2023 Beers & Budgeting Year End Review!!

2023 is officially a wrap and so every single year we do a year in review of our financials to show you exactly what our take-home was what we spent money on throughout the year and gives us some insight on how we could approach our finances differently for the new year so grab a drink get comfy and join us for this year in review hey guys it's Justine your host of the Deb free Millennials Channel this is my husband Kyle up and we're going to go over the year's budget we always get dressed up for this we think it's really important that you take your finances as a family very seriously and sometimes it's something to be celebrated and when you celebrate something sometimes you get dressed up sometimes you get fancy with it you sometimes you drink tequila yeah what kind of tequila is this this is a a tequila called el tequilo and I absolutely love it um it's a sipping tequila so you don't need anything mixers but of course we do enjoy Margarita but this is quite nice and delicious if your idea of tequila is Jose quvo let me just blow your mind when you enter into the like small niche market Tequilas or even like the bigger brand names like uh teramana or George Clooney's uh KAS Amigos KAS Amigos all of those things it's so much fun to try because they're high quality Tequilas that you can literally drink on Ice which is how I typically like to enjoy them and you as well yep okay so tequila over budget started all that said this is not a tequila Channel although idea uh could be for somebody we're going to go over our year what that looked like oh man I'm nervous take a look right there partner Okay so for each year well for each month we brought in on these there averages these are averages okay 13,700 and change and for the year we brought in 164,00 Bucks it does not feel that way I think it's just a High Cost of Living when I look at that number I go wow that's like a tremendous amount of money we must be like driving Ferraris and living in the pinthouse and it's like oh yeah that's right I live in LA and it's super expensive here and child care is super expensive and man I that number just doesn't feel very big it's shocking and it feels sad and like you know coming back coming from the Midwest where stuff is a lot more affordable and I'm sure that there's people are who are in lower cost of living areas watching this going these people are crazy they brought in this much money and they feel poor like are you serious and we don't feel poor I don't I don't no but we it feels like it should go further for some reason definitely it definitely feels like a average ing 13k over a month it feels like it should go farther granted a lot of our journey in our chapter of life right now is building up a really big down payment so that we can buy our own home we know you've heard this a thousand times if you've been following this channel for a really long time and we will get there for sure I feel like 2024 is going to be that year for us uh but that yeah it's just insane so I want to bring you down to the fixed expenses of um our budget so these are all the things that we know are regular bills for us that typically don't change I also include groceries the groceries toiletries alcohol budget in there because obviously we're spending money on food every single month that will never change and so that's why it goes under the fixed column but the biggest expenses for us are rent and daycare rent actually was 31% of our annual budget and daycare was 15.23% you're like that's such a weird number it's because our daycare expense changed mid year so Quinn moved up a a grade level if you will and so it lowered the cost of tuition but now in 2024 that cost of tuition has gone up again so it's it's going to change 31% of our actual take come going towards rent or morgage in a high cost of living area really isn't that bad of a number I've seen some people pushing this number up to 60% and it's like they have nothing left over for food and insurance and cell phone and you know that's 40% I think feel like is more of a closer number to average in high cost of living areas like La San Francisco New York those kinds of places yeah if you're spending 60% on rent or mortgage that's the true definition of being house poor if you were spending more than 40% that is that is house poor you're should be perking up red flags should be kind of going hey 40% of a lot a lot like we got to really make sure that we're either doing our budget correctly or see what we can adjust yeah so a really good percentage and I've done a whole video on percentages of of realistic budget I will link to that up here in the cards if you want to check that out 25 to 35% is the appropriate amount of your takehome budget to dedicate towards rent or a mortgage payment so we truly were right in the middle for last year daycare is a tricky one to figure out what that percentage should be because it varies state by state when you go to a state like Colorado or Nebraska or Kansas states that we're pretty familiar with by now the the the budget for daycare is is a lot less than what it would be for California so it really just depends but you can see some of our other expenses like our cellone bill and our internet didn't even register on our annual budget because they were such small amounts so this is a great way to break down or to investigate where can I get money back in your budget a lot of people want to say okay let's uh lower our cell phone bill but our cell phone bill in total was you know less than 1% of our total income so trying to lower our cell phone bill isn't going to get us that much back at the end of the day where our major areas that we could save money on are our rent which I don't really feel like downsizing to an even smaller place uh and then daycare costs and those I'm sure that's the same story for a lot of people the one that's not on here that I'm sure a lot of people would see is a car expense or a monthly car payment so we have car expense on here but that's for maintenance uh tags Insurance all of that kind of stuff so curious you talked about the percentages do you remember what the percentage is for a car that's recommended I mean ours is zero like for car you can pay for it in cash if you can I don't remember what I think gas and fuel was on there I don't remember what car maintenance was if even the Bureau of Labor and statistics even had the like a maintenance category I'd have to look back at that I would just watched the video the other day this guy who was bringing three $33,500 a month and he had a $1,200 a month car pay payment 33% a third 30% of your income going to a car is not okay so that could be another area to look at and that's why we do this annual review to be like oh okay if I had a cheaper car of course you need reliability and safety those are always factors to consider in that stuff it's not a a black and white kind of a decision we get that yeah so I'm I'm surprised that groceries being as low as it was cuz I felt like for a long time that grocery number was just going up and up and up and up every month it was that's because it was yeah $686 on average is what we spent on groceries toiletries alcohol so accounting for 5% of our budget I think this one was that the BLS said that this was like between 7 and 10% so I know we're on the low end on the groceries which is really nice okay the rest of these categories I feel like good it's 1% or less I'm not really too worried about it so let's go over to the fund this is all of our discretionary spending and so a lot of um the categories that we have inside of our discretionary spending have syncing funds tied to them so instead of counting what I actually set aside for the syncing fund where for example we have an LA bucket list category where we put $300 set aside every single month and then we can choose whether or not we want to spend it or roll over I actually took what we actually spent from those different categories to show you exactly what that expense looked like so for fund money which is the LA bucket list we spent $4,200 or 3% of our annual budget on exploring LA and doing fun stuff around here I'm okay with that $350 per month on average now this also includes a couple of trips to Disneyland Disney on Ice we did some uh day trips to malibo svang we did a lot of different cool cool things yeah yeah it's been fun I've enjoyed it so I when we leave La I hope wherever we end up um has a lot of fun stuff to do in that new city as well restaurants we were averaging $311 per month which I was actually really excited about because a lot of times when we're going out to eat we do it for happy hours and we're not really doing a full sitdown meal with drinks a full entree desserts all that stuff so we've really tried to be strategic about how money we're spending on restaurants just the other day we went out to Sushi for lunch we got a lunch combo meal and then we got some sushi and it was $60 for our lunch yeah which is insane yeah and we just TR had water it didn't include any kind of top yeah so really being careful and mindful am I spending on the things that I truly love I truly love that Toro that Toro was just like it was it was better it was so good okay shopping we averaged just under $300 here's an interesting thing the clothing budget check this out zoom in on this I don't believe that because K spent more money on clothes than I did I don't believe it for a second and you want to know why because of this jacket this fly jacket that he's wearing right now okay this beauty was custom tailored to his body by the Nordstrom personnel and the Nordstrom Taylor so hats off to them and this is a soft soft Blazer every time I get dressed up and my wife gets dressed up the only thing I realize is how far I am outkicking my coverage on how good my wife looks so that's all that this ever does so so the Blazer and that was like $700 plus for that Blazer yeah and uh we'll have it for at least a decade at least okay haircuts we spent about $400 on getting our haircut it's kind of crazy I know it makes me want to go back to just shaving my head well we'll get there thanks love you too I do love you gifts we spent close to $3,000 on gifts in the Year ah wow that's a that's a lot that's a lot a bulk of that we usually don't buy each other gifts a bulk of that is Christmas gifts for our families we may need to rethink how much we're spending on Christmas gifts for I don't know $3,000 we're debt free we can spend money the way that we want spoiling our the people that we love with really amazing gifts something we want to do so we yeah I know we've also spent some bigger money on gifts um so instead of buying our family's gifts we want to buy them experiences that we can enjoy together so like you went to the Shania Twain concert with your mom I took my dad to a Kansas City Chiefs football game like those are bigger ticket items but we don't get to see them as often because we are out of town or we are longdistance families whatever you want to call that and so instead of we don't get to see them on a weekly basis so when we do get to see them we want to make them very memorable times and so we're we're willing to spend the extra money to have those events cuz I know I'm not going to forget it I know you're not going to forget yours so maybe that's why that numbers subscriptions we spent just under $600 for subscriptions I'm okay with that for what oh my gosh Netflix Netflix Amazon Prime credit cards um apps I think that's it jeez seems like a lot the fact that we're spending more money on subscriptions than we are on our kid no okay yeah all right we got that in the right order never mind no we're spending more money on our but not by much like okay let's go let's go down to Future this is all of our savings and our investing outside investing after we bring home our paychecks so let's talk about this because this is amazing we averaged about $2,000 in savings towards our down payment close to $24,000 saved in the year for this particular goal I'll take it that's fantastic 14% so you can really tell this is something that we're really emphasizing and then 2% was spent on the vacation fund or saved for the vacation fund what kind of vacations did we take in 2023 oh man um so I was actually waiting to ask you this question what was well we both raised our hands at exactly the same time anyways uh what do you think you spent money on this year that was absolutely the best thing and it's funny because you typed it in for me it was Las Vegas Las Vegas was great our trip to Las Vegas was fantastic because it was just the wife and I she was looking good I was looking like this so we had a great time great dinners pools all the whole nine yards Vancouver was another great thing that we went on and we walked in the rain we walked like eight miles in the rain in Vancouver which it's hard not to walk in the rain in Vancouver but it was fantastic had a great time so I I'm so happy we spent that money and got to do those things the trip to Disneyland didn't come out of vacation fund it came out of La bucket list but that's also one that I'm like I'm so happy we did yeah yeah you mean chewy giving you a back massage yeah chw Chewbacca put that on screen Chewbacca uh joined the massage train cuz we were like oh our backs are walking around all day so she was rubbing my shoulders after IID rubbed her shoulders and then Chewbacca came up behind her and started rubbing her shoulders while she was rubbing mine it was pretty funny yeah it was great and Quinn was asleep the entire time it's so funny for that moment she wasn't asleep for the entire experience she loved it okay so 2% went towards vacations treat yourself 1% which we didn't even do a treat yourself day we didn't that's okay um Quinn's college fund stash EMB betterment in Robin Hood and then I put this down here CU this is the net this was money that was left over in our 2023 budget month from month to month we would have money left over and we're like what are we doing with this sometimes we would talk about it and I wouldn't set money aside I was trying to be better about it this year and I I think I was than 2022 but still there was money left over in the budget that I completely forgot to move okay and so that's well forgot to move it in the Excel spreadsheet not from the bank accounts right okay so that's a lot of money that most of that went to the down payment yes I would say 90% of that went to the down payment maybe some of it went to Vacation fund so so yeah that's a big chunk of our take home going towards that goal so I also wanted to include this chart over here so that we can take a look at how this breaks down from a pie chart perspective so that you can see okay yes they are right down payment rent and daycare and then this was the leftover money but you can count towards down payment and whatnot so some of these little things though like look it's so small compared to rent daycare the big takeaway that I have here is like how can we reduce the rent in the daycare expenses the answer is moving to a lower cost of living area which we're working on um yeah it's insane and so all of the little meticulous detail that I pour into making sure that we're not overspending in things like shopping restaurants all that sort of thing is just like is it making a dent but it does add up like the accumulation of small things over time adds up like if you spent 10 minutes a day you know doing something for a year at the end of the year it's a lot of minutes it's a lot of hours that you spent dedicated to that one thing so it does make a difference at the end of the day for me my perspective because you're doing it not me I love you um so one thing that's not on this pie chart that I'm kind of curious about is how much of our income went towards our retirement plans because we didn't break that out how much of our income went towards Insurance because this is just the stuff that makes our budget where I have in my pay stub I have everything taken out automatically so it's kind of out I out of mind and I'd be curious if we break it down to look at what our insurance costs and retirement are because I know you have your retirement account too that we don't see breaking down broken down on here I'm be curious what those are yeah but I'm going to guess that they're around 15% yeah and last year you had maxed out your 41k contributions correct and the HSA the health savings account yeah it would be interesting to see what how much of our working money of our pre-tax dollars went towards our retirement and how much your employer had put in that sort of thing so I don't know maybe that makes for another video well what is one thing that you're most proud of out of our 20123 budget it's an interesting perspective because for me I'm looking at this and I'm going what did I enjoy spending money on and that was our vacations that that's the one thing I'm proud of it's like hey you know it's still very expensive but I'm so happy we did those things because it it it's memories that I will keep you know longer than I will remember what our rent costs were in 50 years someone will be like what was your rent back in La I'll be like a lot I don't really remember but I can tell them like I remember taking my 2-year-old to Disneyland and her having a great time meeting Minnie Mouse you know that's those are the kind of things that I I will remember what about you yeah I would say like those three trips were really really awesome and you can tell like travel is still such a thing that we value even though we're doing less of it we did less of it last year because we have a kid and because things are so expensive we really just put our our focus on the down payment and I almost wonder like for 2024 if we just I don't know we we have the down payment I'm talking about this is the year that we're we're going to buy something potentially but I'm also like what if we just used more money and put more money towards trips and we traveled and we made that happen yeah Quinn's older it'd be easier for her to come along now fin at that age where you can yeah so that's kind of my takeaway here but my I I'm most proud of doing our trips and really funneling a lot of money towards that savings goal but we still had a lot of fun we still did a lot of cool things in Los Angeles that a lot of people haven't ever done won't ever get to do we've done a lot of things in the city so yeah I'm proud of that what about you guys tell us what you're most proud of financially for 2023 and that can be anything from vacation like ours uh to just beating down some of your debt paying off a student loan let us know I'd be curious to see what everyone is proud of yes thank you so much for attending this year-end wrapup review of our finances I'm very thankful that we have such an open communication about money that is something that I truly value and I'm glad that I can come to you and say like can we discuss this or this is these are my thoughts these are like the goals that I have and you've always been very receptive to that even if we've had some tough conversations about some bigger financial goals so it's always been really helpful yeah thanks welcome and we'll catch you hopefully stay tuned for the 2024 series of beers and budgeting coming out soon and follow along with us I hope it inspires you to take action to Achieve Financial confidence and Crush debt that leads to more fun and fewer payments and we'll catch you next time yeah