<prompt> Human: This didnt really cross my mind much until recently. I figured hey, everyone is living paycheck to paycheck, right? Why worry? Until a few weeks ago, that is. I was having a conversation with a family member of mine whose wife just had their first child. He was talking about a possible promotion and how his family would be set if he got this promotion because hed be making 130,000. He said his wife could quit her job and they could eventually buy a much bigger house in a nicer area. I was way thrown off by this because my husband and I make 120,000 and we dont feel anywhere near as well off as my cousin made it seem like we should be with that kind of money. Clearly were making some sort of big mistake somewhere but I cant find it. Hoping you guys can help me out here..Ill start by saying we live in a very high cost area. Our city is a higher end suburb of Seattle. My husband makes 80,000 and I make 40,000. We do contribute a significant chunk of money to our retirement plan so thats definitely part of this. We have almost no debt at all. Our recurring payments monthly are: mortgage: 1500 utilities: 100 cableinternet: 100 cell phones: 120 car payment 1: 170 car payment 2: 150 gas: 150 gym: 60 foodgroceries including pet items and household items: 900I can see that we probably need to scale back on foodgroceries. We dont cook a lot hardly ever so we tend to buy food that we can just make easily whenever. We dont really plan meals at all, there are days where we pick up dinner on the way home and days when we dont have dinner at all. We pretty much consistently get breakfast out i.e. Starbucks or the like and we do have a lot of pets to take care of, if that means anything. Two large breed dogs and three cats. We dont have children. Any real debt that we had was paid off when we sold our first house and made a profit. Im 25 and he is 28 if that matters. Even seeing areas where we need to cut back, that still doesnt account for feeling broke and feeling like were living paycheck to paycheck. And even seeing where we should cut back, I dont see how we can. For example, if we quit getting breakfast out, we would still be spending almost the same amount when we then have to include breakfast food in our grocery shopping, if that makes sense?I dont know. Maybe were just incredible irresponsible. Thats possible. We dont really budget much but when we lay out our bank statementsincomebills, we cant really find any area where we could or should be saving money. I mean when we take our monthly income and subtract our monthly expenses, we should realistically have a decent amount of money left over, right? But we never do and we cant even find where its going aside from whats listed above. What are we doing wrong here? Please help, Reddit : Also, to add if it makes any difference, we both grew up mostly quite poor him more so than me so we never saw much of an example of how to manage money because there was rarely ever money to manage. Just a thought I had if that helps to explain our situation at all.  <response>: You need to find the other half of your income. Go through your statements and list every dollar in a category. What do your paychecks per month add up to? You listed 3250 of expenses, and some of those could be cut down on - but you should be taking home around 6500month. You cant make a budget if you dont know where your money is going now. 