I put into savings whatever I have left at the end of the month. I don't worry about it too much.
Tarsnap is my retirement savings plan.
Ask HN: Hacker Finances? / How much do you save each month?
31–40 of 67 posts
Re: Ask HN: Hacker Finances? / How much do you save each month?
#3232 years old, married, one child (another on the way), living in the Bay Area renting a house.
My salary until May of this year was $120k. My wife is staying at home with our son so we're a single income family.
Monthly expenses..
Rent: $1750, student loans: $225, credit card: ≈$2,000 (paid off in full each month)
Savings...
We have about $50k in 401k, $50k in a brokerage account, $20k in Lending Club and some mid term savings in the bank around $5-10k.
I was having 15% post tax taken out for ESPP and 14% pre tax for 401k.
The only loans we have are about $17k for my wife's schooling. We started paying cash for the last 2 years of it.
We are pretty frugal in most areas which aren't important to us (don't go out to eat much) but it enables us to be generous in areas we are passionate about (paid $5k for a kid in Ghana to have heart surgery and gave my sister $12k as a gift since they're moving to do medical work in Africa). Our frugality also enabled me to quit my job and bootstrap a startup (going on 6 months at this point).
It's interesting because it's normal (I think) to look at others and feel poor. The truth is that no one knows what a person's finances looks like. The guy driving a Mercedes and wearing nice clothes may or may not be doing so well.
I wish people were more open about this stuff.
Re: Ask HN: Hacker Finances? / How much do you save each month?
#33One hack that I definitely find useful for saving money is to create different savings accounts for different purposes and putting a set amount in each on each month. For instance, I have a vacation savings account that I put $300 into every month; it becomes a repository of of cash I can use when I travel, and I can spend it in big bursts when I do. If that $300 month just sat there in my ordinary savings account, I'd probably find something else to spend it on.
Re: Ask HN: Hacker Finances? / How much do you save each month?
#34Savings are huge and I think you should be putting more away each month. Liquidity is underrated.
Do this, stash 5% more of your money in your savings every month and try to live off the rest, keep doing that till you repeatedly have to go into your savings to finish out the month and you'll know how much you can absolutely not do without.
Also try not to use Credit cards. I haven't had one for years and I only spent what I had, now that I have one and pay the balance off each month (trying to rebuild my credit) I find that I spend about 20% more each month than I have to simply because I know I can cover it.
Hope it this helps.
Re: Ask HN: Hacker Finances? / How much do you save each month?
#35I don't get this thing called early retirement. You only have one life, stop worrying and start living! Let me ask you this, if you do save enough and can retire at 35, what would you do then?
I quit my job ~4 months ago (because I hated it, stupid big bank)...trust me, it's freaking awesome. I'll go back to work soonish, but not for lack of things to do.
Even though I love to code/work, your idea to "stop worrying and start living" and "why retire at 35" are a juxtaposition born of naivety (no offense)
Re: Ask HN: Hacker Finances? / How much do you save each month?
#36Generally I've told my kids that if they are carrying a credit card balance across months they living beyond their means. That being said, we've talking about finances and while my wife was much better at these things than I was in school, if you have a couple of thousand dollars in your 'emergency cash' fund (that is so you don't suddenly need to carry a credit card balance) and you don't carry said balances except…
Good point about taking in lunch. When I worked in an office, I always did it, day in, day out. I usually made a bit extra for dinner the night before and made a lunch out of that.
Not only is it frugal, it's usually better for you. Especially if you drink water for lunch instead of hitting up the vending machine.
The other big one is takeaway coffee ala Starbucks or similar. Yes, it's nice, but the work-supplied coffee is a lot more economical.
Friends used to snicker at me until we had a little session on the whiteboard and calculated how much their bought lunches and coffees cost per year. Just $10 a day works out to about $3000 a year, and most people spend more than that. After that I saw a lot more lunchboxes for a while.
Re: Ask HN: Hacker Finances? / How much do you save each month?
#37Income is ~50k a year running my own business. 28% Rent / Utilities 7% Groceries 5% coffeeshops and restaurants 2% random socializing(theaters etc..) 10% misc. Save the rest of it.
Assuming you live in a high-tax country, you get some pretty nice tax deductions as a business owner though, right?
Re: Ask HN: Hacker Finances? / How much do you save each month?
#38My monthly breakdown:
- $1000 renting a room in my parents' house (utilities and wi-fi included!)
- $50-100 my contribution to groceries and household purchases
- $50-100 transportation
- $10 cell phone (it's prepaid and I'm a recluse who prefers to communicate online)
- $100-200 miscellaneous discretionary stuff that I don't really track (e.g. restaurant meal, a new pair of shoes, a sale on Steam, yet another USB stick, etc.)
At this rate I socked away about $30k annually into my "I have no idea what to do with this but maybe someday I'll figure it out" fund. Another half that amount in pre-tax retirement savings. So far I've only watched the balance slowly shrink in my brokerage accounts.
I assure you that I do NOT have my shit together, though. You can probably imagine the quality of life I have when discretionary spending is less than 5% of budget.
Considering that you have kids and a house to take care of, I can't even begin to imagine how much of a difference that 45% "other expenses" would make. But you're really going to have to offer more details before anyone here can make suggestions on how to possibly trim some fat there.
Re: Ask HN: Hacker Finances? / How much do you save each month?
#39I don't get this thing called early retirement. You only have one life, stop worrying and start living! Let me ask you this, if you do save enough and can retire at 35, what would you do then?
I personally dont save any money 'directly' for retirement. But I'd expect people are saving living expenses for when they can not work anymore.
Edit: Indirectly is possibly my long term investments. To answer your question about what to do after retiring at 35? I'd probably do the same thing I do now :) thats why I don't save for retirement.
Re: Ask HN: Hacker Finances? / How much do you save each month?
#40Housing cost is one of the most expensive expenses. Living several rungs down in housing than you can afford generates lots of saving. In your case, mortgage is already at 35%; tax, insurance, and maintenance are probably another 10% to 15%. That's a big chunk of your expenses.
45% on others look a lot. Can you break it up? Hope you don't have expensive cellphone plans or cable or etc.
Also supporting 3 other people with one income can be tight. Children are expensive to raise. See if your SO can work, even parttime. That would help out a lot.