Whats your household expenditure for those with kids? Wonder if mine is too high.2 kids, 3.8k per mth expenses. 600 parents, 800 utilities, insurance & enrichment. 800 groceries, 800 food,800 others

Hi anon,

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It's all relative to what your lifestyle is.

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However, it's also important to realise that there are guidelines to help you determine if you are spending too much or not.

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I typically would look at 40% expenses and 10% on insurance (30% on mortgage and 20% for saving/investing), so you are just a tad on the high side as you are spending around 55% of your income on that. It's not too high as to be alarming, but if you can relook at your expenses (start by listing down every cent you spend and tracking it for a month or two to figure out where your money goes) you will be able to find ways to cut it.

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You'll just need to figure out what's truly essential and what's not and you should be able to find avenue for cost savings. That Netflix subscription might not seem like much but add that to your weekly dine outs, occasional Starbucks, etc and it can really add up. You'll find that none of the things I mentioned are considered essential in reality.

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However, there's also a limit to how much you can cut your expenses by, after which you should really look at increasing your income so that you will have more disposable cash.

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Good luck!

What is considered a "high" expenditure is relevant to your income. To someone making $20,000 a month, 3.8k monthly expenses is nothing. However to someone making 5k a month, 3.8k expenditure is definitely too much. General rule of thumb is expenditure should not exceed 50% of your monthly income.