I spend an awful lot of time talking about budgets, but I feel like mine have been slipping lately. I know I have fat to trim on things, I know we’ve been a little more spendy than I would like.

The question is, what is a budget? To me a good budget is having a plan for every single dollar. Save, invest, pay bills, repairs, maintenance. Those are all aspects of a good budget. Some people like it more simple, some are ok with handling complexity.

I’ve had a really bloated spreadsheet for many years that I track a crazy amount of things in, but it has gotten so massive over time that fixing it is a chore. I think I need to build a basic budget here to help stay on track. I’m putting real numbers here because I need them. As always I hope that my process can help others as well.

There are two budgets I’ve talked about here a lot Retirement and Grocery Budget. It’s frequently discussed in both financial books and online that you need to pay yourself first. I look at the 401k as part of this, especially when you are still paying down debt.

$24,500 cap for 2026 should shake out to: $942.31 on a bi-weekly pay schedule, or $1020.84 on a bi-monthly pay schedule. Unfortunately, I am behind this year on reaching the cap, because I’m focusing on CC debt pay offs. I am currently paying myself $900 on a bi-monthly schedule into my 401k, but this also includes $557.51 toward my 401k Loan for a grand total of $1,457.51. Once my 401k Loan is paid off that will be almost $400 back into my pocket every paycheck.

Budget Item 1: 401k – $900/pay – $1,800/month – $21,600/year.
Budget Item 2: 401k Loan – $557.51/pay – $1,115.02/month – $13,380.24/year
Budget Item 3: Medical/Dental/Vision/other Employer benefits – $345.85/pay – $691.70/month – $8,300.40/year.

Now, just for clarity, if I took the payroll hit right now and increased my 401k contributions to account for the limit for 2026 ($2,900 more). I’d save $717.75 between Federal and OH state taxes. Unfortunately, as discussed in my debt article. I see little value in the frustratingly complex process my HR department has for this, until I get the credit card payment zeroed out.

So we’ve already budgeted away $1,800 per pay before we even get to regular expenses. That is frustrating, but at least 50% of that was paying ourself, more since the 401k Loan goes back into the 401k Account.

Next, my family cash budgets several monthly expenses. $1,000 for the month. Plus $350 for groceries. You probably already know from grocery article that we roll most of this over between months because our quarterly meal prep weekend usually runs around $700-800. Last month the $1,000 cash budget had a ~$400 surplus. The “household” cash covers, school expenses, eating out, Dr. Office co-pays, almost everything besides utilities.

Budget Item 4: Groceries – $350/month – $4,200/year.
Budget Item 5: Misc Household – $1,000/month – $12,000/year.
Budget Item 6: Wife’s Car Payment – $500/month – $6,000/year.

This pretty much leaves Utilities and wasteful subscriptions as our remaining key items. That’s before we account for annual things like our Surprise Bills, Home insurance, Auto Insurance, property taxes, etc.

Lucky for me, I’ve been spread sheeting and averaging my utility bills since around 2015.

I like to budget around the average, because usually only electric and gas swap around in usage.

Budget Item 7: Natural Gas – Last 12 month Peak $172.74. 12 month low $0.00. Average $70. – $70/month – $840/year
Budget Item 8: Electricity – Peak $446, Low $209, Avg. $298. We’ll call that $300 (yes this is fat to trim, but I run a full size server rack for work related Cyber activities). $300/month – $3,600/year.
Budget Item 9: Water/Trash/Sewer – Peak $142, Low $113, Avg. $128. $130/month – $1,560/year.
Budget Item 10: Internet – $79.99/month. Promo ended $99.99 for March, New Promo $70.00/month 12 months. $70/month – $840/year.
Budget Item 11: Cricket (Cell Phones) – $163/month. We have 6 lines, but family members pay their portion so $88/month for us $1,056/year.

We also know from the ‘Surprise Bills’ article that Property Insurance, Property Taxes, and Car Insurance runs around $5,000/year.

Budget Item 12: House and Cars – $417/month – $5,000/year.

What we haven’t covered. Annual car registration, Hulu subscription (wife’s), Pandora subscription (wife’s), spotify subscription (family), WoW subscriptions (3x), Google Drive Subscription. There might be more that I’ve lost track of over time. This is why there is too much going on. Too much fat to cut.

This article is already massive and I have seeds for investments wilting away already. I probably need some punches in the face for being so wasteful. Oh and we even forgot one of the most important “bills” of all. Wife’s 100% deductible IRA: $7,500/year, $625/month.

Lets look at these really scary numbers.

Budget Item	Annual Cost
401k	$21,600
401k Loan	$13,381
Employer Benefits	$8,301
Groceries	$4,200
Misc Household	$12,000
Wife’s Car Payment	$6,000
Natural Gas	$840
Electricity	$3,600
Water/Trash/Sewer	$1,560
Internet	$840
Cricket (Cell Phones)	$1,056
House and Cars Taxes and Insurance	$5,000
Wife’s IRA 2026	$7,500
Total:	$85,878

Holy hell. That’s still missing my IRA. Another $7,500. Now If we were to ignore all other factors, and count the 401k loan as savings (it kinda is since interest goes back into my 401k).

$93,378 total, $49,981 “savings” (401k, Loan, 2x IRAs). That’s a 53.52% savings rate. Ok that makes me feel better. I guess I need to track down these stupid subscriptions.

Subscription	Price	Annualized
Home IT server Costs	$7.50/month	$90
Good RX Gold	$20/month	$240
Hulu	$13/month	$156
Google One (wife)	$2.12/month	$26
Spotify (family)	$21.40/month	$257
Blizzard x2	$30/month	$360
Google One (100 GB)	$1.67/month	$20
Google Play Pass (paid for self with Swagbucks game rewards)	$2.5/month	$30
Qustodio Parental Controls App	$4.58/month	$55
Pandora (Wife)	$6.50/month	$78
Tucson Features that should be included in the dang car (wife)	$16.67/month	$200
3 car registrations 1 trailer	$8.33/month	$100
Gasoline	~$180/month	$2,160
Total	$314.27/month	$3,772

That should be most expected regularly scheduled costs. This however does not include medical costs. I think we’re over the $5,000 mark in 2026 so far on that alone. This of course drops significantly when the out of pocket limit is hit, and I do need to go backwards and track these costs. This also doesn’t have pet grooming, feeding, vet visits.

Either way I think that’s enough for now. I plan to monitor this for changes. Without “paying our future selves” We’re at $47,150 a year. Lots of fat to trim.

The biggest point of budget tracking is making sure your emergency fund is on track. In a job loss, 401k contributions would stop but medical premiums would increase. So lets double it for safe planning. That works out to roughly $5,800 a month, and I’d cancel tons of things in that kind of emergency. That puts my cash on hand at 3.5 months of spending. Which is in the fabled “3-6 month” window.

~~Miniwing~~
Investor, Parent, Stoic