So, first off me and my husband live in a small town and have a 2 year old and another baby on the way. The cost of living is not crazy, but we don’t make a whole lot (a good amount for our area and age) so saving has been a struggle for us. We have a serious problem with going out to eat because I can’t cook. But I’m trying to fix that.
Together we bring home $3600 a month on our base paychecks. My husband gets a lot of overtime with his checks so realistically we bring home $4500 a month but I don’t like to base off of overtime because it’s not guaranteed. We would like to start a savings but need to decide what has to go and what we need to do and what is a realistic amount that we can save. Right now we have about $1500 in savings for our son. And $1200 in our savings and average around $1500 as a monthly balance that we keep in our checking. So technically $2700 in our savings.
Our monthly bills:
Car 1: $130.
Car 2: $240.
Car Insurance: $366.
Home Payment (insurance, taxes and everything): $700
Gas and Electric: $150
Internet: $75
Tv Services (Netflix and Hulu): $30
Food (without eating out): $300
Household items and necessities (diapers, toiletries, ect.): $100
Credit cards (we never keep large balances and only use them to build credit so this is an overestimation.): $150
Gas for vehicles: $200.
Total: $2,441.
So we should have $1159 extra a month to save and eat out with and all that stuff. And Car 1 will be paid off in February 2019, so will be $1,289 on base pay and $2,059 with over time.
We have had a hard time saving and I’d really love to start. I feel like we have enough left over that we should be able to save easily but we just blow all of our money. We are young (both 21) and irresponsible and I want to get on track.
I want to know how much you guys would save if you had to work with what we have? We still want to be able to have extra money every month to be able to do things we enjoy and not feel pinned down. But, we really want to set our children up with a great future. We started out with not the best circumstances and have really worked hard to get to where we are and want to better our lives for our children.
I am also open to any investment suggestions!
Thank you in advance and sorry if I did this wrong I just want to be responsible about this!
Submitted October 24, 2018 at 10:26PM by throwaway96939693 https://ift.tt/2O4SbGq
