Look at the posts about the computed non-mortgage spend, excluding Zofia’s personal spend. Latest calculation shows $5800/month in late 2016. With or without this data, it’s possible to propose some answer to this question:

Q: some families (such as Raymond [1] or Wenqiang) have monthly take-home income of 7k. Our monthly spend + mortgage + wife’s personal spend is at least 6k. So if we were such a family, how could we reduce the monthly spend from 5k to 4k, practically?

A: (luxury) fewer vacations. Budget airlines; 3-star hotels.
A: (luxury) avoid yoga centers. Try (though it’s been very hard) to do a bit by yourself every week.
A: (luxury) less eat-out
A: (luxury) /rationalize/ boy’s training regimes. We have paid for many things and most don’t show result.
A: have better tracking of the unaccounted “personal” spend

Q: what’s the “comfortable minimum” non-mortgage spend, given kids’ fees, taxes, bx, utilities…
A: I guess 3k. Breakdown:

• I think the “taxes” category could be $1500k/m (currently $2k+/m). would need to avoid MindChamps.
• I think medical category would be $300/m excluding medishield premium
• I think the “intangible investment” category would be be $700/m (currently $1200) including bx and boy’s training. Would reduce piano and bx.
• vacation/dining budget of $200/m (currently a whopping $1k/m !)

[1] around 4k+ take home for himself, and 2k for his wife.