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Ask HN: Hacker Finances? / How much do you save each month?

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Re: Ask HN: Hacker Finances? / How much do you save each month?

#41
Very few people in the high salary range have their shit figured out. Your story is all too common. Just asking for advice puts you ahead of most people.

One common hack is called the "debt snowball"; it's advocated by Dave Ramsey. The idea is, keep making payments on all of your debts, but channel any extra money you can into one of your smaller debts. Once it's gone, you get a psychological boost, and you can redirect everything that was paying for that debt into another one. So the next debt gets paid down even faster, and the one after that, even faster.

Re: Ask HN: Hacker Finances? / How much do you save each month?

#43
post #8

Generally 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…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Hacker Finances? / How much do you save each month?

#44
post #38

My 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 st…

what the what, $1,000 per month for a single room? My rent and utilities combined is only just above that, I'm in the centre of my town with 2 bedrooms... where on earth do you live?

Re: Ask HN: Hacker Finances? / How much do you save each month?

#45

Very few people in the high salary range have their shit figured out. Your story is all too common. Just asking for advice puts you ahead of most people. One common hack is called the "debt snowball"; it's advocated by Dave Ramsey. The idea is, keep making payments on all of your debts, but channel any extra money you can into one of your smaller debts. Once it's gone, you get a psychological boost, and you can redir…

That is a very costly hack. You should pay off the loans with highest effective interest rates, period.

Re: Ask HN: Hacker Finances? / How much do you save each month?

#46
My wife and I are in school still, have a newborn, and only I work part time.

Rent is 20%, utilities/cell phone 5%, food is 10%, entertainment is 5%, charitable donations 10%, clothes/shopping is < 5%, tuition and health insurance average to 15%, and we save the last 25% each month.

Re: Ask HN: Hacker Finances? / How much do you save each month?

#47
post #27

Any money put into savings beyond petty cash for emergency situations is money lost if you have debts. The interest on your credit card debt is going to be at least an order of magnitude greater than any interest you're going to get on savings or investments. Pay off your debt first, save later. The real answer is that you need to break down what is in that 45% because that's where "non-essentials" are going to be.

Well, there's debt and there's debt. Right now my wife and I have three major debts: mortgage (4%), student loans (4.5%), HELOC (1.75%) -- and those rates are all effectively lower because the interest is tax deductable. When you're talking those kinds of interest rates, I don't think it's unreasonable at all to put money into retirement accounts (especially if those too are tax advantaged and/or if your employer mat…

Actually paying down the mortgage would be sensible. It is a guaranteed return risk-free investment. Mortgage rates are expensive when compared to comparative near risk-free investment; Treasure notes, CD, money market are in sub-1% range. Comparing mortgage paydown (risk-free) to stock (higher risk) are not a fair comparison.

Re: Ask HN: Hacker Finances? / How much do you save each month?

#48

I 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?

Early retirement = financial independent. You can do things you like in your own pace.

Re: Ask HN: Hacker Finances? / How much do you save each month?

#49
Most of the numbers are going to depend on your job, your location, your lifestyle, your preferences, etc. Live in the suburbs and you'll probably spend a lot on transport, but less on housing. Live in the city and you'll save on transport, but spend more on groceries and housing. If you don't like your local schools, you may be faced with a choice of paying private school tuition, or paying a premium for a house in a nice school district. It's all variable! But I did want to highlight one thing:

You say you're spending "10% - loans (school loans, Credit cards etc)" and "3-6% into savings".

That's almost certainly a bad idea. And if you're actually carrying a credit card balance month to month, it's an INCREDIBLY BAD IDEA STOP DOING THAT NOW!

Explanation: When you think about it, it's pretty obvious that there's very little difference between paying a dollar on loan at X% interest rate, and saving a dollar at X% interest rate[1]. And I'm pretty damn certain that your student loans (and ESPECIALLY any credit card debt you have) are charging an interest rate well above whatever you're getting on your savings.

Or to put it another way, does it make sense to owe $1,000 on a credit card at 15%, and have $2,000 in the bank earning 5%? NO! Because at the end of the month, you'll have to pay $12.50 in interest on the credit card, but you'll only earn $8.33 on the savings; a net loss of $4.17. If you use half your savings to pay off the credit card, you're actually $8.33 better off every month.

So do yourself a favor, and pay off the debt as soon as you can. And ESPECIALLY the credit card debt! Compounding interest is not your friend here. Debt repayment is almost always the best way of saving.

Anyhow, to address your broader point: No, nobody is really saving enough. Everyone is going around feeling guilty because they think they're uniquely screwing up, but actually is very common. That's not an excuse to not be smarter than everyone else though. :)

If you look around, you can find a LOT of things which seem like you need them that really aren't. You don't have to do ALL of these, but... What matters to you? Percentages mask the bigger picture. Rent is pretty location dependent, but you can almost always cut back heavily on cell phone ($10/month prepaid. Mobile internet access is NOT as important as you think it is.), food (rice and beans are CHEAP and healthy), and a dozen other areas. Do you buy new clothes for non-work occasions? You don't need to. However many rooms you have in your house, you could get by with fewer. And smaller. Do your kids share a bedroom? If not, why not? It won't do them the slightest harm. And so on. The tendency is to look around and say "Bob has a big house, and Jane drinks two Starbucks a day, and Joe smokes, and Tim won't shut up about his Hawaiian holiday....how can THOSE people have all those nice things, and I can't?" But not everyone can have ALL those nice things. Prioritise. Pick a big house OR a foreign vacation every year. What matters to you?

([1]: Okay, sorta. Debt is often illiquid. If your car breaks down, you can tap your savings to get it fixed. You probably can't run your student loan back up to get your car fixed. Keep SOME liquid assets around (even if it's just a line of credit). On the other hand, there's always a risk that you might lose your savings - low if you're talking about FDIC insured accounts, but not zero. The risk that you might "lose" the student loan debt is probably a lot lower. Also, some debt - mostly mortgage debt - has a prepayment penalty, so keep that in mind too.)

Re: Ask HN: Hacker Finances? / How much do you save each month?

#50
post #45

Very few people in the high salary range have their shit figured out. Your story is all too common. Just asking for advice puts you ahead of most people. One common hack is called the "debt snowball"; it's advocated by Dave Ramsey. The idea is, keep making payments on all of your debts, but channel any extra money you can into one of your smaller debts. Once it's gone, you get a psychological boost, and you can redir…

That is a very costly hack. You should pay off the loans with highest effective interest rates, period.

There are really two hacks here.

The first is a human psychology hack -- paying off small loans so you can feel the results and be motivated to keep at it. You're right, it is costly to ignore a higher-interest loan while aggressively paying off a lower interest loan... but it's much more costly to lose your motivation and not pay off any of the loans. (For someone with the discipline and motivation to pay them off without this hack, I agree, pay off the highest interest rate first.)

The second hack is the "snowball" idea -- once loan A is paid off, use the cash flow to pay off loan B, and then use the cash flow from A and B to pay off loan C. This works no matter which loan you pay off first. As a followup, once most or all of the debts are paid off, I recommend using some of the freed-up cash flow to increase savings rate.

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