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How Much Do you Put Into Savings?

984 views 29 replies 23 participants last post by  EFmom 
#1 ·
Hi Everyone!

I was wondering if you guys wouldn't mind posting what percentage of your income goes to savings, and if you feel that you have a good "comfort cushion" if something were to happen.

I'll go first - we put about 30% of our net pay into savings, and it seems to be a nice cushion to have.

Anyone else?
 
#4 ·
Including retirement it is probably 10%. Not nearly as much as we like but what we can do right now. We do have an decent sized emergency fund already. Once we pay off our vehicles we will be able to do a lot more.
 
#6 ·
currently, all of our money is going to pay off debt...

I can never understand when people are able to put a percentage of their income away...we have SO MANY bills


Like i guess my question is...do you have NO mortgage, NO car loan, NO student loans, etc? Because that is where ALL of our money goes... I assume we'll start saving once the debt is gone (since it accrues interest i don't see the point in only paying minimums and putting other money in savings).

Does anyone save even though they have debt? Or are you all debt free?
 
#7 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by hollytheteacher View Post
currently, all of our money is going to pay off debt...

I can never understand when people are able to put a percentage of their income away...we have SO MANY bills


Like i guess my question is...do you have NO mortgage, NO car loan, NO student loans, etc? Because that is where ALL of our money goes... I assume we'll start saving once the debt is gone (since it accrues interest i don't see the point in only paying minimums and putting other money in savings).

Does anyone save even though they have debt? Or are you all debt free?
Well, we have some student loan debt. We're renting (uber cheap) and don't have any car payments. We've gone back and forth on whether or not we should pay off debt and then save for a house, etc, but personally, I'd rather have a decent savings than my student loans paid off. With that said, we do pay extra on them to get them paid down.

And I'm glad that we did that b/c one of our cars needed a major repair, and our other one just died. So we're on a car hunt... and if we had only put the minimum away into savings we would be financing a car right now.

In this economy I just feel like I need a cushion just in case something were to happen to one of our jobs.
 
#8 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by hollytheteacher View Post
Like i guess my question is...do you have NO mortgage, NO car loan, NO student loans, etc? Because that is where ALL of our money goes... I assume we'll start saving once the debt is gone (since it accrues interest i don't see the point in only paying minimums and putting other money in savings).

Does anyone save even though they have debt? Or are you all debt free?
We are debt-free except for a pretty large mortgage. Fortunately, DH makes really good money so we are able to save quite a bit.

On paper, we should put 1/3 of DH's actual pay to savings, BUT, realistically, it's more like 15% right now. After the holidays, it'll go back up.
 
#9 ·
At this exact moment in time 0.
But that's only because of some account transitioning, and dh not being able to qualify for his comapany's retirement plan until now. Starting next month, it will be 20%-30% I'm not sure exactly. Before it was 10% or so, so we're upping it quite a bit. And yeah, we have an excellent "comfort cushion" if anything were to happen, that was a high proprity for us so that I could stay home with ds with no financial worries.

Quote:

Originally Posted by hollytheteacher View Post
currently, all of our money is going to pay off debt...

I can never understand when people are able to put a percentage of their income away...we have SO MANY bills


Like i guess my question is...do you have NO mortgage, NO car loan, NO student loans, etc? Because that is where ALL of our money goes... I assume we'll start saving once the debt is gone (since it accrues interest i don't see the point in only paying minimums and putting other money in savings).

Does anyone save even though they have debt? Or are you all debt free?
We have a mortgage, but we bought a house for less than we "could" have afforded so that our payments would be lower. We don't have any car or students loans, and no consumer debt. When we did have debt we tried to save what we could, but it was more like 2-4% then, sometimes nothing.
 
#11 ·
We don't currently have any to put towards savings


When we did, we put anything extra we could each month towards extra payments to our mortgage. We've always had good credit and if we get in a bind, we could take out a home equity, but essentially over a 30 year period because of the extra we've paid on our house, we've saved over $60K in interest so far! Of course that is over the course of 30 years, but our goal is to pay off the house in about 7-10 more years (been here 3) and then not have ANY house payments and then we can save. The last few months, that hasn't been going so well though w/ putting extra towards the house
But I'm so glad we did put it when we did. Otherwise I fear we would have spent that money on something else.

Also this way we know too if we need to sell our house, we have equity built into it!
 
#12 ·
We do 50%, sometimes less depending on the time of year.

But, this is divided between various savings: retirement, medical, and escape plan. We refer to our purchasing a sailboat, and living on that full time, while traveling our "escape plan."
 
#13 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by Denvergirlie View Post
We are fairly new to being debt free so that free's up a lot of our incoming to go to savings.
I almost feel ashamed to admit the percentage as I know so many others on these boards are just getting by, but we save about 55% of our income right now on an average month.
Well congratulations to you to be able to be in such a place!!! That is wonderful and awesome! We hope to be there someday!
 
#16 ·
We save about 20% of DH's gross salary. He is a senior programmer in CA, so this is a decent savings.


To answer the question above regarding debt and savings, etc... We only have a mortgage. No student loans (anymore), no car loans (anymore), no credit card debt (anymore). We also purchased a home we felt comfortable buying...no financial stretch and we pay extra towards principal each month. We have always saved at least something along with paying off debt. We believe it is the only way to ever truly get out of debt. Otherwise, every little "unexpected" expense keeps knocking you further into debt. I saw it over and over again in my career (finance degree, various industries) and helping friends.
 
#17 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by hollytheteacher View Post
currently, all of our money is going to pay off debt...

I can never understand when people are able to put a percentage of their income away...we have SO MANY bills


Like i guess my question is...do you have NO mortgage, NO car loan, NO student loans, etc? Because that is where ALL of our money goes... I assume we'll start saving once the debt is gone (since it accrues interest i don't see the point in only paying minimums and putting other money in savings).

Does anyone save even though they have debt? Or are you all debt free?

We put 15% of our gross into supplemental retirement accounts. We are currently saving about 10% into an emergency/general fund. We redid our kitchen this summer, and pretty much cleaned that fund out. We will need to buy a new car in the next year or two, so we want to have a down payment. We also pay a few percent into college funds for the kids.

We have a modest mortgage. It's fixed rate, and a low percentage. We pay a little extra on it, but getting rid of it isn't my highest priority. In our situation the tax break about cancels it out.

We don't have CC debt. At the moment, we don't have a car loan, although we will once we buy the new car. We keep our cars for at least 15 years, so often we don't have loans. We were fortunate in that our parents paid for our undergrad degrees, and we did our graduate work part-time while working. So, we have no education debt. We wish to do the same for our kids.

We are frugal, yet putting away this much is a stretch.
 
#19 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by hollytheteacher View Post
currently, all of our money is going to pay off debt...

I can never understand when people are able to put a percentage of their income away...we have SO MANY bills


Like i guess my question is...do you have NO mortgage, NO car loan, NO student loans, etc? Because that is where ALL of our money goes... I assume we'll start saving once the debt is gone (since it accrues interest i don't see the point in only paying minimums and putting other money in savings).

Does anyone save even though they have debt? Or are you all debt free?
We have a mortgage (though really reasonable, a 15 yr mortgage and we've been here for 9 years--before the crazy boom which would have made our home unaffordable), one student loan, no other debt though.

It's about 30% here...perhaps more than that actually. It would be more, but our health insurance costs are high...not much less than our monthly mortgage payment.
We live pretty frugally.
 
#20 ·
Quote:
can never understand when people are able to put a percentage of their income away...we have SO MANY bills

Like i guess my question is...do you have NO mortgage, NO car loan, NO student loans, etc?
Paid the student loans off about 3 years ago.

both vehicles(a 2000 Camry & 2004 Tundra) are paid off

2 credit cards at 6.99 & 7.99% interest(low for Canada) with total balance of $12600. Min payments are $50ish, we put $300 on.

HELOC but NO Mortgage at $95,000. Min payments are $300ish, we put $1000-$1200 on.
 
#21 ·
We save about 37% of our take home pay, not counting 401k. Some months it's not that much though, but that's the average. We rent, and don't have kids yet. No car payment, no student loans, no debt. We also have a full emergency fund.

This will drastically go down in a year when I am not working and DH has a pastor's salary, so we are being aggressive now.
 
#22 ·
None in savings right now with no mortgage, no car loans, and no student loans, BUT we have almost no debt ( about 1k which will be paid of by January) AND we made it through 1.5 years of school, with a homebirth during that time without any student loans. DH should hopefully be getting into nursing school this next year and we will use all of our savings from 09 (our tax return and hopefully 10% of income) to fund a lot of that. We are only 24 with 2 kids, we feel that we are doing good.

So to answer the original question none right now, hopefully 10% next year.
 
#23 ·
Well right now Dh is deployed so we are putting about 70% into savings. We aren't paying rent at the moment because I am staying with my parents (I just pay them for utilities). We would be putting away more if it were not for Christmas presents I am buying this month and next. When DH gets home we'll be buying a house but he is also getting paid more starting next month so we'll have to rework our budget completely. We have no car payments. I have a student loan that is $156.90/month and super low interest so not worth paying off early.
 
#24 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by Denvergirlie View Post
We are fairly new to being debt free so that free's up a lot of our incoming to go to savings.
I almost feel ashamed to admit the percentage as I know so many others on these boards are just getting by, but we save about 55% of our income right now on an average month.
That is so wonderful, nothing to be ashamed, but proud of
:

Do you have a story to share so that others may benefit from your experience?

Take care and congratulations!
 
#25 ·
Hmm, i'm just wondering if we should change it up a little and start a little savings? It's just i always pay extra to all my bills so I pay an extra 300 to our mortgage every month. Our mortgage interest is 4.5 % so i figure it's better to pay that off faster rather than put that 300 a month in a savings account only getting like 3% interest or whatever the going rate is for savings accounts these days...what do you all think???

p.s. we DO have a 401 k thingy through my dh's work and he puts away the maximum amount in that plus his company matches it.
 
#26 ·
We put 5% of my income (I make about 1/2 of Dh's income) and 3% of Dh's income in to retirement. My employer matches 2 to 1 on contributions up to 5%. Dh's does not match. We are not contributing to other savings at this point, due to C. Cards, Stu. Loans, Home Eq. and Mortgage payments.
 
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