What percentage of your income do you save?

[Chucktown PE]

We're just now able to start saving again. I'm actually trying to pay a car off a year early so what I would be saving is applied to that. Once I pay that off I'm going to be debt free except for the house and I'll be able to max out Roth IRAs for both me and Mrs. Chuck. That'll be a little less than 10% of my salary. I'm also starting college funds for the 3 kids which will be another 5% of my salary.

 

[Supe]

Effective April of 2011, between the new house, Junior, and the GF living with me, I effectively don't save shit.

 

[pbrme]

^ are you referring to junior's Giraffe adventure?

BTW have you restored the mess, aside from that huge hole in your wallet?

 

[Supe]

Nope, still waiting on contractor's to get back with their estimates so I can fight the insurance company. In general, food for 3 mouths, utilities for 3, etc, all add up in a hurry. Plus piecing in furniture and general home reno's add up quickly. Of course last night, my POS $2k Samsung refrigerator showed its first signs of shitting the bed. Apparently there's a design defect where the defrost sensor doesn't work, so ice ends up building up around the condenser fan and triggers a slow, painful death. I've silenced it temporarily by forcing a manual defrost/power freeze (some trick I found on youtube), but the damn thing sounded like an idling Harley last night.

 

[Capt Worley PE]

-10%

Someone pointed out to me yesterday that because of no COLAs for the past five years, we're -10% on salary from where we should be. And everything's a lot more expensive now.

No fun. No fun at all....

 

[Chucktown PE]

Effective April of 2011, between the new house, Junior, and the GF living with me, I effectively don't save shit.

I know this is probably a ridiculous question, but does GF (BTW, nice to see she had upped her acronym status from MIAF to GF) get any child support from Junior's biological father. I thought they could suspend visitation if he doesn't pay?

 

[mudpuppy]

I missed this the first time around too. I'm saving about 24% of my income after tax, since all of my savings are in after-tax accounts--Roth IRA, Roth 401k and cash. That's roughly equivalent to 35% before tax if I was contributing to a traditional IRA and traditional 401k (and after tax for the cash accounts).

I've been using Microsoft Money to track my financial transactions since 1996, and I'm OCD about putting everything in there. They stopped making MS Money a couple years ago but offered a Sunset Edition for free, which I continue to use. The online updates no longer work, but I found a workaround using some PERL scripts.

 

[Dexman PE PMP]

Between the new house, taxes, and a handfull of other random expenses, I got nothin'. I had been putting away ~25% after tax in order to get the down payment for the house, but the mortgage payment for the new house is now higher than my previous house rent by about the same amount as I had been putting away. Plus, I'm trying to collect some funds to pay off this year's tax bill (~$3k) as well as funds to finish out the backyard landscaping. I currently have a fenced in dirt yard (the fence being the last drain on the savings), with the irrigation system, sod, & patio being the next expenses to incur this summer.

Once I get through this landscaping crap, I should be back on schedule to get the credit cards paid off by the end of the year and trying to get the student loans & cars paid off within the next 2-3 years.