re: Here's a budget breakdown of a couple that makes $200,000 a year and yet is scraping by

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They actually have at least $20,700 in disposable income when you reclassify just the vacations, charity, and "children's lessons" (which sounds like some alien term coined by whatever sad foreveralone liberal accountant put this table together).

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Exactly.

Two Vacations a Year: $8,000
Children's Lessons: $5,000
Charity: $2,000
Consumer Debt: $3,000
What's Left: $5,700
TOTAL: $23,700

I'm not even going to count the "Clothes" for $3,000 because they have two kids that I'm just going to assume are growing and need new stuff. But that's still an assload of money for clothes for one year.

Consumer Debt counts as buying goods that are not consumable and do not depreciate, which to me comes across way more as "buying stuff you want" vs. "buying stuff you need."

I'm all for giving to charity, but you can't take that away from "disposable income" just because. That's $2,000 of your disposable income YOU CHOSE to give to charity.

18k in 401k isn't maxing out if they both work.

And that property tax seems way low.

They could eliminate charity, one vacation, consumer debt and child "lessons" and add nearly 15k to their end of year balance. All should be considered disposable income.

15k after all expenses and retirement savings isn't bad at all. Put 10 away each year and roll over 5, and after 30 years, they'd have a sizeable nest egg and a lot of cash on hand.

Well, 3,000 a month on house note will do that

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$1,000 a month on food??

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Looks like neither adult does any cooking.

That budget looks like shite. There are any number of places they can save money.

They are actual morons if they are paying 30% in income taxes. They are missing out on some deductions.

We make 25% less than that in a low cost area and don't use daycare. We certainly do not feel like we have a lot left over.... We do enjoy our life though and eat out, have drinks, take vacations etc... I would not be happy pinching every penny. We work hard so we like to enjoy ourselves. To each their own I guess.

And I thought that was one of the more reasonable figures on there.

LOl, some of you guys have clearly never done a budget. $1000/ month for food for a family of 3 in a big city is not bad at all. That's $150/ week in groceries, 2-3 dinners, and a couple of lunches.

$3,000 year for 2 professionals working full time is not an expensive clothes budget either. Anyone that says it is, does not have a wife or at least has no idea how much she spends. That's a good amount, but not extravagant. A new suit set once a year, a couple of dresses for the wife, and you are damn near $2000. A couple of pairs of decent shoes.

This thread has it all. OT subtle brags to the max. shite talk. even a rapehog sighting

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Damn, I just sat through an entire defensive driving class and this thread about a fictional budget is still going?

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Well I'm just really bored at work today.

I don't know what everyone else's excuse is.

How is that just scraping by?