By: Revanche

Changes that will affect our 2025 Budget

November 20, 2024

We’re expecting increases in spending across the board. These numbers didn’t quite feel real when I started this post but finalizing this post-election, it’s all starting to land pretty hard.

HostGator wants $1100 to renew my hosting this blog for the next three years. If I can’t negotiate that down, we’re going to need to rethink some things. So far I have negotiated a 20% discount, and have a friend thank goodness helping me tackle the major storage problem that caused a big part of that price hike.

Our healthcare premiums are going up $2500 annually.

My pharmacy costs are going up. My meds have been up to $20 copay or the pharmacy’s retail cost if that is less. Next year they’ll charge a $15 copay retail and the 100 day mail order copay is then double the retail copay: $30. I get nearly all my meds through mail order and I have several regular prescriptions. I’ve been steadily ordering refills of anything I can get now to stock up a reserve.

Our dental care out of pocket costs will be $1000 more unless I change the kids to a dentist we don’t know. Hate the idea because they’re very comfortable with their dentist and her hygienist but that $1000 is not spare change.

We need to replace the roof – we need a quote for that but PiC’s ballparked it around $40k. 2025? 2026? Unsure! Are we going to need to do this sooner to avoid the increased costs if tariffs affect the roofers? Tariffs causing price increases are unlikely to be an issue per First Gen American so now it’s a matter of getting it fixed before it leaks.

PiC wants to do some of the travel we’ve put off for the past several years because of Seamus’s health and COVID. We don’t like leaving our pups for extended periods of time so our travel is very limited when we have dogs. Spring break and summer travel: $$$$?

Property taxes are up another $200, add that to the five figures we currently pay.

The cost of JB’s current after school activity is going up. I do pay for a year in advance (now) to get a 30% discount but I mentally assign that expense to 2025.

Edit to add: How could I forget, Smol Acrobat’s daycare will be going up TEN PERCENT in 2025.

If I do figure out how to add archery to our schedules, JB wants to try it and I do too That’s some additional amount of money. A local place doesn’t seem terribly pricey, so hopefully they’re decent for trying out. Figure $100(?) per visit? Just going for a high ballpark figure until I have time to actually think this through.

It’d be nice if there was a down arrow for any expense at all, but nope, none for us. Can’t see a single item going down.

I’d read Scalzi’s post about his money during this upcoming administration and it’s nice that a reasonably decent human and his family are going to be reasonably secure but his point beyond that is important: we have to support our favorite creators now. This means spending more.

We will definitely need to spend more in direct aid. We have spent four figures in that category this year which may have impinged on our tax deductible donations because those are down a bit at this time of the year but that also could be because we had to replace the washing machine this year so I had to get cash flow balanced again, and also because I was stinkin busy.

Some of the areas that ugh-47 wants to target will have a chilling effect on my industry and PiC’s. We’ve already been living with layoffs every quarter at his company these past two years. Now we’re looking at the political landscape creating higher risks of layoffs with the incoming administration promising to gut the government and going after the Department of Education, FDA, NOAA, CDC, and more government agencies. And promising to kill off the ACA, that is going to destroy lives.

There’s no way for us to calculate the risk to us personally, those decisions are made at a much higher level than we are. PiC is more at risk than I am for the next six months while we assess the turbulence at my company vs the upheaval stuff at his. I suspect our risk profile begins to look the same after roughly 10 months into an ugh-47 presidency.

I’m always in a prepping our finances for a recession mode so we’re already doing the major mitigation of saving and investing aggressively. We could get more aggressive but that requires bigger tradeoffs than we’re prepared to make. We’re still running at capacity and then some. If I decided to cook more to save money, that time and energy has to come from somewhere. Right now it’s not a trade I’m ready or able to make. A big savings would be cutting my therapy or other health spending (massage therapy and trainer) but those have long term benefits and I don’t want to cut those until we have to.

What’s your spending outlook this coming year?

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