Those of you with a decent savings

Chiflata2003 wrote: what percentage of your check do you put in the savings? Or how much do you think is good to put in there? I'm wanting to finally start a savings but dont know how much is a good amount to put in there.

~Roo'sMama~ replied: We just started a savings account when we got our stimulus check and put the whole thing in there, and we've been transfering $25 a month to it from Dh's check. Not a lot I know, but it's all we can afford right now and it's better than nothing!

We had to take $500 out of it for van repairs almost right away though - that was a big bummer.

My3LilMonkeys replied: We try to do $50 a week. I don't have it set up for automatic so some weeks when things are tight it doesn't make it, but most weeks it does. Also, for me at least, I find the larger my savings balance is, the less I want to touch it - I try to work unexpected expenses into my 'regular' budget whenever I can and leave the savings alone.

Chiflata2003 replied:
That is what I am wanting to do myself. Learn how to budget to where we can still put money in savings and still have money for unexpected expenses.

DVFlyer replied: Add up your monthly bills. Include everything from rent/ mortgage to gas and food.

Subtract that from your income to get what you *should* be saving every month.

Take half that number and begin putting that into a separate savings account.... automatically preferred.

In 6 months, if nothing has changed (i.e. no job loss, rent increases etc) take another half and add that to the amount currently being saved.

Keep things liquid (savings account only, no CD's etc) for the first few months while you figure this out.

This should get you on the right track.

Chiflata2003 replied: Thanks so much, that will really help!

PrairieMom replied: We started doing Dave Ramsey's plan back in Jan and have gone from 5000 in debt to being 1/2 to having 3-6 months of living expenses saved up. It has been a really life changing thing for us.
He recommends that you save $1000 in an emergency fund, then use all extra $ to get out of debt (except mortgage) Then start saving everything you can until you have 3-6 months living expenses saved up. Then pay off your house, save for retirement and college and what not.

Hillbilly Housewife replied: We figured out pretty quickly the amount of cash we had lying around and were wasting when we started putting, penny fr penny, the same amount we were spending on useless stuff and "other" every month, like eating out, beer money etc... in our savings account. We realized that we were blowing a lot of $ every month... and so now we put about 1/5 of what we get as income every month in savings.

we're pretty bad about spending money over nothing though... so... we actually still put, dollar for dollar, money in our savings when we spend stuff frivolously.

I should mention - we have one joint chequing account, one joint savings account, and we now each have our own separate accounts as well. We make about the same amount of money, dh and I, so it's pretty evenly split down the middle as far as who makes what and saves what / spends what etc...

HuskerMom replied: We put about $200 in our emergency fund every month, and we also invest $200 every month. Once we get our emergency fund up to $1000 then the 200 we were putting in there we'll start investing instead.

moped replied: Depends on the month here, but I think DH puts away about 500-1000 a month, but with me on mat leave it isn't that much right now.

DVFlyer replied: One note (IMO, of course) about investing.

Do not invest in anything until you have all of your credit card bills etc paid off. Without getting into the details of earning more interest than paying in loans v.s. the tax consequences etc, it's smarter to get out of debt before you invest.

"Pay yourself first" is a mantra of many of the personal finance people. The idea is that you pay your mortgage or rent, right? You pay your utility bill, right? Why don't you pay yourself?

With co-workers I've tried to help, I've gone so far as to print up a "Pay Yourself" bill. Every month, I'd put the bill in their paycheck. They would have to write a check to themselves and deposit it into a savings account. It was never a lot ($20?) but once they got used to the $20, we could increase it.

Get a notebook and track where EVERY penny goes..... EVERY penny. You will be surprised.

PrairieMom replied:
Thats the truth. We spend sick amounts of $ on eating out and things like that. It really adds up. We were spending $150 a week on groceries, and eating out $300 a month, thats 2 whole weeks worth of grocery $ in just a few days! I don't even want to talk about the $ we wasted by throwing stuff out either.