How much do you save from your salary after taxes, food, and rent expenses?
Are you curious about how much money people are able to save from their salaries, taking into account various living expenses and factors like location and type of work?
#savingmoney #salaryexpenses #financialplanning
Remote Work Perspective:
Living Expenses
– Food
– Rent
Income Saving Strategy
– Saving all income except $150
– Adequacy of savings for location
Share your thoughts and tips on saving money from your salary!
If you follow popular money advice, then here are the priorities:
1. Pay off debt
2. Save a 6-month emergency fund
3. Max out 401K retirement
4. Invest in stable funds.
Once your debt is paid off and you have adequate fund, then focus on 3 and 4, and live within your means. You can accomplish them with software engineer salary.
$213k this year, i live with my parents and have 3 tech jobs
my partner is in school so I cover everything except grocery bills. I save in total around 600-800 a month if there are no big purchases made during the month.
My salary is $190k and my rent for a luxury 2 bedroom apartment is $1600 but I split it between my girlfriend. Car is paid off, car insurance is $140, phone is $55, groceries is about $400-500 just for me (gf cooks and does the grocery shopping), utilities including internet $180 before splitting. Only subscription I got is GPT 4 and phone insurance so add another $33. Zero debt and no state income tax.
Idk how much I save, I don’t budget. I get $5340 into my bank every 2 weeks after benefits and 401k. I have outrageously expensive hobbies and love to travel 10~ times a year though. I put a couple thousand a month every month into my brokerage accounts too.
Sadly 1K a month only
Not enough. I’m single income in a pretty expensive area and I make $105K. Rent and insurance are pretty outrageous here. I only have 5% going to 401K and $150/month going to stock purchase. I also periodically drop some funds into my brokerage, but not enough (like $500 every couple of months). I am going to put half my bonus in from now on, which will bump that up a little, but it’s still a pretty bad scene considering that I’m old.
Right now, about 95%
But I’ve been living with my parents for the first 1.5 years out of college
Once I move out I’m expecting to save around 30-40% of my base salary
I hope you realize a lot of the replies you’re getting here are people just straight up lying.
Bro saying he’s putting away $6100/mo on a 125k pre-tax salary? Never seen a bigger joke in my life.
20% of my and my wife’s combined paychecks goes to taxes
30% is in deductions (401k, insurance, ESPP, HSA)
23% of gross less taxes is our rent.
16% of gross less taxes is automatically moved to our savings account every month.
So only that 16% goes to savings (so for every $1k earned, $200 goes to Uncle Sam, $300 is directly deducted from our paychecks, $180 goes to rent, $130 goes to savings), but HSA, 401k, and ESPP are all forms of savings as well
A bunch of people on in the comments seem to be trying to live off of as little as possible and save as much of their money as they can, so I’ll offer a different perspective. I’m married and our combined income for this year will be just under 400k (mostly from my salary, my wife is a yoga instructor). We are probably going to save about 130k this year. We live in NYC and rent a one bedroom. We are trying to start a family, and assuming nothing goes wrong with conceiving, we are going to have to move into a two bedroom, which is likely going to add 25-35k a year to our rent, because we don’t want to move out of the city just yet. And then the baby is probably going to add another 30k a year to keep it fed /clothed/happy and pay for child care. So that 130k/year is about to fall off a cliff and become 60-70k. But that’s still a 15% savings rate, which isn’t amazing but it’s acceptable. Even if the baby ends up costing a little more, and the we find ourselves saving less than 60k for a couple years, I’m still not remotely worried about being able to retire comfortably.
I don’t really buy into the FIRE mindset. I understand why people find it appealing, so I’m not saying those people are wrong, but it’s not for me. Working doesn’t bother me, and I like being able to spend money each week without worrying about how much that’s pushing back my retirement. I like that we can go out to eat whenever we want, take trips to see our families, and that we live in a nice apartment in a neighborhood that we enjoy.
I had saved a bunch. Then I got my own apartment and my gf got sick again, she’s stuck in a different state until docs clear her to move + she finished clinical trial. Had to give up her job due to her health and just finally got a new one
So I’ve been helping her out and I’m paycheck to paycheck with about $100 to my name lmao. Making $100k in MA
Working for SF based company remote (still in CA), bought home in 2021. Current strategy is max out 401k, Roth IRA, and live off salary without RSUs (diversify during trading windows). Outside those, I have automated savings totalling about 1.3k/mo. I don’t budget strictly but I’ll just move excess money from my checking to savings/investments if it’s over my usual baseline
i save somewhere between 90-95% of my monthly take home income. i make 3200 every 2 weeks, so roughly 6500 a month and i limit myself to $500 for spending per month
75%
These percentages are all based on my gross income, I don’t take into account tax and COL when figuring out how much to save. Savings come first, and I can adjust my life around that with the leftover.
* 6% into my 401k (I don’t usually max this out, I put in enough to take full advantage of my employer’s match)
* Max out my IRA
* 25% goes into non-retirement savings (mutual funds)
* I keep myself artificially poor, so if my bank account ever gets too high I throw extra money into either more mutual funds, or I grow my emergency fund
The first 2 bullet points are non-negotiable, if I can’t afford those that means I’m living beyond my means. The 3rd can go up/down depending on my life situation, but if it ever creeped below 10% I’d proabably also consider myself living beyond my means.
I have an emergency fund currently sitting at ~8 months living expenses, I just have trouble convincing myself to add money to it since it’s inherently conservative so doesn’t have near the long-term returns as mutual funds do. I understand the need for it tho since I saw my mutual funds crash at the start of the pandemic.
60%
$10000
MCOL, dual income household, save roughly 30% I think. Kids are expensive.
– x
On a good month 0
I’m hopefully just in the phase of paying off some of my biggest debts. I’m at 30 and I feel like this system is rigged. I make so much yet I’m still just in debt.
To be fair my wife was in school for the last 6 years and only has been working for a year. I just was hoping it would be quicker. And those student loans take a huge hit to her wage
Currently, $2k a month to savings and 10% into my 401k. Make about $119k in a HCOL area.
Should save more and readjust budget (esp since rent is going up and I’m hoping to find a new role), but I’m also pretty happy that I’ve been investing in myself and picking up hobbies now that I’m in a better living situation than what I grew up in.
100% Still living with my parents saving for a home ._. Ideally though I’d just want to max my Roth IRA which is $7,000 this year.
29M Living with parents again — saving about $4500 a month.
NW ~ $200k
Trying to buy a house closer to cash due to interest rates
$2200ish a month. I have optimized my remainder income pretty well
Not counting 401k, about 1k a month, give or take. 1k is about 20% of my take home. I put 8% into a 401k.
Rent and utilities are very expensive here and my salary isn’t crazy high. Less than 6 figures.
I could probably save more if I wasn’t into going to punk shows and playing magic the gathering. But life without fun is boring.
About $5-5.5k a month, making $175k in VHCOL
Saving rate can indeed depend on a lot of factors, and I wish money literacy was taught in school, because some stuff I only learned about years after starting to work:
– Debt: pay off high interest debts like credit card asap, from highest APR to lowest. High APR debt absolutely destroys your ability to save.
– Recurring payments: minimize them when possible (e.g. rent w/ roommates early in your career, take the bus vs car payments, cancel subscriptions that you got in on 30-day trial and forgot about). Small habits can also become deceptively expensive (e.g. starbucks, alcohol/cigarettes, daily soft/energy drinks)
– Don’t just save, invest: you only need a month’s worth of cash in checkings, the rest can fill a 6 month emergency fund in a HYSA or money market for easy liquidity while earning 5% APY, then any spillover after that can go into whatever investment strategy you’re comfortable with. “VOO and chill” is a popular one these days and it means buying VOO stock units (that’s a S&P 500 ETF, aka a basket of the 500 biggest companies in the US). Real estate is another popular investment vehicle, and a good choice if you’re starting a family and/or lack discipline to dollar cost average every month.
– You can only save so much: after some point, your money growth is going to depend largely on factors other than being thrifty. Advancing your career is the obvious thing, and younguns need to remember “it’s a marathon, not a sprint” (and not a walk in the park either!), aka you don’t want to bet the farm on some founding engineer role at a startup that ends up not working out, and you don’t want to stagnate either; aim for slow and steady growth instead. Couple this with investing long term and eventually you’re going to be looking at a snowball effect on your net worth, to the point you might not even *need* to save anymore.
100% of RSUs and bonus go to savings, and I max out my 401k match. The rest? idk, probably a X*10k/yr
no
my lady and i salary about 10-20% of our income and save the rest
Absolutely nothing, at most £10-20, inflation on food and housing on top of min wage has me living pay to pay.
Max out 401k to federal limit.
Max out HSA(if available) to federal limit.
Thats only ~30k for 1 person working for a family – but eliminates paying taxes on 30k.
Next you can do an IRA if you’re income is low enough(161k single, 240 married).
Then funds for goals like a new car or home improvement.
How much you can save is going to depend on costs of your housing, kids, food, taxes, if you’re remote or not.
Your food, transport, hobbies, rent, taxes ALL cost only $150?
I save $1000
1000 goes into saving account
About 584 goes into IRA
And I fluctuate between 5% – 15% for 401k depending on how many days in the month I can save.
Everything else goes to bills and food.
I save roughly about 1k living in Germany
Maybe 1-1.5k. But eat out 2-3 times a week with my gf or friends and also travel a lot during weekends. Im from EU, so I don’t worry so much about my retirement.
I could safe around 2.5k-3k if I would live super boring life. It might sound very cringe, but for me life is about enjoying process. There is no end goal in my opinion, so I feel very content investing in experiences.