Savings

cheer10sak

I'm finding out budgeting with a military income is hard work when there is so much we need! My question though is how much do ya'll have saved up in a savings account for emergencies?

kristend33

I think as a general rule it's a pretty good idea to have at least 6 months worth of expenses saved up in case you or your spouse lose a job. That said, we're using Dave Ramsey's total money makeover plan to aggressively pay off a loan, so we don't have nearly that much in our e-fund right now. And you can definitely make a budget work on a military income; it's just a matter of putting necessities before your wants.

Akhollywood85

We just got married so we are still saving, but we have 3 savings accounts.  One for emergencies, one for house stuff, and one for travel.

100 per month into emergencies

75 per month into travel

25 into house stuff

 

meltoine

We are investing our wedding gifts for a down payment on our forever home when H gets out of the military.

We put H's flight pay and hazardous duty pay into our rainy day fund each month, in addition to any income I bring in from freelancing.

We put an additional $300 per month into our E-fund, which right now is about 12 months worth of expenses.

We put our tax refund each year into our new car fund. We were able to pay cash for both of our cars and hope to always be able to do that in the future. 

Any gift money we get (birthdays, holidays, etc) also gets put into savings. 

kyrgyzstan

cheer10sak:

I'm finding out budgeting with a military income is hard work when there is so much we need! My question though is how much do ya'll have saved up in a savings account for emergencies?

 

I actually find budgeting a military income easier than budgeting mine, as mine changes.

We generally have about 1k for emergencies. It's probably low for most people, but as my income goes all toward debt payoff, we could feasibly up it anytime we wanted by going down to the minimums on our debts. 

cheer10sak

We were recently married too... and we used our wedding money for savings and a washer and dryer! I read dave ramseys book and follow his plan so my hubby and I are both debt free and have paid cash for both cars and my college and anything else we need... it's just the savings part that seems hard for us! It's like every time we save we end up having some sort of extra expense that comes up! Do any of you have tips for saving too?

I started using mint.com and i am setting up our goals and I keep going back and forth with what they should be! lol I guess that's true at least the military pay doesn't change!

kaynix21

The military budget has mattered since the military hasn't paid H in awhile....

But we've been putting 20% of each paycheck into our savings. We have about six months worth of expenses saved up. 

SpunkyBlowfish

Everyone (even in the military) saves money differently. We are debt free so keep that in mind when reading my post.

My entire paycheck goes into savings.

We have 6 months of income (not just expenses) in an emergency fund.

We have our savings/investment accounts broken down as follows:

-Car Fun

-EFund

-CDs (which are broken down on an excel sheet to which savings it's allocated)

-House Fund

-Roth IRA (maxed out for each of us annually) 

-Travel

-General/Slush

-5% of my take home goes into my own retirement account and my company matches 

We save close to 48% of total HHI but we both work full time and don't have kids. We also spend saved money, I mean why else save if you're not going to enjoy it! Example: we use the travel fund to go on several trips per year.

SpunkyBlowfish

cheer10sak:

We were recently married too... and we used our wedding money for savings and a washer and dryer! I read dave ramseys book and follow his plan so my hubby and I are both debt free and have paid cash for both cars and my college and anything else we need... it's just the savings part that seems hard for us! It's like every time we save we end up having some sort of extra expense that comes up! Do any of you have tips for saving too?

I started using mint.com and i am setting up our goals and I keep going back and forth with what they should be! lol I guess that's true at least the military pay doesn't change!

Congratulations on being debt free! 

Do you have a budget? Honestly, the ladies over on Money Matters (MM) are awesome at picking apart a budget and finding ways to save.