We bring home about 20k per month and usually don't spend 10-12k per month. We put some in stocks and just keep the rest in checking, move some to savings.

I think we need a better plan.

Right now--22%
In a few months when I pay off my student loan--48%

Anonymous wrote:Outside of retirement and college, we save $0.

HHI is $180K;

We save 10% for retirement and $1,200/month total for two kids college.

We have $500K in home equity to dip into in case of emergency.

Do you have two incomes? It might make sense to fill up retirement funds before 529s.

About 13% of my after take home goes into savings. That’s not my emergency fund-just general savings that gets tapped for major expenses (mainly house related). I keep a separate vacation savings fund that I throw any random extra money into (tax refund, cash bonus, etc). That’s probably another 3-5%.

In our younger days we tried to save one of our incomes. Later we deferred bonuses. My guess is that we usually saved around 33% of our income. We were pretty aggressive savers and it really paid off for us.

Outside of retirement and college, we save $0.

HHI is $180K;

We save 10% for retirement and $1,200/month total for two kids college.

We have $500K in home equity to dip into in case of emergency.

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Sorry if I wasn't more clear. I mean savings for operating expenses (car repairs, vacations, home repair, landscaping, etc).

Oh, gotcha. I don't do regular savings for that stuff, just deal with it out of cash flow. We have a large EF, but I rarely (never) actually dip into it. Certainly we don't use our EF for vacations, etc.

Not including retirement or college (which are the bulk of our savings), 10%. We have a set weekly amount that gets moved from checking to savings, and a set monthly amount that goes into longer term savings.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not including retirement or college accounts. I'm trying to figure out what percent to save from our take home pay to add to our general savings account.

Pre marriage and kids, I saved 50%. Post-Marriage and kids, we save 25%.

This is about right for me.

Outside of maxing 401k and putting money in 529 plans for 2 teens, we put 25% of take-home per month in savings/taxable investment accounts. I don't necessarily think of all of that as "savings", however, some of it is just for irregular expenses like travel or home improvements.