Can’t live on this anymore

amother

Dahlia ↓

Yesterday at 10:59 pm

How r people making so much and it’s still not enough
I get so stressed out reading things like this.
Is it really necessary to need more than 400k to raise a family? Why on earth is 300k with 3 small kids not more than enough??
I’m not even going to say how much we’re living on right now with one kid

amother

↑ Brunette ↓

Yesterday at 11:06 pm

amother NeonBlue wrote:

If you mind answering questions, then please ignore the rest.

Is your car paid up? And you gave a pretty detailed list, so what would be the everything else that would amount to $1500 monthly?

Yes cars were bought secondhand with cash.

“Everything else”- some furniture (bought a home recently), small vacation, therapy, kids extracurriculars, replacing things that break every so often like eyeglasses laptops phones, things for kids like bikes, books, toys, yom tov expenses, tips for rebbis/teachers, car maintenance and repairs, gifts, money my husband pays to his chavrusa, diapers, chol hamoed trips, cleaners, barber, sheitwlmacher, large “once every few years” purchases like sheitels, dental work (thousands of dollars a year) etc etc.

amother

↑ Brunette ↓

Yesterday at 11:09 pm

amother Dahlia wrote:

No we lived perfectly fine on $60k with 2 small kids. Once you buy a house life gets expensive.

amother

↑ Brunette ↓

Yesterday at 11:13 pm

amother Lightpink wrote:

I understand brunette is not op and op says,she doesn't have a fancy house. Brunette may also not have a fancy house . However paying 5,500 morgage for your general American (or anyone) is considered a high morgage. Yes homes,in frum communitys are very expensive even if the home is nothing special.
Many frum people think that 1,00,000 (and multiply) is a normal amount to spend on a home. If you purchase a home with a morgage that size it will eat up a tremendous amount of your profit.
These finances need to ideally be looked at prior to purchase

Of course I understand $5,500 is an outrageous amount to be paying monthly for a mortgage. The reason I specified 2,800 square feet and 1 mile walk from shul is because I wanted to make it clear how insane the market is these days. We bought a comfortable house but not a mansion, we didn’t buy in a highly desirable area, we were pioneers. Still barely have frum Jews around us. Yet look how crazy our mortgage is. And yes of course we calculated if we would be able to afford the mortgage, now and in the future. Like I mentioned above, we hustle to save a lot of money in addition to our $300k regular income. We’ve actually managed to save an extra $60k just since January of this year BH! We have approx $350k we can choose to throw at our mortgage now but it doesn’t make financial sense at this moment. We are not drowning, we are very financially responsible. But yes such a tremendous mortgage is a huge burden psychologically and I wish it could’ve been different. But unfortunately people buying these days have very limited options. And for the record our home wasn’t near $1,000.000.

amother

Teal

Yesterday at 11:19 pm

amother Dahlia wrote:

Same here
It's really stressing me out Crying

amother

↑ OP

Yesterday at 11:24 pm

amother Dahlia wrote:

It honestly worked better on less. Now we pay more taxes, we pay health insurance, we have big house bills, a lot of tuition… life got more complicated. We did well for 2 years on this income until inflation and now it’s impossible. And no one wants to give raises.

amother

Candycane

Yesterday at 11:25 pm

amother Brunette wrote:

Like I said above we lived perfectly fine on $60k with 2 small kids and cheap rent. Once you buy a house and start paying healthcare and tuition, life gets expensive fast.

How long ago did you live on 60k with two kids? Because very high inflation happened super recently, and it’s inflation that’s making the numbers not work.

amother

↑ Dahlia

Yesterday at 11:38 pm

amother Brunette wrote:

60k in savings in less than a year is a dream
Don’t worry so much lol
You’re not rich but ur very comfortable in my opinion

amother

↑ Lightpink

Yesterday at 11:41 pm

amother DarkYellow wrote:

Why, there are so many expenses that weren't on that list!
Toys,
Books
school trips/fees
teachers tips
gifts for family
anniversary gifts
dental work
sheitel macher
facial or manicure once in a while or as needed
any subscriptions
pharmacy/prescriptions
cleaners
I can think of many more!

...lots,of extras here to cut back.
These,expenses,shouldn't be so high each month especially not if you having trouble getting by

amother

Lemon

Today at 12:40 am

Completely with you on this.
We have 1 child bH. Paying $750 for babysitting ($9000 a year!).
BH bought a tiny starter home. Mortgage+Home insurance is under 3k which is super amazing in this economy. We will need to extend/finish garage at some point but will cross that bridge when we there.
We make a combined income of 100k and can hardly pay the bills.
I’m still on my parents health insurance but we pay for my husband and baby.
We have 2 cars and combined payments are $500 monthly. Life is just sososo expensive.
All my shopping is Walmart and aldi, kosher grocery just for chalav Yisrael and chicken.
It’s the one time necessities that get you. For example- I can make it if we only buy groceries and nothing else. But...my baby needs a high chair and went up a size. Or I ran out of a supplement that I need which costs $40

I just daven that this year should bring us more $$ and lower prices. And that elections should change the economy in a major way.