Family Budget 2011-2024

 I kept logging my expenses without sharing them for the past three years. Its time to catch up! Here how our family expenses look like over the past 13 years: 

   All figures are in USD.  

Home:

In 2019-2020  we did some home maintenance – painting the walls and ceiling, changing our built-in wardrobes and installing metal fence around our small garden.  Some of the work spilled over in 2020-2021. This resulted in additional ~ $50K  over the two years.

2021-2022 and 2022-2023 I had to re-paint the tarmac in front of the house. I did it myself but materials alone cost me ~ $2K (mainly bitumen paint – 100l in 22/21 and 60l in 22/23).  It kept the driveway alive since we moved in but quite time-consuming exercise (~2-3 full day labour from dusk to dawn painting it by hand). 

Like for like toilet replacement alone cost ~ $1.4K (out of which $800 is the labour). Seemingly on iPhone replacement I spend $1.5K a year (this assumes Iphone replacement every 4 years).   New dishwasher - $1.3K, new PC - $3K.

Every year – moss killer, fertilizer, lawn seeds cost are about 500 USD. 

Bills.  Home - We have used an excuse of being “busy” and spending about 200 USD a month on house cleaning and gardening help. This is an avoidable expense, but somehow its still there, despite both of the services crying for quality improvement.

Education.  Kids are in a private school. The feelings are mixed – one school is exceptionally good; the other one is very average value for your money.  They are going to apply value added tax (to be paid by parents) for the school fees. This will result in about 6% (35,000 pupils) of the kids will move to government schools.  We will see what happen to mine yet.

Joy. A quiet year during pandemic resulted in two trips a year post pandemic and I am thinking how to close the Pandora box in the polite way.

When the kids are out of the house, we will need about $80K after taxes to maintain the same life style and just under $60K once the mortgage is paid.  The figures also indication of the serious inflation (the government keep telling us we are almost at 2% - which is blatant disinformation).  We don’t have any loans or credit cards, other than  the mortgage.

 Curious observation: gasoline cost didn't change much during the pandemic years and cannot explain why.

Figure 1. Family budget over 13 years – percentage of overalls spend.

 Figure 2. Real life cost of living Chicago vs. Oxford (the UK).

 This is also clear demonstration that house owning is emotional – we spending more on paying the mortgage and more on owning it.  The bills are also higher in the England due to higher bureaucracy and low efficiency.