I don’t write very detailed numbers concerning my personal finances on this blog even though it is a personal finance blog. I always write some estimates and approximations and also things that have happened in the past. That seems a bit weird since I sort of advocated revealing salary information and being transparent about personal finance. I am actually really open with my close friends about my personal finances, but I do feel weird about revealing exact numerical details to the world. I also don’t keep a networth graph here like many other PF bloggers because I feel that is akin to keeping score with money. The hubby also doesn’t like to give out too much information. Anyway, today I decided to satisfy some personal finance voyeurs by posting our savings and expenses in terms of their percentages of our gross income. I took most of the numbers from our current paychecks, and some numbers are averages of bigger expenses.
Taxes
Payroll taxes: 20.16% - This includes Federal and California State Income taxes, Social Security and Medicare Taxes, and the CA SDI Tax. The total may seem a bit low because the income taxes are only taxed off our income after our fairly significant 401k deduction. The income taxes are also tiered, so only a portion of our money is taxed at the highest brackets. Though I am pretty sure we may owe some more taxes this year because I exercised some incentive stock options at the beginning of the year and we may trigger the AMT.
Living Expenses:
Rent: 12.26% - We have been living here for less than a year, and when our lease is up in July the rent might go up, but we don’t think it would be too egregious because our landlord is not some huge corporation and we’re taking care of his apartment. We really do enjoy living here.
Car Insurance :1.71% - The hubby just recently got a rate reduction for being a good driver. It took about three phone calls to the insurance company but those phone calls saved us $400 per 6 months term so I am pretty happy about that.
Car maintenance : 1.08% - This is an monthly average of the amount of money we spent on maintaining our cars in the past 9 months or so. We actually spend big chunks of money at once. For example, my last car maintenance was a bit over $1000, but this happens rarely so I averaged it out.
Utilities: 1.1% - The main utilities we pay include cable internet, the hubby’s cellphone, and electricity.
Food: 4.69% - I feel that we spend quite a bit on food every month, but actually sometimes eating out is cheaper than cooking. For example, making a couple sandwiches at home actually costs a lot because deli meats and bread are getting expensive. A lot of the times the hubby and I just buy one dish and split it because restaurants give too much food anyway. There is a really good Thai place nearby so one time we just bought one curry dish for $10 and then cooked rice at home and stuffed ourselves.
Gas: 2.52% - We have been doing good at saving gas lately by driving slower.
Entertainment: 1.1% - As it was laid out in The Baglady Budget, we have a 2% ceiling on entertainment, but actually we never spend that much. On average we have spent about 1.1% per month, and that’s why the hubby is running a surplus that he wants to use on a computer in a few months.
Donations: around 6.5 to 8% - We upped our donations a bit this year and we’re donating more than before. The percentage seems a bit small when it is based off our gross income. In light of the recent disasters in Burma and China we also added a few special donations this and last month.
Other: 0.7% - This category includes things like gifts. It seems that there is always a birthday or wedding around the corner. The hubby has a gift account for such expenses.
Total expenses inventory: ~31.61% of gross income
Savings:
401k: 17% - We both contribute 17% of our paychecks into our company 401k plans. The hubby was pleasantly surprised when he bumped his contributions this year from 10% and 17% and barely noticed a dip in his take home pay. The reason is that his taxes were reduced accordingly.
529 plan: 0.72% - I have a 529 plan open with Fidelity for our future child(ren). Right now we are putting very little into it every month.
The rest: 31.21% - The rest of the savings currently is going into money market funds in our Vanguard joint account. I also funded our Roth IRAs for last year with our savings. I’m not sure if we’ll qualify for Roth IRA again this year since the hubby may be getting a raise soon, but we’ll see. This money is also our emergency fund and house down payment savings. It is growing quite a bit and I may buy some more mutual funds with it once it gets past 25% of our entire portfolio.
Total savings: ~48.2% of gross income
I hope we can still save this much when we have kids, but I think we can afford to spend 15% of our income on a kid and still manage to save a good amount for the future. It is also good that we are able to essentially live on one income because this means we don’t have to worry if one of us loses employment. Anyway, it was fun to lay this out so I could see the flow of my money clearly, and I hope someone’s curiosity has been satisfied.
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13 comments ↓
I have this on my blog as a dollar amount but I think breaking it up into percentages is valuable. I’m going to do the same!
Wow. This is a real eye-opener. People cry about gas prices, but look at the percentage of your budget it represents. Granted, other items go up (petroleum is the blood of our economy), but you show us that it is possible to save and come out ahead despite the doom and gloom everyone is talking about.
Having fuel efficient cars and a short commute definitely helps. The hubby drives more than me but lately he has been slowing down (from 80mph to 50 to 60mph) and he said he cut down his gas usage by almost 1/2!
I recently did a similar exercise, but came up with 34% taxes, which seems really high. I wonder if I’m over withholding. I’m only able to contribute 8% currently (and 2% to tax free HSA). I have experimented with bumping it up, but it definitely affects my paycheck, and thus, my savings goals
Anyway, thank you for sharing!
Yeah 34% taxes seems a bit high. If you usually get a tax return every year you are probably withholding too much. I don’t know though, maybe you just make a lot of money! We consider our 401k a part of our savings so even though our take home check is a lot smaller than our supposed gross income we know we already saved a good amount. We will be taxed on it in the future but considering that we spend a lot less than we earn we will probably withdraw less than what we earn and be in a lower tax bracket. I think if we didn’t contribute anything to our 401k our combined taxes would be around 25 to 28% of our gross income.
I think i miscalculated. I don’t make enough to be taxed at 34%, even with the high state taxes in CA! A new calculation gives me a more reasonable 25% for taxes.
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Wow! Congrats!! Those are wonderful percentages. I admire your diligence in minimizing expenses (without giving up a lot) and maximizing your savings and investments.
Well done. Great idea on the percentages, too. I agree with you that it seems weird that some PF bloggers put up their dollar figures; it’s exactly like keeping score.
Which isn’t bad, it just feels weird. Like I shouldn’t know what other people have.
You and “hubby” are to be congratulated for being able to save so much per month. It is very doubtful, especially in the City, that many folks are able to do the same. If so, our economy wouldn’t be in such a mess. Kudos!
Well, we do live in a pretty expensive part of the country, but we are fortunate to have pretty good incomes, too. So 12% for us may be a lot more for other people. So in a way it’s sort of unfair. Then again, I could say that with more money some people would be more tempted to spend it all, so we’re doing good in that we’re not tempted to spend so much when we have a lot.
Those are some great numbers and percentages. Looks like you have it totally under control. I have to get mine
to be a little more detailed like yours.
That’s pretty good. We have been able to save nearly 38% of our income this year.
6.66% - Insurance/Health care
12.53% - Tax/SS
43.13% - Living expences
37.68% - savings
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100.00%
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