Hellobee Boards

Our goals are to get completely out of debt (have a few student loans hanging around); to have a really comfortable emergency fund, to have money to travel, and to save for a large downpayment on our next home. Basically similar to yours.

Right now, very little outside of our retirement savings. We're buying a house and it needs to be furnished, albeit rather sparely. Our budget plan is to be done with spending by September, and then we'll be back on saving my salary in full.

@Mrs D: our story is very similar, DH has a lot of student loans and I don't so we balance how much we put away. Unfortunately, it's only 8%, and it could eaaaasily be more, so we need to actually do it!

What do you consider savings? We put money into 529 plan, IRA, 401k, MMA, and CD. Besides that I put $100 a month in general savings... DH puts more.

We put a pretty large amount away - 50% of our take home pay goes to regular savings and 18% pre-tax of DH's pay goes to his 401k.

BUT are only able to do this because I'm a contractor and therefore make a higher hourly rate than I would as a permanent employee. And along with that, I have no benefits (luckily I use DH's medical ins.) including no 401k or vacation days or holiday pay, AND I may or may not be employed when my contract is up in June.

In a couple years we intend to buy a much bigger house and we'll be paying for daycare at that point too (and I'll probably stop contracting), so I imagine at that point we'll save closer to 15% plus 401k contributions.

ETA: BTW I'm pregnant too, so once I become unemployed, I may not be able to find work until 2014.

Lateley, I've been putting more than 50% into savings, just because I only have 2 more months to save up for my UNPAID maternity leave plus my unpaid summer.

In my new district, teachers are 10 month employees, so we get paid only 10 months. I already knew that was coming, so I started saving to "pay myself" over the summer at the beginning of the year. Then I got pregnant and since I'm new to this state and have no built up sick leave, it's going to be 3 months unpaid. So that's 5 months total unpaid.

So I've been saving like mad to try to get at least $10,000, so I can pay myself $2,000/a month while I'm not working (less than what I normally make).

However, I'm only able to do that because DH pays our rent and bills with his paycheck. I'm just responsible for my own gas, tolls, food for both of us, and utilities for my house in Texas that I rent out. Luckily, the rent covers my mortgage/taxes/etc totally.

I think DH probably saves...15% of his paycheck? But I'm totally just guessing there.

We strive for 17% but we often fall short. Right now we are just socking away cash in a high yield savings account - we don't have retirement funds or any other savings. We have debt payments but we have scaled them back since we got pregnant and we're focusing on savings.