Hot on the heels of discussing Christmas gifts, I figured I might as well do a budget roundup from 2024. I find posts of this ilk are either deeply fascinating or horrifically boring depending on the audience. You get to decide where you land!
HOW WE TRACK SPENDING
At the beginning of each month I download the transactions from our joint chequing account and our personal credit cards (one each). I record all our expenditures under the appropriate category and that same information is funnelled into a summary spreadsheet that gives running totals for each category, along with monthly averages.
HOW WE SPENT MONEY IN 2024
- Every year there always seems to be a dominant area of spending. In 2023 we bought a new-to-us (used) SUV in cash. Early in 2024, shortly after “The Car Literally Won’t Turn Off” incident, we ended up repairing and selling our owes-us-nothing-but-is-going-to-become-a-money-pit Hyundai. We spent several months living as a one-vehicle household, but quickly discovered that wasn’t ideal. In June we purchased a used car (in cash – so a significant investment upfront, but it means we now own two vehicles outright; no car payments!). This made our Auto expenses this year…quite spendy. This category also includes car insurance (on two vehicles), repairs and maintenance (tire changes, undercoating), plus the cost of gas/car washes. Cars are very expensive to own and operate. But living in a quasi-rural area, they are really a necessity.
- The other big category was House Investment. A major financial milestone in 2024 was paying off our house, and this includes some lump-sum “overpayments”.
- The pie chart does not include personal taxes or investments in anything other than the house (so saving for future education in an RESP – which is partially matched by the Canadian government – GICs, RRSPs, TFSAs, etc.)
- Since we manage our own business, phone and internet expenses are covered by our company + we get a portion of money spent on Household and House Investment back since we maintain a home office. Those rebates are not factored into this pie chart.
- We do NOT track cash. If we find $20 on the street or if I sell something at a consignment store and get a payout, we do not classify that as income. If we buy something in cash I don’t track it. If I send a child into the store to buy a bag of apples for $5.99 and I give them a $10 bill, none of that transaction will show up in our spreadsheet.
Our biggest category in 2024 was Auto at 26.2% and our smallest category was General Thrift at 0.9%.
AUTO (26.2%) | Last year auto spending was 33.5% (for reference, in 2022 it was 6.6%) so while it was a significant portion of our spending, it includes buying a second new-to-us vehicle in cash. In 2025 this should shrink back down closer to 6.6%!
HOUSEHOLD INVESTMENT (18.4%) | This includes regular mortgage payments, and any extra payments to complete the mortgage. I don’t foresee any major household investments in 2025 (costs associated with painting a room, for example, would go under Household), so this should be close to $0??
HOUSEHOLD (11.1%) | This includes things like property taxes, house insurance, general home repairs, heating and water bills, and general home purchases (furnace filters, home decor, water heater/propane tank rentals). I’m thinking of combining all insurances (home, vehicle, life) into a single category next year.
CHARITABLE (10.9%) | Various causes we support; one of the most special is helping cover school expenses and basic living costs for a boy Indy’s age in Kenya and a girl Belle’s age in Ecuador. They love communicating via letter with these children who we’ve sponsored for over 6 years now. It also includes all other giving, including a down payment for a humanitarian trip John will be taking to Rwanda later this year.
GROCERIES (7.6%) | Our grocery spending is up from 2023, and it continues to be a sobering reminder of just how fortunate we are; inflation – especially as it relates to basic human necessities like shelter, food, communications, and medical needs – has wreaked havoc for so many in 2024. What an incredible blessing to never have to prioritize food over heat, to never go hungry. The skyrocketing rates of food insecurity are heartbreaking.
TRAVEL (6.7%) | This includes: flights, meals, and entertainment on vacations (this doesn’t include any local adventures here in Nova Scotia where gas would just go under Auto and restaurants/movies/events would go under Meals and Entertainment). In 2024 we went to Barcelona (though the plane tickets were on 2023’s budget) and Portugal; this also includes the tickets for our 2025 trip to Paris which were booked in 2024.
MISC (4.5%) | This is terrible categorization. It mostly represents purchases from the Dollarstore, Walmart, and Amazon. I am too lazy to pull things apart, so this is a mix of household items, groceries, and gifts. I’m going to separate things a bit more intentionally next year.
HEALTH (4.2%) | Most medical procedures are covered free of charge by the Canadian medical system. But we don’t have private insurance, so things like eye care and dental work are only covered free for our kids. Spending this year included new glasses for John, Belle’s braces (completely out of pocket since it’s technically a cosmetic procedure, not a necessary intervention), medications, and any other health-centric expenditure.
KIDS (3.2%) | This includes haircuts, school fees, and other activities (summer camp, recreational sports leagues).
MEALS AND ENTERTAINMENT (2.0%) | This covers restaurant meals/coffee shops, movie tickets, takeout, and subscriptions (we have five: Spotify, Netflix, Disney+, TSN and John’s monthly Oura ring fee).
GIFTS (1.8%) | Self explanatory, but a significant chunk of Miscellaneous belongs in here…
LIFE INSURANCE (1.2%) | Self explanatory. I think I’ll combine all our insurances into a single category next year.
CLOTHES (1.4%) | This category is up from 0.5% last year. It includes thrifted clothes from several independent thrift stores we visit (so NOT “General Thrift” below), but it’s also where I would record any clothing or footwear we happen to buy new.
GENERAL THRIFT (0.9%) | This is the amount of money we spent at our favourite chain of thrift stores (Valu Village). This encompasses household items, gifts, and clothing. I don’t tease out specific purchases, but John will also sometimes buy electronics that he refurbishes and sells for a profit.
In case you’re interested in a side-by-side comparison.
2023
2024
Our overall spending was down quite a bit in 2024 – mostly because for several months of the year we had no mortgage payments and the used car cost quite a bit less than the used SUV we purchased in 2023.
And there you have it!
Your turn.
- Do you track your monthly or annual spending habits?
- If so, what was your biggest category in 2024? Smallest?
- Do you track cash (in/out)?
- What category would you like to see go up (e.g. more going toward travel) and what category would you like to see go down?
Header photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
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mbmom11
This s so interesting! Do you not use cash enough that it would not show up on the chart or affect the categories much? I don’t use cash often, but there are still places here where cash is required / preferred.
I stopped budgeting strictly years ago, but I am trying to track food expenses right now. I know things have gone up in price ( I keep a mental list of what things cost) , but I want to break it out more clearly. Many things have gone up over 50% in the past few years.
And insurance – sigh. We just added teen son to the car insurance- so that got inceased by 30%.
Congratulations on paying off the house! We did that too, though the monthly payment wasn’t much. We can use the mortgage payment funds to pay for the car insurance increase.
Elisabeth
We don’t use cash much at all. I pay the kids their allowance in cash (but I don’t track that and they are responsible for how they want to deal with their money), we occasionally buy some things second-hand in cash (say, at a yard sale), but I would almost never use cash in a “regular” store. I don’t think it would budge any category at all based on how little we use cash.
With groceries, at this point, for me it is “it costs what it costs” and “can I get this on sale.” All the sales are now much higher prices, too, but I feel like certain staple foods need to be purchased so I just put them in the cart, accepting there is literally nothing I can do at this point about inflation. But it is insane how some things (chocolate chips! olive oil!) have skyrocketed.
That’s so great you paid off your mortgage. It’s not always feasible or even the right financial strategy for many people, but I am very glad we were able to prioritize paying it off. Thankfully we have a few years before we’ll need to insure a kid. I’m terrified already!
Maria
I’m one of the “finds it super interesting “ crowd. Cars are expensive! I don’t have the time right now to do a pie chart but I 100% know that auto is the biggest expense for us too. We bought a minivan with cash in October. My in-laws moved to town and we need to be able to help transport my grandmother-in-law. We’re trying to sell our old car though because we really don’t need 2 and it would be really nice to get some of the money we spent on the van back by selling the Subaru.
Between the new van and a couple house repairs that needed to be done 2024 was an expensive year. There are two smaller house things that really do need to be done this year, but other than that I hope 2025 is less expensive! We need to rebuild our short/midterm semi-emergency fund. (That’s what I call the savings for things like car repairs that are expensive, an unexpected big house expense etc.)
Elisabeth
That makes me feel better! Having auto so high two years in a row is unusual for us, but it makes sense since each year we bought a used vehicle outright (I mean, money transfer, so not literal bills). It’s great you can go down to one vehicle.
There are lots of things we “could” do in 2025, but nothing that HAS to get done which feels like a relief after 5+ years of basically something being broken or being renovated.
Jenny
A couple things I really love here- one, you paid off your house!!! That’s huge. And you have no car payments! We’ve been in both those positions- the house we liced in before this one was paid off, and for a while we had no car payments- but right now we have a mortgage and TWO car payments, sigh.
Second, I love your attitude towards the rising cost of groceries. Instead of complaining about it, you say “we’re so lucky to be able to afford this.” We ARE lucky. No matter how expensive groceries are, we still go to the store and buy just about anything we want. A lot of people aren’t in that position.
Elisabeth
Jenny, it is so huge and we are so fortunate. First, that John works in such a well-compensated field, second that we live in an area that is generally relatively affordable, and third that we’re content with “lesser” homes and “used” vehicles! That trifecta has been a real blessing.
To be honest, I can’t even imagine not being able to buy food. How are we living in 2025 and people are still going hungry? Growing up my parents has very little money, but the one thing we always had was hearty food. I’ve never known a day of food want in my life, never had to skip a meal because there wasn’t something to eat, and isn’t it sobering to think that the majority of people on this planet can’t relate to that. It’s just…awful.
Nicole MacPherson
Congrats on paying off your house! Yay!!!
We do track expenses and it’s weird now that Rob is retired, because now the income comes in different ways. Our travel funds come from the travel budget that we had set aside when he was working, for example. Personally my largest expenses are groceries! But you know how that goes.
Elisabeth
Groceries are…a lot. We don’t eat organic, we shop sales, and we have pretty basic tastes, so I think that helps keep our grocery bill fairly reasonable but even still. It is rather shocking to buy 2-3 things and end up with an $80 bill. Olive oil! Flour!
Birchie
Good stuff! I didn’t track spending until two years ago, which is of course when I started thinking about leaving my job. I use Empower Personal Capital, which is free and does a pretty good job, and I’ve been known to extract the data and run it through a spreadsheet to get more detail. This is something of a one time project, since I just needed to get a general idea of my spending to check that my savings and investments will be able to cover my expenses once I stop working. It’s also helped me to confirm that yes it’s OK to spend money for fun.
Elisabeth
I can’t wait to follow along as you transition out of your career – both logistically and financially. And I know you have big plans to do some fun things with those savings 🙂
Joy
I find this super interesting and pie charts are incredibly satisfying! I really love how you break it down. I don’t track specifically but I know our grocery costs have risen the past two years especially – prices are discouragingly high. We have also seen an increase in clothing expenses the past two years as our children have steadily grown out of hand-me-down territory and also have more personal preferences for their appearance. I just donated a tall stack of Abby’s old jeans that the younger girls won’t wear – dark wash skinny jeans are not the thing anymore. I get it but it still sort of pains me.
I guess when they were very small children we spent almost zero on this category because of hand-me-downs, so I will try to factor that in in my mind.
Congratulations on the mortgage pay-off – what a big accomplishment!
Elisabeth
We are a bit freer with our spending now that we have more financial freedom BUT, there are still some things I simply can’t stomach at the store. The prices are just too unbelievable. Our grocery spending has more than doubled since we had two toddlers at home.
Agreed that the hand-me-down phase is largely behind us. Thankfully Belle really likes to shop at thrift stores, so almost all our clothes (fancy Nikes aside) are second-hand, but even still…it adds up!
Colleen Martin
Paying off the house is such a huge accomplishment, especially when you’ve been putting extra money into the mortgage, so big congrats! We are planning on having ours paid off for Phil’s 45th birthday this year and I’m very excited to start saving those monthly payments, although with two in college and one in med school plus Catholic elementary school tuitions, I don’t think as much will get saved as I would hope. I have to admit that I’m a wee bit jealous of the healthcare in Canada because we pay over $15,000 a year for our family plan, which does not include copays for every visit – blech!
mbmom11
Do you have HSA? Money can be taken out pretax for medical expenses. It’s eye opening how $1000 taken off the gross only lowers the net by $750 or so. This is good if you only take the standard deduction and not itemize.
Congrats on getting close to paying off the house- that will be a great birthday present!
Elisabeth
How exciting!!! You’re so close to the big moment and I’m sure that will feel monumental.
The Canadian healthcare system has a lot (A LOT) of flaws, but I firmly believe in equal access to care and so despite the flaws, I feel tremendously fortunate to live in a country where basic medical support is free of charge. I remember reading a blog once about a mom in the US who didn’t have great insurance and she was debating about taking her daughter (with a minor, but worrying, fever) to the ER. She knew it was going to cost over $1,000 for the visit. While we have horrible wait times in Canada, I am so glad we can walk into any hospital and get medical care without spending a penny (other than our tax dollars, of course).
Colleen Martin
Nope, we have an HMO with no HSA option.
NGS
Woot! Woot! Yay for paying off your house. That’s so amazing! We still have fifteen years on our mortgage, but I think we can probably pay it off in ten. That still sounds like a lot of time when I write it out like that.
I should get my husband to track his expenses. I wonder if he would cooperate so I could get a better view of our overall expenses? It sort of violates a lot of our non-spoken agreements about financial independence within our relationship, though. Oh, well. I’ll post my expenses next week, but it will not be our entire household.
Elisabeth
I’m curious if you sit down and have discussions about how much money you have jointly? For example, what would happen if Dr. BB didn’t have enough money available for a mortgage payment. Would that automatically fall to you. (Not a great hypothetical, I’m just genuinely curious since we share an account, but I do know some other people that keep their finances separate.)
NGS
These are great questions. We actually talk about big picture money a lot, but rarely touch on nitty-gritty details like how much the phone bill is. My husband doesn’t get paid over the summer, so at the beginning of every summer, we talk about what’s going on with money. We can, hypothetically, pay all of our “regular” expenses on my husband’s salary. If something out of the ordinary happened (medical crisis, accident, having to replace ALL THE WATER PIPES TO THE MAIN SEWER LINE – more on that later), then we’d have to dip into savings, but ideally he’d never have trouble making the mortgage payment or something like that. We do share a savings account and so we can use that to track how things are going financially from year to year.
Anyway, we do talk about these things a lot, but we just have separate checking accounts.
Elisabeth
So interesting!!!
Sarah
Oooh, this is fascinating!! I WISH we could pay off our house this year- that would be THE BEST.
Elisabeth
We started with a certain goal in mind and paid a bit extra and were quite thrilled to be finished earlier than anticipated.
Ernie
I do not track our spending. Eek. My dad is an accountant and we grew up with my dad so overly focused on where every penny was spent, it was exhausting. In general, I feel like we are fairly thrifty and therefore, I don’t feel like zeroing in on all that is spent. We have never had a car payment and we probably never will. We can pay off our house, but sometimes the tax benefit of the interest on that outweighs the benefit of paying it off. We reconsider this every once in a while. We were incredibly blessed to inherit money from my uncle last year. So, this year we will probably revisit whether or not this is the time to pay off the mortgage. I would guess that travel (sports teams and college visits) or groceries are our biggest expense, followed closely by shopping for clothes. I buy clothes and shoes on sale, but I spend a bit more here because I gravitate towards quality items that will last. My dad would have a fit if he knew that I don’t even balance my checkbook anymore. (although I also don’t write checks very often either). Congrats on paying off your home. I do think driving used cars is a great savings. We spent $5k in 2020 to keep GW afloat, and that was a gamble. It’s held up and I use it for my daycare. We could not find another used van to relace it at the time.
Elisabeth
We’ve had good success with used cars!
I like having an idea of where the money is going, but I’d say it takes me less than 15 minutes a month. I’m not sure I’d be keen to invest much more time than that!
Maureen
Congratulations on being able to pay off your mortgage and purchase a new-to-you car. WOW! My mind is blown because we have never been able to do that in our 42 years of marriage; we are spenders! That is awesome.
Altho, once we figure out what we owe in taxes this year, I will be paying off my husband’s truck. And we still have a little bit of credit card debt that should be paid off by the time we head to Florida at the end of February. We also just switched our cell phone provider to Mint Mobile which will save us over $800 for the year. Next big thing is to get the high interest savings account to a certain amount before retirement in March 2026.
I am tracking our January and February spending so we don’t waste money. Since I will be retiring next year, we have too really cut our spending so that the retirement funds will cover our spending. Those are our goals for the year.
Elisabeth
$800 in savings!! That’s incredible. Wow.
SHU
OOH! I love posts like this. It also inspired me to create the same graphs for us with YNAB.
Travel was our biggest category (13%) followed by mortgage (12.5%) and our nanny (12%) which was nearly tied with school (12%). Super interesting. I actually was happy to see our graph looks like it matches with our priorities overall, I don’t have a lot of spending regret though obviously I would always like to save a bit more! (We have most of our savings automated so it’s easy and I don’t think about it, but ‘extra’ savings is not always something that comes naturally or that we are inclined to do. Our overall long term goals seem like they are being met though so I feel decent about it all!)
Elisabeth
That’s the goal, right – to have money going toward what you value. I know how much you love travel, so it sounds perfect that travel was your biggest category.
SHU
Oh and congrats on your mortgage payoff! That is amazing . We are not aiming to pay ours because the interest rate is just so low (under 3%) that I’d rather just keep autopilot investing with our savings, but it must feel incredibly freeing!!
Elisabeth
I don’t think it’s generally considered the best financial move (though Lisa and Kyria did it and they’re in the finance industry, so that makes me feel like I’m in good company), and mortgage isn’t traditional debt. Still, it feels so good to have that behind us (for now at least). And interest rates in Canada are going up. We go for fixed rates, and our last fixed rate was over 5%. Eeks. So paying it off feels like a guaranteed 5% return since I know I’ll be saving that in interest.
My accountant didn’t agree, but we did it anyway and I don’t regret that!
Kyria @ Travel Spot
I did not do it! I am in the other camp, that I feel that you should use the money to invest at a higher rate if your mortgage is low.
Elisabeth
Oops. Okay, which blogger was it. I know someone other than Lisa. (And I’m pretty sure Nicole wasn’t the one I was thinking of either.)
Lisa's Yarns
I do a finance post each year and plan to publish mine tomorrow! We track ours through our Fidelity account. I used to use Mint.com but that went away last year. It’s an imperfect system since I don’t manually re-categorize things so we have a big “shopping” piece of the pie. Expenses related to childcare and other kid activities was 47% (!!!!) of our spending! But it’s an important line item that allows us to work full time so it’s just something I observe with no desire to manage/lower. Our 2023 was like your 2024 in that we bought a car but now our vehicle expense line item is back down to around 5-6%.
I rarely rarely have/use cash. Phil is my ATM. He collects all the cash that we receive for Christmas presents and such and has an envelope. If I need cash, I will go to him. So it does not get included in our expense report but we also do not buy much with cash.
I would love for our travel line item to increase (it was 3% in 2024) but we are not in the stage where travel is something we want to do a lot of… I know there are people who will travel with small children but I don’t feel the need or desire to do that. I do like doing 1:1 trips w/ the kids so I will be taking Will to Chicago with me when I go to my nephew’s HS graduation. I took Paul to DC to visit my sister and we had the best time so now it’s Will’s turn.
Elisabeth
Looking forward to your post!!
A few years and your childcare output will rapidly decline!!!
We didn’t travel at all with the kids when they were young (SC a few years ago was the first time Indy had been on a plane). Like you, I had zero desire to spend that much money and have to juggle naps and tantrums. And look at us now. They kids have two European trips under their belt and they are great little travellers. There is no reason to rush that stage. It will arrive before you know it, and better to save the money now for trips that will be enjoyable down the line over going now when you have a kiddo that might be awake in the night etc. (At least that’s how I look at it!)
Alexandra
I think everyone in upper school should be schooled in doing their finances in prep for adulthood. It would make life so much easier, if everyone knew how to do it, and keep track of everything. I was lucky enough to have parents that took the time to drill it into us kids the importance of keeping your accounts in proper standing, as my dad use to say.
So yes, me and mine do monthly accounts to keep track, and have just started our prep for tax time, to get a head start. I like to know exactly where I am at any time of the month and year, with money.
Meanwhile, congrats on paying off the mortgage. We rent, which is a whole other kettle of fish.
Elisabeth
AMEN. I think financial planning should be mandatory for kids to learn. Budgets and how investing works. All of it. Frankly, it’s far more important than most other subjects they might be learning and yet, at least where we live, it doesn’t get touched at all. Which leaves parents responsible for teaching their kids about money and that’s…tricky. Anyhoo, I couldn’t agree more.
I’m pretty sure it’s almost always a better financial decision to rent in a city though, right?
Alexandra
There are so many “life” subjects that would be better taught at school, if only …
Yes, we decided because of the OH’s job to rent in the city, and are in a six-building apartment complex not 10 minutes walk from where they work. And, with great bus service, we don’t need a car, which is a saving.
Sophie
Ummm you paid off your mortgage?! That’s huge Elisabeth, congratulations! Mortgage is BY FAR our biggest expense (we bought only 2 years ago and house prices are sky high in Australia), so this is a distant dream for me. I love how you categorised your spending, so interesting. My bank app provides this each month, so I could pull this together pretty easily. Other than the mortgage, our big ticket items are daycare (only for one more year!), and groceries. Always a challenge keeping the food bill down, but you are right, we are so lucky that we never need to choose between food and other essentials.
Elisabeth
It really is so huge. And I realize it is very rare. We are tremendously fortunate. We bought at the “right” time – a few years before COVID so many of our renos were done when materials were less expensive, and houses in general cost a lot less. There is NO way we’d be finished if we had tried to buy a home during COVID.
You will notice a huge difference when daycare is no longer in the ledger!!
Kyria @ Travel Spot
I love seeing how other people spend money. I have my finance wrap up post set for Monday, but this year (2024) was a weird one for me, as I spent a ton of money on the house stuff at the beginning and then obviously traveled the rest of the year so had a compeltetly different type of spending. Spoiler, I spent more in 2024 than I ever have before in one year. However, most of it was in the first half of the year and was related to the house.
I think paying for your car in cash is one of the best uses for your money, unless you can get 0% financing (or really, really low), as like I said in my comment above, I do feel that you should invest if you can get a few percent more than your mortgage or loan. However, I do know that having things paid off has an emotional benefit which I definitely do not discount. But I am in the camp that I want to spend my money on my terms, so whether it is getting a spread for borrowed money or paying less taxes at the beginning of the year and paying the gov’t at tax time, I want to put my own money to work under my own control, if that makes sense.
Elisabeth
Can’t WAIT to read your post tomorrow.
The last time we even looked at financing it was 8%. 8%!! No thanks. We’ll pay in cash at 0%…Though I realize it is a tremendous privilege to be able to buy a car outright (that said, we have made a lot of wise financial decisions to provide that flexibility).
Marcia (OrganisingQueen)
I do track but I’m not obsessive about it. I should do better I guess but I already track so much.
My biggest spend was a car (new – first one in 17 years) which I paid for cash after thinking that my old car would die every year for the last 5 – 8 years, then kids’ schooling (we pay for school here) and then holidays!
And notably, all the cancer treatment – I cannot believe how much it all cost and it just came in under my oncology benefit limit. I think I’m at 97% spent with a good few oncology visits and blood tests/ mammograms due in June this year. Prayers that nothing goes wrong until the anniversary of diagnosis otherwise it’s a 20% co-payment on everything.
Elisabeth
Wait, does everybody have to pay for school in South Africa?? Or just if you send your kids to some sort of private school.
I’m so glad you came under your limit. I think we often overlook just how expensive it is to be sick 🙁
Stephany
I loooove these posts, even if our financial situations are vastly different, lol. What an amazing thing to be able to pay off your mortgage and buy a car in cash. That’s really a huge blessing, I’m sure.
I do track my spending because I am NOT frugal by nature and must keep tabs on how much money I’m spending. I’m really trying to spend a LOT less money on online takeout this year because it’s just insane how expensive it has gotten. A single sandwich from Subway can be $25 after fees/tip/etc!
Elisabeth
It is such a privilege. And, also, we’ve taken some steps that have made it a lot more likely (buying a house far below what we were offered in terms of a mortgage, buying used cars). I am looking forward to a year of lower spending!
Yikes. That’s an expensive sandwich, but sometimes convenience has a steep price tag and sometimes it really IS worth it! Would you believe I still have not ever had food delivered to me a single time in my entire life?!
Kelsey
Thank you for sharing this! And a huge congrats on paying off your house! That’s amazing and is such a gift to your present and future selves. We also closely track our spending and saving, although we did not pull together an overall pie chart like this for 2024 — now I am curious what ours would look like! We use the app Monarch to track all of our money and to categorize our spending and saving. I would not describe us as thrifty but we are very thoughtful spenders and prioritize savings, while also enjoying being able to afford more expensive things that we feel bring value to our lives. For example, our memberships at a boutique gym, nice items for the house as we can afford them, kids’ activities, and our car, which we bought new in 2022.
Over time our income has continued to increase bit by bit and while growing kids also cost more bit by bit, we are looking forward to a couple of big financial milestones in the in the next year: being done paying for preschool (+$750/month) and being done paying for our car (+$650/month). I’m excited to increase our savings rate with that “extra” money.
Elisabeth
I am a sucker for pie charts. They just look so pretty and really help me visualize the overall patterns in our spending. I’m already curious about how 2025 will shake out without big car/home expenses (HOPEFULLY).
It was such a milestone when we finished preschool payments. It’s glorious. And hooray for finishing the car payments as well. That extra money is a wonderful feeling since you don’t have to work harder to get it, it just doesn’t automatically zoom out of the account to those recurring bills.
Tobia | craftaliciousme
Congrats paying off the mortgage. What a mile stones. Also you are so good in lowing your expanses in these times we live in. So amazing.
We do live in a more rural area now – compared to down town Berlin – and the husband keeps suggesting we need another car. While I sometimes wished I could take the care I often opt for public transport. But when two busses are canceled and I sit 40 minutes at the station I regret my decisions. But I dont want to pay for a second car…
Elisabeth
It costs so much to have a car. But where we live there are very (very!) limited public transit options and it is so nice to be able to go in different directions with different kids if needed. But it’s a major expense, to be sure.