Your comments please on this "Cost of Living" spreadsheet

On a more serious note, why not use a program like Mint (www.Mint.com), and start budgeting your life now and get the habit pattern established?

A program LIKE Mint is not a bad idea. I'm not sure how I feel about Mint.

They are owned by Intuit. 25 years of experience with Intuit has taught me that owning their stock is probalby a good thing, but depending on them for supporting my business (and life) is sometimes not.

Their products often lead people down irreversible paths.

SVreX wrote: A program LIKE Mint is not a bad idea. I'm not sure how I feel about Mint. They are owned by Intuit. 25 years of experience with Intuit has taught me that owning their stock is probalby a good thing, but depending on them for supporting my business (and life) is sometimes not. Their products often lead people down irreversible paths.

I just ignore all their suggestions and use it purely as a budgeting tool. So far it hasn't screwed me there.

PubBurgers wrote: a $640 mortgage

If I had a $640 mortgage, I could own a Lexus LS600h.

$640 here (RI) gets you a rented 1-bedroom apartment. Triple it and you get my mortgage in a normal middle class neighborhood.

Well, anytime you post actual numbers (instead of percentages) you will get alot of "you'll never spend that much" or "you can never live on so little", but I have a few points I'll throw in being a SI2K.

• Don't buy a home budgeting for 2 incomes. Regardless of what you think you'll do or want to do once you have kids, that's a 30 year contract requiring 2 salaries and sometimes plans change. Plan conservatively. Very conservatively.
• If you want kids, plan on paying for life insurance. Luckily it's cheap.
• As others have said, employer health insurance still has copays. I put $1000 in a FSA every year and use it all (and I have some of the best employer insurance you can get). Half of that is contact lenses for two, just so you know.
• Good for you for planning an emergency fund and planning ahead. Getting on a budget before I got married was the single smartest financial decision I ever made!

^This!

I realise its not possible everywhere to buy a decent house on $95k. But look in older established neighborhoods that aren't run down, instead of some brand new, high falutin edition with same 4 floor plans just in different colors.

We gross more in a year than our house cost, so we could have bought much more, but why? To be house poor?

What the heck is a DINK and a SI2K?

Enyar wrote: What the heck is a DINK and a SI2K?

Dual Income No Kids

Single Income 2 Kids

SVreX wrote: A program LIKE Mint is not a bad idea. I'm not sure how I feel about Mint. They are owned by Intuit. 25 years of experience with Intuit has taught me that owning their stock is probalby a good thing, but depending on them for supporting my business (and life) is sometimes not. Their products often lead people down irreversible paths.

I would show this to my dad and his company but I doubt it would change anything...

Serious advice: Are you going to be making the better half of six digits per year? You don't live in a big coastal city so don't worry about it, you're set.

Do you think you'll be scraping by on chump change? Then don't bother with spreadsheets, you have two options: Go into survival mode and save up every penny you can or live like there's no tomorrow. After a while of doing the former you'll probably give up and fall into the latter anyways.