I also love reading stuff like this, and I would be mortified to have my spending published. But this particular one is super weird:
$584 on a mortgage, but $447/month on “rentals”? That’s got some strong dril vibes:
https://twitter.com/dril/status/384408932061417472
[I am also super tilted by including credit card payments as spending, but that may be a me thing.]
Yeah these people are very brave to volunteer this info. I would be horrified if any single person other than my wife knew our monthly spending in that much detail.
is that credit card debt or paying off a credit card?
30$ a day in restaurants and 750/mo on pets seems like a leak
Feels like it should be the former, otherwise a lot of the other items would be appearing on next month’s list.
You can add the $900 on restaurants to the $1550 on groceries (not all food, but mostly I guess). How much is the family of four eating ffs?
$2,400 divided by 4 people, 3 meals per day, 30 days in a month is only $6.67 per meal. Its possible to eat cheaper than that but its also not outlandish.
Breakfast should not be weighted the same as the rest. What’s a bowl of Cheerios? 50 cents?
As noted, you can eat cheaper than that. But a reasonable well rounded diet that includes a reasonable allowance for eating out can easily be $7 per meal IMO. Again, I’m making the assumption that we’re not actively trying to reduce cost.
Sure, I’m just saying $28 for breakfast for a family of four is outlandish. The numbers for lunch and dinner go up a lot with reasonable numbers for the first meal.
I think it’s a pretty large amount when you factor in how cheap food is in the US - and that half of those 4 people are kids.
Fine. I do love my smoked salmon for breakfast but I’ll allow it.
Note that I also included zero for any food or drink between meals. I think that their total spend is higher than it has to be but they’re not eating filet mignon and truffles every single day either.
Also
Paula: I have a few credit cards: Capital One, Merrick Bank, Children’s Place, Walmart, Macy’s, Fingerhut. I owe money on all of them. The Walmart credit card — that is for groceries, and they just upped my credit.
so it looks as if some of the cc spending is on food too lol.
Some pretty normal habits erode the cheapness of food though. Coffee habits are expensive. Convenience can be expensive.
What in the fuck? Kai-lin? Dest-eye-nee?
https://www.valuepenguin.com/how-much-we-spend-food
This article has some good info. Average spend is about $6,600 per household per year. So the sample family is more than double the average household. But they probably should be somewhat higher because I think 4 people is above average.
You’re right about convenience food being costlier (and less healthy) than cooking yourself. It’s one of several ways in which food/shopping is skewed against the poor: having to work longer hours means a greater reliance on convenience food; and living in smaller accommodation means less scope to save a lot by buying in bulk.
Every one of those families is weird in some way – tithing, cell phone + tablet $435 for 2 people, 6 kids, $700/month for a beater car (?), prioritizing adult braces over more urgent expenses, and yeah, $2400 for food is kind of nuts.
I would be mortified if my finances were broken down like that. My biggest expenditure during pandemic has been food delivery.
