Family of 3 Living on $330k in New Hampshire

Hello! Our editorial calendar got a little out of whack this month, and we missed our usual Home Economics newsletter. (There’s a long back story, but I won’t bore you!) So you’re getting it today, and we’ll send the paid subscriber issue next week.

I’m also not going to prattle on with a long intro! I really enjoyed the conversation I had with today’s writer, and I think it’s really cool how open she is about her and her husband’s decision to spend money on some additional child care support. I hope it might inspire those who don’t have family nearby (or whose family can’t/won’t help with child care for whatever reason) to consider investing in good babysitters. One of the babysitters this family uses is a grandmother who raised five kids. She’s been instrumental in helping these young parents learn to care for their baby. I find it really heartwarming!

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And I hope you enjoy this edition—our first from New Hampshire!

Age: 36
Location: New Hampshire
Relationship status: Married
Age of partner: 33

About me: I work in a public policy/nonprofit field. My husband and I combine finances, and our household income is about $330k. We have a one-year-old daughter and a seven-year-old dog. We intentionally sought out a cheaper home in a lower-cost-of-living area (compared to Boston, where we previously lived) so that we can have flexibility around work in our early 50s. We spend a good amount on child care, so that we don’t get burnt out with full-time work and parenting and because we don’t have family close by. We’re hoping to start traveling again soon now that our daughter is sleeping better!

Income:

Your job title/salary: Senior director, $143,000
Partner’s job title/salary: Principal engineer, $190,000
Your monthly take-home pay (paycheck amount after taxes and other deductions): $8,075
Partner’s monthly take-home pay (paycheck amount after taxes and other deductions): $9,630
Total monthly income: $17,605

Account balances:

Checking account balance: $35,000. We tend to keep this amount in our checking in case large expenses come up quickly! When we had to replace our oil tank, for example, we found it handy to not have to transfer funds. I have been thinking about moving $15,000 or so into savings.
Savings account balance: N/A
High-yield savings account balance: $30,000 (3.10% APY)
Monthly contribution to savings account: $2,500
Retirement account(s) balance: We have about $600,000 across our individual 401(k)s and my Roth IRA. My retirement savings is about $250,000 of this total.
Monthly contribution to retirement accounts: We max out our contributions, and my employer offers a 6% match.
Investment account balance: $60,000 in low-cost mutual funds
Monthly contribution to investment accounts: $1,500
529 account balance: $5,000. My mom provided this sum from part of the inheritance she received after my grandmother passed away.
Monthly contribution to 529 account: We plan to start contributing $750 a month in July.
Emergency fund balance: We consider our high-yield savings account to be our emergency fund.
Goals-oriented savings accounts: While we don’t use buckets, we do anticipate undertaking one more large home renovation project in the next few years, which will probably cost about $100,000 to $150,000. This will be funded from our savings account.

Total in checking, savings, and investment accounts: $730,000

Housing:

Size of your home: We live in a 1,700-square-foot, three-bedroom, two-bathroom house built in the 1920s. We’re only the third owners, which means we’ve made a lot of updates.
Mortgage: $2,200
Current home value: $550,000. Our area is growing quickly, and we've done about $250,000 in improvements.
Current mortgage balance: $280,000
Year you bought your home: 2021
Price you paid for your home: $309,000
Mortgage interest rate: 2.67%
How much was your down payment? I actually don’t remember! It was either 5% or 10%. Due to the fixer-upper status of our home and our finances, our mortgage advisor suggested we put less down so that we could pay for our first renovation with cash.
How long did it take you to save for the down payment? We used savings we accrued individually before getting married and then pooled when we combined finances.
Did you have any family help buying your home? No. However, we had the savings to buy our house in part because my parents paid for our small Covid-era wedding events.
Property taxes: $800
Homeowner’s insurance: $80
Electricity: $100
Water: $42
Natural gas: We just switched our heating system from oil to propane, which fuels our steam radiators. In our oil era, we often paid as much as $900 a month during the winter and very little during summer. I believe the switch saves us a few hundred dollars a month, but my husband pays this bill on his credit card!
Cell phone: $165
Internet: $178
Housekeeper: $400 for biweekly cleanings
Gardener: N/A

Transportation:

Monthly car payment: $480. We are one year into a five-year loan with an interest rate of 5% (I think). Our second car is paid off. My husband, like many New Hampshire residents, works in Massachusetts three days a week and plans to drive the paid-off car into the ground.
Car insurance payment: $139 for two cars
Gas: $350. My husband’s commute is nearly 80 miles each way (and can take up to two hours one way). Many of our neighbors also commute to Massachusetts or Maine for hybrid work schedules. We do have great connections to Boston and Portland via Amtrak, but alas, my husband works in neither place! We chose our town for the walkable transit options, as I commuted into Boston three-days a week until 2021. We lived in our town for a year before buying our home.
Car maintenance: Knock on wood, we haven’t had major car maintenance in the last few years.
Parking: N/A
Monthly public transportation: N/A
Ride shares (Uber, taxi, etc.): N/A

Children:

Number of children and their ages: We have a one-year-old daughter.
Day care: $1,625 for full-time daycare, daily from 7:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. (She can stay as late as 5:00 p.m.)
Nanny: N/A
After school: N/A
School tuition: N/A
Babysitter: $800. We have a babysitter come two evenings a week when my husband commutes to Massachusetts. It gives me a chance to catch-up on work or chores/errands, exercise, or meet up with friends. Plus, we usually do one weekend date a month. We have two sitters we work with regularly, and we pay $20–$25 dollars an hour.
Extracurricular activities: N/A
Other: N/A. We bundle our household items, including diapers, personal care needs, etc., into our grocery spend.

Debts:

Student loan total balance: We paid off our student loans in the last three years or so. We had about $35,000 each. I believe I took out $25,000 in loans but ultimately paid $35,000 with interest. My grandparents helped me pay for college, and my parents gave me $3,000 when I was 29 to help put a dent in my loans.
Personal loan total balance: N/A
Credit card balance (if you carry a balance month to month): We pay off our cards each month.
How much do you spend on your credit card(s) each month: $8,000. We put everything on our credit cards!

Food:

Groceries: $900. My husband and I both meal prep one family-style meal on Sundays during naptime (or sometimes Monday during my lunch break) to get us through lunches and dinners ’til about Thursday. We also make a batch of freezer-food for our daughter to pull out during the week for daycare lunches and snacks. Things like meatballs, quesadillas, muffins, etc. We created a standard meal plan for her that we put up on the fridge so we both know what’s available for her and don’t have to scramble to figure out her meals! She eats the food we prep for dinner Monday to Thursday, too.
Dining out: $800. We tend to order takeout for lunch and dinner toward the end of the week/beginning of the weekend to hold us over ’til we do grocery shopping. Occasionally, if we know a week will be very busy, we’ll use Feast & Fettle, a meal delivery service our friends and family provided us with gift cards for in our newborn days, and we enjoyed.

This amount also includes our socializing budget. We live in a tight-knit downtown neighborhood and have made a lot of friends here. Most of our socializing happens at our local breweries, restaurants, wine gardens, etc. We also often host people or hang out in each others’ backyards.

Socializing and Entertainment:

Subscriptions (streaming services, magazines, etc.): $150 a month for things like streaming services, The New Yorker, digital access to the local paper, favorite Substacks, Burst oral care, etc.
Memberships (museums, etc.): $150 annual membership to Historic New England, a nonprofit that maintains historic homes throughout the region. As you can imagine, there are many in our area, and we like to visit the beautiful grounds for walks, picnics, and events. We'll probably add one or two additional memberships as our daughter gets older.
Movies, concerts, other events: This is hard to track since we haven’t done much of these in the last year and don’t budget for this specifically. Maybe $30 a month for one-off local events, movies, or shows.
Entertaining and socializing other: $300 in addition to the “dining out” category!
Hobbies: I’ve been getting back into tennis and try to go to a weekly clinic that costs about $45. I drive 55 minutes to Portland, Maine, for this because my area only seems to have fancy tennis clubs that cost $20,000 to buy into! I also try to go skiing once a month during the winter for about $150 each visit. My other big hobby is reading, and I have no qualms about spending money at local independent bookstores/Bookshop.org! My husband’s hobbies are mostly video games, skateboarding, and baseball cards. Technically, we each have a $300 a month “fun” budget, but we haven’t tracked that in ages.
Travel: None so far this year! Before we had our daughter, we were spending $15,000 a year on travel. It’s one of our priorities!

Miscellaneous:

Clothing: Probably $350 a month on baby clothes and seasonal items for myself, including my monthly Rent the Runway subscription. (I think I’ve been using RtR for 10 years at this point…)
Home supplies: This gets bundled into groceries usually!
Exercise: My husband doesn’t spend anything in this category, but I buy class packs for yoga, indoor cycling, and pilates that probably averages to about $250 a month.
Personal and self-care (haircuts, manicures, massages, etc.): I get my hair cut every quarter for about $120, and my husband’s bimonthly haircuts are probably about $30.
Pet supplies: $460 a month for doggie daycare (twice a week), food, and miscellaneous other expenses. Our dog has eaten so many things he shouldn’t (my underwear, chicken bones, raisins, marijuana he found on the ground during a walk) that we have probably spent over $10,000 on vet visits for this alone!!!
Pet insurance: N/A
Donations: $25 a month to a local service organization supporting the food pantry, $50 a month to our local Democratic town committee, and probably $500 a year to other causes
Tithing: N/A
Events (birthday parties, etc.): Probably more than I’d like to admit with my daughter now on the scene! I’d estimate $2,500 a year for gifts and other milestone events for friends and family. I really enjoy being generous in this area. I also spent $400 this year on my own birthday party. I hosted my friends at a private art class offered by a local gallery!
Other: $110 a month for embryo storage. We banked two embryos and then got pregnant unassisted the cycle before the embryo transfer after two years of infertility. 🙂

Insurance:

Life insurance: We only have plans through our employers.
Health insurance: Eek, this comes out of my husband’s paycheck, so I don't know! One of the best parts about having a husband who works for a Massachusetts-based company is that we get access to the state-mandated healthcare plans, which largely paid for IVF.
FSA balance: N/A
HSA balance: N/A

Total monthly spending (includes annual expenses divided by 12 and monthly transfers to savings and investment accounts): $15,392

Tell us more:

What are your top financial priorities?
(1.) Doing smarter things with the money we have leftover each month! We work with a financial planner and need to recalibrate after last year’s events of having a baby and completing our second large home project. (2.) Continue on our career trajectories, keep our living expenses low, and save enough to have flexibility to downshift to part-time work in our early 50s. In our immediate area, we’d struggle to find jobs that pay as well as our remote/hybrid jobs, which are key to this goal. (3.) Travel and have meaningful experiences in this life while we have it!
How do you feel about your current financial situation?
I’m optimistic that we can continue to be strategic and meet our goals! But now that we have a child, the lifestyle creep has become more obvious in that we want to give her the best life has to offer (which she doesn’t always need, of course).
How is your financial situation or approach different from 5/10/15 years ago?
I started off working very low-paying jobs in comparison to my peers but now earn a competitive wage relative to my industry. Entering the job market in 2014 was tough, especially because I wanted to work in public policy. My starting salary was $36,000 in Boston. It’s only in my most recent job have I seen the biggest salary increases. These days, I feel a good degree of job security and work-life balance, which wasn’t always the case.

My husband’s career trajectory aligns with his industry, and he’s happy being an individual contributor. Even though he has a long commute, he has a more flexible workplace and unlimited PTO. That means he’s able to take days off when our daughter is sick and has to stay home from daycare.

The change to remote work allowed us to leave a VHCOL area for a lower one (although it’s still high), which allowed us to buy a house in an area we love and keep our fixed expenses low. This was probably our best financial decision to date. We both have always prioritized retirement savings since early in our careers and that continues to be the case.
What are your money stressors?
I want to make sure we’re able to set our daughter up to have options as a young adult. My dad set up my Roth IRA for me when I was 18 and matched my contributions through college. I plan to do the same for my daughter! But, like many millennials, I worry that my daughter’s future and success will not be guaranteed in the way perhaps my grandparents or parents might have felt about the upward mobility of their children.

Given the state of the world with AI, our current political administration, and the environment, it’s so hard to predict the future. Paths are so much less linear than they used to be. And that can be really exciting and create a lot of opportunity, but it could also mean it’s harder to achieve financial stability.
Do you expect to receive (or have you received) an inheritance from a family member?
Yes, I expect to receive an inheritance from my parents who are very financially savvy. They weren’t super high earners (both state employees) but have lived according to their values, prioritizing early retirement, travel, etc. I’ll also inherit a small summer residence.
Do you receive any financial support from your family?
Not currently but I received a lot of financial support into young adulthood. While I worked during the summers as a teen and had part-time gigs in college, my parents had me deposit my earnings into an account they managed for me and then provided me an allowance. The unused funds went into my Roth IRA or toward my other expenses. I’m glad they did this. It didn’t feel too controlling to me but instead felt like they were providing guardrails as I entered adulthood.

My grandparents helped pay for college, and my parents also paid any medical bills I had until my mid-20s (mostly co-pays and for my contacts), as well as my cell phone, trips home, etc. When I turned 30 (actually 29 because my mom forgot what age I was turning…), they gave me $3,000 to help me pay off my student loans faster. They also paid for our two small Covid wedding events.
Do you financially support any family members beyond yourself and your nuclear family? No.
How do you and your partner split your finances? How did you decide to go that route?
We merged our finances completely when we got married. I think we opted to go that route because it felt administratively easier, and that’s what our parents did!

Before we bought our house, we were really good about tracking our expenses every month and updating our spreadsheet with our savings, etc. But once we bought our house, and our salaries started going up, we are less diligent than we used to be.
What are you willing to sacrifice to meet financial goals?
Fancy house, cars, etc., that we might be able to afford on paper.
What are you NOT willing to sacrifice to meet financial goals?
Things that bring us enjoyment in life, like our hobbies, dates/experiences, travel, special events with friends. Life is so short! And of course, our daughter’s wellbeing and future.
Tell us about one financial accomplishment you’re proud of.
I’m proud that my parents instilled good financial habits in me that have translated to managing my husband and my money (with our planner’s advice) well so far. It felt so good to pay off my student loans over 10 years, too!
What is one financial goal(s) you still want to achieve?
Setting ourselves up to opt into part-time work in the next 15 years or so. We are maxing out our retirement accounts and investing toward this goal.
What do you regret spending your money on the most?
Clothes that didn’t fit or last more than one season!! This is still a weakness, but Rent the Runway helps curb my shopping habit so much. It helps that the New Hampshire fashion scene leans a little more classic/outdoorsy/hippie in a sort of timeless way.
What is one thing you spend money on that makes your life better?
Spending money on a weeknight babysitter a couple of nights a week really helps us feel like humans and has been crucial for my mental health postpartum. On nights that my husband is commuting, it allows me to spend time with a friend or go to a workout class or even catch up on errands/chores.

I initially felt a little weird about this—I even talked to my therapist about it. I felt like I should want to spend every minute with my daughter. But that’s not sustainable for me from a mental health perspective.

My parents worked shift jobs when I was growing up, so I spent a lot of time with babysitters. It was a really positive experience because even though I was an only child and we didn’t have much extended family, I felt surrounded by community. We also don’t have family nearby, and I hope my daughter feels the same way—that there are a lot of people who love her.

I can’t speak for my husband, but I also think this extra child care support in the evenings helps him feel less guilty about his commute, because he knows I’m not home shouldering the burden of taking care of our daughter in the evenings all alone. Ultimately, spending money on this child care provides us with more balance and bandwidth.
What is one thing you spend money on that drives you crazy?
The downside of living in New Hampshire (which has no income or sales tax) is that we pay a lot in property taxes. In my town, this has pushed a lot of lifelong NH residents out while many young families like mine have moved in from Boston, New York City, and Philadelphia for the relatively lower cost of living (and improved quality of life—beaches and skiing). At the same time, relying on property tax creates a lot of inequities in our education system, and our town always has a rough time during budget season. I wish we had other revenue streams in our state (hello, legalized weed, at least!), so that we could fund our schools and pay our teachers what they deserve and support affordable housing options.