My husband and I started using YNAB in March, which has made tracking our purchases easier and more graphics-friendly. Before this, I was using a Google excel sheet.
I decided to compare August 2023 (married, starting fellowship as a PGY-4) to August 2025 (married, starting my second year as an attending). This may be painful.
August 2023
Rent: 900
Utilities: 181.89
Groceries: 456.66
Gas: 259.58
Eating out: 118
Other: 303.89
Tithe: 500.50
Investing: 100
Total expenses: 2820.52
Income: 4486.81
August 2025
Mortgage: 2000
Utilities: 222.06
Groceries: 390.38
Gas: 200.48
Eating out: 59.62
Other: 11559.54 (8210.17)
Tithe: 2210
Investing: 350
Total expenses: 16992.08 (13642.71)
Income: 12349.88
Not included are taxes and retirement savings, which are removed from my paychecks automatically.
Interesting, isn’t it? We’re in a house now, so unsurprisingly we pay more for housing, although not excessively so – around $13,200 more a year. Utilities are surprisingly similar: lower costs in Omaha, compared to Rochester, MN? Groceries, gas and eating out are all similar, although I know 2023 gas was inflated because we traveled that month.
The big difference is “Other.” I will note that $3,349.37 of this was from funds previously saved and earmarked for our shed project, so removing this makes the Other category “just” $8,210.17. What did that include?
- Necessary car repairs and new tires
- Insurance
- Home maintenance
- Travel
- Auto registration
- Clothes
- Presents
- Medical expenses
- Life insurance
- An unexpectedly expensive sewing machine, curtesy of my mom (that we nevertheless had to pay for)
- Paying for this blog’s host site
Overall, if you add up the “necessary” spending categories of car repairs, insurance, home maintenance, auto registration, medical expenses and life insurance, it comes to $6,562.70. Travel, clothes and presents, which I see as mostly non-negotiables, ate up an additional $846.65. That leaves $800.82 purely frivolous spending (I’m looking at you, fancy sewing machine!).
Now, some of the “necessary” spending is the result of lifestyle creep. About $2,000 of the car repairs were because part of our shed-in-construction fell on my husband’s car during a windstorm. If we didn’t have the money, we could have driven it around after duct-taping the back but results would have been unideal. Insurance wouldn’t be so expensive if we were buying renter’s insurance instead of homeowner’s. We wouldn’t be paying to maintain a home if we didn’t own one. Lifestyle creep cost us $4,300 in August alone.
The other thing not reflected in this comparison is lumpy costs. We certainly paid for auto registration and insurance, bought clothes, gave people presents, went to the doctor and purchased airline tickets in 2023, but apparently not in the month August.
The other thing I’ll add to this postmortem is that thankfully, we aren’t exceeding our income every month. Me as a PGY-4 would find it hard to believe you can spend $12,000 in a month. Current me knows that sadly, it’s pretty easy to do.
SDG