I recently was going through my computer and came across a screenshot of my December 2017 budget. As I was looking through it I began to think, “How much has our lifestyle inflated or gone up since 2017?”
In 2017 we had just had our first baby in February. We also had 2 dogs and 2 cats. We had student loans in deferment and a loan for our furnace and heat pump. I went back to work 3 months after having the baby but only working very part time and mainly from home. My husband also worked part time and went to school full time. We were really in the middle of our debt free journey back in December 2017. I was also reselling as a side hustle just to bring in extra money to pay off more debt.
I found this snapshot of my December 2017 expenses and really wanted to see how much lifestyle creep has come into our lives.
Some things to note. I had already set aside all my Christmas money by November(which was a very minimal amount). Because my husband was still in school we did not have a student loan payments, they were in deferment. Notice how bare bones this budget was. We did not go out to eat or do anything extra. At this point in my life I was telling my friends “no” all the time to their invites whenever things costed money.
Here is an idea of our present day situation. My husband works full time as an engineer and I am a stay at home mom. I also run this blog and have a financial coaching business. All of my money from my businesses goes directly back into my business so I currently don’t count this with our income. We now have 2 kids plus 2 dogs and 6 chicken. We live in a multi-generational home with my dad. Our current income is almost double what we were making back in December 2017
Some things to note. We typically don’t spend this much on eating out. During the pandemic we were really trying to support small businesses. Once we became debt free we starting buy mainly organic foods and focusing on eating whole food unprocessed items. Also, during the month of December my sister and brother in law were staying at our house so we had 2 more mouths to feed. So this is groceries for 4 adults and 2 kids. I just included expenses in this graphic. This does not include savings and investing. Our animal expense for December was large because we had the dog’s annual vet visit with some shots. I typically budget $80 for all animals per month. Our internet is a lot! Rural internet is expensive. We do not get great service and have to pay much more than living in town. See the video down below if you want a more in-depth look into our finances.
One thing to note. All months are not December. December usually has more expenses with the holidays and in our family we have 3 birthdays.
Overall our expenses have increased about $1200 but our income has doubled. Ever since we started our no spend year our expenses have been even smaller. It’s a continual work in progress.