It's all personal preference. More money each month or a fat refund check. Should we start a poll???

 

If you want to up your odds of success, put in much larger amounts. 10% of every income stream is a good starting point, and if you can't swing that work as hard as you can to get there just as fast as you can. Once you're at ten percent, start looking for ways to make it 12% or 14%. And so on. The reason: Piddling amounts make saving seem like a chore with no appreciable reward. More appreciable amounts feel like a real victory. When that account balance is going up rapidly in relation to your income, it feels really, really good and motivates you to continue doing it. Your thinking changes: That toy you might have bought without a second thought before is now something that wants to get between you and that good feeling. More often than not, it'll stay on the shelf.

Turning off dad mode now. Good luck, Mister Sheriff!

 

10% seems like a good chunk of my limited income but it may be possible. I'm not entirely sure how we will be able to cope with such a large portion of our income going to bills every month because we have never had more than a car payment, insurance and a cell phone bill. Both of us are out of the car payments now and we both tend to not have much to show for the money we spend each month. I told her that we will be tight with our money for the first couple/few months until we have a good grasp of how much extra we have left after spending what we absolutely have to spend. By my (high) estimate we will be spending about 60% on bills.

 

I've never met anyone who said otherwise.

The easiest way I know to make a ten percent savings plan work is to just do it. Just put the money into the savings account on payday, and get by without it. Your bills will still get paid, your groceries will still come home -- but you'll be that guy who's not an idiot, the one who walks out of the convenience store with nothing more than a gas receipt. In five pay periods you'll have half a paycheck sitting there with nowhere else to be. Before too long it'll be a full paycheck, then two, then five... at some point you'll find that saving feels a lot better than spending. The test comes when some big ticket luxury item catches your eye and you have to choose between keeping the savings or having that doodad. If you pass the test you're likely to start looking for ways to save even more to get more of that good feeling. We humans are that way -- we do more and more of the things that feel good.

The time to buy that big ticket luxury doodad is when it won't make more than a dent in your savings. You don't go without, you just don't decimate your savings needlessly so maybe you go without that particular thing at this particular time. It's not like they're going to stop making big screen TV's any time soon.

Something to ponder: A guy who's paying $1.89 for a 1.5 ounce "Big Grab" bag of Lay's potato chips at the mini-mart is coughing up a tad over $20/pound for potatoes. Now that you've seen it that way, is that guy an idiot or what?

 

X2. Now is the time to "live like no one else" so that later you can "live like no one else".

 

That's a good way to look at it. I would like to eventually get enough money in my bill account to cover at least three months of bills ($6000) and at least $10,000 in a savings account. Once I get there I plan to keep it at least that high. Having that much should cover any emergency that should come my way and keep me out of debt if hospital bills ever get sprung on me.

 

Don't get hurt or get sick.

Problem solved.

 

The government and universal health care will take care of all of us. We don't need to save anything anymore!

 

Don't drink the kool-aid!

 

Don't you believe it. That's not how this country operates. If you don't manage to die suddenly of the first expensive thing that happens to you, the hospital corporations are going to get all of your stuff.