I’ve been tracking every expense and dollar earned for almost 2 years now. I use a homemade spreadsheet with double entry accounting and a budget sheet inspired by YNAB.
In 2017 my wife and I (both 27 yrs old) got married and went from one person working full time to both (but our finances have been combined for the entire year). I’ve used /r/personalfinance a lot to plan our saving strategy. I had some time to sit down this weekend and pull out some summary info from the past year, so I thought it could be nice to share. When I started working a few years ago, it was hard for me to decide what was a reasonable amount to spend on things like rent and entertainment, so I thought that our breakdown might be useful for other people who are just looking for some more data points.
First, the bug numbers:
Income: ~$111,000
This was our take home pay. It does not include money that was deducted from our paychecks for taxes or health insurance. It does also include capital gains on our retirement accounts. It would probably be more useful if it didn’t, but I think that amount is negligible and would be a pain to calculate.
Expenses: ~$69,000
This includes ~$4,500 we spent on our wedding. We were lucky to have our parents pay for the majority of the wedding costs.
Savings rate: ~38%
I wasn’t tracking this number month to month, so I was very pleased to see that it was so high after I ran the numbers!
Other financial details:
- We are renters in a high cost of living city
- No debt
- 13 year old car with no loan
- Savings of ~$100,000. This includes both retirement and liquid savings.
Spending by category:
| Category | 2017 Expenditures | Percent of total spending | Monthly average | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rent | 22,842.25 | 35.37% | 1,903.52 | |
| Groceries | 7,771.91 | 12.03% | 647.66 | |
| Travel | 4,410.07 | 6.83% | 367.51 | Vacation |
| Household goods | 4,256.60 | 6.59% | 354.72 | Misc things like laundry detergent, small appliances, furniture, linens, etc. |
| Transport | 3,871.92 | 6.00% | 322.66 | Includes gas, car repairs, car insurance, bike repair (my primary form of transport), etc. |
| Eating out | 3,481.05 | 5.39% | 290.09 | |
| Other | 3,366.86 | 5.21% | 280.57 | Renters insurance, software, new computer, cash expenses that we forgot to track, etc. |
| Moving | 2,658.48 | 4.12% | 221.54 | Long distance move to a new city. Plane tickets to visit new city and find apartment, hotel when visiting new city, uhaul rental, hired movers to load/unload, some new furniture to accommodate immediate needs |
| Education | 2,609.39 | 4.04% | 217.45 | Summer program, books, some weekly classes |
| Entertainment | 2,368.67 | 3.67% | 197.39 | Movies, video games, other hobby and leisure expenses |
| Donations | 2,194.78 | 3.40% | 182.90 | |
| Utilities | 1,462.05 | 2.26% | 121.84 | cooking gas, internet, cell phones. Heat, hot water, and electricity included in rent. |
| Healthcare | 1,431.82 | 2.22% | 119.32 | Does not included health insurance premiums (which is deducted from pay check) |
| Clothes | 1,042.05 | 1.61% | 86.84 | |
| Gifts | 851.97 | 1.32% | 71.00 |
(note that % of total spending does not include wedding expenses in the total)
Things I want to change in 2018:
- Spend less on groceries
- Introduce sub-categories into our expense tracking system
- Track income/expense of health insurance premiums
- Track dividends and retirement account growth separately from other income
- Set some specific savings goals
I hope someone finds this post interesting or useful in some way, but even if not, thanks all for the help in 2017 and for making this sub great!
Submitted January 07, 2018 at 08:50AM by pf2017summary http://ift.tt/2CBBGwH
