whats your biggest expense?

[SteinFamily]

It's pretty easy to get free/cheap food once you have skills like using coupons down. I know at least in Florida housing is expensive. So my vote defiantly goes to rent/mortgage.

[startover40]

Housing: mortgage+HELOC= $6,000 a month. OUCH

[Kircheis]

Definitely taxes...

[sarah]

Hands down: Housing

[Goldy]

For us its
1) Retirement Savings
2) Housing (only because we make extra payments)
3) Taxes
4) Company Stock
5) Food

[Rainbow Traveller]

Housing cost is the biggest cost of leading life because it is my hobby to live in a beautiful house where as i spent extra money for my hobby.

[elfen lied]

We only bought the house in October, found the tenants for November and we move into the house in 13 months. So far the property manager says everything is going well. He does a walk through every 3 months and he's got the third one scheduled for next month. Our tenants pay enough to cover the mortgage, taxes, insurance, AND the mgr's fee and we still net a couple dollars. We were planning to get family to move in free, so every month they are there means they pay the basics.

A lived in property is safer than one that's not - especially when the nearest neighbor is over 1/2 mile away and we are half a country away.

[Bades]

Auto insurance by far.

How much auto insurance are you paying?! Even if you were paying $5,000 a year for Auto Ins that only comes out to $417/month.

???

[Bades]

I pay $470 for rent so Food is usually my biggest expense at around $540 a month.

To me food includes: Groceries, restaurants, and alcohol & bars. I have a g/f too so some of those restaurant expenses are for two people.

[feh]

Depends on your definition of "expense". If we just look at where each dollar goes, our biggest expense is savings.

After that, ours is probably groceries, as we don't have a mortgage.

[mom-from-missouri]

Auto insurance by far.

[mavycharm]

Food

I often spend much of my money for foods rather than on housing or other expenses. I'm not a fatty girl nor someone who always love to fill in my tum tum. I spend much of my money for foods because I love to eat in places I haven't really been there regardless of how the foods actually taste like. Better to say a hobby, hobby of trying new restaurants and eating to places to give it a try. I'm really fond of it. And this usually happens when it's wage time. lol

[humandraydel]

Just out of curiosity, what are you including in "housing"? I assume you mean PITI? Or just PIT? I'm asking mainly because I've started using GNUCash and it doesn't treat the principal payment as an expense...which, technically it's not because you are gaining equity and it increases your net worth.

All that aside, my PI is $500, TI is another $200. I spend $400 per month on food.

[theduc]

Ours is housing... about $2,300/month (but that is on two properties... $1,200/month on our main residence). Next is food & dining at around $700/month (including groceries, going out to eat and bars/night life)

Savings/Investments is about the same as our housing but I don't see that as an "Expense".

[kork13]

For me it's by far savings (27%), which I'm none too upset about... But excluding that, housing (18%). However, if I had gone with a 30yr mortgage vs. the 15yr loan that I have, Taxes/SS/Medicare would actually be the highest at about 13%... or at least tied with housing, and also with charitable giving (about the same). As a single guy, food doesn't even come close. Even including my "eating out" allowance, that's less than 4% of my budget.

There are alot of factors that impact individual families' budgets, but in most cases, it makes sense that housing or total insurance (health/dental/home/car/life) costs would be the top expenditures.