Monthly Budget

Where the money goes

Largest first. Food and household is still the biggest single category. The two kids come to $1,814 a month across childcare, school, and their own lessons, which is 25 percent of the budget. Adult lessons add another $325, and at $260 a month the wife's tennis is now the single most expensive lesson in the house.

Share of the budget

The same categories as part of the whole. Values are on the right because three of these sit within half a percentage point of each other, and angles cannot separate 11.6 from 11.0.

Click any slice or row to isolate it and see its line items. Click again to clear.

How this compares

Benchmark is the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey figure for a married couple with an eldest child aged 6 to 17, $117,355 in 2024, carried forward to 2026 at about 3 percent a year. The A typical household, meaning all consumer units including single people and retirees, spends far less, $78,535 in 2024, so both bars are shown. The last bar is this household carrying the debt and insurance an average family carries, which is the honest like-for-like test.

What is missing from this budget that an average household pays

Where this budget actually runs hot
Track spans zero to five times the benchmark. The tick marks 1x, where an average household sits.

Carrying zero debt is what puts the total below average, not restraint on spending. Measured against the top income quintile, which averages roughly $150,000 to $160,000 a year, the gap is wider still. Two cautions on the benchmark. The BLS figure is a mean, which high earners drag upward, so the median family in this category spends less. And it counts mortgage principal and pension contributions as expenditure, which are saving rather than consumption. It is also not a true peer group for this household.

Every line

These are not monthly bills

With no mortgage there is no escrow account smoothing anything out, so three of these arrive as lumps and have to be saved for deliberately.

• Property tax, about $8,492, due once. verified Two parts. $7,894.97 of ad valorem tax, confirmed against the 2026 TRIM notice at a market value of $474,985, plus $597.26 of non ad valorem assessments, taken line by line off the 2025 bill: solid waste collection $302.17, solid waste disposal $208.60, and stormwater management $86.49. No CDD on this parcel. The assessments are flat fees, so the homestead exemption does not reduce them. Together with the card fee that is $724.32 a month, a sinking fund and not a bill. It replaces the original $12,000 estimate, which was high by $3,508 a year.
• Curbside trash is already inside that number. Collection plus disposal is $510.77 a year, about $42.56 a month, billed through the tax bill rather than as a utility. There is no separate trash line to add, and adding one would double count.
• A card convenience fee of about $200 rides on top. The 2025 payment carried a $248 fee, which is 2.64 percent of the $9,385 bill. This is a percentage-based card processing charge, not a flat service charge, which is why it looks large: it scales with the bill. The Tax Collector receives none of it. eCheck carries no fee at all. The published card rate is 2.35 percent, so the 2025 charge ran about $27 above it, worth checking the receipt for which payment channel was used.
• Paid at the end of March, so no early payment discount. The 4 percent November discount would have been worth about $340 on this bill. March carries no discount, and April 1 is delinquency, so the current timing is the last available day at face value.
• Homestead is applied and it saved $893. First Homestead $25,000 plus Additional Homestead $26,411, against $0 for both last year. The additional exemption is now inflation indexed, which is why it reads $26,411 rather than a flat $25,000. Total went from $8,788.16 in 2025 to $7,894.97 proposed for 2026, a 10.2 percent drop.
• The appeal deadline is September 11, 2026, printed on the notice itself.
• Auto insurance, $731 every six months. Two payments, not twelve.
• Tag renewal, $103.20 a year for both cars. verified The plate decal. Confirmed from an FLHSMV receipt: a biennial renewal on the Model 3 cost $103.20 plus a $2 convenience fee, so $51.60 per car per year. Florida charges on net weight only, under FS 320.08(2): $14.50 under 2,500 lb, $22.50 from 2,500 to 3,499, and $32.50 at 3,500 and over. Not value, not age, not make, not fuel type. Both Teslas are in the top bracket. There is no electric vehicle surcharge: FS 320.08001 sets the EV license tax equal to a non-electric vehicle's. Fee-aggregator sites publish a $200 BEV fee as current law, but it is a proposal that keeps failing, most recently SB 804, dead in committee 13 Mar 2026. The $225 initial registration fee is one time, at first registration only.
• Travel, $2,000 a year. Shown as $167 a month, spent in one or two blocks.
• Pool and home equipment. Not in the budget at all. A pool pump runs $800 to $1,500 every 8 to 10 years and resurfacing is $5,000 to $10,000 every 10 to 15. The $120 service keeps it clean, not working.

Open gaps

Not in the numbers above, listed so they are not forgotten rather than to pad the total.

• No health insurance. The largest uncovered item on this page. On the ACA marketplace for two 39 year olds plus two children under 14, a Bronze plan runs roughly $1,012 to $1,190 a month and Silver $1,265 to $1,488, unsubsidized. A premium tax credit applies at or under $128,600 of household MAGI for a family of four, and nothing above it. Open enrollment is Nov 1 to Jan 15, so the earliest coverage would start 1 Jan 2027.
• No homeowners insurance. The house and the pool are uninsured for fire, lightning, burst pipes, and liability. Distance from the coast does not touch any of those four. A high deductible HO-3 runs roughly $260 a month and the 2022 roof should price well.
• No term life. The paid off house lowers the need but does not remove it. Two college educations are still exposed, and with a 4 year old the income replacement window runs another 14 years, which points at $1.5M to $2M over 20 years rather than the $1.25M first estimated.
• Auto upgraded 23 Aug 2026. done Bodily injury from 10/20 to 25/50, uninsured motorist from none to 25/50 stacked, which across two vehicles combines to 50/100 and follows the family into other cars. PIP from Basic to Extended at 100 percent of medical, and $10,000 of medical payments per person added. Premium went from $469.69 to $731 per six months. Property damage stayed at $25,000, and bodily injury sits below the 250/500 an umbrella policy normally requires.
• Medical, dental, and tires. Real but irregular, so they never feel monthly. Left at zero by choice. School supplies and tag renewal used to sit here and are now real lines in the budget above.
• No savings line. This page measures spending only.

Daycare is temporary, and two levers can cut it now

At $1,050 a month, $12,600 a year, daycare costs more than the property tax. It is also the only large line here with a known expiry date.

• Florida VPK: claimed. done Voucher obtained and applied at the daycare, which took the rate from $1,350 to $1,050 a month. That is $300 a month, $3,600 a year, for a free state program with no income test. 2026-27 was his only eligible year, since kindergarten starts fall 2027. Worth confirming whether the $1,050 rate holds through summer 2027 or reverts once the VPK school year ends, since VPK is 540 instructional hours and does not run year round.
• A Dependent Care FSA is off the table on 1099 income. It only exists inside an employer Section 125 plan, and sole proprietors, partners and 1099 contractors are excluded by statute. There is no retail version to open.
• The Child and Dependent Care Credit replaces it. Self-employment income counts as earned income, so this one is available. The expense cap is $3,000 for one child, and only the 4 year old qualifies since the credit stops at age 13. At most income levels the rate is 20 to 35 percent, so $600 to $1,050 a year. Claimed on Form 2441, no setup, no enrollment window. Both spouses need earned income.
• The cliff is 2027, but it is a step down and not a cliff. He starts kindergarten in fall 2027 at Pride Elementary, 10310 Lion's Den Dr, which dismisses around 2 PM, so paid after school care still applies. Budget $300 to $400 a month for it. The likely route is HOST, the district's own on-campus program, at up to about $75 a week plus a $30 registration fee; the Tampa YMCA runs 26 Hillsborough schools but Pride is not one of them, so the existing YMCA membership does not help here. Replacing $1,050 of daycare with $300 to $400 of after school care saves $650 to $750 a month, landing the budget between $6,188 and $6,288. Daycare is 15.1 percent of the budget today. Nothing changes until then.
• Two additions are planned for the same year, and they eat into that saving. Martial arts for the son and tennis lessons for the son, neither priced yet. Using his sister's tennis at $100 a month as the only anchor available, that one line alone would consume roughly a seventh of the daycare saving, and martial arts is on top of it. So treat $650 to $750 as the gross improvement and expect the net to land meaningfully below it once both are priced.

Utilities by month

All three from actual invoices, over the 11 months where electric, gas, and water bills all overlap, Sep 2025 through Jul 2026. Electric has the storm recovery surcharge stripped out since it ended in Aug 2026. Three different peaks: electric tops out in July at $382, gas spikes once in February at $255, and water peaks in June at $178 during the spring dry season. A flat monthly average hides all three.

Budget electric in three tiers, not one average

The bill swings 2.3x across the year. Same $3,196 annual total either way, but these tiers match what actually arrives.

The four summer months are 44 percent of the electric year on their own.

The lever already on the table

A 13 kW solar system takes electric from $266 a month to roughly the TECO minimum bill, about $229 a month off this budget from the first month, for $26,650 to $32,500 in cash. That is 4 percent of total monthly spend eliminated, with a break even around 9 years. Separately, the gas account has a $32 a month fixed customer charge that is 44 percent of the gas bill and only escapable by closing the account, which needs both the furnace and the water heater gone. With no gas pool heater confirmed, that path is still open and worth $524 a year, but only at natural replacement time.