savings once you have a child

Anonymous
Hi Moms,

I am curious as to what most families are saving on a monthly basis once you have a child (after taxes). I know some families will be on the low end and others on the high end but just want to get an idea. Thanks!
Anonymous
DH maxes out his 401K at work and then we put away $250/month for DD's college fund. We've structured our budget to do the same thing for DD#2 when she arrives next month.

We also have $ in our annual budget for house repairs, so as those come up, we have money available for them.
Anonymous
We max out on the TSP (both of us) and then put a few grand into college savings.
Anonymous
We max out retirement (401(k)/TSP) and put $250 a month for each child (we have 2) and put $600 into savings account per month. But neither of us are spenders.
Anonymous
When you all say max out retirment, does that include the $4000 per year Roth/IRA type of stuff or do you mean just the 401K/TSP from work???

We try to put away the max Roth allowed per year and just wanted to see if other do the same.
Anonymous
The TSP comes to $31k, so that's enough.
Anonymous
Annually we do:

my simple IRA max - $10,500
both of our trad IRA's @ $5,000 each (this years new limit)
savings ($300 a month) - $3,600
college - need to figure out how much....baby just born in Nov
Anonymous
I'm the 21:45 poster. When I say max out 401(k) and TSP, that's all we do for retirement as we earn too much to qualify for Roth IRAs to contribute penalty/tax free. We're fotunate that we work at places that match (partially) our retirement contributions.
Anonymous
Before baby, we were both already saving the max in our 401k and each putting 4000 per year in Roth. So we are both saving about 39,000 per year for retirement. My husband earns 83K and I earn 65K - low by DC standards! When the baby came, we had to pay $1200 per month for childcare and, of course, the ARM on our mortgage adjusted the same month - ouch! We are still able to max out like before, but with serious cut backs on other stuff. In two years, I figure that raises at work for both of us will be paying for daycare and then we'll be able to have a bit more again and start a college fund. We have already decided that when our child stops going to daycare at age 4 or 5, our strategy will be to dump the same amount of money we were paying each month for daycare into a college fund. That way, we won't miss it. We only have one car and commute on foot which helps keep expenses down.
Anonymous
to everyone who max's out on 401k - do you max out to the company match or max out the total amount allowed?
Anonymous
I'm the 21:45 poster and we each max out the 15,500 per year.
Anonymous
I am on the low end. I save nothing. I make about $35,000/yr and am a single parent. I barely break even each month.
Anonymous
21:18 here: We max out on the 15,500 (thus, get another 5% from the gov't on top of that).
Anonymous
DH contributes $12000/year to his TSP at work, and gets a match (5% I think).
Anonymous
We both max out on our 401k (total $31,500 per year, which entitles to employer matches that add up to about another $11,000 or so per year). We also put away about $7,000 per year for college. We built up an emergency fund to $30,000 but now don't regularly contribute to it. Another thing we did was to purchase a lot of life insurance in case of a premature death of one of us.
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