I try to spend around 500-1.5k USD on renting a place to live in, depends on the country I'm in. Around 200-500 USD on food for two people (again depends where we are). Anywhere between 0 and 500+ USD on "activities" - ski lift passes, hiring a car, permits to go hiking, access to tourist sites, etc.
Every 2-4 months, I spend some money to go to the next country, could be anywhere from $20 for a bus to $700 for long distance flights.
I don't really buy things anymore, I have everything "I need" for a comfortable life, anything more at this point would just be annoying, I only buy to replace. I buy new shoes every 1-2 years and usually for $200+. I think nice shoes are worth it.
> What things would you like to do or have but can't because you don't have the money?
I think I would need an insane amount of money to make meaningful differences in my life. My partner has a "weak" passport, so being rich enough to "buy" one for her would be nice. Other than that, being able to buy a house or getting a pilots license would be nice.
This isn’t anonymous enough for me to give any details. Nearing retirement so I’ll just say I can buy almost whatever I want, especially if I raided the retirement account, but have finally discovered those things don’t bring happiness. There’s a great cartoon I lost track of that shows a person walking around with a huge hole in their chest, and how different people try filling it with various things (sex, drugs, drinking, money, fame, other people, hobbies(?), etc). While that gaping hole is there, money means very little. How to fill it? Still trying to figure that out.
In my 20s and early 30s I was very frugal. I had a relatively low income as a civil servant, was paying down student debt and spent any spare cash on backpacking. Fast-forward 15 years and I lucked into a high income about 10 years ago, am married and have two kids. We still enjoy spending on travel but we live in a high COL area, have a big mortgage, a couple of nice cars and buy too much non-essential stuff online. We do also try to give a good amount to causes we believe in and save well for retirement.
I think saying "money doesn't buy happiness" is too reductive. The crap from Amazon certainly makes no meaningful difference and actually I feel slightly embarrassed when I see a new package arrive. But the relief from stress of having no debt, living in a good area for schools, having a large runway and not worrying about the cost of groceries is a real life improvement that I would be sad to give up. Having said that, none of the great memories from life so far involve spending huge amounts of money.
I have a fundamental philosophy about spending money -- identify the few things that really, genuinely, make your life better and spend on those. For everything else, be a total cheapskate.
So, for example, I drive a cheap used car because a nice expensive car doesn't actually make my life better, but I won't think twice about buying an expensive tool that I'll use every day, or going out for a lavish meal every so often, etc. There is nothing I want to do but I can't because of a lack of funds.
I make six figures, and I'm not in SV or NY, so that can provide a very comfortable standard of living. I actually spend about 25% of that and put the rest into charitable donations, savings, investments, etc.
Most of my money is spent on mortgage, property tax, electricity and then food (including eating out). I’m married with two teenage boys so food is a decent chunk of change. Money left over is spent on family vacations in the summer, savings for college and retirement, and extracurricular things for the boys like piano, boxing lessons, and GPUs (heh my youngest has expensive taste in hardware). I have a couple hobbies, high power rocketry and competitive pistol shooting, that consume maybe $200/month on average.
I don’t really spend a lot of money on “things” per se. Mostly tools, materials, and other consumables for my hobbies.
My salary is $96,000, which comes to about $5700/month after taxes and everything. I spend about $1300 a month in recurring expenses (rent, gym, etc.). I'm 36, I live with roommates in Brooklyn, and I saved $1200 last month. That means on average, I spent about $100 a day on everything else (food, fun, travel). It's a life that works for me.
IMHO, income is logarithmic [0], so in terms of things I might like to have but don't (an apartment with a shared pool?) it would probably be a big jump up in income to get them. If I got a $10K raise tomorrow, it wouldn't really make a difference.
If I ever have kids, I'll either have to give some things up or climb the income ladder.
[0] https://ofdollarsanddata.com/climbing-the-wealth-ladder/
Food. Kids’ school, clothing, etc. Cheap AliExpress microcontrollers to play with, tools, 3D printing gear, occasional music gear, a new Mac every four years. Have recently decided to not buy any more gaming consoles and just use Steam on beefy mini-PCs, so am budgeting for another four-year upgrade cycle (1080p gaming is fine today, 1440p should be perfect in two years, there is no reason to buy expensive games today when they’re on sale in two year’s time).
Would love to buy some top-of-the-line compute for my homelab and a few machines that just don’t exist yet and a house in a country town to retire to. None of that is ever going to happen.
Am in South Europe so my income is way less than it should be considering what I do for a living, have somewhat made my peace with that by just enjoying my free time.
I had kids when I was pretty young and, in parallel with that, also spent two years earning nothing at all to start a company. I spend a very long time feeling quite poor, since it took a while for the company to be big enough to pay me a real salary. And if you have kids on a low salary, all of your money goes to absolutely the most basic necessities.
In recent years, I have had just a little bit extra, and I found satisfaction in paying off debts and contributing to a retirement fund for the first time. I also bought ski passes for myself and my kids and we had many enjoyable days on the mountain.
I have rich friends who own three houses and make over a million a year just from investments. They’re quite content, but the extra money doesn’t seem to buy them much extra satisfaction.
Nearly all my money goes on living in an above average apartment that I own.
Housing is stupidly expensive if you want to live comfortably, and even more so if you want to actually own the place you live.
I earn something like €95,000-€100,000/y in Prague. (varies due to Czech Koruna)
Travel - $20K - $30K per year. Not extravagant trips, just a lot of them and months long “nomadding” in different cities and starting next year a couple of months in the winter in Costa Rica. Most of our long stays are offset via income by renting our home out. We live in a unit of a condetel (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/condotel.asp) that we own.
We are 51/49, grown kids, and I work remotely
I make in the low $200s in cloud consulting and another $7500 in rental income offsets to pay our mortgage + expenses when we aren’t there
I spend about $1k/mo on groceries and basic necessities for a single immigrant mom with five kids who escaped an abusive relationship. Plus some extras like birthday or Christmas presents for the children. Emergency costs too.
Started buying some items for them in 2020 when the pandemic hit and they lost what little income they had. Slowly it grew into large-scale support, and I'm committed to help to get the folks to adulthood.
The impact: I've learned to let go and become less stingy. Donate much more frequently these days because I realized I have more than enough. Much happier this way.
Nothing really. I invest the majority of my money. I'll buy the occasional $50 video game and get take-out a lot, but I don't have any large expenses (modulo rent and utilities) or expensive hobbies. I have the money to go travel on vacation or attend live concerts, I just don't want to and would rather stay at home.
I make ~$190k/yr. I work 32hrs/wk instead of 40hrs though, and I like it a lot more for my mental health - which I'm able to do because my salary is high enough to support my lifestyle with the trade-off of earning less per week.
For anyone that gets worried about splurging too much, one way to perhaps assuage yourself about it is the "2X spending rule":
> The first tip is what I call “The 2x Rule.” The 2x Rule works like this: Anytime I want to splurge on something, I have to take the same amount of money and invest it as well. So if I wanted to buy a $400 pair of dress shoes, I would also have to buy $400 worth of equities. This makes me re-evaluate how much I really want something because if I am not willing to save 2x for it, then I don’t buy it.
[…]
> And you don’t have to invest the money for The 2x Rule to work effectively either. For example, you could donate the other half to a charity and have the same guilt-free effect. Every “extravagant” dollar you spend on yourself could be matched with a “charity” dollar that goes to a worthy cause. Not only does this allow you to help others, but you won’t feel bad when you spoil yourself.
* https://ofdollarsanddata.com/how-to-spend-money/
And if you get a raise, if you're wondering how much of your extra income can you spend without succumbing to "lifestyle creep", about half is a good rule of thumb:
I make ~$220k with my bonus. I live in a rural area and work remotely so that money goes a long way. I also don't really have expensive hobbies. Well, my hobbies could be expensive but I don't go down the road some people do. I have a wife and two kids. A decent portion of my money goes to the normal family expenses including retirement savings. Outside of that, my biggest expenses, in order-ish, are:
- Concerts. My wife and I love going to see music so it's maybe $100 bucks for a concert or two per month.
- Once or twice a year I'll buy myself a new guitar pedal. They tend to be higher quality ones so that will run you $300 - $400 easy.
- Pokemon cards. My son got into and I got hooked. It's a deep strategy game and it's tons of fun. We probably spend ~$50 a month on this. We go to a game store to play on the weekends so we always buy a pack or two to help support the store.
- The usual drugs. Alcohol. Weed. The less usual but still good drugs, mushrooms and molly (pure MDMA) a few times a year.
If I had a billion dollars I would probably have things like a personal driver and chef, and maybe a few nicer guitars and some sweet-ass pokemon cards, but overall I want for nothing. As you can see, I tend to spend money on experiences instead of things. The physical things I do buy, pedals and cards, are for things I do with other people. My biggest restriction is having two kids, 4 and 7. I would love to travel more but it's not a money issue.
I make almost all purchasing decisions using one simple metric, will I use it? More precisely, the question is will I use it an amount that justifies the expense?
This applies for small purchases like a tempting snack at the grocery store. Am I going to eat it? Will I really enjoy this? If so, ok. If it will sit in the cabinet and be passed over for other snacks, no.
It applies to large purchases as well. Should I buy this very expensive bicycle? Yes, I will ride it. And as it turns out, I did. It’s almost 10 years old, and I still ride it a lot.
I’m also regularly going through my belongings and donating, selling, and trashing things I don’t use. This helps me to learn over time and make better purchasing decisions. It also helps me reduce the amount of crap I have. Best of all it’s really nice when I can give something to someone who appreciates it much more and will make better use of it.
The result is that other than the regular essential things to maintain life such as food, household goods, etc. I buy things extremely rarely. The thing I spend the most disposable income on is probably tickets to shows, sports, and other experiences. If you ask me if I’ll use them and enjoy them, the answer is almost always yes.
The only thing I want, but can’t afford, is real estate. I could afford real estate in a place with lower property value, but I only want NYC real estate. It’s not happening.
I'm spending fair amount of money on helping teachers and professors in Serbia who had their pay reduced to to absurdity because they are supporting their students in demands for justice in the case of Novi Sad canopy collapse[0].
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novi_Sad_railway_station_can...
23m, 2 YoE software engineer, live in Louisiana. I take home around $1100 weekly after tax. My monthly bills total ~$2500. I put ~$600 into my personal IRA, being a contractor. What remains either sits in savings, put towards to developing another source of income, or spent on games and beer.
I am fairly lucky in that I can do most things I want to. I can buy things that I want with a little saving. I can eat out with the family. I can't travel too much, though I'd like to. The only "normal life" expense I can't afford is buying a home. It seems a long way off.
I think the path forward will be moving states or working remote, as there are few jobs in software near me. At least at my experience level. For now I cannot complain. My quality of life is higher than most I know. Off topic, but I think about this a lot.
I like to figure skate. I'm not competitive at all, just like putting on some headphones and gliding around and working on new moves. It can be a bit expensive. I like that it's a bit social too as you see the same adults all the time and it's also great if you have kids as they can do their own thing and socialize. It's good for exercise and balance.
It's prob over $200/month on group and private lessons when put together for me (I skate for 3-6 hours a week). Skates vary in cost from $150 for beginner skates (both boot and blades) to $400 for intermediate. At the upper end, boots are $1k by themselves and blades are $500+. Your skates last a good while though assuming you're not an Olympian. Hockey has similar costs, but you also have to spend ~$1500 on gear as an adult.
I've been saving and underspending for so long, living at home, that inflation depleting the value of my cash savings is literally my biggest single expense. Sitting on a cash hoard that will ultimately be a house deposit. Maybe my biggest expense is house price appreciation before I buy.
Kids. I have five school-aged kids. My daycare, before- and after-care, babysitter, and camp bills this year will easily exceed $75k, despite them attending public school or going to cheaper religion-based camps and daycare (for a religion we don't practice). Kids are expensive.
Spend about 20% of my salary on (varies depending on month) - Eating out - Video games - PC Parts - Joint account with partner
Impact of life; is that I'm not miserable. (I was obsessive about not spending early on in my career and got really bad depression, i.e. working really hard, not allowing myself to enjoy the fruits of my labor)
Things I'd like todo if I had more money are: - Travel to see family abroad - Tidy up the nitpicky things in my house that bother me - A car with more doors (3 door at the moment)
My philosophy is to have enough saved for a rainy day, then excess goes to pension / investments and then provide myself with a small amount of ÂŁÂŁ for myself (And research the hell out of the thing I'm buying)
I'm in the top 20% of salaries in Latvia, which in absolute terms is still pretty bad (not even close to 6 figures).
That said, I was pretty lucky in that I don't have debts: I got my Master's degree mostly for govt. funds due to good grades + started working in development during my 2nd year in Bachelor's. I am also pretty lucky that I don't have many expenses: I live in my dad's old city apartment and look after it (swapped out fridge and stove some time ago, new lightbulbs, lots of cleaning etc.), so day to day only have to cover utilities (~300 EUR) and no rent to speak of.
I try to save and invest a decent chunk of whatever I earn, sometimes funds managed by my bank, sometimes specific company stocks, a relatively small amount in crypto as well. At the same time I spend some of my money helping my friends that are less fortunate than me, like with medical expenses or getting food near payday etc., since while I feel comfortable with a bit of a spartan lifestyle, them not being able to afford necessities sucks and it'd feel bad to do nothing.
Aside from that, I do get some knickknacks sometimes, like how I'm getting an Aigo AIO for my PC (~60 EUR, not strictly necessary, but might help with the Ryzen 7 5800X, ~150 EUR, throwing a hissy fit whenever I make it compile things) and a new Modecom PSU (~50 EUR, the old one rattles a bit, might be bad bearings on its fan, probably a good idea to replace it and not risk it frying things at some point), some new clothes (~150 EUR) and the usual boring stuff (e.g. groceries are around 250-300 EUR a month over here). Also visiting Germany later this year (~1000 EUR) for a programming event and to hang out with some lovely people.
Probably won't have: a fancy gaming PC, or flagship phones/laptops, a car in the near future, my own apartment in a newly built building even in the more far future, or any sort of living in luxury. At the same time, I much prefer either being able to help others and also having some financial stability over having the latest shiny thing.
Unfortunately, despite not living in excess, it very much feels like I'm one financial crisis away from financial ruin. Fun times.
Paying for grad school out of pocket (around 700 USD per month, I'm going slowly). Paying for a large tattoo out of pocket, actually the same price as grad school (700 USD). Member of a few different clubs (BJJ, Muay Thai, local spa gym) which is maybe 300 USD all in.
Those are my regular monthly bills outside of house, food, etc...
Won't say salary but in a high percentile of income in EU country.
If I had no job and unlimited money (and no responsibilities) I'd go to Phuket and train Muay Thai for a year, then go to the Wudang mountains and train Kung Fu at some probably quite Westernised temple for another year. Afterwards I'd start a company in the defence or space sector.
Currently funding my wife's restaurant which just opened and requires a lot of operational money.
Rewind 1 year: I was buying retro gaming consoles to mod (the exquisitely beautiful, but unreliable Sony PSX). I also bought a mid-engine Japanese sports car to soup up (one of the cheap ones you can get for less than 20k with low miles).
Rewind a little further - paid off the house.
Purchases that fill not a hole, but my time. Hobby-type purchases which create learning opportunities. Or - investments in financial security of some sort.
Funny you should ask, I just paid my mortgage.
Mortgage - $3800
Groceries - ~$1000
Eating out - ~$1000
TV / Internet - $250
Utilities (Water, electric, sewer, gas, trash) - $400 average
Car insurance - $280
Phones - $170
Life insurance - $106
Health insurance - $700
Audible - $40
Personal Trainer - $300
Panera Sip Club x2 - $26
Pharmacy - $100 / average
~$8200 a month on regular purchases.
What do I want that we don't have the money for? A paid off house. My mortgage is 40% of our monthly expenses and I'd like it to be half what it currently is.
I want to buy a nice new truck or car, but can't justify adding another payment of $500 to our bill sheet for the next 6 years. I also don't want to blow up savings to buy a car with some cash.
I built a side project during COVID and after. I started recording videos explaining everything that's happening in the world for my kids to watch in 20 years.
Then I wanted to capture my parents life story. I thought it might be a good little project and others might find it valuable. So I built viography.co
The problem is that I'm not really promoting it and not getting customers. So I'm spending a few hundred dollars a month to record videos, save them for later and of course fix bugs that I find.
Looking at my expenses for 2024 my top expenses were taxes, rent, dining out/snacks/drinks, charity, my kids’ school tuition, insurance, utilities (including web hosting services) and groceries in that order. But overall, the biggest place my money went (over a third of my gross income) was into savings (401k and cash reserves).
Why do you want to know?
My current biggest money drain is for equipment and supplies for a small farm/homestead we bought last year. Never knew compact tractors with all the bells and whistles cost so much. Plus I like to buy EDC tools off of Kickstarter.
Roughly 25% living expenses, 25% weekends and activities with my girlfriend (or provisions for future fun and activities), 25% provisions for a future downpayment and the rest in personal savings for retirement. That may be +/- 5-10% on each depending on what's going on in a particular month.
Food and (international) travel almost exclusively.
Currently on the third $10k+ trip with my wife in 18 months but don’t have a car and am still using my laptop from 2014. Main reason is that I feel like I have my whole life to buy X or Y but only have the time and energy to travel long distances while young.
Nothing. My biggest spend recently has been paying off my sisters student debt. Funded a car purchase for my other sister. Beyond that just rent and groceries. I should probably reevaluate my current lease because I quit my job and haven’t had any income in six months or so.
Seattle, 2 kids. Most of the expenses exceed normal due to us trying to relieve the hardship of raising very young kids, expect to go back to normal in 2-3 years.
$6k apt in a very nice area
$4.5k for preschool and daycare
$4k for household help (kids, cleaning, some cooking)
$1.5-2k for eating out
$400 for utilities
$1.5k on travel (smoothed out)
$500 boat club
$400 hobbies
I invest about 40% of my income and other than necessities I spend an inordinate amount of money on travel, alcohol, and food. If I had more money I would travel more and spend more on alcohol and food.
Life takes about 1/2, Mortgage, Insurance, Tuition, Utilities. SCUBA takes the rest, gear/travel. When SCUBA doesn't take the rest it goes into retirement/investments.
Taxes win the plurality of my spending: Federal, state, local/property, sales, fuel, fees, etc.
I would put more into savings/investments and charitable giving if the taxes came down.
Makes me realize I hardly spend any money on fun stuff. Not that I can't but I'm the provider and I'm too scared of the future.
Apparently many "gaming" mice, as I can't find something that doesn't bother my hand after a few hours.
i spend all my money on skiing that i have nothing else left. I hate how expensive it is but i just can't give it up.
Raising a family
Offspring's Tuition, as I don't want them to have the screwed up college debt that the US provides...
I spend most of my money on food and transportation. Hardly anything left by end of month
Beyond mundane living expenses, bicycling and brewing supplies.
Chicken nuggets and debt atm
stocks and stuff that makes me happy (car, movie theater, eating out)
hoes.. and coke..
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I have spending habits that will probably make a good chunk of HN feel a little sick. I offer as a counterweight to all the frugality that inevitably accrues in these sorts of threads. Sorry, Financial Independence, Retire Early folks. Read at your own risk. Judge if you will.
Income is $450k / yr, engineer, 39 years old, no kids and no plans to have them. I have a chronic illness and retirement seems a distant and not very pleasant prospect. I like working and like to enjoy life.
* $5k / month on rent. (Nice apartment in a high cost of living city).
* At least $7k month goes into savings (I’m not totally financially irresponsible!)
* One pretty ordinary car, expect to drive it for 10 yrs, usual costs.
* $5k / month average on travel. My biggest luxury. I fly international business class sometimes but only when it’s “cheap”.
* $2k / month on groceries, wine, dining out. I enjoy fine dining.
* $3k / month on clothes and accessories. I’m a woman and I have a weakness for nice things, worst of all for designer bags. Yes I know it’s frivolous but the marginal utility is there for me.
* $1k / month on a personal trainer. Could I have the same level of fitness without it? In theory yes, in practice no.
The thing I wish I had more of is time, not in the sense of “retire and don’t work” but in the sense of “it would be nice to take a slight pay cut and work only 9 months of the year and travel more and spend the rest of the time reading, studying math again, and doing interesting projects.” Unfortunately that option isn’t really open to me, outside of consulting which I have no appetite for.
I didn’t get into engineering for the money, but out of love. I’d have done it anyway. But the money is nice, for sure. I save some and don’t feel the need to be unnecessarily frugal with the rest. I know I’m incredibly fortunate. Your mileage may vary, and especially if you have kids. Make your own choices according to your values.