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Dr. Jackal posted:My company is offering both a Regular 401k and Roth 401k, should I put money into the Roth 401k? It's a replacement for the 401(k) as the contribution limits are the same and shared across the two types of accounts.
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# ? Mar 18, 2015 14:17 |
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# ? May 23, 2024 14:25 |
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As I understand it, part of the reason this thread recommends 401k and then Roth IRA is that it gives you a mix of post tax and pre-tax retirement accounts. The average person could also do a Roth 401k and then a traditional IRA to get a similar mix. Though if you are making over $60k and filing individually, you can't get the full deduction for a traditional IRA, and over $70k you don't get any deduction. So if you are in a high tax bracket that probably means a 401k and a Roth IRA makes more sense for you.
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# ? Mar 18, 2015 14:36 |
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Hashtag Banterzone posted:As I understand it, part of the reason this thread recommends 401k and then Roth IRA is that it gives you a mix of post tax and pre-tax retirement accounts. The average person could also do a Roth 401k and then a traditional IRA to get a similar mix.
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# ? Mar 18, 2015 15:10 |
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Dr. Jackal posted:My company is offering both a Regular 401k and Roth 401k, should I put money into the Roth 401k? Check the type of funds available first, other good thing about having your own Roth account is you can shop between brokerages. Most companies tend have okay US stock funds but tend to have worse options for foreign stocks. Most people itt prefer Vanguard. Bettermant also had a blog post on why the no RMD for Roth IRAs is a handy feature: https://www.betterment.com/resources/retirement/401ks-and-iras/the-roth-ira-advantage-no-rmd-required/ etalian fucked around with this message at 16:51 on Mar 18, 2015 |
# ? Mar 18, 2015 16:24 |
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I need some advice figuring out what to do with a stockpile of cash I've accumulated as well as how to work 401K contributions into a new budget I'll be living by starting in June. I'm cross-posting a bit from the Newbie Personal Finance thread. First off, my girlfriend and her parents are buying a condo. Since it's in her name I'll basically be paying her rent when we move into whatever they end up getting. No matter where we end up, this is approximately what my monthly budget will look like: Rent+Utils+Internet: $1050/mo Car Payment: $330/mo Savings: $625 This will leave me with about $1200/mo to cover everything else - gas, groceries, eating out, entertainment, etc... This is about what I spend now, and I'm usually able to keep things under this limit. This has helped me keep a slush fund of sorts between me and my savings account - I'll pull from the fund to cover shopping sprees and car insurance every six months. I'm bringing all of this up because... 401K: $16,300 Vanguard MF: $10,800 Savings: $12,000 ...This is what I'm currently sitting on investment-wise. I had a sweet 401K match at my last job but my new job doesn't offer any retirement plan so it's up to me to keep things going. That leaves me with two questions: 1. How should I continue contributing to a retirement fund? Toss $300/mo into a Roth IRA? This'd reduce my savings contribution to ~$300/mo and I've been really uncomfortable with that idea, especially considering that I've been able to get away with putting $1100/mo into savings thus far. 2. What should I do with that $12,000 sitting in savings? I'm thinking of using some of it to fund a Vanguard international mutual fund to round out the one I have now, and using some more to purchase a bit of silver. When all is said and done I'm thinking of leaving myself about $5000 in savings for emergency expenses, and then rebuilding with my meager savings contributions every month.
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# ? Mar 18, 2015 17:19 |
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You have a car loan and no retirement contributions going on - taxable investments and speculation in precious metals are for a time in the future, when that situation has changed. What's the interest rate on the car loan? Depending on that, you should use extra money either to pay down the car loan, or to contribute to an IRA. Eventually you should be maxing out your IRA every year.
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# ? Mar 18, 2015 17:48 |
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Karthe posted:I need some advice figuring out what to do with a stockpile of cash I've accumulated as well as how to work 401K contributions into a new budget I'll be living by starting in June. I'm cross-posting a bit from the Newbie Personal Finance thread. What jumped out to me was the $1200/month on gas/groceries/eating out/etc. That's quite a bit, man. To start, does your employer offer a matching contribution to your 401k? If so, contribute so you get the full match. That is priority one. I'd also look into either paying off the car more quickly (you have plenty of extra income to do this) and opening a Roth IRA.
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# ? Mar 18, 2015 17:55 |
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slap me silly posted:You have a car loan and no retirement contributions going on - taxable investments and speculation in precious metals are for a time in the future, when that situation has changed. What's the interest rate on the car loan? Depending on that, you should use extra money either to pay down the car loan, or to contribute to an IRA. Eventually you should be maxing out your IRA every year.
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# ? Mar 18, 2015 18:01 |
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Omne posted:To start, does your employer offer a matching contribution to your 401k? If so, contribute so you get the full match. That is priority one Karthe posted:I had a sweet 401K match at my last job but my new job doesn't offer any retirement plan so it's up to me to keep things going.
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# ? Mar 18, 2015 18:03 |
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That car payment makes me think the loan is between $12,000 and $18,000, yuck. Your budgeting sucks and your priorities are terrible. Don't make a line item of "$1,200 for everything else" because "everything else" will inflate to $1,200 ever single month. In my opinion your car loan is an emergency and you should make it an equal priority to Roth IRA contributions. You have a big healthy emergency fund so put that $625/month (currently for "savings") to better use. Can you shave your Everything Else budget by $200? Your $825/month could be used to max out an IRA ($458/month) and make double payments on your car loan (extra $367/month). Taxable mutual funds and precious metals are cake and ice cream, and a Roth IRA is your chicken and broccoli. Finish the latter before gorging on the former. As you pointed out, you don't have a 401k anymore and it's up to you to plan for the future. Make a Roth IRA a huge priority, tied only by paying off your car loan. You say that "saving only $300/month" makes you uncomfortable. What are you saving up for? Karthe posted:The interest rate on the car loan is 1.49% through my credit union. If an IRA is the next thing to prioritize, I should get into the habit of contributing $300/mo into an IRA and increase contributions as my income increases. I'm sure I'll get a better return on an IRA than on nuking the car loan sooner rather than later. $300/month to an IRA isn't enough. If that's the only retirement planning you do, you'll have $200,000 in today-dollars thirty years from now and you will have to eat dog food. GoGoGadgetChris fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Mar 18, 2015 |
# ? Mar 18, 2015 18:07 |
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Omne posted:What jumped out to me was the $1200/month on gas/groceries/eating out/etc. That's quite a bit, man. To start, does your employer offer a matching contribution to your 401k? If so, contribute so you get the full match. That is priority one. I'd also look into either paying off the car more quickly (you have plenty of extra income to do this) and opening a Roth IRA.
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# ? Mar 18, 2015 18:09 |
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Karthe posted:$1000/mo for incidentals is too much? That's just what I budget for myself to spend per month after taking care of savings and fixed expenses. I usually don't even spend all of that - it's not uncommon for me to have a couple hundred of that left over every month that I siphon into a slush fund for whatever surprise expenses might come up later. I enjoy being able to make my savings account a one-way street (as in, money only goes in, not out), and the slush fund helps me protect that train of thought. What are you saving for? Your lack of retirement savings and your humongous car loan are emergencies and seem like legitimate uses for emergency fund savings.
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# ? Mar 18, 2015 18:11 |
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Karthe posted:$1000/mo for incidentals is too much? That's just what I budget for myself to spend per month after taking care of savings and fixed expenses. I usually don't even spend all of that - it's not uncommon for me to have a couple hundred of that left over every month that I siphon into a slush fund for whatever surprise expenses might come up later. I enjoy being able to make my savings account a one-way street (as in, money only goes in, not out), and the slush fund helps me protect that train of thought. Yeah it seems like a lot to me, though when I was younger I'm sure I was doing the same thing. I would set up a budget and try to stick to it. You make a decent income and your debt load is fairly small. As GoGoGadgetChris says, you have plenty to double your car payment, max out an IRA and still have plenty for other stuff. Can you give us a bit of a breakdown on what your $1200/month goes to? If you don't know, I'd suggest signing up for Mint and start tracking that. Since this is the retirement thread, the advice you're getting is solid: max out that Roth IRA!
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# ? Mar 18, 2015 18:18 |
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1.49% interest isn't a big deal. Just pay the minimums and truck along. Don't take on more debt than you have savings if you can at all help it. That being said, if I had 30k of savings and someone offered me 30k at 1.49% you bet your rear end I'd take that loan instead of blowing my savings. If someone offered me $1m at 1.49% I'd have to think about it but I'd probably still say yes -- put 250k into savings to pay for its own minimums while I ladder some poo poo into investments (like, hell, a 10-year CD). Roth IRA is definitely a priority over taxable. If your company doesn't offer a 401k I think you have expanded contribution limits to an IRA-type vehicle. Solo IRA? I'm unsure of the name.
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# ? Mar 18, 2015 18:23 |
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GoGoGadgetChris posted:What are you saving for? Your lack of retirement savings and your humongous car loan are emergencies and seem like legitimate uses for emergency fund savings. And is the car loan humongous? I just bought a brand-new 2014 car and plan on driving the thing into the ground so it didn't seem like that big a deal to just make the payments for the next 5-6 years. Should I liquidate my mutual fund and use it and my savings to pay off the loan? I'd have about $3000 left over if I did that. GoGoGadgetChris posted:That car payment makes me think the loan is between $12,000 and $18,000, yuck. GoGoGadgetChris posted:In my opinion your car loan is an emergency and you should make it an equal priority to Roth IRA contributions. You have a big healthy emergency fund so put that $625/month (currently for "savings") to better use. Can you shave your Everything Else budget by $200? Your $825/month could be used to max out an IRA ($458/month) and make double payments on your car loan (extra $367/month). IAmKale fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Mar 18, 2015 |
# ? Mar 18, 2015 18:26 |
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Retirement saving is the single best way to alleviate your fear of getting old, poor and scared like your parents. They probably had bad money habits, like letting their expenses inflate to match their income, thinking about money in terms of "splurges", "slush funds", and "disposable income", and buying brand new cars. Don't be like them oh fuuuuu I don't think you need to sell any assets or wipe out your emergency fund. That's a low interest rate loan so you may as well just make the basic payments, and you've done a good job of amassing wealth. Just tighten the spending a LITTLE bit, don't buy another brand new car for a long time, and make a Roth IRA a priority because it's the best form of "Savings" there is.
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# ? Mar 18, 2015 18:39 |
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The car buying thread is a good place to talk about how much car can you actually afford. Typically we advise people getting car loans there not to finance for more than about 3-4 years, for several reasons. A big one is that a 5-6 year loan usually means someone is financing more than they can actually afford: they've "shopped on payments" instead of shopped on price, and a dealer can squeeze a really expensive car into a payment you've picked, when you should have bought a much less expensive car and paid the same payments for a shorter period. Also: you can plan to keep a new car forever and drive it into the ground, but events beyond your control can prevent that. I bought a new car in 2005, and in 2010, a drunk smashed into it while it was parked on my block and totaled it (and then fled the scene, and was never caught). My insurance paid me out quite reasonably... replacement cost for a used car. So my bought-new paid-off car I had planned to own and drive for 20 years is now replaced by a bought-used paid-off car... and I could have saved $10,000 by doing that from the beginning. I'm not saying nobody should buy a new car, or that nobody should finance a car. Only that you should at least recognize that "I plan to drive this for 20 years" isn't a guarantee. Beyond that, a lot can change in your lifestyle and financial situation in 20 years, so it's probably more realistic to plan for maybe 10 years max and then assume by then you'll have something different you want (family/kids/better or worse job/much better cars available/whatever). Paying for a car for 6 years that you'll own for 10 is not the best plan. Here's the car thread.
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# ? Mar 18, 2015 18:45 |
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GoGoGadgetChris posted:Retirement saving is the single best way to alleviate your fear of getting old, poor and scared like your parents. They probably had bad money habits, like letting their expenses inflate to match their income, thinking about money in terms of "splurges", "slush funds", and "disposable income", and buying brand new cars. Don't be like them oh fuuuuu
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# ? Mar 18, 2015 18:54 |
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Karthe posted:What's wrong with spending the money that's left over after paying off fixed monthly expenses (rent, utilities) and contributing to savings/retirement accounts every month? I'm not quite sure I understand how I'm letting my expenses inflate to match income - wouldn't that mean that I've not been contributing anything into savings/retirement accounts because I've been spending every penny I pull in? Maybe I need an attitude adjustment with respect to budgeting in general? Am I reading your prior posts wrong? You didn't want to save $300/mo=$3600/yr because it will pinch your other savings? Retirement savings should be set at a fixed 15% of gross regardless of what your income does. I'd work on a detailed budget. It sickens me that you spend more on a car loan than retirement savings per month.
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# ? Mar 18, 2015 19:14 |
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SiGmA_X posted:Retirement savings should be set at a fixed 15% of gross regardless of what your income does. At least 15%.
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# ? Mar 18, 2015 19:20 |
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SiGmA_X posted:Am I reading your prior posts wrong? You didn't want to save $300/mo=$3600/yr because it will pinch your other savings? Retirement savings should be set at a fixed 15% of gross regardless of what your income does. If retirement savings are supposed to be, at minimum, 15% of my gross income, what am I supposed to do after maxing out a Roth IRA? I don't have any 401K vehicles to invest in after that because my company doesn't offer any.
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# ? Mar 18, 2015 19:40 |
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Karthe posted:If retirement savings are supposed to be, at minimum, 15% of my gross income, what am I supposed to do after maxing out a Roth IRA? I don't have any 401K vehicles to invest in after that because my company doesn't offer any. If you don't have any other tax-advantaged accounts available to you (e.g., an HSA if you're on an HDHP), then you can open a taxable brokerage account and invest the same way you would in an IRA. It's sad and unfortunate, but due to the very low annual max contributions an IRA alone is not really sufficient retirement savings for most people.
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# ? Mar 18, 2015 19:47 |
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My 401k plan's (through Principal) 2050 target fund has a "total investment expense gross" of 1.2%. Other funds offered through the plan aren't much different. Meanwhile, the Vanguard 2050 target fund in my IRA has a fee of only 0.18%. Is this typical for 401k plans, or is mine especially bad?
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# ? Mar 18, 2015 19:50 |
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Karthe posted:I need some advice figuring out what to do with a stockpile of cash I've accumulated as well as how to work 401K contributions into a new budget I'll be living by starting in June. I'm cross-posting a bit from the Newbie Personal Finance thread. Your fixed monthly costs will be about $2600 a month (1200 +1050+330) without car insurance, so that $12k in savings is a 4 month emergency fund, approximately. That isn't half bad, leave it alone. What you should be doing is maxing out a Roth IRA (about $460 a month). Meaning you'll have $165 a month leftover for other savings (car insurance and spending sprees as you say). That is ok, provided you never want to save for anything else again. No big purchases, no refilling of the emergency fund (stupid), nothing. You need a budget if you want to improve your retirement prospects, you spend too much on a month-to-month basis as $5500/year in retirement savings is not very much.
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# ? Mar 18, 2015 19:57 |
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Guinness posted:At least 15%. Karthe posted:I think you read them wrong, I'm already saving the money. My point earlier was that it feels weird to think about not putting anything into a bank-located savings account because that's the habit I've been into all this time. I'm finding out thanks to you guys that now that I have sufficient savings socked away it's okay to have all of your funds allocated into other types of accounts that aren't as liquid, especially if it's for the purposes of saving for retirement. You sadly have to use taxable if you make over ~36k and want to do 15%. I'd do an HSA before Taxable if possible like others have mentioned, but after that you gotta do taxable. I think Congress needs to readdress limits for the IRA for us poors (as in it should be available to put ~54k in if you don't have a workplace 401k, and no double dipping to maxing both a 401k and expanded IRA..) but they're really ineffective at getting things done so I doubt that'll happen. Karthe posted:Alright, so I changed jobs last December to one that doesn't offer a 401K, and I'll be moving in May resulting in my rent increasing to about $1050/mo (all inclusive, but I'm actually paying my girlfriend rent since she's buying a condo with help from her parents). I think you need to do a budget and follow it for the months before moving in with the gf, and take a better look at fun of blowing money now vs savings and eating human food vs. cat food in retirement. SiGmA_X fucked around with this message at 20:23 on Mar 18, 2015 |
# ? Mar 18, 2015 20:04 |
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Splinter posted:My 401k plan's (through Principal) 2050 target fund has a "total investment expense gross" of 1.2%. Other funds offered through the plan aren't much different. Meanwhile, the Vanguard 2050 target fund in my IRA has a fee of only 0.18%. Is this typical for 401k plans, or is mine especially bad? That is pretty bad, and is unfortunately not that uncommon. Are there any other lower-ER funds available in your 401k plan? If you have some broad-market ETFs available you can approximate a target-date fund and save a lot in fees. The target 2045/2050 funds in my Fidelity 401k are approaching 0.8% in gross ER, but I fortunately have some Spartan Index funds that are in the 0.1-0.2% range that I use instead. If your options are limited remember that your target allocations should be across all your retirement accounts. For example, if one account has really bad foreign equity options but good domestic equity options you can instead do most of your foreign equity investing in an IRA. The other option is to try to lobby your HR/benefits people to improve your 401k plan -- it's not necessarily a lost cause. HR people are often as clueless as the average American when it comes to investing and in all likelihood don't even realize how bad their plan is, and they (hopefully) would love to get feedback from employees. It worked at my company. Guinness fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Mar 18, 2015 |
# ? Mar 18, 2015 20:23 |
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MickeyFinn posted:Your fixed monthly costs will be about $2600 a month (1200 +1050+330) without car insurance, so that $12k in savings is a 4 month emergency fund, approximately. That isn't half bad, leave it alone. What you should be doing is maxing out a Roth IRA (about $460 a month). Meaning you'll have $165 a month leftover for other savings (car insurance and spending sprees as you say). That is ok, provided you never want to save for anything else again. No big purchases, no refilling of the emergency fund (stupid), nothing. You need a budget if you want to improve your retirement prospects, you spend too much on a month-to-month basis as $5500/year in retirement savings is not very much. SiGmA_X posted:It reads like you don't save much currently. Did you take a big pay decrease or something? Matching 401k doesn't change how much YOU save at all. No 401k at all can change how much you can put in tax advantaged accounts though. Looking back I probably should have maxed out a Roth IRA last year but I was too focused on building up liquidity that I failed to consider that. As for the overall change in pay, my current salary is 15% more than what I was making before. SiGmA_X posted:Hang on, I didn't misread at all. You were only saving as much as someone with 21.3k gross income (should) save. If you plan to keep only saving $267/mo, you won't come close to maxing a Roth IRA... IAmKale fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Mar 18, 2015 |
# ? Mar 18, 2015 20:32 |
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You're on track for great things. Good work paying off that student loan. It can be a lot harder mentally to build up a balance (never ending process) than to pay down a loan (clear goal), but if you keep that fervor going you'll be the rich old eccentric person you've always wanted to be. How old are you, out of curiosity? Sorry if you said it, but I didn't catch it. Open a Roth IRA at Vanguard as soon as you possibly can. Make your contributions between now and April 15th as "2014" contributions rather than 2015 contributions. I would recommend that you consider reading the JLCollins Stock Series posts and/or William Bernstein's "If You Can" PDF (google If You Can.pdf Bernstein and it's the top result) to get a handle on what makes for good investment holdings.
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# ? Mar 18, 2015 20:50 |
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Guinness posted:Are there any other lower-ER funds available in your 401k plan? If you have some broad-market ETFs available you can approximate a target-date fund and save a lot in fees. Guinness posted:The other option is to try to lobby your HR/benefits people to improve your 401k plan -- it's not necessarily a lost cause. HR people are often as clueless as the average American when it comes to investing and in all likelihood don't even realize how bad their plan is, and they (hopefully) would love to get feedback from employees. It worked at my company. Worth a shot. This is why I asked. I wanted to make sure the plan was as bad as it looked before I go to HR.
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# ? Mar 18, 2015 20:51 |
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GoGoGadgetChris posted:You're on track for great things. Good work paying off that student loan. It can be a lot harder mentally to build up a balance (never ending process) than to pay down a loan (clear goal), but if you keep that fervor going you'll be the rich old eccentric person you've always wanted to be. GoGoGadgetChris posted:How old are you, out of curiosity? Sorry if you said it, but I didn't catch it. GoGoGadgetChris posted:Open a Roth IRA at Vanguard as soon as you possibly can. Make your contributions between now and April 15th as "2014" contributions rather than 2015 contributions. On the subject of retirement accounts after maxing out a Roth IRA, would mutual funds be alright accounts to work on? I currently have a VFIAX account open up with admiral shares, can I pay into that once I get to $5500 for my Roth? IAmKale fucked around with this message at 21:02 on Mar 18, 2015 |
# ? Mar 18, 2015 20:59 |
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Karthe posted:Thanks for the praise, I was getting a bit disheartened from all the brutal (but honest) advice. I'm going to peruse the How To Create A Budget thread for ideas since it seems like my budgeting "system" probably won't hold up in the long-term. I'm glad someone brought up the at-least-15% rule for retirement savings though - that's something concrete I can work with to determine how much of my net pay I need to put into accounts I don't touch until retirement. Yea you can contribute to an IRA till tax day, and Roth has no impact on your taxes unless you make too much money for it, but you're safe there. Id sign up for a Vanguard account online and your old 401k to a traditional and Roth IRA (match is traditional), and then max your 2014 contribution for the Roth too. Rollovers do not count toward annual contributions.
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# ? Mar 18, 2015 21:10 |
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Karthe posted:Thanks for the praise, I was getting a bit disheartened from all the brutal (but honest) advice. I'm going to peruse the How To Create A Budget thread for ideas since it seems like my budgeting "system" probably won't hold up in the long-term. I'm glad someone brought up the at-least-15% rule for retirement savings though - that's something concrete I can work with to determine how much of my net pay I need to put into accounts I don't touch until retirement. If it helps, this is how my family's budget is broken down by category: Bills/Costs Rent Groceries/household goods Fuel Phone Internet Utilities Pets Health Insurance Car Insurance Renter's Insurance Hulu/Netflix Laundry Charitable Discretionary Date nights NSA money me ("no strings attached" money we can spend on whatever we see fit) NSA money her Trips (small weekend things) Savings Roth IRA me Roth IRA her Emergency Fund (3 months, growing to 6) Car maintenance/future car payment Doctor/Dentist Vet Taxable investment account (no workplace 401Ks, no HSA, so our best retirement vehicle after maxing out our Roth IRAs) You basically want a line item for every predictable expense. Even your discretionary/fun spending should be predictable. It will help you see where you overspend and where you can cut back to increase your savings rate (and retire earlier). Assign every dollar you make a specific job to do. khysanth fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Mar 18, 2015 |
# ? Mar 18, 2015 21:10 |
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khysanth posted:You basically want a line item for every predictable expense. Even your discretionary/fun spending. It will help you see where you overspend and where you can cut back to increase your savings rate (and retire earlier). Assign every dollar you make a specific job to do.
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# ? Mar 18, 2015 21:38 |
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Karthe posted:How often do you sit down and crunch the numbers? I was looking at Mint's budgeting features since I'm already well-established with them but there's no way to really denote reimbursements (for stuff like mileage or cellphone reimbursements) so I'd have to use a spreadsheet or something like YNAB to get a true feel for what my actual budget looks like. I use YNAB and make a Reimbursable category. For instance, I designed shirts for my hockey team. I spent $500 of my own money, so I put this purchase as an outflow against the Reimbursable category. When people paid me back, I marked them as the same category, but an inflow. That way, when everyone paid me back, the balance of my Reimbursable category was 0.
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# ? Mar 18, 2015 21:40 |
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Karthe posted:How often do you sit down and crunch the numbers? I was looking at Mint's budgeting features since I'm already well-established with them but there's no way to really denote reimbursements (for stuff like mileage or cellphone reimbursements) so I'd have to use a spreadsheet or something like YNAB to get a true feel for what my actual budget looks like. I use YNAB. I'm obsessive and every morning at work I log into my bank/CC sites and enter in spending from the previous day. It takes less than 5 minutes, and I get to see what our numbers look like in each category as the month goes on. When I'm feeling especially obsessive, I just enter the spending right when I make the purchase on the YNAB phone app as I walk out of the store/whatever. khysanth fucked around with this message at 21:51 on Mar 18, 2015 |
# ? Mar 18, 2015 21:47 |
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Karthe posted:How often do you sit down and crunch the numbers? I was looking at Mint's budgeting features since I'm already well-established with them but there's no way to really denote reimbursements (for stuff like mileage or cellphone reimbursements) so I'd have to use a spreadsheet or something like YNAB to get a true feel for what my actual budget looks like. You can mark expenses as reimbursable in Mint, and/or you can setup custom categories.
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# ? Mar 18, 2015 22:06 |
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Karthe posted:I'd have to use a spreadsheet or something like YNAB to get a true feel for what my actual budget looks like. I can't recommend this enough. You seem to make decent money and have relatively modest expenses. Budget your savings and vital expenses and plan for those "surprise" expenses like semiannual payments and gifts and consumables for your car. I think you'll find that you can easily meet your savings goals if you look at every dollar earned more critically.
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# ? Mar 18, 2015 22:51 |
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Easychair Bootson posted:Budget your savings and vital expenses and plan for those "surprise" expenses like semiannual payments and gifts and consumables for your car. I think you'll find that you can easily meet your savings goals if you look at every dollar earned more critically. This. You need to make a budget and decide on a reasonable allocation of your money. You've told us some of your expenses, but it seems that you don't know exactly where every dollar is going (food, entertainment, vacations, etc.). You need to decide how much you want to spend on these items versus how much you want to devote to other financial goals.
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# ? Mar 18, 2015 23:36 |
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Karthe posted:How often do you sit down and crunch the numbers? I was looking at Mint's budgeting features since I'm already well-established with them but there's no way to really denote reimbursements (for stuff like mileage or cellphone reimbursements) so I'd have to use a spreadsheet or something like YNAB to get a true feel for what my actual budget looks like. If the issue is that the reimbursements get added to your paycheck, you can split your paycheck into 2 or more categories in Mint. So you can put the $50 income to cell phone and the rest to paycheck.
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# ? Mar 19, 2015 14:16 |
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# ? May 23, 2024 14:25 |
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Hashtag Banterzone posted:If the issue is that the reimbursements get added to your paycheck, you can split your paycheck into 2 or more categories in Mint. So you can put the $50 income to cell phone and the rest to paycheck.
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# ? Mar 19, 2015 15:17 |