We live pretty frugally. We bought a short sale, fixer upper that was 10 years old instead of the shiny, new homes most of our friends in the area were buying for more than double what we paid. We can afford the house on one income, which is very important to us. Yes, we qualified for a lot more mortgage than we used but we don’t believe in maxing out our limits on anything. We drive regular vehicles, usually for a very long time (over 150k miles). Our kids wear a mishmash of clothes from sales and clearances racks, as well as the outlet mall near where we live. We almost never buy things for ourselves that aren’t necessities but we spend that extra on our children. My husband and I don’t buy Christmas, birthday, etc. gifts for each other. We don’t eat out more than once a week unless it’s cheer or dance season (at which point all bets are off because we are almost never home).
We buy most groceries and paper goods in bulk from Costco, BJs, or Sam’s. I color my own roots at home and get it colored twice a year when I get it cut and styled: once at the start of the academic year and once in January. At most, we spend on home renovations or upgrades that are “wants” but only if we can pay cash and still have enough money for a nice vacation. Some renovations we do on our own because we know how to (like finishing our unfinished bonus room, building walkways, excavating and re-grading the yard, etc.).
We use everything we save to fund two larger vacations a year. Pre-Covid, it had been 7-10 days at WDW and then a 7-14 day trip elsewhere (Bermuda, Aruba, cruise, etc.). When I took a full-time job after being a SAHM and then only working part-time for a few years, we took that difference in salary and purchased (no financing) DVC points direct (just a couple of months before Covid). I used the direct benefits from that to buy gold passes for all of us weeks before the shutdown because we had planned for a May trip with a
Disney cruise and then another trip in January 2021, so we would have hit over 10 days in the parks with separate sets of park hoppers for each trip.
With what I saved from not commuting during Covid last spring, not sending the kids to summer camp last summer, and my girls dropping competitive dance in favor of all star cheer, we saved enough extra to buy another set of DVC points to help cover more frequent trips in 1 and 2 bedroom villas. We had purchased enough points for us to do a week in a 1 bedroom and have a little extra but then Covid hit and changed our travel plans. My girls are too young to be vaccinated and I don’t see us, personally, returning to international travel or cruising any time soon so Disney will be two bigger trips a year for now.
We don’t work in fancy jobs. I work in public education and my husband is a frontline worker in the public sector.