Living in Vegas: what to plan for a family budget? (Las Vegas: renters, car registration)

If you need 3 or 4 bedrooms, you would probably be better off renting a house or a condo. Usually your rent would include your HOA/association fees, taxes. Sometimes it also includes water, sewer, and garbage. You would have to go over all that with your landlord. I think with the kids, you would probably be happier renting a house where you could have a fenced back yard for them. Usually the only insurance you would need for the home is renters insurance. You don't pay extra for the school bus.

I've never had to figure out expenses for a family of 5 so I'm afraid I would underestimate. I can point out a few things you may have missed.

Health insurance- A lot of money for 5 people. It's probably a LOT higher here than what you are used to. Even if your company pays for part, you need to know how much you contribute out of your paychecks and what your co-pays are for using the services. Does it include dental and vision? What if one of the kids needs braces?

Car(s)- Auto insurance is required and it's not cheap either. Then there's car payments and maintenence too. And gas!

Is food expensive? That depends on where you are now.

I know how hard this is because I've lived in other countries. Tough decisions, especially with a family to consider as well. Income taxes will take a big bite out of your paycheck as well. You will be entitled to 5 exemptions on your w-4. It would be very helpful if your company could give you an idea what your take-home pay would be. Then you would know what you have to work with.

you may need to pay for city bus if the school bus doesn't take the close enough to the house...it is 2 or 3 miles away from the school to be considered for bussing depending on the grade level...Nevada is supposed to have the 2nd highest grocery prices in the country...

I also have 3 children close in age to your children. We rent a very nice 5 bedroom home for 1800 a month. You can find a home for a lot less still in a nice neighborhood. We spend roughly $800-$1000 on groceries per month....this includes non food items such as laundry soap, cleaning supplies etc. Yes the public schools are free, however I am a teacher in the school system and there are many incidental expenses like supplies, school trips, school lunch, sports etc. Our utilities for our home, which is almost 3000 square feet average about $80-$100 monthly for gas and electric can be anywhere from $100-$300 per month depending on the time of year. Then you have phone, cable, internet which averages about $150 per month. We spend about an additional $400-$500 in gasoline per month currently..(my children attend private school so I drive them both ways, also they have several after school activities which involves additional driving. I also drive a SUV so someone else's expenses may be less). Then we spend probably anywhere from $400-$600 per month on entertainment....(eating out, movie etc.) Depending on the lifestyle you want to live I would say you need to make at the very least $6000 per month after taxes to live here comfortably with a family of 5. With my husband and I both working we bring in roughly $9000 monthly and still find it difficult to put money away to eventually purchase a home here. I realize that our family may have additional expenses that your family may not but it will give you something to think about.

We moved here and went through sticker shock!

Our 3 year old Nissan and 3 year old Miata each cost close to $300 a year to register.

My 7 year old miata registered this month for $158.

I hate the cost of car registration.

YES!!!!!!!

Nevada is actually a low tax state. There is no income tax the big hitter in the US. However Nevada gets you on sales, property and similar taxes. I think overall we are about 37th of the fifty states in taxing the individual.

The threshold for comfortable existing in Las Vegas is about 40,000 for a single. You can get buy on 30,000 but it is tough. For a family of five I would think 60K to 65K.

While I am not going to suggest breaking the law it is also possible for your wife to end up with a visa to work or to explore other options. It is quite illegal for instance for Americans to work in Mexico yet a number manage to do so...check with the expatriate community. They are always up on this stuff.

My wife is a Canadian by the way...for the plains of Sasketchewan.