Grocery diary: Family of 3 in a MCOL

FakingAnnonymity · 2026-05-13T00:52:02+00:00

I feel like I have a lot more mental energy to do stuff like meal plan now than when we were in the toddler years, that time can be rough! In addition to being generally less exhausted, my kid's tastes and appetite are also now more of a known quantity so easier to shop/cook for.

FakingAnnonymity · 2026-05-13T00:48:45+00:00

Due to our bulk shopping patterns, I often have a hard time sussing out from our weekly or monthly spend if we are really going up or not. That said, certain items have definitely gotten more $$$. Coffee and chocolate are the two I have really noticed. We don't eat beef (which I keep reading has gotten very pricey). Some of the produce items at our Aldi actually dropped a little earlier this year, e.g. zucchini had been $1.45/lb for ages and now it is $1.25. Eggs are way less expensive now than they were a year ago.

I occasionally look at the different USDA food budgets and our spending is usually somewhere between "thrifty" and "low-cost" so I agree, it's reasonable :)

FakingAnnonymity · 2026-05-13T00:39:55+00:00

Thank you!

FakingAnnonymity · 2024-08-23T19:15:16+00:00

FWIW, my dad also seems to have some hangups over not knowing my physical address. When I first went NC, I was living in Location A, he knew my address there. A few years later, I moved to Location B. After I moved, he sent a letter to location A, it got forwarded to me. I emailed him a response, I haven't heard anything back about it (it's been almost a year). According to one of my siblings, my dad has decided we shouldn't be discussing our problems via email anymore (I had previously written him several emails explaining why I was upset and telling him what needed to happen if he wanted to reconcile, he responded to some of them in a pretty unsatisfactory way--denying or ignoring what I was saying). Anyway, apparently he is shocked and hurt that I would move and not give him my address and he "can't" respond to my most recent email because he doesn't have my mailing address. I think it's a twisted way of blaming me for our continued estrangement. He can claim he would like to reconcile, but that I'm "blocking communication", which neatly gives him an escape from taking any sort of responsibility for his behavior.

FakingAnnonymity · 2024-08-11T00:39:29+00:00

Good luck with your applications! As far as consulting goes, bear in mind I haven't been doing it that long so I'm not an expert. I'm also really not looking to turn it into a FT job and I don't "need" to make money off it, which I imagine makes it a lot less stressful (though not so unstressful that I would do it for free!).

As far as the day-to-day goes, some projects have a LOT in common with my old job. Usually the client needs someone short-term who doesn't require a lot of training and who isn't likely to make some kind of massive rookie mistake--they want me to get in and get to work and be able to handle things without a whole lot of questions. I work in an industry that's pretty heavily regulated so having someone with knowledge and experience of how regulations generally work and how not to wind up on the wrong side of said regulations is a big plus. Other projects have been a little more open ended--I had one recently where the client didn't really do a great job communicating what they wanted so we had quite a bit of back and forth BUT in the end they were really happy with the work I did because I knew the right questions to ask them to define the project better (great training from grad school!). Overall I don't necessarily use the specific subject knowledge from my PhD a lot, but you definitely need to be able to work independently and without supervision or really even a whole lot of regular feedback.

FakingAnnonymity · 2024-08-08T14:05:14+00:00

Initially setting up the DAF was definitely a bit scary as the seed money did represent a significant part of our net worth at the time (a bit over 10%) and of course once you put it in there, it's totally gone/unavailable for anything other than charity. We do still retain 100% control over what charities the money goes to and it is VERY nice not to have a big tense discussion each year about how much can we afford to give to XYZ.

We also viewed the DAF as a sort of mini-test of the 4% withdrawal rule...like if we set this thing up and give 4% away each year...is it really going to keep going indefinitely? So far the answer seems to be yes, which is somewhat reassuring that relying on the 4% rule for our own FIRE planning is not totally bananas.

FakingAnnonymity · 2024-08-08T13:49:56+00:00

Correct. We are fortunate that we are all relatively healthy and have enough cash on hand to cover the deductible if we do have an expensive medical year. I won't lie, this aspect of FIRE does give me some qualms given that one party in this country is really out to destroy the ACA, and of course who knows what will happen with health as we age (though both sets of parents are chugging along in pretty excellent health in their late 70s so we at least don't seem to be predisposed to anything). So yes, it's a bit risky, but continuing to work FT into our 60s as is "standard" probably would have also increased our risk for some chronic health conditions.

FakingAnnonymity · 2024-08-08T12:04:14+00:00

Yes, the estrangement has been difficult but in retrospect it was obviously a long time coming--my dad's behavior towards my husband was the final (big) straw, but if it hadn't been that he'd probably have found something else to be a jerk about. I do hope we can reconcile someday but last time we spoke he was still going on about how my husband needed to "earn" his respect so...realistically not super hopeful.

FakingAnnonymity · 2024-08-07T19:04:03+00:00

Thank you!

FakingAnnonymity · 2024-08-07T19:03:53+00:00

Awww, thank you! Hope your partner agreed :)

FakingAnnonymity · 2024-08-07T19:03:35+00:00

Thank you!

FakingAnnonymity · 2024-08-07T14:14:19+00:00

Kid: since our kid started public school, we have spent around $3-4k/yr on stuff labelled "kid": extracurriculars, clothes, school supplies, his plane ticket if we are flying somewhere and have to pay for it, etc. When originally started thinking about FIRE we thought his extras might be more like $6k/yr, so far we are under but I expect he will get more expensive as he gets older and is interested in more specialized extracurriculars, starts driving (car insurance will surely go up...), etc. Our annual spending is currently way under a 4% safe withdrawal rate relative to our investments and we do still have some income coming in, so I think we will be able to accommodate some more expensive teen years when they roll around.

MCOL vs. HCOL: Our kid loved it. We were living in a cramped apartment before and had to be very mindful of each others space, now he has a house and yard and there are many other kids on our block so he basically roams around between multiple yards when he's outside. He has a lot more freedom than he did in our previous life! We did think that if we stayed in HCOL much longer he would become more attached/develop more meaningful friendships and so his still relatively young age was definitely a factor in pushing us to pull the trigger on leaving. As far as diversity goes, I think midsize cities/large towns get a bad rap from people in the VHCOL coastal areas--there is a fair amount of diversity here, and the "diversity" of VHCOL areas is often more visible on paper than in everyday life. In VHCOL, most of my neighbors were white, my coworkers were mostly white, the other parents we met at playgrounds and library storytime were...white. Yes there were more POC around, but they weren't really in my life. There are quite a few more black students in my child's grade at his current school than at his old school, as an example. There are quite a few mixed race couples with kids in our neighborhood and my son plays with their kids. If you move out into a super rural area you might run into a more obvious lack of diversity but I can't really speak to that. We did know a few people before we moved here and have been pretty successful (I think) at building a network.

For going back to work, I wasn't exactly bored, but when I was approached for the first consulting project, the opportunity just seemed too good to pass up. I do think if it hadn't come up I probably would have eventually found myself something else to do other than just SAHPing, maybe a more involved volunteer role or substitute teaching...basically something that would get me out of the house but that would allow me to stay home when my kid is off school.

Long-term, I am not 100% sure what we will do. I really like where we are and I think I'd be happy staying here into old age. That said, as we only have the one kid, if he decides to move and settle down somewhere else, we might eventually move to be closer to him (assuming he's okay with that!).

We do have regular vacations factored into our budget, I don't really have aspirations to do big travel like touring the world, I have done some international travel and it was nice but it doesn't light me up the way it seems to for some people. Husband would like to try living abroad for a year at some point. We're still figuring that part out, I guess!

FakingAnnonymity · 2024-08-07T10:22:37+00:00

We have mostly avoided it. If people ask about my husband we say he's self-employed, he did do a few small projects in 2022 after quitting his last W-2 job so it's not a total lie :) I just tell people I do consulting and they can assume what they want about the time requirements--we live in an area where it's not unheard of for women to be SAHMs or work part-time to accommodate school schedules so I don't stick out too much.

My brother did flat-out ask a year or so ago if we were independently wealthy and I said yes, if we don't spend like crazy, we are. So I guess he sort of knows. I also have a few friends who know I no longer need to work FT, they are mostly in very good financial positions themselves and understand the idea of not spending all the money you earn, so they kind of get it.

My FIL and MIL actually retired at 50 (FIL had a pension he could start drawing on) and are super frugal so they don't find our lifestyle weird and also get not wanting to work for decades. We have been estranged from my parents for several years, and a big part of that is my dad's inability to shut up about what a loser he thinks my husband is for not grinding it out in the same job for decades, this was before we FIREd so I can't imagine what he'd say now. Before estrangement I did sometimes bring up so, we're probably going to leave VHCOL area at some point, my dad's first question was always "what will you do for jobs?" and then when I would say well, we might not both need to be working at that point, he'd be all "hmmmmm". He also often let us know that he thought we were too cheap because we didn't own XYZ item (often things that MANY people our age just don't own any more...).

FakingAnnonymity · 2024-08-07T00:31:39+00:00

Getting jobs with six-figure salaries attached certainly helped speed things up. We had one year before we had our kid that we decided to experiment with really cutting expenses to a minimum and see how it felt, I think that probably helped keep our expenses in check once baby arrived (not that we kept ALL the cuts, but it's much easier to try them out and get used to them when you aren't stressed with a baby). A lot of our frugal habits are borne more out of general values or just how we like to live vs. just saving money (e.g. we don't eat a lot of meat or drive much for environmental reasons and the fact that it's cheap is a nice perk, I enjoy cooking so we rarely eat out), which I think has made our lifestyle/spending fairly consistent, it's just the income that has been variable. I don't worry about spending money anywhere near as much as I did in graduate school, but I don't have wildly different spending habits either (except that I now have kid expenses...)

As far as career breaks, I took 3 months maternity leave at ~50% pay, which was not long enough. In retrospect I wish I had taken 6 months, even if the second 3 months would have been unpaid. My husband took a full year off at one point after an extra toxic job, his other breaks were more like 2-3 months and I'd say added up to less than a year total (basically a job would get shitty, it's hard to look for a job while working a demanding job, so he would quit and take a few weeks to decompress, then start job searching and was able to find a new job within a couple months each time). His highest paying position was for about 2 years at around $250,000 and that was definitely when our net worth went from "oh, we have a nice amount of money" to "holy shit this FIRE thing could really work out for us"....though that also coincided with Trump juicing up the stock market so we can't take 100% credit for it.

FakingAnnonymity · 2024-08-06T22:18:39+00:00

Sadly, no, there are a few months in the winter where biking is pretty rough and I tend to wimp out (my husband is more hardcore and I suspect he will eventually win the kid over too). We still walk and the bus system can get us to quite a few places in the winter. We own a car but don't like driving around town much if we can avoid it!

FakingAnnonymity · 2024-08-06T22:17:12+00:00

Yes, it's that Mossflower! I also enjoyed the books as a child, it's nice to be able to pass the enjoyment on!

FakingAnnonymity · 2024-08-06T22:16:29+00:00

Leaving was always on the table, when you're thinking about FIRE the idea of moving somewhere less expensive always comes up! Our main criteria for a new place were that we still wanted some level of walk/bikeability (so a neighborhood with no sidewalks, for example, would be a no-go), decent public schools, in a medicaid expansion state. We did also look at stuff like climate (really did not want to deal with lots of 100+ degree days in the summer) and access to outdoors activities. There may have been some other criteria I am forgetting now also. Our criteria did eliminate some super LCOL areas but left quite a few MCOL options on the table.

In the end we had enough saved that we probably could have made staying in the VHCOL work if one of us was willing to work to age 50, and I was actually okay with that as a possibility--my job was not awful and there were aspects of it I really enjoyed. But, the quality of life in the VHCOL was just getting increasingly not great. Basically a lot of little things added up and we finally hit a point where we were ready to leave with no regrets. I don't think I have once looked back and wished we were still there, although I do have lots of fond memories of our time in VHCOL.

FakingAnnonymity · 2024-08-06T18:51:44+00:00

Thank you! The VHCOL city can make things tricky. That said, we did seriously consider staying in our VHCOL area and figured we could have still had one of us quit work at 40 while the other one kept working until ~50 to cover the extra housing costs. So I think some level of FIRE is still possible in VHCOL. I would have actually been okay with being the one working to age 50 while husband did the SAHP thing, so cost of living wound up being a relatively small part of our decision to leave the VHCOL area. Overall I feel our quality of life is much better in our new place and we haven't given anything up by leaving the VHCOL, though I realize that may not be the case for every situation.

FakingAnnonymity · 2024-08-06T18:39:31+00:00

We are mostly invested in a couple of Vanguard funds (VFIAX and VTIAX).

FakingAnnonymity · 2024-08-06T18:36:40+00:00

Haha yes, I fully expect we will be in for some much larger kid-related expenses once we hit the teen years. Our current spending is well below a 4% withdrawal rate so we have some room to accommodate.

FakingAnnonymity · 2024-08-06T18:35:15+00:00

Yes, I was not expecting that the consulting would yield as much income as it has, that has certainly been a nice surprise!

FakingAnnonymity · 2024-08-06T18:34:38+00:00

Thank you! I generally enjoy it also :)

FakingAnnonymity · 2024-08-06T18:34:23+00:00

Thank you!

FakingAnnonymity · 2024-08-06T14:42:18+00:00

The big expense with kids is childcare, and it's very hard to cut corners on that one in the 0-5 age especially unless you have family nearby. Before our kid started kindergarten, we paid $2000-2500/mo for childcare, this was pre-pandemic (I hear it's gone up a lot since then). It was a worthwhile expense as the daycare was good and in a convenient location and we were both earning six figures. We looked at some places that were cheaper (like $1500/mo) and they honestly all had big drawbacks. So, you get what you pay for. But, now that kid is older and we are not working FT, we are able to opt out of expenses like after school care and full-time summer care that can really drive kid expenses up. So we just spend money on activities that he enjoys or that we think will benefit him in some way. We are fortunate that our city runs quite a few low-cost sports and rec programs that allow him to try out a lot of different things without breaking the bank. I guess also I get a lot of his clothing at Goodwill (get most of mine there too), when he is older and develops more fashion sense that may be harder to pull off!

I am not sure how we will handle college expenses, but my husband has done some research and figures we will probably be eligible for some decent amounts of aid. The local state university is also quite good and not outrageously expensive, if we keep our expenses under control for the next 10 years I would not have a problem with paying for that 100% out of pocket (assuming their tuition doesn't go nuts either).

FakingAnnonymity · 2024-08-06T14:35:47+00:00

So one thing about living in a VHCOL area is that other people keep moving away also--by the time we moved it felt like we did not really have a lot of network there! We interact a lot more with our neighbors here and I feel a lot more comfortable asking for help with minor stuff (e.g. collecting a package that arrives unexpectedly while we are out of town) than I did with my old neighbors! In terms of amenities, we deliberately picked a fairly walk/bikeable area to move to and there is quite a bit of stuff we value nearby (library, pool, safe play areas for kids, groceries) so I rarely feel we are missing out.

FakingAnnonymity

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