As I mentioned before, we paid off our mortgage in February, so our housing expenses are much lower as a result. I put bits of money here and there into our "dream home" fund which we will use for part of the down payment for our next house, as well as costs associated with selling and moving from the one we currently own. Our home needs a lot of work to get it to the point where we can sell it. With the housing market the way it is, I don't want to have to depend on selling it right away in order to move, so the dream home fund is sort of our safety net as well, so if the right property comes along, we can go ahead and make an offer on it.
As I mentioned in the previous post about our savings accounts, our homeowner's insurance as well as county and town real estate taxes only get paid once a year (twice a year for county taxes), so I put money in savings every paycheck to ensure we have enough when that rolls around. They are such large bills, it also has become sort of our short- term emergency savings too. That's part of the reason I've never drawn out of our real emergency fund. If I know I'll be able to replenish it before the bill rolls around, I'll just take it out of our real estate tax fund.
Household improvement and repair also fall under the housing category. We use this for anything from new picture frames, to light fixtures, to drywall, to a new dryer. Basically, if I consider it "consumable", like light bulbs or paper, it falls under groceries, but if it is more permanent, it goes under household improvement and repair.
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