My family's position: Make $65,000/year
Parents both work and recieve health insurance through work.
Family consists of a wife, husband, 17 year old son, and a 4 year old daughter.
My feelings during the budgeting process were that of frustration because it was hard to decide what to spend the money I made on. Another problem was deciding what things I could live without. I wanted to make sure I had enough cash to purchase basic necessities, but still have atleast $1000 left to put into saving for a rainy day. I also wanted to take some of the $1000 and place that into a 401K so that I would have some money for retirement. Along with that left over $1000 I want to place that into a college savings fund for my children.
One difficult decison I was forced to make was deciding on wether or not to send my kids to a public school, which would cost me nothing, or to a private school, which would be costly, but would give my kids a religious education and more one on one learing. Making the sacrifice of not sending my children to a public school helps me to save money and have some to put into my childrens' college savings fund. Another tough decision to make was wether or not to purchase the more costly health insurance or the cheaper one. When it came down to it, I decided to go with the more expensive health insurance because the copays are cheaper and in the long run I would be saving myself money because with two kids there more likely to be sick or injured so there would be more frequent doctor visits which would lead to more copays.
