My wife and I are living paycheck to paycheck. Can someone take a look at our budget and help us start saving?

Water Cooler
#1

Backstory: I’m 30and my wife is 25. Got married three years ago. I am a trader at an investment Bank and make about $8500 a month after taxes with an annual bonus in December of about $150k. Wife works for a dog walking agency and makes about $6600 monthly after taxes, no bonus. She’s currently looking for a new job that will pay her a decent bonus so that may help. We think her employer is taking advantage of her by not offering one. We bought a house a year ago, paid $1.8m for a nice little duplex and put down $800k (gift from parents…My parents gave us $500k and her parents $300k so they owe us like $200k I guess).

So we are mostly just spending money on credit cards for the rewards and miles and it has just got to be a bit much. Taking in only $15k per month but spending about $25k per month on average. Some months are more, like December because of Christmas or April because we usually take the whole month off to travel around the world to interesting places. Anyway, we got ourselves in a little debt…$133k worth. To make things worse, our interest rate is now 29.99% because she forgot to pay a few months and we hit the penalty APR.

Other than the mortgage and the credit cards and our two cars we have no debt.

Anyway here is our budget, any help is appreciated:

Mortgage: $5500/month

My Dodge Viper payments: $640/month

Wife’s Ferrari California T payments: $720/month

Credit card payments: $3k/month

Travel expenses: $2300/month

Housing remodels/redecorating: $1500/month

Food/dining out/basic groceries for 2: $3200/month

Utilities: $800/month

Pool supplies/maintenance: $920/month

Landscaping: $275/month

Cell phones and tablets: $480/month

Pet supplies/insurance: $300/month

200GB/s Internet: $355/month

Entertainment budget (includes cable and DIRECT TV): $2k/month

Alcohol: $750/month

Boat Payment and slip fee: $2900/month

Total: $25,700

I honestly don’t see what can really be cut from that since it’s pretty much all necessities. We’re accustomed to a certain lifestyle. Do you think I should just demand her parents pay us the $200k they owe us from shorting us on the down payment or what? I thought about getting a second mortgage on the house too since we have so much equity that we could be working for us. I went to the bank and they offered me a rate of 12%…That seemed fair. Is that a good idea?

Oh I forgot to mention we both make pre-tax contributions to our 401k and Roth IRA accounts. Between both of us we have about $750k saved there but we don’t want to touch it because we’re planning to retire in about 10 years.

Thanks for any help you can give us. We’re really pretty desperate at this point since we only have about $230k in space left on our credit cards and they keep filling up fast.

#2

You should trade your boat for a bigger one and take one week off for a fishing trip so that you can clear your mind and think better about solutions to this debt problem.

#3

what . the . F?!

#4

Have you considered trading your wife in for an heiress? Also, if you get a smaller one, maybe she’ll eat less?

And I see your bottles expense, wheres the models expense?

#5

Is this Mr Pokhim the ultimate wife problemer ?

#6

https://www.reddit.com/r/PFJerk/comments/66mmlb/my_wife_and_i_are_living_paycheck_to_paycheck_its/

franky copy pasted this from reddit

#7

You’re f’ed bro that 30 percent IR is a killer

#8

So what’s pokhim’s reddit handle? (too lazy to click through link)

#9

Reddit OP is ‘PFJerk’

#10

mr Jesus how did you find this in Reddit.(Ultimate Red Reddit) . Bahahahahhhhahaha

#11

Lol! Who the eff makes that much at a dog walking agency?!

#12

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-top-nyc-dog-walker-makes-110000-a-year-2016-02-05

I think whoever wrote that Reddit entry probably read this article, as the numbers roughly add up to $6600 a month.

"Stewart says he makes about $110,000 a year — after paying his expenses and employees — while working 25 hours a week. “It’s full-time pay for part-time work. I think everyone would want that,” he says, adding, “I’m doing something that I love, and I have time to go to school at night.”

“He knows a solo dog walker in his neighborhood who makes $2,000 a week by working 35 to 40 hours a week. And he knows a dog walker with employees who makes $150,000 after paying his employees.”

Dogs around here take more money to live than people in developing countries.

#13

yeah that’s a bit fishy - could be all the bougie people the OP interacts with…dog walkers do make decent coin though.

Walk 6 dogs (depending on licensing, could be permitted to walk more) at min $20 bucks an hour. You can walk three times per day. $360. Most of it’s cash. Do some boarding as well and then grow your business and hire people at an hourly wage. It’s not a bad gig just to hang out with dogs all day.

#14

i read this over the weekend and kind of chuckled. but then i saw this article as a headliner on cnbc:

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/24/twitter-employee-earning-160000-says-hes-barely-making-ends-meet.html

#15

Dog walking > plumber > IB

#16

Ban this troll

#17

Forget San Fran, in my low key burbia, you would not able to afford to raise family on 160k, because real estate taxes are so outrageous ~3% off property value a year!!!

#18

clearly a troll

#19

Already on wife #2, upgraded from a bulemic, which is quite wasteful, to an anorexic so I’m saving there. If she could get the dogs to pull her they’d tire more quickly and she would burn even fewer calories.

You have a good point with the heiress. As mention above my wife’s parents owe us 200k basically. Should I call that debt in? I really don’t want to have to get a smaller boat.

#20

one does not realize how expensive real estate tax is until you own. mine city appraisal base just jumped a tremendous amount yoy.