I'm getting conflicting info online and am now thoroughly confused. Our budget is something like 50% necessities, 30% discretionary spending and 20% savings. Does that sounds fair? What does your family do?
That sounds amazing to me. I just had to drop (temporarily, I hope) my one and only savings vehicle (401k) down from 6% to 2%. I'm at something like 90% necessities, 8% discretionary and 2% savings. Keep up the good work!
I use this. https://www.everydollar.com/ It's easy and you don't have to overthink. It's a Dave Ramsey tool, so you'll get lots of guidance through the process of using it. There's a free version, and a paid version. I'm actually jumping in to buy the paid version today because you can drag and drop your transactions instead of entering them by hand, which I love.
I wish we could simply pay our bills each month and have enough to go out to eat every now and then. It must be very nice to have 50% of your income meet that. I would feel truly blessed if each and every month we had enough for basics. We just cancelled a trip for later this month to go on a mini vacation to meet up with some friends and spend a long weekend away. It was going to cost us about $500, food, gasoline, expenses, and all. But there's no way.
That's about what we do. Some years we save more like 25%, others more like 19. It depends on what's going on.
I just try to find a budget list that I found helpful years ago. it gave a breakdown on what percent of your income you should spend on different things, like food and eating out, etc. I liked it because it made my giant grocery bill look reasonable as a percent of our full budget :-) I just looked for it in my Excel file but I can't find it.
But yes, that breakdown sounds fair.
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That's about what we do. Some years we save more like 25%, others more like 19. It depends on what's going on.
I just try to find a budget list that I found helpful years ago. it gave a breakdown on what percent of your income you should spend on different things, like food and eating out, etc. I liked it because it made my giant grocery bill look reasonable as a percent of our full budget :-) I just looked for it in my Excel file but I can't find it.
But yes, that breakdown sounds fair.
i htink that is a great question. Hubby handles our finances so i don't really know, but i feel like alot goes to entertainment and eating that i would rather save for retirement.
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i htink that is a great question. Hubby handles our finances so i don't really know, but i feel like alot goes to entertainment and eating that i would rather save for retirement.
Updated
i htink that is a great question. Hubby handles our finances so i don't really know, but i feel like alot goes to entertainment and eating that i would rather save for retirement.
yours sounds great!
we had been getting along okay without me working for a couple of years, and after years of working a LOT i sure did enjoy my belated SAHM status (with no kids at home!)
but we weren't putting enough aside for retirement, so i got a p/t job and we're doing better at that.
your budget sounds very sensible indeed. don't spend too much time online!
khairete
S.
I've always looked at this differently. Obviously some necessities are just that and you bring them as low as possible. Then I don't think a percentage should be used for savings. I think setting savings targets and then seeing what you need to reach those targets is how to do it. If you want to pay for college and have $x a year to spend in retirement and 20% a year doesn't cover that, you should lower your discretionary spending. If it more than covers, you can be more conservative what you need in retirement to be safer and then also spend more on luxuries. Know what I mean? I always planned to stop working so we saved much more than 20% a year bc it was a goal to have xyz paid for before I resigned. So life changes should be taken into account too. Your mix does sound reasonable but 20% of what number makes a huge difference if it's enough savings or not. 20% of $75k a year or $750k a year is very different.
I used to have my budget set up in Excel, but now I use You Need A Budget (ynab.com), I have lots of categories. Mortgage, electric/gas, water, gasoline for the care, school-related stuff, clothing, savings categories, groceries (food only), household goods, cat food and such,...a long, long list.
30% discretionary spending sounds like a lot to have unspecified to me, but I like control over details. 20% saving is great.
