How much do you save?

[mrskennedy]

I can't pinpoint where now... But I know I've seen it recommended more than once to save 10% of your monthly income--including savings acts, retirement, etc. We don't have retirement acts/investments right now, so all we have is a savings act. And 10% isn't feasible right now with my tuition payments. At least 5% is, and I put in whatever else I can--incl. fun/bday money. It's me, DH, and 7MO DS. I'm just wondering how much you save monthly and if we're doing enough. The only bill we have that we don't absolutely need is satellite, but it's cheaper to keep the cheaper package I just switched to, than to cancel before the contract ends. Any ideas? (I do write for AC to make extra money, and DH only gets $60/M entertainment money. I get nothing and that's ok right now.)

[akwifeandmomma]

6% of DH's income automatically goes into his 401K pretax.

Other than that we try to put aside $100-250/mo. Sometimes we save 10% or more, sometimes not. The 401K contribution always makes me feel better those months we aren't able to save any additional.

[aircantu1]

Uh, nothing.

Every extra penny we have is going toward debt payoff. We have one house note in savings and that's it. We even stopped retirement savings to speed up the debt payoff.

[MaddieMay]

5% goes into DH's work retirement (pre-tax)
20-25% goes into investments (Roth and otherwise)
Savings varies each month-just depends. We want to live off one income, so all my paychecks go into our savings account. (I go to grad school full time, so I do a flex work schedule.)

I'd like to add that it hasn't always been this way-it's been a gradual build up. One of our hobbies is financial/investment stuff, though too.

MrsKennedy-I think 5% is great for where you are at right now! When DH and I were both in school, our savings/investments were much less than they are now. Once you get through with your training, you'll be able to save more and start your retirement accounts.

[MommyinMN]

We are currently saving about 15%. 8% goes into Dh's 401k, the rest is divided between a savings, a roth IRA and the kids 529 plans. We have another roth IRA that we are currently not funding. Hopefully once I go back to work we will be saving more. We do have a small amount of debt to pay off, but paying what we are currently paying will have it paid off in 3-4 months. We could simply pay off the debt now by stopping our savings, but for us that would not be smart because once we stopped saving we would spend the money. All the payments are set up automatically so we never see the money.

[phathui5]

We have 4% automatically going to retirement savings in dh's 401k. Our goal is 15% going towards that.

We're also working hard to get $1000 into an emergency fund before we start throwing every extra penny at our debt.

[*violet*]

My dh is a public school teacher, so the state retirement system automatically takes 10% of his pay for retirement investment, you don't have a choice. That's all we're doing with me home with the kids right now and it'll have to do until I get back to work. I'm comfortable with that amount of savings.

[alleyoop]

3% of pre-tax income, which is the company match, goes into a Simple IRA through work. I put away approximately $800 a month for property taxes, but that goes in and out, and anything extra goes to debt (almost done!) and our emergency fund.

I wish I could save more but most of my income is going to our property taxes. They are outrageously high but I am hoping this year I can get ahead by using some of my bonus for them.

[nadia105]

7 % of Dh's pretax pay goes into his 401(k) and it is matched at 50% by his employer, so 10.5% total. We have Roth IRAs that we are not currently funding, but hope to be soon. We also put away $250 per month towards our emergency fund.

[katheek77]

19 percent goes automatically into savings/investments. We max out our Roth each year, and put the rest into short-term savings (we're rebuilding after purchasing my husband's jeep last year) and long-term investments (mutual funds...ie...house and retirement funds - we probably won't be buying a house until DH is out of the army in 12-14 years). What percentage goes into savings and investments other than Roth depends on how much is in the savings fund. Right now, most of it goes into short-term savings. In a few months, we'll switch back to funneling most of it into our mutual funds.

3 percent goes automatically into our daughter's 529. It's not much, but, it's something...just not at the expense of our retirement.

At the end of the month, whatever is left over from our budget gets split 50/25/25 (savings/me/him), so, another 3-8 percent is usually put into savings (or investments). He gets a raise in January (yearly), another in April (10 year mark - you get one every two years in the military) and is supposed to be getting promoted next Spring (knock on wood) which would be another raise...he won't see that money..we plan to keep our expenses pretty much the same, and funnel the extra into savings/investments.

In general, at least 25% of our income is saved in some way (savings account, investments, Roth, 529).

[mrskennedy]

Thanks for sharing, mamas. Since I don't know what my starting wage will be when I do work, I can't say what will be going where... But if/when I make more than our necessary expenses, I'll def. save for retirement, esp. if my employer matches.

Originally we were saving more, but we agreed that my tuition was a better investment right now than the 10% + we used to save. I'll be done paying after Dec. so it may be 10% then. If nothing strange/screwy happens! And I hope to be working by the middle of May '08. It will be a stretch... But I'm hoping!

[normajean]

Dh's employer pays 7% into a retirement fund for him. I try to save 10% of our take home, it ranges between 5-10% more realistically. His other job (very part time job, puts about $100/month into a retirement fund for him as well.) Since we plan to be in our house long term, I view the money we pay towards principal on our mortgage as savings in a way. We are not paying extra toward paying off the house, but the equity is a nice idea even in an insecure market.

[mum4boys]

Originally Posted by mrskennedy

Thanks for sharing, mamas. Since I don't know what my starting wage will be when I do work, I can't say what will be going where... But if/when I make more than our necessary expenses, I'll def. save for retirement, esp. if my employer matches.

Originally we were saving more, but we agreed that my tuition was a better investment right now than the 10% + we used to save. I'll be done paying after Dec. so it may be 10% then. If nothing strange/screwy happens! And I hope to be working by the middle of May '08. It will be a stretch... But I'm hoping!

What are you training to do?

If you can make your savings part of your budget even if its just $25.00 a month.

[CarrieMF]

I put 5% of dh's checks, the child tax credit & harper money I get into savings. I change up what savings account it goes into though. I have 1 for down payment, 1 for house taxes, 1 for presents. In Jan when we pay the house taxes I'll form another account for vacation & then lower the amount that goes into house taxes as our situation will be different for the next round of them. We took out a HELOC & paid the mortgage off in August & have till the middle of Jan to get enough to pay 2008's taxes at the discounted rate. It's around $660. Before it was added to our mortgage pmt.

Dh puts 2% of his base income into RRSP's(and his company matches that 100%, he's been there long enough that if he quits he gets to keep what they've matched). The amount he puts in is the max that his company will match. this is retirement income, like a 401K

I put $35/month into each of the girls accounts though I have lowered that to $15/month to pay down a couple of other things. I would like to put at least $50/month into them.

I also have been putting $35/month into an RRSP for me, but lowered that one too. The 3 girls accounts & my rrsp come to less than 1% of our income. They will all be increased in Jan, though it may be earlier if Dh's brother pays us the last $1000 he owes & the truck gets paid off on Nov 1.

[2babybees]

I'm a single mom with 2 small kids. I put ~2% into my retirement Simple account through work and ~8% of my paycheck into a savings account. I just finished off paying my cc debt and now have my car and student loan to tackle. I hope to have both paid off in the next 5 years and then will up my retirement savings. We live very frugally but I want my children to see responsible financial decisions and know how to take care of themselves financially as they become adults. Their father is not the best role model in this area.

[SusannahM]

A LOT. 50% of my husband's gross salary (I'm a SAHM, so don't bring in anything). Our goal is to do a mini-retirement and hike a lot of the world once DS (he's 9 months now) gets to be about 5 or so. We want to be in a position where if we want the mini-retirement to become a permanent retirement, then that's OK.

[mrskennedy]

Originally Posted by mum4boys

What are you training to do?

If you can make your savings part of your budget even if its just $25.00 a month.

Medical transcription.

Savings already is part of the budget, even with tuition pmts. It's just temporarily less than it used to be, and we're not saving anything for DS.

[weliveintheforest]

We only save 57 dollars a month right now, and it goes into a registered education savings plan for dd. When dc #2 is born we will do the same for them, but I don't see us saving any more than that in the next year because it will take us that long to have all our debt paid off.

[alicia622]

We had been putting about 25% into our regular savings but have piddled much of that away and have stopped saving and spending like maniacs again. We are about to get our butts back into gear and start saving again. I am going to inist we start putting much more into retirement accounts as we are very behind in that department.

[PrettyBird]

We are currently putting about 10% into retirement savings. As soon as I figure out which 529 plan to get for DD, about 6% will go to that. Short term savings varies month to month.