California E&S Insurance

Bay Area cost of living for us: $11.7k per month for a family of 4 I finally analyzed my monthly expenses for all of 2025 and came up with the following results. Sharing for the benefit of other Bay Area folks (or those considering moving here) to understand the cost of living in the Bay Area (South Bay to be specific) for a family of 4 with one kid in middle school and one kid in elementary school. This seems high, but we are very happy but are often questioning ourselves if we border on the line of “excessive” consumption. Rent (2 bed / 2 bath): $4,600.00 Public Storage: $100.00 Other Utilities: PG&E: $215.00 AT&T (Phone/Web): $285.00 Xfinity: $104.00 Digital Subs: $150.00 Kids classes: Music lessons for 2 kids: $440.00 Math Tutoring: $435.00 Kids activity: $235.00 Kids activity : $152.00 Food/household spending at major retailers: Costco: $585.00 Walmart: $125.00 Safeway: $125.00 Target: $275.00 Local Grocers: $100.00 Amazon: $250.00 Clothing/Personal: $430.00 Medical: Orthodontics: $285.00 Eye Glasses: $62.50 Prescriptions: $35.00 Insurance (umbrella): $40.00 Life insurance: $160.00 Dining Out: $1,125.00 Local Entertainment: $250.00 Auto Insurance: $231.00 Auto (Fuel/Maint): $500.00 TOTAL MONTHLY: $11,700 Digital subs include: Netflix, Disney+, Amazon prime, AWS personal use, Dropbox AppleCare, Google storage, Google One, iCloud, Xbox, Audible, MyFitnessPal premium. Rent: An apartment in a good school district. Rent also includes trash, water and sewer. Local Entertainment is movies, farmers markets, parking fees at events. Dining out evenly split in terms of dollar value between fast food at McDonald’s, Chipotle, Subway and Chinese takeout, and middle of the road restaurants such as BJ’s and Lazy Dog. Our Amazon purchases are mostly household essentials, small dollar items. Walmart, Costco, Target include both groceries and household items. Safeway for last minute purchases. Kids are in elementary and middle (public) school. Activities include gymnastics, musical instrument lessons, swimming and supplemental Math tutoring. The above excludes our travel. We took a total of 6 trips last year. 2 night, 400 mile round trip, 🚗 :: $1500 2 night, 350 mile round trip, 🚗 :: $1500 3 night, 1100 mile round trip,✈️: $5500 7 night, 1000 mile round trip, 🚗 :, $5300 2 night, 300 mile round trip, 🚗 :: $1200 4 night, 1200 mile round trip, 🚢: $3800 3 night, 1100 mile round trip, 🚗 : $1200 Total: $20,000 In vacations for 4 people. I have also excluded charity and gifts (both received and sent). Thoughts? And please share yours if possible. What do you spend? (Not adding income for now, since this number represents our happiness budget, but will share if a lot of questions arise) The below edits are purely based on requests in the comments. EDIT: I did not want to add income but enough commenters have asked for it. It’s 580k per year. One income. Spouse is a stay at home parent. EDIT: Max out 401-k at $23k, and have a cash savings of about $200,000k or so. EDIT: Total taxes (Fed, CA, FICA) $195,000. EDIT: we have two fully paid off cars. One new and another with only 50k miles. EDIT: Health insurance paid in full by employer.

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