Food $1200 Phone/DSL $1100 Propane $800 Property tax $700 Car insurance (liability only for 2 vehicles) $500 Electricity $500 Gasoline/Oil $300 House Insurance $220 Misc. $180 ---- Total $5500/year
I'll get it lower than this once I get out on my own. If you subtract your rent from what you spend, I bet you'll find you aren't that much different from this.
>she hailing
> working only part-time. But, by my estimation, she'd actually
> require over 40 hrs of labor time to support her current lifestyle
I get paid $24/hr of class time on temp contract (no benefits). I was making $30/hr in my last fulltime job, (not including full benefits for which I paid next to nothing). That's why I could save so much to live on the last few years. I don't need to work full time and I don't want to.
> -- if you accounted for the paid for house, the tax write off for
> house
The tax writeoff ended when we paid off the house in 1987. I now get to claim the better deal of standard deduction, without having to spend a cent to get it. For the last couple of years, Eric has been claiming himself, so I no longer have him as a dependent.
> and the EIC, as well as any child support payments she
> recieves from the ex (though, hard to say, there's always the
> deadbeat dad possibility, but if the house was paid for, invariably
> the house is turned over to custodial parent as alimony/cs.
My ex paid $160 a month for 4 years (til Eric was 18) and keeps Eric on his medical and dental insurance policies while he is a student. After my ex left, I had to go back to work after my 7 years off, and since I made more than my ex, my share of child support was higher. Eric is now 20 and has been working most of the last couple of years and has paid for most of his own car insurance and food during that time. I paid the rest with no help from his father for the last 2 years. My ex will claim half the proceeds of the sale of this house and though I'll try to argue some about the tax and insurance he didn't help pay (and would have had to suffer the consequences if I hadn't), I have no problem with splitting it with him. He was the one who left the marriage for someone else, BTW. But it was an amicable parting. I'm really very glad to be free of the suffocation I was feeling in the last few years of marriage.
--tully