Unless you live at home with your parents, have paid off your mortgage, or get your housing costs covered by your employer, housing is probably your biggest expense each month. The second biggest expense, however, will vary greatly amongst us depending on what stage of life we are in. Word on the street has it car payments, daycare, and alcohol can be budget busters.

Is that true for you? Let’s see what the poll says…

Extra credit if you comment with your response and why it is what it is.

You can see all my polls here.

Girl Ninja and I have a significant amount of our net worth sitting as cash in a “high yield” savings account. It’s exciting that we are just a few weeks away from hitting our $100,000 savings goal, but it’s also terribly depressing to know this money has earned a paltry 0.8% over the last couple years. Especially when it could have been earning 20%+ in the stock market. I mean, I would literally have an extra $20,000 to my name if I saved via the stock market, instead of saving via a bank account.

As you know, we are keeping such an excessive amount of cash on hand for a down payment on our first place. We’ve been hunting for about six months now, and the reality is, we are no closer to buying a home today than we were when we first started.

If we decided tomorrow that we never wanted to own a home, I would immediately take $90,000 out of our savings account and start putting it in the market. This would leave us about $10,000 in cash for emergencies. I think having more than $10k in the bank is pretty silly. Especially when we have a healthy discretionary income, stable jobs, no kids, and a Roth IRE.

My question for you today is simple:

Is there anywhere else I should consider putting this $90,000? 

Half of our net worth is failing to keep up with inflation. This concerns me and I feel like something needs to be done about it. Only problem is, I don’t know what reasonable alternatives there are to savings accounts when it comes to having quick access to cash in the event Girl Ninja and I finally find a house worth buying. HELP!!!

Over the last two weeks I’ve purchased six round trip plane tickets. It’s insane. Between baby showers and weddings, we knew we’d be dropping some serious coin on flights this summer. But dang, $1,600 disappeared from our bank account faster than a Twinkie at fat camp.

Fortunately being not broke is pretty awesome. It allows you the ability to take advantage of incredible deals when they pop up. It gives you peace-of-mind in the event of an “Oh $#@!” emergency. And it gives you the freedom to experience things you may have otherwise missed out on like weddings and graduations.

There really is nothing else to be said besides…

Financial freedom rocks my face off.

Don’t be discouraged if you aren’t there yet. Stay the course. Work hard. Focus on the end goal. You didn’t get in debt overnight, and you probably wont get out if it overnight. Patience and perseverance is the name of this game.

Being not broke is awesome. I hope you are either right there with me, or plan to join me soon.

On a scale of broke to loaded where do you fall? Has your financial freedom allowed you to take advantage of any incredible deals or opportunities lately!?

It’s Friday mother lovers, which means you all have likely checked out mentally in anticipation of the upcoming weekend. So today I propose a simple question…

If you had be selfish and spend $5,000 by the end of today, what would you buy? 

See what I did there? I said you had to be selfish with it. So  don’t think you’re getting off easy, taking the moral high ground, pretending you are going to donate this hypothetical $5k to charity, use it to pay off debt, contribute to retirement, or some other noble/responsible purpose.

No! Today you must be greedy
. You have to use that $5,000 on something that only (or PRIMARILY) benefits you. It’s okay to be hypothetically selfish, so don’t feel bad.

If I had $5 g’s to selfishly blow, no questions asked, I would, WITHOUT A DOUBT, go buy myself a motorcycle. I sold my street bike three years ago now (exchanged it for that tiny little diamond that sits in Girl Ninja’s ring) and would love to get another. It just makes getting from point a to point b that much more fun.

That said, It would be totally selfish of me to buy a motorcycle, not necessarily because of the money spent, but because Girl Ninja DOES NOT want me to have one. Although she herself admits she understands why I enjoy riding a motorcycle so much, to her it just isn’t worth the inherit risks and exponentially increased danger factor. Probably doesn’t help that my dad was in a motorcycle accident a few years back that resulted in the near amputation of his leg. Instead he got off “light” with a muscle transplant, multiple skin grafts, a permanent limp, and one gnarly looking battle wound. Yup, doesn’t look like I’ll ever get the blessing to own a motorcycle again, thanks a lot dad

So reader, I’d buy a bike with my $5,000. What would you do?

And what keeps you from doing it?

Coming at you with another poll. These seem to be wildly popular and that makes me happy. It’s one less day I have to think about writing and one more day you all get to see how you fare against the masses. Since we’ve done debt and income, figured we could use this poll to explore housing. Likely, the biggest money suck you have.

Only got one rule before we get to it…

• Factor in ALL of your monthly housing costs (PITI/rent, utilities, HOA’s, etc).

For extra credit, drop a comment reiterating what your ALL IN housing costs are, if you rent or own, what general geographic area you live in (obviously important for perspective), how many people covered under this payment, and what percent of your NET household income this gobbles up. I’ll go first…

1. My all in housing costs: $1,175
2. Renter
3. Just outside of Seattle
4. Just me and Girl Ninja
5. 19.62% of our take home pay goes to housing

 You can see all previous polls here