148. 2025 Expense Review Part 2 - The real cost of food, fitness, phones, and more!

Hello, it's your financial friend Maggie. Welcome to the Inside Out Money podcast. Hey guys, part two now, you ready? Hey everyone. Alright, two, wow, a whole week. It hasn't been 20 seconds. It's only been 30 seconds if you're behind the scenes. So we just finished our part one wrap up of what we all spent in 2025. If you're not sure where you are, you're in part two of a two part series. And this is the Inside Out Money podcast. Go back and listen to part one. Yeah, go back and listen to part one. You might enjoy this a little bit more perhaps. But this is a personal finance podcast. And look, we talk about money. We'll do the short version on this one. And we've got all the co-hosts here. This is our most popular episode of the year. So popular, we tend to go like two plus hours. So we turned it into a two-parter. And go back and listen to part one. We all shared the total amount we spent by category. And we talked a little bit of our learnings and how we think about how we did for the year. And now we are going to do some comparisons of some specific categories that we feel are a little more comparable and meaningful. Like, you know, current, what are you paying for current insurance and stuff like that? So we're going to start with food. We could do a whole episode on what we spend on food. This is like, I don't know why the most popular one people love to talk about what people spend. Because everyone's got to buy food. We all have to eat. That is, that's a good solid theory of why Andrew. I think I'm going to go with that. Okay. Well, we're just going to jump right in. Yeah. We'll do ours first. So we spent $24,700 on food. We track some in a travel category. So for the purposes of this, we combined what we track it, the food part of our travel budget and our overall. That breaks down to that's about 2000 and 58 dollars per month. And we again, we're a family of five. We're a blended family. But our kids are here like almost every day after school. They're here a lot of extra times and they're constantly eating here, even when it's not like our day, quote. So I would probably just compare us to like a family of five half the time. And we spend about 10,000 total on groceries. That's about eight, 50 a month. We spend about $8,300 eating out. Somehow a thousand on alcohol bars, which we just, I don't feel like we even like go out to that often. But I guess we do. And when we eat out at like a restaurant, do you separate the alcohol portion of our bill? Look at gray. Or if we buy beer at the grocery store. Wow. Okay. Well, that's some dedication right there. Wait, I'm not glad you're not. I don't really get into the details. You know, I don't need to know how the sausage is made. You know, clearly. And also we don't need any sausage. So I should say we're pretty pretty much that we buy a little bit of meat for the kids, but mostly a vegetarian household. And travel food was about $4,500. And then somehow travel. We're drinking a lot on trips to travel alcohol was $700. Well, Iceland is one of the most expensive countries in the world. That was like two beers and I wild. It'll be really interesting to see the Thailand trip, which will be like the polar opposite as far as the tickets are very expensive to get there. But the food and accommodations should be less. Yeah. That's true. I can concur the food in Thailand is very cheap. So that's our food spend. And I think we would like to. It's funny. I'm very much focused lately on like quality of my food. But I also do think there's some things where we could be a bit more intentional about where we are spending money. And I always hate to see food go to waste. And so we need to do a little bit more like meal planning. But I feel overall pretty good. I don't feel terrible about our food spend. Like it's it's about. And also like it legit. All food costs more. Like it just is more expensive. And so I think some of our food costs are just going up because of inflation and the cost of goods. I just want to tighten it up a little. I don't want to have a huge drastic decrease, but I do think there's there's things we could tighten up. And as Maggie said, just be a little more thoughtful of our grocery spend using the food we have. And then eating out when it's meaningful, but not eating out because we're just feeling a little bit lazy. Yeah. And I think lately we're like, we give into our kids a little bit more than we should at times, because I do actually think it's good to teach our kids moderation and to, you know, not they if they if they were in charge, they need out every single day. And they're not in charge. So. Are they? Well, I don't know some days. I'm not sure who's in charge. That's fair. Fair enough. Okay. I just because I'm this is the way I'm looking at on the page. I feel like I should compare myself. So actually our grocery spending was almost the same. But I have a family of two and you have only a five. I was $10,690. You were at about eight 50 a month, we're at about eight 90 a month. That's pretty, but I feel like we've been around 800 a month for the last year or two or so. I don't. I put zero effort into bringing down our grocery bill. I just go the grocery store and buy what I want. So I feel really happy about that. And you're eating out category about 8300. We're we're actually almost exactly the same again, but it's just for two people and set up five. So ours was 8400. Comes out to about seven 92 a month. But I break that down. So in my in in monarch what when I look at eating out like it's really important to me to separate it out in categories. And I know we've had this conversation on the podcast before so restaurants are a place where I'm like, this isn't experience. We went to a sit down place. This was like a date. And that was $5,585, which is way up from the year before part of that was we spent two months in Washington state. We were staying at a friends vacation house like house up in mountains. And so while we were there, it was like kind of like we were just living there like normal, but also we were seeing our friends. We were kind of going out to Seattle every weekend. So there was just that was much higher and I feel really happy about that. I also separate out take out so of that like 8400 total 5500 restaurants 1784 is take out that's something I'm like, I mean, I don't try to bring it down, but it's not a meaningful experience when I grab a slice of Costco pizza. Something like that when we're busy. And then the last sort of piece of that bucket is coffee shops at about $1,000 for the year about $88 monthly. And that's a place where I do try to spend my I try to spend like at least $50 a month at a local coffee shop because I think the coffee shops near me make my neighborhood better. And I would like all of them to stay in business forever. Okay, alcohol and bars. Okay, compared to that game Greg, Megan Greg, right at 1000. I'm only at 43. However, I do not have the Greg tenacity to count alcohol at restaurants or in traveling like I don't break that out. I probably even occasionally buy like one bottle of wine at Costco that just gets categorized as groceries, but it's I will say that that has come down over the last few years, which is partially conscious decision on cutting back and drinking and partially just getting older and drinking doesn't feel as good as it used to which is annoying. Which is also a conscious because you're drinking less because you feel crappy in the morning the next day. Yeah, I'd rather just still be drinking more and feeling good. So our total was nineteen thousand six hundred dollars for the year that brings us to about sixteen thirty three a month. We have been averaging about thirteen hundred a month for at least like the last two years and the difference was that restaurant spending out out of the five thousand five hundred we spent in restaurants. Like almost half of it was in that two months that we were in Washington. So I you know something I'll be mindful of if we go back and do it again next year, but I'm not too stressed about it. Popcorn Andrew. All right, here we go. So for our family of four, our total was sixteen thousand three hundred across groceries eating out. So on the grocery line twelve thousand six hundred about a thousand a month is typically what we've been we've been at and feel good about that are on our eating outside restaurants twenty three hundred. I probably say almost half of that is just the vacation so we don't split out when we're on vacation in restaurants so universal and the Florida Florida spring break and summer trip. That's actually that we that may be two thousand dollars of that for the restaurant spend. And then I differentiate between restaurants and what I have the fast food budget it's not all fast food it's just basically restaurants where we're sitting down and fast food is we're taking it it's either a counter to go something quick quick serve or fast food. So that would be that was a little bit higher because when I'm working at the bike shop I'm typically finishing a ride and I grab a sub from public. So that was a little bit higher than usual, but my kids will grab chick fly sometimes or they like going to willies like that's all part of the the quote fast food budget. So eating out total was thirty seven hundred and then alcohol bars was grand sum of zero dollars for us both crystal I don't don't drink so that's that's a good savings for us and then drum roll the one that everyone loves is the coffee shop spend forty six dollars crystal. So that was with the coffee for the for the year yeah forty six dollars for the year was the coffee shop budget now rage. I mean I should have put that in the goals like we got to cut that in half at least we got to cut that down to twenty five dollars for twenty six. And coffee only from here on out. Crystal does drink coffee every single morning and she makes it home and so I mean she's a big coffee drinker but she makes it home and really almost all that forty six dollars is when we're traveling when she's grabbing a coffee when we're on the road. So yeah I also make coffee at home every morning and then I also like like like a little afternoon. Yeah. Yeah so that's that's our breakout. You know how there's that show like what was it called like husband swap or some wife swap or something like that. I think it's fun to just go like yeah wife so I want to like go like live in Andrew's house for a week and like send Andrew to you know. I just want to feel on both sides don't want to see what happened in our house and I'm like hey we're having dinner at Starbucks tonight guys. We had our Christmas Eve dinner at Starbucks it was actually quite affordable nice. Not a lot of places were open someone had not prepared that was me and we had to eat something out. Part of this spending is a little bit of stage of life for us right now my kids are my daughters turned twelve yesterday and my son is nine and they are fairly picky eaters they don't eat out they don't like eating out much. They like Chick-fil-A and or willies are like their two go to's they don't like going to restaurants because it's quote to fan the quote fan they don't like fancy food. Yeah they just want to drink it right correct exactly and so I think there's there's some of some of that like like yesterday for my daughter's birthday I said to her I was like do you want to go to dinner. She's like no I want mom to make fondue like they love fondue is like we it's our New Year's tradition on New Year's Eve they do fondue she would much rather have crystal make fondue at home then go out to dinner so yeah that's really nice. Yeah I will say Mike and I like I'm here and I'm here and I'm going to introduce him to sushi or was that you. I think that what's interesting to me is like our kids like the food from eating out they do not like the experience like you'll go I probably said this before you'll go out to dinner. I'm just like I just got my food I'm still eating and they're like done and they're like can we go now and I'm like I just take took my second bite like you have to wait for every one of the table to finish their food then we will go home they don't they're very impatient they don't want the experience I also like to eat at home but that's why we started doing like dinner night out with our kids because we realize they miss like basic. Learning how to be citizens in a restaurant like with the covid years and we're like we need to introduce you how to like sit at a table without like just falling over sideways and laying on the booth you know like how do you sit up how do you talk to someone in a restaurant you need to order for yourself. Yeah close your mouth while you're. You're like you know and you're often with us so like get better at this experience yeah that's great okay I mean this is not a competition but if it were you want Erica why don't you go through your food. I won again by losing but I guess there's since it's not a competition doesn't matter okay so yeah my groceries 18,700 $3 probably all of that is either Costco or trader Joe's eating out. 17,693 dollars that I think part of that is vacation eating out but it's yeah it's just I gotta like go through these numbers again because I know they're right but it's like geez what did we do we ever eat at home. Part of the eating out is alcohol our tabs are often big we do drink when we go out and like if we go to a nice restaurant we often do the wine pairing so it it. That's part of the experience for us but then we have a separate. Spirits tab which is alcohol bars but this isn't bars this is just like the landlord has a kegerator. I go to this one wine shop that I really like so you get like 10% off if you get six bottles so I'll often like stock up for a little bit but like you Liz I'm just drinking less and less which is like good and bad. So I'll be curious to see what our spirits tech budget is next year did you did you want something where there was a wine shop in your neighborhood that you could invest in or something yeah so we invest in that when that's the one that I still go to okay yeah that's my go to I mean like if we're if we're hosting like we host New Year's Eve at our house like I'll get like grocery store wine I'm not going to get like the nice stuff to just like put out when people are mindlessly drinking it. But I do I try to buy like nicer quality wine to a help with like the after effects of how they feel and also like I'm going to be less inclined to open a bottle just to have one glass if like I don't want it to go bad so I kind of consciously did that to be like do I actually want to have a glass of wine right now. But then that's the problem because in the kegs there so it's like well but I could have one glass beer anyway so our coffee budget is 726 or coffee spent 726 dollars we get a monthly coffee subscription the landlords are doing it's called atless coffee club and you get coffee two bags of coffee from somewhere in the world for like local coffee vendors and that's like it gets us through a majority of them. And then we're going to have a majority of the month not the full month so we might still have to go out and buy like local grocery store coffee. But our kids have discovered boba tea and that is in that and that is kind of pricey and like they use it Greg I see smiling or your kids maybe it's all kids. Boba tea and sushi and matcha yeah I don't even know what boba tea is. Driving all of these over consumption patterns with kids you know but yeah they love boba tea they like sushi. Oh it's like boba tea okay no boba tea boba is a tapioca pearls in the like it's like Asian style like milk tea Thai I think I don't know if it's tights yeah you can get like Thai ice tea but they're boba shops and you can alter what goes in it it's high sugar. Anyway so they discover boba tea but also like something for me and I'm okay with this is like since I work from home and don't have co workers. If I go if I want to see someone a lot of it might just be like I don't have time to go like meet for happy hour like I might have back in the day so it's let's go meet for coffee. That's like my social time like I go to the gym there's a coffee shop right next door and at least once a week will like all go and hang out for like a half hour afterwards and sit and talk and have coffee so it's kind of like and I want to say it's ritualistic because it is like I need my caffeine but it is how I socialize now that I'm like very much. Alone for most of my day and I'm an extrovert that's important if you are meeting with people about potential work opportunities you can expense that coffee or that lunch yes well I just had to meet with a friend to notarize my notary form to renew my notary and so I'm. Expensing that okay so our total which is just like this is makes me want to throw up is thirty eight thousand nine hundred thirty nine dollars so seeing it like that really makes me want to figure out like what are we doing that it's so high I know what we're doing how do we make it a little different for next year that feels a little too high. Do you think I know the landlord highly values food spending it's like a very intentional category for him by the way the landlord is what Erica affectionately refers to her husband as to keep his name anonymous but do you think he would be like have any feelings about that number or do you think he be like oh yeah no that's right where I thought it would have been and I'm fine with. He gets kind of like prickly around like grocery shopping so I actually is a good question for him because like I hate grocery shopping yet I feel like I do most of it because like if I'm the one to do the Costco runs so I wonder if I like task him with doing it if it will look any different. Also I think I just think and that's why we're doing it but it's interesting as you look at other peoples you know yeah. But honestly yours compares to Liz when if you think of you know your kids is true there about adult size now so you're basically you guys are on a very similar track yeah and I will say like our grocery bills kind of up because we've become the house that has like we're like the hangout house or like we do carpool with our kids are the boy ones basketball team and so we might have like five 12 year old boys here and so. I don't want to embarrass him with snacks I already did that once it did not go well so like I just like try to have a lot of food on hand because like they need it before practice and so I've had to like up what we have. So there's a little more spending there yeah. And in like one sitting like a whole Costco bag of goldfish in one sitting. So the next one we're going to do cell phones I always think this is an interesting one cell phones is actually what motivated me to start expense tracking in the first place. Some of the very first noticeable things I did to reduce expenses many many years ago we spent about seven hundred twenty dollars this past year on cell phones that is three different phone plans so Greg and myself and then one of the kids is on our. Our phone plan versus the other two kids are on Greg's ex wife's plan and then there's a small portion of the adult lines that we have allocated as business expenses but but ultimately just for quick numbers we are spending about thirty five dollars a month per plan so our visible like my visible plan is the thirty five dollar a month plan and I've been incredibly happy with the service I use it as a hot spot all the time it's been great for us and I love it. But Liz you at us beat where you at we are total for two people is four hundred and twenty dollars like plus whatever the taxes I didn't I didn't go and look at that so I you convinced me to switch to visible I think you're on the like premium visible plans and mine's actually only twenty dollars a month instead of yours that's thirty five dollars a month but I really like it I also hot spot all the time I wasn't on and limited before. But I decided to splurge and spend an extra five dollars a month so that I don't have to pre download all my podcasts before I leave the house and go for a walk and I will say it's been like a very luxury experience. And then so I pay twenty dollars a month and then my partner is actually still on meant mobile which is only fifteen dollars a month but it caps out at five gigs but like I will use all the data if it's there I'll use it and my partner like doesn't even hit the five gigs every month and this is just like a tiny little bonus but that's visible is Verizon. And mint is team mobile so I do feel like we kind of have a hedge on coverage like when we were road tripping to Washington and back sometimes one of us would have coverage sometimes the other one didn't so it kind of felt like a little risk management in terms of being smart without bars. That's a cool strategy for a reason to be on you know two different ones in a household. Andro where you were at six hundred dollars for the year so pretty straightforward crystal iron both on mint we're paying twenty dollars a month each for fifteen gigs we were on the fifteen dollar a month for five gig plan at the beginning last year and then we switched because once I got once I wasn't in the office every day I was hitting over I was going over that five gig crystal used to go up the five gig playing about all the time. So I gave her that gift to really splurge up to that twenty dollars a month for the fifteen gigs got her that in a coffee yeah that in a coffee right exactly. And then my my daughter's apple watch we've got her set up on us mobile for ten dollars a month I really wish mint would offer a less expensive like kids line for the apple watches but they don't so US mobile ten dollars a month is great. Yeah I can't remember what visible says but visible does offer I have my apple I added my apple watch and now we pay like five bucks a month I think it was included in the plan we had oh that's what that was one of the reasons we upgraded from the cheaper a visible plan right that is included. Yep nice okay Erica all right well shocker minds way higher it's a nineteen twenty three I think. This includes my phone was being paid off from a couple years ago so that includes part of the charge I think I paid it off like towards the end of twenty twenty five so that's a significant amount of that but it's about seventy dollars a month for my phone which is insane looking at just me but it's unlimited. And it has my son's apple watch on there which is ten dollars and then the landlord just switched from Google five to mint and he got like I think is like two hundred dollars a year because he used a friends promo code and that friend got something. So I'm intrigued by switching to mint if I can be assured that it's going to work it's so mint is the exact same network as T mobile and so you would. Should see no difference okay so the only thing I'm going off of is Maggie and I were in Durango for a girls trips a year ago one of our friends had mint and granted this was like a handful of years ago and she had no service and she was like nobody lose me because like I can't get a hold of anybody. There is some throttling at times right but yeah there's there is throttling and well but here's the other thing too for me so because this is now. A business expense I switched it to my business payments so like it's kind of a wash which doesn't necessarily mean that I can't switch to mint but I just switched our home internet. To T mobile as well so I like having everything in one place also this does not equal nineteen twenty three nine one thousand nine hundred twenty three dollars but I get free MLB. Extra free MLB TV once a year which is like a hundred and fifty dollars but I get it for free through T mobile so like there are all these things were like they have really good perks like we've used it for travel. They have all these like T mobile life things that they offer and like it's actually come in handy like we got a hotel in Brazil when we went for wedding. That was cheaper through T mobile than like through the wedding website wow that's cool yeah T mobile does have a lot of perks I feel like they still have that thing on Tuesdays you would get a free. Something somewhere and yeah you can manage that I mean you can definitely make it worth it I'm surprised I think this is maybe what you're getting at Maggie I'm surprised your friend didn't have service and Daringo because I run into like throttling because I have the cheap visible so it's the same as Verizon but. I remember being somewhere I was like downtown there was a game and like my phone was just going really slow and I think it's because I was like bottom priority compared to the people paying a little bit more. That was one of the reasons I switched to the to the highest visible plan is because I am on the one that no longer does any throttling and I pay a little more for it but I still pay a lot less than if I was on an equivalent Verizon plan because we're essentially on a prepaid plan. It is a minor difference but there's a version that is that is the exact same level of service is what you're getting you are kind of considered on like a post paid but not a prepaid plan in the area and I mean you could cut your cost in half if you wanted to and I would argue it's not quite a wash because you are giving up business profit by spending that much on it but if it's not stressing you out worry about it. Yeah I mean the landlord just switched so maybe I'll see like I just want to see how it works like we have some friends who are on it and we're at a concert with them and we were trying to text them in the venue and like it just they just couldn't send the text like it just wasn't going through like what's the point of paying cheap money for something that doesn't work like I like yeah so I just want to see how it works and maybe in like a year I'm like okay yeah I see the work for the landlord well here and I'll switch over yeah and in the meantime you have both. I mean you could also again do what we did which is like have one on a Verizon you know which is visible and what you can also you kind of had your bets but also you could pay like I'm I'm on the version of visible where I get throttled because I don't really care I'm on my 5 most of them anyways and Maggie is paying a little bit more to be on the version where you don't get throttled but that would still be less than what you're paying now it's kind of yeah yeah I think it's confusing on purpose like it's it's maybe I'll give myself six months and see I sometimes I have jokingly rationalize it too that I'm like well when I'm at a concert I really should not be on my phone anyway so but it but there are times that it is like quite annoying to try to get if you're trying to find them yes we're trying to find each other and with kids like I always want them to have a good signal and stuff so okay we are going to move on to health and fitness so our health and fitness spend for last year was about 2,800 that included I think the biggest bulk of that was three months of personal training that Maggie did and a used palaton purchase we also just bought some miscellaneous homework out stuff but other than that we don't have a gym membership or anything so it's mostly just those those categories when I was doing training at a gym and I hadn't been to a gym in years I was introduced to some nice pieces of like really simple equipment just like a medicine slam ball and some step rise or I forgot what they're called but jump boxes stuff like that that I was like in my head rationalizing it too on I'm paying $420 a month for this right now this piece of equipment only cost me like 50 bucks or maybe a hundred bucks so I put I spent a couple hundred dollars on some additions to our gym setup that I've been using and have been great and I'm committed to working out at home again and I it was fun to try the gym experience and I got some nice coaching that I will you know have continued to use at home in terms of how I'm doing stuff and then now I have the peloton coaching which is also helping with my form and stuff like that that's cool how do you I know you were has a 10 about the 50 dollar month subscription fee but are you just going to make Greg like cut some supplements and then yeah little less creatine I feel I'm not even I don't feel anything about it that which means I feel good about it like I'm not even thinking about it you know it's just it gets hidden in my you know that is a $600 a year expense out of our almost 200 grand that we spent last year. I don't want to get to budget you're on an 18 days to all that's cute I'm only got 400 day straight I'm just kidding sorry not a competition. I'm just teasing I'm just teasing now I can never lose my straight because I don't want maggot catch me okay can you make sure to budget for a trip for us to go to New York City to go meet Mount Wilbur in person and take his class in the studio in New York City. Yeah I already have yes and I invited yes yeah I wrote it right that you're probably going to get us the IP back room access Andrew I'm going to be like with the world champion over here you better put us in the front row I'm going to wear the rainbow jersey. Yeah could you bring extra ones I know you have like 12 of them for Liz and I to wear that's a that is that is absolutely sacrilegious yeah I I'm telling the Stanley cop before you win it okay I apologize for even suggesting it I was very inappropriate. We'll get tied I inside out many jerseys obviously to wear to our indoors like clean glass. In New York City next door to the whole thing it's going to be great okay Liz what did you spend on health and fitness all right I spent $3,846 on fitness related things last year that works out to about $320. I also I copied Maggie and I bought a sauna this year was about $1200 it's a little baby it's like the size of a phone booth and it just fits in the corner of the closet. I also paid about $600 for my Peloton membership I think I need to drop down to a lower membership because we didn't actually bring any the physical equipment into when we moved so there's like a cheaper version you can get but I just haven't switched it yet. I also spent so we did go to New York City in the summer and took five classes live in the New York City studio they actually only let you take four but we were there just kind of hanging around like big fan groupies and there was a class that had two spots left in it so we got to jump into that class and do five in the same weekend. However we were not dressed for it I was wearing jeans and so we had to run up to the shop and spend another $176 my partner had by assured I had to buy leggings and I just wore them with a t-shirt I had on so that we could I didn't have to take us spin class and jeans and now they're kind of a souvenir so. Okay let's see oh I signed up for private Pilates which I'm going to continue this year I only did four sessions last year and that was $407 total for the four sessions there was an introductory rate I think it's like $150 per session I could be wrong. I fell for a million Instagram ads I swear it's like the only time I've ever gotten stuck in the ads but I bought that scale that also tells you like your lean muscle mass and your water and your bone density and all the things and then I also paid a membership for that which was $105 and it's like fine I probably wouldn't recommend it but it's I don't know I guess I know what my bone mass is now. We also spend money on other in person fitness classes I'm big into going to like Pilates bar studios yoga. Okay one question for you would you recommend the whom thing because I read about it and then I went and read reviews and I was like yeah. It's I mean it's not terrible the apps not great I feel like it's just kind of a fancy scale it's I mean it's not junk but I'm not sure. It's not something I get a ton of value out of. Okay that sounds like a okay I got it. If someone if your neighbor was a giving someone away the giving one away then yeah like grab it but it's not that exciting. And yeah. Okay we also have a gym membership but I actually get the membership for free for both of us through my job which is nice because otherwise it would be like another $150 month. I also put in this I would put in this bucket which is $146 for both of us it's 70 something it's about $70 plus tax to have the or app so I never thought to actually I feel like a lot of these things live in different places if that makes sense like I put sauna and household the sort of things that I was in fitness I think I put the human my again and household or home furnishings or something so anyways Maggie I'm glad that you asked to do this I hadn't sort of looked at it through this lens before. Yeah it's interesting to see it all total up. I mean obviously I'm good at it. This is like the best place any of us can spend money right. Yeah so we actually don't have anything in this category since all of my kids stuff all their sports stuff goes in kids activities and then all my cycling stuff I exclude because it's from it's on the business side of things. So yeah nothing nothing to talk about really on this category. That's impressive. Given how active you are. So I didn't quite do the assignment in the same way of breaking it out but just looking at our fitness category it's 39,000 no sorry $3,949 which is mostly just a gym membership the landlord and I both are members of orange theory. And a lot of that is not just orange theory I was going to yoga studio for a while but I was paying a lot of money for classes that weren't that great so I'm going to start going to our community center. Yeah I also have an or a ring but it's in my I think my personal budget so I didn't include that in there but I'm fine like I've always gone to a gym I've always had a gym membership it's like the way I prefer to work out and I use it so I'm fine with that that's like an expense I know that like. It's just always going to be there. I think the key word is you use it I think gym memberships are great investment if you use it it's when people are paying a bunch of money and then not actually going that it's unfortunate because it's just a bit of a waste it expense. Yeah. Erica I would think Portland would be a good town. It is it's I just don't want to drive all across town for yoga I had a great studio I loved when I worked in an office and I'm not going to drive 25 minutes across town for that. Speaking of driving to yoga Erica we're going to do car insurance next. Okay we're paying $2,480 with all state for two Teslas that are like 2023 Teslas and what's our deductible it's high it's like 5,000. Yeah. Okay that's a quick one what do you have was we're paying more than that $4,000 a month and we only have a one car it's like $300 a month but I think when we bought the car I had a loan on it for a year we took about a year to pay it off and I never dropped it down you know how after your car is paid off you don't have to have I always forget what they're called like collision or comprehensive or something. And so I think I need to go in and take those down because I actually don't like the cars worth less than $30,000 and if it got total I would be very sad but I don't know that I want to pay this much money to like ensure myself against that loss. Yeah I think car insurance is also one where like I often think mine is quite high it looks less high now that I've seen yours though but it feels high to me. But I also have shopped around a decent amount and it seems like you know the rates are different in different markets there's just you know there's a lot of regional differences and so I think on car insurance in particular it's more as long as you feel like you've done some recent comparative shopping and you know it's if you if you ask people even in your own city that are similar ages with similar types cars what they're paying it's a good gut check of like if it feels about right but I do think your seems a little high list who are you with by the way. We use USA so like I'm confident that it's not an issue with the carrier there I mean they're always the cheapest like they're really really good but and their services just like I do think they're fantastic they're not always the cheapest I pray we have access to USA to we've priced it and I always get confused which but our combined car and homeowners is more with USA then all state for the exact same coverage one is more and one is less but the combined. Total is I think it's car car is significantly more with USA for us. I'm not saying you shouldn't keep it I'm just saying like it is worth shopping around for I'm mentioning this to other people more so than you yeah. Yeah I'm not going to show I mean I'll be very honest I'm not going to show I've had the same car insurance through USA since I was a teenager and it's almost like an emotional thing well their homeers insurance I'm sure it's a lot less I think I even talked about this on a podcast episode because for we had a paper work issue so we couldn't get our home insured through USA it's very long story for like a year and I had to go through state farm and it was that I mean I want to say it was like five or six thousand dollars more a year. It was bonkers but anyways I think it's more a matter of I mean do you have the I should know what this is called the like comprehensive or like if something we do yeah yeah it covers my car and. Lies you're still going to want to have that even on thirty thousand dollars. I would yeah I don't have my other one one one say we're paid off I was like like if my car is like my ten thousand or less I would consider dropping it but I still would probably it depends they'll tell you the amount like I can tell you exactly what you know. It was like fifty bucks at that point on her car so I was like well let's eat it. Yeah we didn't have it on the Lexus towards the end of her life but like always have it on like our other cars. Yeah. All right well I'll take a look but it's a I mean it's a personal decision it's insurance you you could afford the loss and so if something didn't happen you'd be fine. Yeah and it was still leaving a situation obviously if the accident wasn't like I would still have insurance where if I caused an accident it would pay for the other person's car it just wouldn't pay for my own car if it was my fault like that's the only thing that I would be sort of cutting out and giving the amount we drive I I. Anyways I gotta look at the cost but like four thousand dollars I mean four thousand dollars a year is for one car that's yeah that's very expensive and that's what I mean is I think it's the level of coverage and I think it's an outing it's like that thing has dropped so much in value. Yeah since we bought it that I just don't know your pain I'm not that insured almost 15% of the value of the car every year to ensure yeah that's what I'm saying it's like it's not worth it. It's high as a percentage okay Andrew what you got alright ours is $1,700 for the year with all state we have a twenty that's insuring two cars a 2015 RAV 4 and a 2018 high under so probably approximately about forty thousand dollars in car in value of those two cars together. Okay let's do homeowners insurance we are paying two thousand nine hundred and thirty dollars a year for a thirty five hundred square foot home we actually had to add our sunroof onto that I mean our sunroof onto that and that's in Atlanta Georgia we have a very old roof which I recently learned is drastically increasing our price and we have a very high deductible I think it actually is that is it. 5k or 10 I think it might be 10k anyways we have a very high deductible and our price is going up to 3,500 next year in like a month I just saw the quote that comes in February and so I'm going to do a little bit of shopping around notice okay Greg confirmed 5,000 deductible we are going to do a little bit of shopping around this year and I just want to but and I've been talking to like some friends on what they're paying and it's like it's not crazy off but I just I do like all state we've been with them for a long time. I actually recently got hit by someone and I'm like dealing with progressive their insurance company and it just reminds me like how much how important it is to have a like good solid insurance company. For both people involved if something happens okay Liz what do you pan. I think the highest we could are able to set it to is $20,000 and that's my mo has to always just choose whatever the highest shop to us. So far as is 37 45 which is I always think it's high because it used to only be when we first moved into his house it was only 2000 and then it is increased significantly when we were with state farm and then I reshopped it last year. We recently got a quote of 3,100 and then after they after they I took pictures and they looked at the house they came back and re quoted at 3,700 so I wasn't psyched about that but it's it's a it's the houses on the larger side and so I think it's a square footage is the bedrooms bathrooms you know the just the size of the house. And we have a 13 K to talk about about trying to increase that you know Liz I see you at 20 and I've thought about trying to push that push that up higher. At one point or it was actually like to I think we've even had higher than that but our mortgage company wasn't wouldn't like the other thing that I think has hurt us is we did have a claim when our basement flooded and so that's not help in the situation. So we had it was like it wasn't a huge I was probably 13,000 14,000 was the claim when the when the water heater exploded and flooded our finished basement so. Yeah, that definitely what Andrew remind me what your square footage is. It could be 6 5 say it's 6 bedrooms 7 baths and could be 5 or 6 it's a lot. That's a lot of that. Have you been in all those bathrooms now. It's it's much I mean the previous owner did a big renovation and you know it the houses is much larger than what we need as a full the finished basements the full foot print of the house and so it's it has a large living area. Do you and crystal each have two bathrooms like like one to shower and one to take a bath in. Yeah, it's amazing. I didn't know I never knew that about you that seems that is something I would have not have I think you met Andrew. I know right guy who live house was seven. Well, Andrew I'm coming to stay with you next time I'm taking a business trip to Atlanta. Yeah, seriously. I'm passing on this one because obviously I don't know so good show everybody. I hope this is a good reminder I think a lot of people just find it interesting to see like from a you know financially voyeuristic way just to see what other people are spending on stuff. But also comparatively like sometimes you don't really know that you could save money on a bill until you see oh wait someone else is you know has a cell phone is on the same plan and you know or insurance to compare me even Andrew and I being in the same market to come. Like when I see your insurance I'm like okay it seems about right except your house is like twice the size of mine. So it feels like mine actually might be a little high and it validates my thinking that mine feels a little high. But I also know we have a really old roof and anyways my point is it's I hope people find this helpful because I do think. Aside from it just being interesting it can be quite helpful to. Ask your friends what they're paying for certain things I don't think it's overly personal to ask someone what they're paying for homeowners insurance right you're not asking them what they how much money they make for a living. You're asking them for you know commodity products that we all have to buy. And I think more people should feel encouraged to talk about money and that simple question of like what are you paying for your cell phone bill or what are you what your auto insurance. Could then turn into much deeper conversations about money and what's important in life and you know I think it could like open the gates of having more financial conversations with friends. I love this how are your friends how much their homeowners insurance costs and it could it could change your life. I was going to say those types of things to or you can get big savings and it has zero impact on your life as opposed to you know materially reducing your spending on food could you know substantially change your lifestyle but if you can save a few hundred dollars a year on home insurance and still have your home insured that's great that's an easy win. That's such a good point Greg because it's like changing habits versus just like taking a few minutes to call a company and like either negotiate down or make the switch which I think is the game these days you just have to like keep jumping around and they kind of expect that and build that in. Yeah and there are certain insurance companies as an example that it's not a negotiable price but it is a different price there are certain insurance companies where you as that customer profile and based on their. Actuary tables whatever you call it you will get a better price your profile of a person might get a better rate with one insurance company than another and so it is worth doing a bit of shopping around and you know we we had some friends that were paying like a really low rate and we were like who are you. And what's you know and I got their contact info and then it turns out theirs is actually about to double in price so so it's not a comparative piece right so I think you just it's worth asking around and asking questions and like double clicking on the details because you can't just ask a price and then not ask the size of their home or what company they're with and what they're deductible is and and again I recently learned how much an old roof can add like a thousand plus to my annual cost to the point where. To the point where Gemini who I listened to for all life advice lately was telling me that it sounds like I'm like getting right getting my horoscope bread was actually saying it might cost out to just proactively get a new roof because ours is so old. Before we are like forced to from water leaks to just get one in our insurance savings alone might not obviously not pay for it but it would just be worth it so. I think we're done y'all we've spent three hours reviewing expenses congratulations to. We had everyone else got to split this up over two weeks but we we did this all in one sitting and I think we're all tired hungry thirsty and we appreciate you listening and for all this work I really feel like now is when you should go leave us a review right it's 2026 it's a new year. We just opened up our entire expenses to you all and go go let us know if you enjoy and appreciate this podcast and you can leave us a written review on Apple podcast it is one of the most helpful things you can do for us to help grow the podcast or you can share it with a friend both of those things are really helpful a cool friend a nice friend. Someone who's going to leave us a review. Thanks everyone. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.