How much "should" I be saving a month?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Working on a budget so DH and I can make some important decisions about childcare and what we can and cannot afford. We have high HHI (350Kish) but we also have a lot of debt (all student loan, low interest). What's a good rule of thumb (and something preferably not too complicated) for how much you should pay yourself first/save ideally a month?

I've heard 20% a month into savings is a good barometer and we're at that. Meaning, I've got a budget worked out where we pay down some student loan debt every month, plus have a nanny, plus put away about 24% of our take home income each month into savings (including retirement). Thoughts? Is this good? Bad? Basically trying to make sure we can afford a nanny without being financially irresponsible.

We make slightly less (~325k) and we save about 35-40% of our gross (counting 401k matching), but we don't want to work until we're 65 either. 24% of take home seems good for now. Once the kids get older you can drop the nanny expense and funnel that to savings as well.

I'm assuming you have a super high 401k match because after taxes there isn't that much left to live on.

We have a high match and live well below our means, but still very comfortably. We could save probably 30-35% of gross with a standard match. I've found we have a TON of money after taxes, enough to save an extra 60-70k per year.

[Anonymous]

So much depends on your mortgage. If you have about 15K coming in a month after tax and your mortgage is 5K + 3K childcare + 1K cars + 2K school loans that leaves 2k for other. It is mortgages around here that add up.

[Anonymous]

Our income isn't nearly as high as yours, but I can give you our picture:

Combined income $135k/year
Cash savings $ 20k/year (15%)
Retirement savings* $ 22k/year (16%)

And always looking for ways to increase both.

*didn't count the match because that isn't money I could spend otherwise, so it's not a percentage of income saved.