Family Spend Reality — and the Plan to Cut It

Related: _index

The honest, shareable read on where our money goes, why it feels tight, and exactly what we cut — permanently — to fix it. Built from a full read of our real spending (both cards linked, nothing hidden). Every lumpy/semi-annual cost is folded in.

The one-line truth

We have a big house now. We're paying for it. We act like it — for good.

No leak, no villain, no secret waste. The money goes to the house, the kids, and the day-to-day. The house is the giant one. "Tight" isn't failure — it's the cost of a deliberate choice. But the base runs negative every month, the bonus backup is thin, and — important — if the kids go private through 8th grade, daycare never turns into relief; it turns into tuition for ~a decade. So we can't wait for the kids to "age out." We cut now, we keep it cut, and our raises do the rest.

Where it goes — EVERYTHING in (per month, at current habits)

THE PLAN — cut deep, keep it there, bank ~$500/mo

Targets are permanent, set so the floor is at least +$200/mo even if we slip — and on plan we bank ~+$517/mo from regular paychecks, after funding home maintenance and every semi-annual bill. Almost all of it is two dials: groceries + shopping.

The bottom line (everything in)

All plan figures use the post-recast mortgage of $6,876 (Aug 1 onward). June–July run ~$500/mo tighter at the old $7,376 — so the surplus really starts in August.

Honest note: $1,200 groceries / $850 shopping is genuinely lean — near what we hit during the move while paying two mortgages. We only have to hold the tightest version for a year or two. Here's why ⤵

Why it gets easier — our raises (the real tailwind)

The kids may stay private through 8th grade, so daycare won't become a windfall. What makes it easier is income growth: Ryuhei $258k +4%/yr, Polly $110k +3%/yr → net take-home rises 3.5%/yr ($650–700/mo more, every year, compounding).

¹ Hugo daycare → private K saves ~$550/mo around 2028.

Even with both kids private the whole way, raises alone take us from +$500 to ~+$3,000/mo within ~4 years. We cut hard now — the tightest year, before raises, at peak daycare — and income growth lifts us out. The discipline is permanent; the tightness is temporary.

What each dial means in plain terms

• Groceries → $1,200: one Costco run + one market trip a week. Kill the random QFC/convenience top-ups — that's the leak. (We hit $1,093 during the move.)
• Shopping → $850: the hard one, mostly small-and-frequent. Not "stop buying" — notice the frequency. Every Amazon/Target/thrift run adds up faster than it feels. (We hit $1,039 during the move.)
• Dining → $800: we eat out ~$1,300/mo combined. A few fewer takeout nights.

Inflation check — did we buy more, or just pay more? (for fairness)

Short version: we mostly didn't start buying more. Prices rose and we can finally see both cards. This isn't about blame.

• Groceries: flat. On the one card tracked the whole time (the Costco card), grocery spend is flat-to-down over two years (~$1,000/mo then, ~$960 now). The reason the total looks like it jumped is that Polly's cards got linked in 2026 — her grocery spend became visible, it didn't appear. A measurement change, not a behavior change.
• Prices genuinely rose. Same basket vs the old-house years: groceries ~+20%, restaurants ~+17%, overall ~+18% (CPI). A $1,000 cart in 2021 is ~$1,200 now — identical food. We really are paying more for the same stuff.
• Real creep was narrow: mostly the coffee habit (roughly doubled) and a bit of driving. Dining actually peaked in 2024 and came down.

So the lost "old-house excess" is ~80% the bigger house, ~15% price inflation on the same basket, ~5% real creep (coffee). And note: hitting $1,200 groceries in 2026 dollars is tighter than it sounds — in old-house purchasing power that's ~$1,000. The cuts aren't "back to normal," they're a real squeeze we're choosing against a higher price level. That's on the economy, not on us.

The three layers (so nothing blindsides us)

1. Base (monthly) — the table above. Permanent target: +$517 (floor +$200).

2. Seasonal (from the cushion): Niko summer camp ~$5,000 (Jun–Aug), holiday gifts ~$1,500 (Dec), travel as we choose.

3. Periodic (now in the $362/mo reserve): home maintenance ~$3,600/yr ($300), car tabs ~$420 ($35), tax prep ~$318 ($27). (Geico semi-annual, auto maintenance, and medical are already inside the lines above.)

The home-maintenance gap (now fixed)

$0 was budgeted for upkeep on a $1.18M house — no line for HVAC, roof, gutters, appliances. Now reserved at $300/mo so a $2k repair doesn't wreck a month. Biggest blind spot, closed.

The other tailwinds go to SAVINGS, not to relaxing

• Mortgage recast + rate drop: +$500–700/mo, August → bank it, don't spend it.
• EV replaces the Forester: −$150–200/mo gas → offsets the car payment.

When windfalls land, they compound the surplus. The cuts stay.

How we hold ourselves accountable — Monarch

Targets only work if something watches them. We set these numbers as category budgets in the Monarch app and turn on budget alerts — so the moment groceries, shopping, or dining cross the line in a given month, we both get pinged in real time, not at month-end when it's too late. Alerts go on the five behavioral dials we actually control:

The deal: when an alert fires, we talk about it the same week — not relitigate, just course-correct. Monarch is the referee so neither of us has to be. (Fixed costs and necessities don't get alerts — there's no behavior to change.)

Bottom line

We're not in trouble — $125k cash, building equity + retirement, nobody reckless. But the base bleeds ~$1,860/mo with everything counted, the bonus backup is thin, and the kids may not get cheaper for a decade. So we cut ~$2,200/mo — mostly groceries + shopping + dining — bank ~$500 now, and let our raises carry us to ~$3,000/mo banked within four years. We ran leaner than this during the move. We can hold it. Big house, big life — run it on purpose, every single month.