How much do you spend as family of 3?

amother

OP ↓

Wed, Jan 01 2025, 3:05 am

Trying to figure out what’s within the range of normal these days but it’s so hard cuz I feel like most people I ask are not so comfortable talking about their finances…. How much does your family of 3- 2 adults and one child, need to live for the year after taxes with everything included?
Thanks in advance! Just trying to get an overall idea….

amother

Aubergine ↓

Wed, Jan 01 2025, 5:16 am

Location dependent

We are in Israel, and we spend 10k nis a month, after taxes and maaser.

You need to track your spending for a few months to see if you need more income or less spending.

We have a fixed budget for all expenses, including a discretionary spending budget.

Part of the budget is putting money towards yearly expenses.

amother

↑ Impatiens ↓

Wed, Jan 01 2025, 5:27 am

amother Aubergine wrote:

Okay thank you!
How many kids do you have? 10k nis a month sounds low to me (we are also in Israel) - I wonder where you live (if you are comfortable sharing!)

amother

↑ Impatiens ↓

Wed, Jan 01 2025, 5:27 am

amother Chartreuse wrote:

We are also in Israel. We spend probably 8-9k a month.

Currently we bring in over 15k so we are bh saving alot.

you are talking in shekel or dollar?!
How many kids do you have?

amother

↑ Aubergine ↓

Wed, Jan 01 2025, 5:50 am

amother Impatiens wrote:

Okay thank you!
How many kids do you have? 10k nis a month sounds low to me (we are also in Israel) - I wonder where you live (if you are comfortable sharing!)

We have one kid - dont feel comfortable saying where we live, but our rent is 4,200 nis.
We make 14k after tax - 1,400 for maaser, 10k for living, 2500k for savings.

This is our budget:
Rent: 4,200
Utilities 220( we pay bi monthly, but its a monthly budget)
Vaad Bayit 150
Meuchedet C for all 3 88 nis
Rav kav chodshi - 250, I work from home, so no extra travel
Tzaharon - 250 nis ( gan 3 is free)
Yearly expense saving - 1,000 nis. That combined with the tax return is for things like yt expenses, summer vacation
Food budget - 3,000 nis. I am super careful, we do mishnat yosef and other sales. We eat well, protien every nice, lots of fruits and veggies, but I do make a lot from scratch
Clothing Budget - 450 nis a month
Discretionary spending - 200 each for me and dh

amother

↑ Impatiens

Wed, Jan 01 2025, 5:55 am

amother Aubergine wrote:

Thank you so much! This is helpful
I would love to hear from more people!
I don't want to derail op's thread because she was asking for something else so I will start a new one

↑ Bnei Berak 10 ↓

Wed, Jan 01 2025, 6:01 am

amother Impatiens wrote:

Following!!
We are a family of 4- 2 adults and 2 kids
trying to figure out what is the problem- are we spending too much or do we need more income!?
How do you know?

Do you live in an expensive place like Raanana?

amother

↑ Chartreuse

Wed, Jan 01 2025, 6:02 am

amother Aubergine wrote:

Our rent is 4000. We don't budget like you guys but we are also careful with food shopping. Mishnat Yosef, and sales. We probably spend 2000 max on food but we often go to family for Shabbat.

amother

↑ Aubergine

Wed, Jan 01 2025, 6:11 am

amother Chartreuse wrote:

Our rent is 4000. We don't budget like you guys but we are also careful with food shopping. Mishnat Yosef, and sales. We probably spend 2000 max on food but we often go to family for Shabbat.

We host a lot for shabbos, so that makes sense, it adds up.

Before I budgeted we had the same income, no debt, but the end of the month there was never anything for savings....

amother

Tan

Wed, Jan 01 2025, 6:42 am

Im in the us in the tri state area
With one baby we need about 4k a month net to live. Plus more for saving
But we have cheap rent so that makes all the difference, I don’t host because I don’t have room and we’re out for shabbos most weeks

amother

Hawthorn

Wed, Jan 01 2025, 8:55 am

amother Tulip wrote:

I live in the tristate area

Rent 1600
Utilities 200
Childcare 1000
Car insurance/gas 300
Groceries 600 average
Target/amazon/walmart 200 average
Aprx 4k a month

Wow that amazing

I live in lkwd
Rent 1800
Cars lease/ insurance / gas probably around 1500
Childcare 700
Groceries approximately 1600
Target / Costco 250
Miscellaneous 500

amother

Papaya

Wed, Jan 01 2025, 9:01 am

amother Aubergine wrote:

Thanks for posting, I’m in the USA so doesn’t work for me but I like the idea of saving monthly for yearly expenses plus you save for the future.

Also I’m curious about the part of not saying where you live? I’m trying to understand why some people wouldn’t say, like for example I’m in NJ it’s huge no one will know who I am now… plus we’re amother and not under our usernames….

amother

↑ OP

Wed, Jan 01 2025, 10:18 am

I just calculated one month of spending to the dollar, and not including maaser and saving, seems we need around $60,000 a year to live. Was higher than I thought since our rent is cheaper and we don’t live lavishly (although we don’t pinch pennies either)
How much do you all think each child really adds to your expenses (childcare and food/ diapers…)?

↑ Bnei Berak 10

Wed, Jan 01 2025, 10:29 am

amother Acacia wrote:

If you're have an international conversation and your using NIS, you mention that

An all Americans on this forum state the dollar sign all the time? Absolutely not.