Give With One Hand, Take With Another

Some thoughts on the family budget:

My mortgage reset lower at the beginning of May and the savings to me over the course of the next year will amount to around $1,100.00.  We changed our family telephone plan.  That's going to save me another $700-1,000.00.  Natural gas bill is lower on average, as is my consumption of electricity.  It's impossible for me in a short period of time to quantify that down to actual dollars due to variables like the winter, but I know on average we've been paying lower amounts for these things.  All of that's good right?  Now the other side of the ledger.  

My property taxes are likely to increase $400 to $1,000 this year as every governmental entity in Cook County, Illinois that can is trying to tack on an increase.   Our food budget today for two people is nearly identical to what we used to pay when we had five people living at home.  I know this is true because when cleaning out a drawer the other day I found an old grocery receipt from 2008.  That's the last year I permanently had three children living under my roof.  Now granted some of that  increase has to do with an upgrade in what we buy to eat.  Kids like mac n cheese.  We prefer fresh veggies and the like.  Still that is a huge increase in what we pay for food.  Everything seems to have a price increase now as well.  Whether it's the person who cuts my hair,  to the price of going to a movie or an evening at a restaurant, it all seems to have set prices higher to the tune I'm guessing of 5-10% in the last year.  I've been to one movie in the past six months.  My daughter and I went to see Godzilla when it was released.  In all fairness we went to an upgraded cinema and saw the movie in 3D.  Our tickets were $30.00.  I paid $5.00 to park and we shared a popcorn and two bottles of water.  The evening cost me $60.00.  That to me is not a casual evening out but rather more like a date night.  For a mindless summer movie no less!  Finally we've been informed to expect a pretty substantial increase in our health insurance this fall when we receive the new rates.  

I'm guessing that when you balance the debit and credit side of my personal ledger that every bit of savings we've seen in a few areas of our balance sheet have been offset on the expense side.  In fact I'm guessing that I'm actually negative when you sum both together.  I'm a believer that economically things are getting better, but I'll speculate that one of the reasons we see personal spending so slack is that many of us see the same kinds of increases every day in our personal expenses.  Figure out how to translate real savings into the family budget and maybe you'll see better economic growth.  Until then, don't expect as much help from the consumer.  For the most part he or she is still just treading water or worse.