https://boards.hellobee.com/ Pregnancy, Baby and Parenting blog, by Hellobee en Sun, 17 May 2026 18:51:56 +0000 https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/the-ideal-budget#post-2891963 Mon, 22 Jul 2019 13:53:02 +0000 kayla0416 2891963@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>We haven't consistently done a budget, but I just estimated a few things in my head and this came up pretty close actually, except for the major one missing - childcare. Our childcare is currently 20% of our take-home income (will be 30% with baby 3 next year!), 25% to mortgage. Most of the others, we are on the low end of that range or a little below. We spend almost nothing on Personal//Recreational, because we can't afford it, and vacations aren't a big priority to us right now. We spend almost nothing on "giving". </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/the-ideal-budget#post-2891943 Mon, 22 Jul 2019 12:19:28 +0000 hellobeeboston 2891943@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>ha! No.... Childcare is our biggest spend currently, and has been for the last 4 years or so.</p> <p>And food would probably be a higher percentage than what is shown. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/the-ideal-budget#post-2891906 Mon, 22 Jul 2019 08:49:10 +0000 graceandjoy 2891906@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>Eh, ours isn't that similar for a lot of the same reasons previously mentioned like childcare, taxes, etc. It looked different before kids, and now we're in the throes of having young kids/baby so in another 5 years it will look different again.</p> <p>While I think DR is great, I do think it's really geared more towards people who really need a lot of help or don't know what they are doing at all. Cause I think he also said something about you should not buy a house more than X% of your income and in some areas, it's just not feasible.</p> <p>I've been successfully budgeting with YNAB for a few years and it really saved me through having kids, having to pay for daycare, etc! </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/the-ideal-budget#post-2891803 Sat, 20 Jul 2019 15:43:58 +0000 DesertDreams88 2891803@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>@Anagram: yeah, I know the risk, I just believe knowing about all the minutiae of my money is more important than the risk. I have a credit freeze with all 3 bureaus and I've had multiple layers of credit monitoring for the past 10 or so years (bc of hacks --&gt; free credit monitoring and most CCs monitoring the score for free now). Also, since I check Mint daily, I see all of my transactions daily, and could catch a fraudulent transaction right away. Here's to hoping for the best!!</p> <p>*This also makes me think the one extra thing I could do is at least unlink our 2 savings accounts from Mint, since we don't spend money directly from those accounts. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/the-ideal-budget#post-2891801 Sat, 20 Jul 2019 14:39:14 +0000 crazydoglady 2891801@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>@Anagram: I use YNAB without it linked to my actual bank acct. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/the-ideal-budget#post-2891800 Sat, 20 Jul 2019 14:27:55 +0000 brownepiano 2891800@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>@anagram: if you want to work on designing a budget/tracking at the same time, check out goodbudget. It has very good analytics but you manually enter everything yourself. I can easily see a break down of how much we are spending on any given category for a month, or a year, where, how, what cards, etc. You can also install the app on multiple devices and have you and your husband both input expenses easily. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/the-ideal-budget#post-2891798 Sat, 20 Jul 2019 12:03:39 +0000 Anagram 2891798@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>@DesertDreams88: My husband refuses to link any of our accounts with sites like Mint. He doesn't believe they are secure enough. I used to think he was being paranoid, but then my paypal account got hacked, and then my password info for another credit card site was hacked in one of those giant links. So now I kind of agree with him. I'd have to track it myself. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/the-ideal-budget#post-2891797 Sat, 20 Jul 2019 10:55:37 +0000 DesertDreams88 2891797@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>This budget breakdown is spot on for us, after taxes and insurance. The insurance category could be re-named "childcare and kid expenses" and it would almost be our exact budget, lol.</p> <p>Our student loans used to be about 25% but now they're down to about 7%. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/the-ideal-budget#post-2891796 Sat, 20 Jul 2019 10:51:07 +0000 DesertDreams88 2891796@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>@SweetCaroline: yeah, after taxes. </p> <p>@pachamama: most evangelicals, Momons, and Muslims believe in tithing, which is giving 10% of your income (some disagreement on pre or post tax.) I don't know stats of follow-through, but I know anecdotally most of my friends do. </p> <p>@Anagram: If you're interested, Mint.com will pull all of your accounts and categorize the info for you. I've been using it for 12 years and thus I know every penny in and out. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/the-ideal-budget#post-2891794 Sat, 20 Jul 2019 10:33:26 +0000 skinnycow 2891794@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>Ours is pretty similar to the chart assuming this is net of taxes. There are a few categories that we spend less on (insurance and giving mainly) and we spend about 10% on childcare. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/the-ideal-budget#post-2891788 Sat, 20 Jul 2019 08:51:17 +0000 SweetCaroline 2891788@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>Where are taxes? Is this graph net of taxes? That is certainly our greatest expense, followed by health insurance and then child care. We save significantly more and are in a phase of life where we spend very little on housing, just property taxes and insurance. We also do not budget but I have been working on building out a personal income statement and balance sheet, so I have a better idea of some of these things. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/the-ideal-budget#post-2891785 Sat, 20 Jul 2019 07:59:25 +0000 Anagram 2891785@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>Yeah, we have a childcare category that takes up a fair chunk, although not near as much these days as when our kids were younger and we had a full time nanny + part time preschool. The rest of the categories are flexible. I don't see a vacation category (maybe that goes in personal?). I don't have a separate category for "insurance". In my mind, home insurance and utilities are included in my housing category; auto insurance is included in my transport category, health insurance is included in my health expenses category. Our housing is low--probably 15%, but we put a lot extra into it, so not sure if that would count towards savings or not. And our savings is also not just "savings"--we have it further split into retirement funds, actual cash savings, additional house payments, additional non-retirement investments, my pension fund ( we just bought some extra years last year to make up for my switch from 1 state to another). </p> <p>We actually don't budget, so I can't say how much we spend on food exactly (groceries that aren't personal care items + eating out/delivery + random trips into convenience stores or coffee places+ amazon prime/pantry) but one of these days I want to sit down with my husband and add it all together so we have an idea. The problem is, we'd have to sit down with all our credit cards and debit card accounts at once, since we're always rotating cards for different promotions and between the 2 of us, we probably have 6 different cards in use at any time. And where do kids' activities go? Personal? As our kiddos get older, we have more activities that suck up our money--dance, camps, soccer, even things like teacher gifts and class events and fundraisers. It really adds up.</p> <p>I read Refinery29 budget diaries all the time, and one day I want to do one for myself, just so I can see exactly what we're doing--but I'd rather track for a whole month, not just 1 week. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/the-ideal-budget#post-2891782 Sat, 20 Jul 2019 07:42:24 +0000 lindseykaye 2891782@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>We spend a little less on many of these categories (housing, auto, food) and more on some that aren’t even included like childcare and student loans. Last year for a short time we were paying nearly 50% between private school tuition and part-time daycare for the baby. This year I’m very thankful we got a scholarship spot for school which brings that down to just 10%.<br /> We are also a 1.5 income family where my husband primarily SAH and works part time. He’s planning to return to full time soon so these numbers would likely change a lot. But the plan for that additional income is to almost entirely use it for debt payoff and savings. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/the-ideal-budget#post-2891780 Sat, 20 Jul 2019 06:21:08 +0000 brownepiano 2891780@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>Yep. I checked out budget app and ours fits pretty closely in this. No debt and I sah mostly so very little childcare. We aren't hard core Dave Ramsey people but we did use his principles some when we were first married and paying off debt/getting a budget set up. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/the-ideal-budget#post-2891779 Sat, 20 Jul 2019 06:06:54 +0000 wrkbrk 2891779@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>@Hypatia: Whoa no this looks nothing like ours. Where are student loans in his chart?? 🤣😭 </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/the-ideal-budget#post-2891778 Sat, 20 Jul 2019 06:05:28 +0000 pachamama 2891778@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>@Hypatia: ours looks pretty off. We definitely don't give 10-15% of our income (do people do that??) ...childcare for us is like 35% for 2 kids. Tens of thousands a year for nanny and Forest school, it's shocking. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/the-ideal-budget#post-2891768 Fri, 19 Jul 2019 23:26:49 +0000 Hypatia 2891768@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>I think I found this chart on Dave Ramsey’s website. Does it resonate with your family budget?</p> <p>Our major differences:</p> <p>Mortgage - 40% (we couldn’t pass up our house, we love it)<br /> Food - 20% - 25% (our worst vice)</p> <p>We either hit the target or spend less in every other category, so that’s a relief. What about you? Do you think any of these categories should be higher or lower than they are? I noticed childcare isn’t in there (I am a SAHM, but I know that’s a huge piece of the pie for double income families). </p> [attach=8948/19/puxb0p.600x600.96A03C15-95FE-40EB-8D98-BA8AE190FDB6.jpeg]