Reply to What % of your income should be saved with income 100k?

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[quote=Anonymous]Two questions:

Do you own your condo or rent?
Do you have an emergency fund?

If you own your condo and you have an emergency fund (3-6 months expenses), then all you need to save is 15% gross for retirement. And if your company does a match, that's included (ie, if your company matches the first 5%, you only need to save 10%). That's also assuming you're budgeting/cash flowing any large purchases like vacations and home repairs.

If you don't have an adequate emergency fund, you need to be saving. Your level of aggression here can be proportional to what you have. So for example, if you have 3 months of an emergency fund, but would prefer it was 4, then you can just be adding in a very small amount - say $100 a month - until you get to where you want to go. If you have NO emergency fund, then you need to be aggressive. Sell stuff and eat ramen to get yourself $1000 in the next two weeks. If you have more than $1000 but less than two months expenses saved, I'd probably cut retirement savings down to just 5-10% of gross (depending on if you have a match), and be saving 15-20% of your net until you're in a more comfortable position.

If you have an emergency fund but don't own your home, you should probably be setting a little money aside for an eventual down payment. If you feel homeownership is far away, then again I'd say something small is fine - $100 a month. If you're hoping to buy in the next 5 years, that should be higher. But this is definitely a lower priority than emergency fund and retirement.

If you're having trouble reaching these savings goals, you need to cut your expenses. Food is the obvious spot. For me, I'd keep the $80 Saturday nights, but start packing a lunch. $25 a day for ordering lunch, you could easily buy a loaf of bread, some cold cuts, peanut butter and jelly, bananas or apples, and a little treat and it would cost you $25 for the week. That's $150 in savings a week right there, you don't have to cook, and you're still eating dinner out every day. Healthier, too. [/quote]

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