Budget Categories

**myrdale** · 10-29-2025, 06:37 AM

I should note that Rent and Mortgage and Vehicle payments are non-issues for me. Those would be biggies for most. The mortgage use to land in the "Other" category in the past.

**kork13** · 10-29-2025, 06:58 AM

Here's my breakdown ... I don't hold strictly to these figures, they're more an observation than limits ... It's just a means for me to project how our income will likely be used. Everything is a percentage of gross (and rounded, so probably >100%)

- Taxes, FICA, etc.: 12%
- Tithing (church donations):12% Housing: currently 0%, living in military on-base housing
- Utilities: currently 1%, just phone & internet right now (see housing)
- Insurance: 2% (WAY cheaper overseas!)
- Childcare & Activities: all of the kids' needs & fun stuff, 4%
- Auto: 1% (not alot of driving needed, plus our current cars are super old & super cheap
- Groceries: 5%
- Savings/Investments/Goals: 50% ... This is extreme, but we're just conservative with spending so we don't have much else to do with excess income.
- Eating Out: 2%
- Charity: 1%
- Entertainment: 3%
- Spending Money: catch all for the rest, 5-10%, meant to be flexible

**disneysteve** · 10-29-2025, 08:16 AM

I don't budget - I track. I don't break it down by category. I really only focus on the bottom line. How much are we spending each month? How does that compare to last year?

My spreadsheet has all of the major bills but things like the credit card bills aren't broken down at all. Just the grand total for Visa, Discover, and Amex regardless of what those charges were for. So, for example, I have absolutely no idea how much we've spent on groceries this year or travel or restaurants. I just know how much we've spent overall. But I can give you totals for gas and electric, water, health insurance (though not OOP expenses), home insurance, and property taxes.

**myrdale** · 10-29-2025, 08:21 AM

Originally posted by kork13 View Post

- Savings/Investments/Goals: 50% ... This is extreme, but we're just conservative with spending so we don't have much else to do with excess income.

This is an interesting category. Some of it I can track, some not so much.

For the first few months of the year I am investing in the Roth IRA, that is easy because it is more or less a purchase.

Throughout the year I have deductions to the Roth 401(k) and HSA. These are taken out of my paycheck. They are known values, but are happening in the back ground.

I have an additional money market account that I send any surplus to as my project fund (house siding and new truck were both paid directly from this account). That money is just in a different jar. I'm not sure how I'd look at that on paper.

**myrdale** · 10-29-2025, 08:23 AM

Originally posted by disneysteve View Post

I don't budget - I track.

This is honestly closer to what I do. I total up all the categories and have that for a reference. I have made summaries off of that which would reflect what my budget actually is, but I am not operating off of the frame work that I have 10% to spend in x category and no more after that.

**cypher1** · 10-29-2025, 09:09 AM

More of a high level breakdown, which I don't really factor monthly or annual budgeting. As long as I'm investing a minimum of 25% of annual gross income, I don't sweat the monthly expenses unless something jumps out in a charge.

Needs:
Mortgage
HO insurance
Auto insurance
Electric/Gas
Water
Garbage
Internet
Cell
Gasoline
Groceries
Gym
AAA

Wants:
Chase CC
Costco/Citi CC
Lawn/weed spray
YT Premium
Stock widget
VPN
WSJ
Eating out

**LivingAlmostLarge** · 10-29-2025, 11:21 AM

I can't budget I haven't ever been able to and i can't seem to get organized enough to do it. I can't even track how much we spend really. I have too many CC and couple of different checking accounts. I basically know what I can spend and then see where my CC balance is and cut it. I've really tried hard to create a budget and i have sketched outline so I can tell you what things costs. But even tracking I couldn't tell you my spending. I can't seem to get quicken or any money program either to work since it's all on thec redit cards and it never categoriezes correctly.

But what I do is I budget off of gross. I do a high level annual budget and then work from there.

Gross 100k
Social Security -
Medicare -
Federal taxes -
State taxes -
-these items you can calculate using standard deduction and that's helps me understand my net.

then the two line items health insurance and 401k - gives me a true net take home.
-since we started we maxed out the 401k never skipped or worked up that was a line item

Another line item for us was an ESPP of 10%. That's the maximum and for us we did the maximum there so we saved 10% of gross to a EF or other short term saving if the company DH worked for had it.
-then we redirect the 2 Roth IRAs and 2 esa from the monthly net.

That gives me an annual amount work with no matter if we are always paid biweekly not bimonthly or monthly.

Then we had deteremined our mortgage/rent. Then our insurance - car, home, umbrella, life, HOA, etc. Fixed monthly costs including utilties and cell and cable.

Then after netting all this I had $x. It might be $3k and that i could spend on however I want but there might be fixed costs. Dog insurance, kids acitivites etc. Clothing, travel, eating out all came from here so I'm not too certain about the categories.

What I found is that it never mattered what I spent because it was only a % of our total income. The taxes/health insurance/saving were like 50%. Then the housing and fixed bill were like 25%. and our spending was 25%. We always saved a lot because the fixed savings allowed us to know what we could spend instead of spending dictating what we could save.

So i can't tell in 25 year exactly what my grocery bills are. I can guess and give a pretty good estimate. But even when we didn't have a job for a year, what we did at that time was deposit exactly $3500 from our capital one savings account into our Bank of america. And that was our monthly spending to pay the CC. That's was it. There was no flex. It was our "paycheck". And the $2500 rent was paid out of capital one but we spent $6k month on rent and living. I couldn't tell you how we managed but that was it.

This is why when we cut our salary I knew we could do it. We took about a 70% paycut and we had pretty much the same lifestyle as before. Because our living was the same but the taxes went way down and the savings went way down. Our mortgage was the same. We had no car loans/student loans/CC, etc. Our monthly bills were the same. We even travelled similarly. But the savings went away.

I find it incredible difficult and one of the reasons i'm embarrassed to ever post on ER forum. I would struggle with the question "what do you spend in FIRE?" My answer would be "um i think around $x" and i don't know about categories if i covered everything. I would admit to not really knowing my number for FIRE because i'm not really sure what my spending is. I just know that it's more that I spend now and more than i make now. I'd like some smart advice there but I think i might be bashed down if i posted I want to fire, I am pretty sure I have enough but i'm not really sure what I spend or what I need. I just think it's enough.

But i can tell you a lot of details about our fixed savings and expenses.

Budget Categories