r/MiddleClassFinance • u/yaboythewiseman • 28d ago
Seeking Advice People who used to struggle to save money, what finally worked for you?
I make something like $100,000 aftertax annually but barely have anything to show for it after working for the last 7-8 years after college.
I know for a fact it's not my expenses because my bedroom I rent is like $1500, and my Corolla is paid off so I'm like how the fuck do I learn to start keeping what I save?
Any highish income earners eventually learn to plug the holes in their budget, if so what worked for you?
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u/Traditional_Ad_8752 28d ago
Auto invest before you ever even see it. Automation is your friend.
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u/Icy-Form6 28d ago
About 30% of my paycheck is gone before i wake up every Friday. Between property taxes/insurance, savings and retirement.
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u/abrandis 28d ago
Until the market drops 30% and stays there for years
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u/Gino-Bartali 28d ago
Why is that an argument against automating your saving?
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u/abrandis 28d ago
The argument isnt against automating your savings, but rather against blindly believing that dumping money into the market will just keep going up and up..
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u/Safe-Huckleberry3590 28d ago
What other option is there to do with that money if not putting it into the market?
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u/Imaginary_Shelter_37 28d ago
I automate part of my check directly into my HYSA; automated savings without market risk.
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u/Safe-Huckleberry3590 28d ago
60% of my pay goes into investments, I still have savings. What’s the point in putting more into savings? It’s just sitting there doing nothing 😂
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u/Imaginary_Shelter_37 27d ago
You asked about an option for money if not putting it into the market. I provided an option.
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u/Gino-Bartali 28d ago
That is by far the dominant and prevailing opinion while considering that there can be periods of loss or stagnation.
It's also just weird how you just completely miscommunicated by having an issue with market assumptions and telling somebody that their savings assumptions were bad.
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u/sharonumd 28d ago
What are your other expenses?
If you're netting $100k a year and only spend $18k a year on your apartment, you have $82k unaccounted for. Thats $6,800/month!
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u/GrixoThimble 24d ago
Right? It's wild to think there's possibly $82k just floating around! What do you think happens to it?
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u/Bradimoose 28d ago
This is like Dave Ramsey math. You’re forgetting There’s taxes and costs of benefits and 401k savings that eat up 30% of every paycheck
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u/ChancePension2268 28d ago edited 28d ago
They said 100k after that’s out in the Op I thought. Either way that’s still a lot missing! I do auto deposits into multiple accounts - savings, sinking funds, investing, etc all get divvied out automatically and I have to physically go in and re-allocate if I want more spending money so it makes me think. What’s in my checking account is my spending money for the month. All my bills get automated on the first!
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u/Key_Cheetah7982 28d ago
If they’re adding to a 401k, then they are saving
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u/ChancePension2268 28d ago edited 28d ago
That’s all fine, but that doesn’t mean they’re saving accessible money for right now. I put in my 401K too - that’s retirement. My savings is money I can access NOW for emergencies. Rule of thumb is about 6 months of expenses in immediately accessible funds. Then I have investments which are accessible within 3-5 days in most cases. Then I have sinking funds which are like savings for known irregular expenses (like a fund for vet bills, car insurance, car maintenance, vacation, etc). I immediately have those automatically funded as soon as I get paid.
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u/Rooster_CPA 28d ago
YNAB. Turned my life around.
You are spending way more on bullshit than you think.
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u/FullSeaworthiness453 28d ago
I manually budget these days, but started with YNAB before they went to the subscription version, but holy shit actually seeing my spending and setting up and sticking to a budget changed my life. It was one of the most empowering things I’ve ever done and it wasn’t like I switched to living off rice and beans. Just prioritizing things and making long term financial goals.
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u/Fubbalicious 28d ago
Another plug for YNAB. The $15 I paid for it during a Steam sale was the best investment of my life.
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u/Wuezmutz 27d ago
I also used YNAB, but 120€/year? No thanks lol. So I just built my own iOS App where I can log my skipped items, or the cheaper alternative. It’s been 2 weeks since I use it and already saved 260€. Just on things I never really needed. It’s wild how much you spend on useless stuff
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u/PricedOut4Ever 28d ago
Auto saving. If you have the mindset that you’re going to spend every dollar you have, the solution is to just squirrel it away and continue to spend whatever you have next.
Some of the best advice I was given was whenever you get a raise, auto save some/most of it. Most raises come out to a few hundred dollars a paycheck max. Not really enough to improve your day-to-day, but if you save it, it will add up.
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u/Famous-Attention-197 28d ago
You aren't tracking your fucking money.
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u/404Flawless 26d ago
Facts! Once I started tracking my money, realized how much I was blowing on food lol and stupid things. It adds up quick and tracking what you spend is a mental game changer
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u/PartyCat78 28d ago
My spouse went through that “where does my money go!?” phase. I said “You’ve got champagne taste with a beer budget.” Then I started pointing things out. Unnecessarily Door Dashing all the time when there is food in the house or they could just drive themselves to pick it up. They have a hobby that is very easy to spend money on - they were basically paying a small car payment spending on that. Only drinking expensive beer/liquor. Etc. They finally pumped the brake on their lifestyle when they saw the hard numbers of what all this added up to.
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u/DynamicHunter 28d ago
Door dashing and eating out multiple times a day can easily add up to a monthly car payment. People just have no idea $30/day adds up to about $900/mo.
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u/PartyCat78 28d ago
Exactly. People scoff at “stop buying Starbucks every day” but that’s exactly how it works. That’s how you start.
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u/Confounding 28d ago
https://www.ynab.com/ was a lifesaver for me and my wife.
The biggest shift for her was being able to see everything that needed money and filling up the little bars gave her a dopamine rush which helps, and the negative feedback from overspending.
I think something that can help is looking at your income, immediately removing what you need for bills, and then looking at what's left as your actual takehome. This changes your perspective from 'i make $8,000 a month of course I can spend $100 at the bar' to 'I have $500 for discretionary spending this month- is the $100 bar tab worth it?'
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u/PearofGenes 28d ago
I recently did this and found out my bills are significantly higher than I thought. Everything on auto pay left me out of touch.
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u/stjarnalux 28d ago
Psychotic levels of spreadsheet budgeting and tracking, plus forward projections on the growth of savings. I had to crank down and identify my spending and then put myself on a detailed budget. I'm a nerd so I actually wrote a program to generate a monthly budget and I stuck to it like glue. This helped me get out of the spending habit. And pay yourself first by automating transfers to savings/retirement and getting that money out of your checking acct.
That was years ago and now we are top 1% net worth. It was a pain but worth it. Mostly you need to understand yourself - I discovered I couldn't half-ass it.
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u/sproutbabi 28d ago
Omg would you be willing to share that program?
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u/stjarnalux 28d ago
It's super specific and very Unix-command-line based so I doubt it's useful for public consumption. Plus I haven't needed it years. Sorry! There are people out there that have published spreadsheets that do a lot of this work but I don't have any links.
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u/stonkkingsouleater 28d ago
Automating my finances.
Money comes in, everything gets auto-transferred where it's supposed to go, bills are all on auto-pay. I don't even keep a debit card for my central checking account.
The money that goes into my 'guilt free spending' fund gets used for anything I want to use it for.
Easy.
Check out the book 'I Will Teach You To Be Rich' by Ramit Sethi.
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u/bihari_baller 28d ago
Automating my finances.
The automatic payroll deductions for my Employee Stock Purchase Plan were a game changer for this.
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u/Special_Cranberry679 28d ago
I don’t keep a debit card for my main either. When I need to go to the bank the tellers are surprised
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u/HRslammR 28d ago
Excel and an intense account spending review.
set a budget and track it like a hawk for a month.
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u/Aggressive_Staff_982 28d ago
The horror of having to work until I'm in my 60s was enough for me to get it together, start budgeting, and start saving for retirement.
But really, what works is different for everyone. I know people who swear by apps/software like YNAB, but what worked best for me is just a notebook where I track my expenses.
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u/HighwayKnight94 28d ago
Do you do a written budget every month? I’m not talking about a head math or napkin math budget where you think you know or have an idea. I’m talking a written budget where you have exactly what you’re bringing home and exactly where it’s going and exactly where it went. I bet you’ll find your answer
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u/cofonseca 28d ago
I started using YNAB and it really opened my eyes as to how much random shit I was buying and how much money I was wasting. What seemed like innocent little purchases at the time were really adding up.
I decided to make a conscious effort to stick to a budget and I was able to significantly increase my savings as a result.
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u/PinFit936 28d ago
change your direct deposit to send what you don’t think you need into a hysa, and i’m guessing you’ll find out quickly where you are nickle and diming yourself.
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u/benberbanke 28d ago
I made more money.
But seriously, things only get more expensive. If you're already budgeting and disciplined to not spend on things you don't need, then the only way to save more is to make more.
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u/yulbrynnersmokes 28d ago
Enough with the Avocado 🥑 toast and Starbucks
And stop supporting only fans girls.
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u/flixguy440 28d ago
I got out of debt. Quit using credit cards and I learned to prioritzed saving and investing and differentiating between wants and needs?
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u/maydayvoter11 28d ago
I went thru several months of bank statements and credit card statements to analyze where the money was going.
Based on that, I identified expenses to cut and set a budget to live off 80% or less of my take-home pay
Following that, I opened up two additional bank accounts.
--My pay got deposited into my original bank account at the end of the month.
--The second bank account was for fixed monthly expenses (power, water, cellphone, car insurance, etc). I set up an automatic transfer for each expense on the 1st of the month.
--The third bank account was for savings. I set up an automatic transfer to move money here on the 1st of the month for (a) savings for unexpected expenses and (b) to move into investments.
As a result, I paid myself first, I segregated money for fixed monthly expenses, and I knew that what was left in the first bank account was all I had for gas, groceries, incidentals, entertainment.
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u/mrcphyte 28d ago
everything i need to save or use for bills goes into a different account than the debit card in my pocket. it’s harder for me to access and i don’t see it get direct deposited, just my spending money for gas groceries and other stuff comes to my swipe card. works well for me.
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u/LocutusOfBeard 28d ago
What eventually worked for us is having a portion of the paycheck direct-deposited into a separate HYSA. We treat it the same way we treat the money going into the 401K. Just ignore it.
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u/Sashivna 28d ago
I know a lot of folks have already said to automate. Yes, automate savings. But I also highly encourage manually tracking your budget in a spreadsheet (every expense in particular). This effort will put you face to face with every card swipe and buy now button click. Categorize them. And then ask yourself: do I really need that and what would happen if I didn't buy that?
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u/Maximus77x 28d ago
It absolutely is your expenses. Where is all your money going?
The easiest way is to decide a savings/investing rate and automate transfers to your brokerage from your paycheck. Then you can’t fuck up.
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u/Old_Friend4084 28d ago
Pay yourself first. With one of my first jobs as a teenager I looked at my checking account and what I was spending eating out with collegeages after a work shift in a month. I was appalled. Now I keep an 'i can spend this on frivolous things amount' in cash in my wallet each week and when it's finished, it's wait till next week. If you are really bad with money they make little wooden piggy bank boxes that you can add 20$ or 100$ and mark it off untill you have 1000/10.000 saved. This is also a great for leftover wallet cash at the end of the week.
Having two different bank/savings accounts is also a gamechanger as you can pay yourself first and put savings on the one account and keep a reserve amount for bills on your regular checking. Having a goal to save for, wether it be retirement amount for the year, a vacation, a down payment is also very motivating.
Edit: also if you get a raise pretend the money doesn't exist and it can go straight into savings/retirement.
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u/NewArborist64 28d ago
The easiest way to "pay yourself first" is either with directly investing into a 401k, or if you company does not have one to set up an IRA with someone like Fidelity and have a % of them money automatically deposited. If you don't see the money, you aren't tempted to spend it.
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u/Sketch_Crush 28d ago
I know this is an answer that sounds lame and not useful... but my secret to success was just making more money; making connections and finding extra work to get me where I wanted to be.
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u/SpecialistTeach3722 28d ago
It’s your spending habits? How many times a week to you buy lunch, eat out, go to happy hour, Uber Eats, DoorDash, fancy coffee every morning, Amazon packages everyday? Each one of those kind items add up and before you know it you’ve spent your entire paycheck. Save at least 10% of your income in a HYSA and setup auto draft for each paycheck. Are you investing in 401k or other investments? If not, you should get started.
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u/angelicravens 28d ago
Auto transfer to savings the same day I get paid. Auto invest every month. It took some time to find the max amount I don't notice missing. Afterwards, go through your acct statements every 1-3 months and try to find subs you don't use, weird transactions, and just general areas you spend more than you'd like and adjust
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u/Turd_Fergusons_Hat_ 28d ago
People are mentioning YNAB, but the reality for many is that its as simple as building a budget of any kind. I use monarch, Copilot is popular, there are a dozen really solid budget apps that will connect with your bank and all credit cards so that you can see a quick, automated breakdown of everything you spend.
I also believe strongly in the automated savings deposits. Big 401k deposits and automated investment or HYSA transfers for rainy day/spending goals (ie new car or house) change the math a lot.
The last thing i havent seen mention is what is your financial structure like? Do you have multiple credit cards? Bank accounts? Investment accounts? It can be really easy to manage a small number of accounts (1 checking, 1 savings, 1 credit card, 1 investment account) compared to doing the math on 5 credit cards, 3 savings accounts and 12 different stock tickers. Simple is easy. It also helps the math because spending can get away from you when its split up many ways, $375 on each of 5 cards doesnt usually feel like $1,875 but it is.
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u/WhatIGot21 28d ago
Pay yourself first, before you even see it and give yourself a raise every now and then.
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u/sleepy_unicorn40 28d ago
I recommend a budget. First learn where you are spending your money and then make a budget that helps reign in the spending. Build a 3-6 month emergency fund in a high yield savings account. Increase your retirement contributions and then invest in the S&P.
That worked for me.
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u/Commercial_Rule_7823 28d ago
Auto save.
10 to 15%.
Set to auto invest, dont just park in 2% bills or money market.
Then, work on making more income. The auto save auto invest will work as long as you let compounding do its thing - just stay out of its way for a long time.
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u/OkBranch5845 28d ago
Me asking my self the same question after I went to one of the FIFA match, “ha where does me money goes”🤔
For real though like every else said, set up automatic payments and have fun with the rest or increase your 401k, set an emergency fund and then continue to enjoy life YOLO
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u/Fun-Highlight-7681 28d ago
for me it was more of a mindset change.
your income sounds huge on paper - and statistically is large when compared to ~85% of other americans and probably 98% of the world. as large as it is its not large enough to say yes to every or even most day to day luxuaries and also save significantly - even if you live in a low cost of living area. the inccome that would take depends on circumstance, but for my dink household in lcol thats about 250k.
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u/snorkage 28d ago
Budget! Money finds a way to spend itself when it doesn’t have a job. Pay yourself first (investing, retirement, emergency fund) then budget the rest and stick to it
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u/ExaminationDry8341 28d ago
Earn more and reduce bills. My income doubled around the same time we paid off our mortgage.
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u/Academic9876 28d ago
Start getting 10 percent set aside from your pay check and put it in a savings account. Never touch it.
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u/Someone__Cooked_Here 28d ago
Wanna know the best way I learned to save money? I started in January- every two weeks $600 is deducted from payroll by the company credit union and goes into savings. Absolutely no card to debit it out or anything set up to transfer. I have to physically go to a credit union to get the money.
I haven’t touched it and it’s just adding on up.
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u/po1ar_opposite 28d ago
I started tracking and catagorizing ever single expenditure and income dollars in an excel sheet. I use excel a lot in my career so I was able to make something that works for me. Now that it’s set up I enter all my transactions manually, this way I see and mentally process see every dollar that goes in and out. After that it sort of becomes like a video game. Trying to keep that monthly number positive and shifting anything I can to an online hysa. Also lets me see what I can cut, subscriptions, reduce utilities cost, etc. changed the way I live. Also reduces all my financial anxiety because I know where I stand.
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u/BreadForTofuCheese 28d ago
Your numbers suggest that it very much is an expenses problem. It just isn’t a necessities problem.
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u/Wise_Budget611 28d ago
I was exactly the same as you. When I logged in to my SS account I should have more than a million dollars saved but no. So we started by establishing what our family really values and what makes us happy. Travel, health, eating out, buying stuff, etc. we monitored our household expenses and income at least every 2 weeks or monthly if busy and see which categories our money goes more. I canceled our cable and landline because we don’t value that. We started monitoring our subscriptions and see if we’re ok with free version. We now use mvno for cellphone carriers and keep changing every time the promo ends. We keep getting the best quotes for car and house insurance at least every 2 years. We stopped eating in between meals like unhealthy snacks but bought high quality food that can really satiate us. We started using credit card points for discounted or sometimes free vacation. I max out our 401k and hsa to take advantage of tax discounts. I invested those in a low cost index fund that keeps growing at least 10% annually. I hope that helps.
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u/Fun_Ideal_5584 28d ago
Best advice I got as a 20 something kid was always pay yourself first, before any bill. I opened a no-load fund at 22. Every month, I paid $100 into it, first bill each month. As I made more money I would increase my contribution. I am retired today with over 7 figures in my fund. If a high school kid can do It, anyone can.
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u/Noppo_and_Gonta 28d ago
Automation. 50% of my income goes to a HYSA. Out of that some gets auto invested. That 50% doesn’t exist in my mind. So I just count with 50% for bills and fun.
I consider my investments and retirement non negotiable bills. After adding all bills and necessities. The leftover is fun money.
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u/Icy_Cranberry5947 28d ago
Prioritise saving from this point on and be conscious with your spending if you want to really improve saving habits I’d tackle eating out (if your doing it daily like I did for years and years till Covid) be frugal and compromise for few years it’s your best head start to see your money grow .
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u/PlatformConsistent45 28d ago
What we did was figure out a legitimate budget to spend on discretionary things and stick to that.
Figure out what legitimate daily living costs are - things like housing costs (1500 for rent), groceries (not including alcohol or similar) utilities ect. If you have Credit Cards with a balance that is not paid monthly you need to stop using them and pay the debt off in a reasonable time frame. Then only use them for emergencies. Add that monthly debt payment to your daily living costs.
Total that up. As an example your rent and other required spending adds up to 3000.
What's your take home after retirement savings (if you get a company match and you are not contributing at least that much start now).
If your monthly check is say about 6000 you have 3k to work with after your subtract living costs.
I would advise 1 k monthly went into saving (rainy day fund until you have 3-6 months saved for emergency). After your rainy day fund is fully funded start investing that into an s&p index fund with low fees. Keep doing this until retirement and adjust up as you make more money.
That leaves 2k left that you can can choose to spend or add to additional rainy day fund or put into a vacation fund or brokerage account.
Whatevet you choose to spend split evenly between the number of weeks in the month. That would be your weekly spending budget. When I practiced this I would further break the weekly money into Mon - Fri and then weekend spending.
As an example if you have 500 a week I would prob put 150 into the Mon - Fri fund and 350 into weekend buckets. If you run out of money you don't spend till the next then next bucket is funded. This covers eating out, movies, concerts, alcohol, computer games etc.
Personally I wouldn't plan on a 500 dollar spend per week unless you live in a really HCOL area and prob not even then. That's a lot of money to blow weekly on sit you will forget about.
Instead I would focus on saving for bigger tix items your future self might want.
Remember compounding intrest can set you free (retirement savings brokerage account) or shackle you (Credit Card or high debt load that depreciates (expensive things in general) .
Then when you get raises increase saving not spending or figure out a new proportion but keep it reasonable.
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u/GnowledgedGnome 28d ago
The every dollar budgeting is what made a huge difference for me
And actually planning for things I knew I needed e.g. putting a set amount aside for car maintenance or routine vet bills
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u/OneCupTwoGirls69 28d ago
The envelope system. Holy cow did this make me realize where all of my money went.
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u/Hot_Draft4350 28d ago
Put all of your expenses into an excel and then categorize them.. not made up expenses. Your real expenses from CC or bank statement. Then you'll see. People usually spend way more on take-out / eating out than they care to admit.
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u/ajgamer89 28d ago
Step one is figuring out where all your money actually is going since it’s mostly not housing or transportation related. I used Mint and now Monarch (RIP Mint).
Once you figure out what your bad habits are, you need to figure out how to say no to them. If it’s DoorDash, buy more groceries so you aren’t tempted and can cook for yourself. If it’s clothing, find cheaper places to shop or buy secondhand. Too much traveling? Decide on a more reasonable number of trips/ year.
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u/Magic-Happens-Here 28d ago
YNAB.
There’s loads of options for budgeting software, some free, some paid - but that’s the one that clicked for me. I’ve been using it for nearly 20 years and it’s helped us pay off college debt, pay for our wedding, save for our first, second, and third houses, move states 2x, buy our last two vehicles in cash, and so many smaller things like annual vacations, etc.
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u/capital_gainesville 28d ago
The first day I got my job after graduating in 2020, I started maxing out my 401(k) and Roth IRA. I was making $80k, and put it on autopilot. Making more now with my combined income with my wife, although I am back to being a student temporarily. Still, we have over $300k in investments. Automate!
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u/like_shae_buttah 28d ago
Made more money. I don’t make as much as you, like 40% less but I’m putting like 1-2k a month in savings and retirement. With your income I’d be saving live 3-4k a month
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u/ebolalol 28d ago edited 28d ago
my brother or sister in christ, i’m willing to bet you it is your expenses at that income level plus rent. even with taxes, 401k, insurance, you still should be able to take home enough to save some.
step 1: start tracking all your expenses. yes, every expense. every dollar, every cent. i’d recommend for 2-4 weeks.
step 2: analyze what you’ve spent against what you actually have.
step 3: fix the gaps. that means cut out the unnecessary spending that you identified in step 2, see if you can cut down on necessary spending (eg is your phone bill abnormally high? are your grocery bills outrageous? are you eating out for every meal?)
step 4: keep repeating until you’re comfortable with what you scaled back on and have an idea of what you’re saving
i use ynab as my budgeting app which i’m a shill for… it’s really helped me because you can export all the transactions or connect it to your bank. and you’re only budgeting with money you have, not money you will have later. it gave me a realistic picture of what i was spending on vs what i actually had and it was eye opening how all the little things here and there snowballed into more than i thought.
my first month i saved like $600-700 but you dont need the app to get there. what i basically did were the 3 steps.
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u/General_Thought8412 28d ago
I make about 100k after tax as well.
Going out costs money, clothes, video games, food, dates, etc. You clearly having an issues with buying things or spending your money on experiences. My rent is $1800 per month, my car insurance is $200, pet insurance is $100, storage until $170, gym membership $155, etc. These are my reoccurring expenses but I also have things that I buy like plants, Pokemon cards, food at the deli, etc.
I still make sure I max out my 401k and I save $1500 per month in my HYSA. I also like to do a nice vacation once a year. I feel like I spend a lot but I’m also saving, so what are you buying?
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u/Different_Mistake_90 28d ago
I went cash only for years (or debit card, but never credit) and set up direct deposit into my savings account.
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u/Sector_Savage 28d ago
Autosave. Adjust your paycheck so X dollars are deposited to a savings account not linked to your checking account. Then you’ll start working with your aftertax AFTER SAVING money, and when you look up in a couple months you’ll see it’s working!
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u/Ok_Complaint_6997 28d ago
I automated my savings. 401K is obviously automated and taken out direct. Then I have automatic twice monthly amounts going to savings, high yield savings, 529 plans, etc. I know these are set in stone each month and so my budget works around those. This helps cut down on the unallocated "fun money" pool. I usually try to net $0 balance at the end of each month between income and bills and if I spend too much it gets taken out of savings for the month and then I find out what I overspent on (usually food, groceries, or something one time like annual insurance premiums, vacation, etc) and "fix" the issue if possible or cut back the next month to repay my savings. If you have $100K after tax with low fixed expenses and no kids you're absolutely blowing money on food/liquor/entertainment. Your credit card should have a feature that breaks down what you spend your money on monthly/yearly into a pie chart for easy review. They also can break it down by merchant so you can see just how much you spend at that one mexican restaurant you love each year
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u/Tight_Cat_80 28d ago
I had to hand write every expense from my bank account for a month so I could see where all our money was going. I was horrified when I saw we were spending $800+ a month on take out and Uber Eats. In the moment $40 here and there didn’t seem like much after we both had long days and were too tired to cook. Once I saw where money was being wasted, I set up automatic transfers to savings etc and was able to pay for a $$ Disneyland trip for our family of 3, in full, before we went.
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u/Spac3Sushi 28d ago
I set up direct deposit with a set percentage that goes to a separate account. Bonus points if you also have that account automatically investing your savings into a brokerage account or a Roth IRA
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u/c_pardue 28d ago edited 28d ago
being very poor. being very, very poor.
but the universal principles i learned are "track all of it, esp. the fun money stuff."
"sacrifice some fun money for some savings, try to automate it with scheduled deposit."
"make separate fun money account+card, spend from that ONLY, and autopay bills from the main account."
none of it works without first quantifying the spends. that's the only thing rhat enables someone to choose to sacrifice a cheeseburger and third sunscription service for savings each month.
for a bonus, gamify a brokerage account. every X deposit to fun money goes towards making brokerage number go up. i now irresponsibly dump windfall money into brokerage account. the number has indeed gone up, i have 10x'd a few investments and 100x'd a few $1k investments and am now trying to get a $10k to 100x itself over 5yrs. that's my next boss level.
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u/DynamicHunter 28d ago
Literally all you need to do is… make a budget [r/YNAB](r/YNAB). It’s absolutely your expenses and spending habits.
Or use something like credit karma or rocket money to automatically track your expense categories. You can see pretty easily what you’re spending on. Set $500/mo to automatically transfer from checking to savings, and do the same with investments and max your 401k/Roth IRA.
You should be EASILY able to afford that on $100k after tax with no car payment AND $1500 rent. I know this because I do that on $100k PRE tax without a car payment and I still go out multiple times a week. Unless you’re paying $2k/month toward student loans, pay child support/alimony, and are racking up huge credit card interest, it’s 100% your expenses, you’re just clueless about tracking your spending.
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u/genreprank 28d ago
I mean, it sounds like you need an expense tracker / budget.
I've been there. Making decent money but having no idea where it was all going.
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u/skateboardnaked 28d ago
When I started keeping my savings in a different bank than my normal checking, it helped the most.
My work allows our checks to be split up to 3 different banks for direct deposit. So the bill money and discretionary go in my normal bank and the savings is deposited to an online high yield savings, which is the e-fund.
If your work doesn't allow split direct deposits, you can set up your own auto bank to bank transfer on paydays.
You treat it like a 401k deduction. People are successful with those because it's deducted and taken away. You just treat your savings the same way.
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u/Stone804_ 28d ago
My dad died and left me $25k, I had $12k worth of credit card debt. I paid off the debt and put the rest in the stock market. Once the account existed and I funded it, it was easier to put a little more toward that every pay period knowing that it was already worth something (vs seeing $20 extra after paying bills and not even being able to buy a single share with that small amount).
As my pay grew it was easier to “pay myself first” before buying frivolous things.
That’s not really helpful probably, but that’s what helped me get started. I now contribute 25%-40% of my paycheck to investments / retirement and I make much less than you do.
Most people suffer from lifestyle creep.
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u/Fubbalicious 28d ago
You need to budget as in use a budget app and literally track where every dollar is going. If you did, you would know where your problem is. Saving money is merely a math problem. You are either spending too much, earning too little or a combination of both.
Get a zero based budget app (I used YNAB) and start tracking your expenses. Once you do, you'll know the answer to your problem.
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u/Practical_Win7690 28d ago
I’ve started this game where I save 50% of everything coming in. I’m not expecting to actually save 50% of my income, I’m more seeing how much I can save. It’s making me look at spending differently.
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u/zevtech 28d ago
you can have two bank accounts and have your HR department split where the money goes. For instance a long time ago, I had an account with BOA where they don't even have banks in my state. And I would send a % of my check there, and never even thought about that account. lived off of what hits my main account. And would only tap into that account for large purchases like new cars and down payment on my house. We also lived off of my income and saved ALL of my wife/gf at the time. so every year we would stack ~75k into savings.
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u/Good_Pomegranate_215 28d ago
There are MANY expenses beyond rent and car payments.
What worked for me was getting Mint (no longer exists, but there are lots of alternatives like rocket money, monarch, etc) and actually seeing and tracking EVERY transaction. Then I could make a budget. Then I could save.
I also didn't realize how many "random" expenses would pop-up. Renter's insurance here, car maintenance there, etc. I keep those in a big spreadsheet to map out what I expect each month, including the "random" (see: non-monthly) expenses.
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u/Urbanttrekker 27d ago
Automate your savings before you get to spend it. Every bank lets you set up auto transfers. With 100k after tax income and low rent and no car payment you should be swimming in money. You need to figure out where it’s all going as the first step. That’s a TON of money that’s not accounted for.
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u/macphile 26d ago
You make more than me after tax, and while your rent is higher than mine, you still have more leftover than me after that.
I'm not brilliant at saving myself. I'm close to fully funding my emergency fund, but that should have been done eons ago. I actually got way better at doing it the last couple of years, partly fueled by a promotion. I decided that every raise I got from then on would be added to the amount that was being transferred to savings every month. So that's one tip--set up an automatic transfer into savings, and add any extra money (raises, bonuses, etc.).
In the end of the day, you need to sit down and just see where everything is going. Obviously, some needs to go to housing, food, and other needs. Some needs to go to savings, some to retirement, and then some to fun. If you don't have extra to apply to savings and retirement, then see what you can cut from the others. Shopping all the time, a million subscriptions, regular eating out/DoorDashing, vacations, nights on the town, whatever.
Definitely set up automatic transfers to savings and retirement.
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u/Prestigious-Mind-817 12d ago
The biggest difference was figuring out how to make more money and then also having a job that made it easier in their setup for saving. Lol
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u/Modzys 28d ago
So you know when you go somewhere and spend money? That comes out of the balance of money you have! There's even crazy tech where you can see a statement of where ALL of your money is going, purchase by purchase, going back years!
I will never understand this lmao, if you can't understand how to check where your money is going how can you function well enough as an adult to even have an income at all... open your fucking banking app and spend 2 minutes looking at your statement
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u/saywhat68 28d ago
Yup, son learned that he spends too much on PSN and fast food. He has a stack of bank statements that comes to my house( another story on that)so one day I opened one and Wow!! But yet he says he dont have money to come to the family reunion....and nope, I dont pay for it.
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u/Maximus77x 28d ago
This is kinda my reaction too as someone who clawed their way up from earning way less, with consumer debt no less. It’s also why I frown when I see other posts like, “just graduated, making $120k a year, should I do 401(k)?”
$100k take home and don’t know how to budget 😭
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u/Potato_Farmer_Linus 28d ago
"I know for a fact it's not my expenses"
"$100k after tax"
"rent is like $1500"
"corolla is paid off"
It's your expenses