Saving and finances

TheFORCE

Financial education should be taught in highschools as a class. All saving measures you can take and afford now, the more comfortable you will be later on.

dave330i

TheFORCE wrote: »

Financial education should be taught in highschools as a class. All saving measures you can take and afford now, the more comfortable you will be later on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ant_and_the_Grasshopper

dave330i

tedjames wrote: »

I started bringing my breakfast and lunch to work. No more needless spending. Why do I need stuff? It just takes up space in the house. Now I have little debt other than a car note (zero interest) and mortgage. I also have a nice savings account. No more impulse buying. I'd rather spend my money on experiences, like the UK trip we took last year. Saved for a long time to pay for that.

I stopped packing lunch some years back. Did the calculation, then told the wife that I'm willing to splurge ~$3k/year to dine out for lunch. It gives me an opportunity to leave work to decompress, try out new cuisines, and generally enjoy life.

volfkhat

kalimuscle wrote: »

With any retirement saving schemas such as 401k you have to wait till you are 50 to be able to get the saved funds back. What is the point? Honestly I am not trying to be funny here but I do not believe I will live to be 50

That's actually a fair point.
lol

Live Free, Die Hard.... leave a good-looking corpse :]


Besides, getting Old... SUCKS.
(your body will definitely betray you)
In the end, I would hate to be wiped out by medical costs..

/shrug

paul78

kalimuscle wrote: »

With any retirement saving schemas such as 401k you have to wait till you are 50 to be able to get the saved funds back. What is the point? Honestly I am not trying to be funny here but I do not believe I will live to be 50

I realize that you are currently unemployed and in debt. And that in itself can be stresfull and distressing. But hopefully the responses have given you some ideas. There's really no magic bullet. Simply put - it's all about financial discipline. The reality is that if you have a fatalistic attitude about your future, perhaps you need to get some help. As one of the few TE members who is 50 and older, I can remember that getting feedback and advice was a lot more difficult without online communities such as TE. There has been some great advice offered for your situation. Hope you act on some of it. Good luck to you as you look for a job and get your finances in order.

kalimuscle

Thanks for the replies

roninkai

Dave. Ramsey.

Iristheangel

kalimuscle wrote: »

Hey everyone,

I am unemployed at the moment.

I have come to a realization that when you had a high paying job and you spend alot of your money without a care on materalistic and high end things as well as drinking and parting etc, and when you lose your job its hard to stop your spending habits as well as cut back on your lifestyle.

Does anyone have any experience with this ?

Also how much of your pay cheq do you save and what are your general expenses?

Going from eating out 3 times a day in fancy places to eating at home is hard !

Depends on the situation. If you have a kid, spouse, etc, you may have more/less money depending on the income. I was poor most of my adult live and my spouse came from a 3rd world country so you'd think we'd never be spending money but I find that isn't true at all. The more money you make, the more you spend to some degree. For example, while I don't buy luxury cars or anything, I do buy new Hyundai's now for the warranty. I still make sure I get the best deal I can but don't get the lowest tier car anymore. When we first got together, we had a 2 bedroom apartment. We're now in a 4 bedroom townhome since we're starting to plan for our family. Having kids for a *** couple isn't cheap so that's more $$$$. We're also at an age where we're taking other things seriously so we max out our ESPP (our "shadow savings" in a way), 401K, and put money in brokerages.

When all is said and done, we don't really save a lot in a savings account or leave tons in liquid assets but we have money out there if we need to pull something out of stocks or our brokerage, a decent sized 401K, and, in an absolute emergency, a lot of available credit to cover most crisis situations.

I'm a little old school with my budget planning with Excel months in advance. It keeps me honest on what I need to pay with that check and makes me all happy when I see I'm sticking to it. I'm one of those people that need routine and structure to keep myself honest to a budget (or study schedule).

@kali - I know what you mean about losing incoming. I guess I'm a little paranoid because I keep my debt down and I don't take more than I can bite off if my spouse or I were to lose our jobs or my income were to dramatically decrease. I don't ever want to be in the next financial crash or dealing with a medical issue and have more bills than I can pay on 25% of what I make now.

JoJoCal19

Iristheangel wrote: »

I'm a little old school with my budget planning with Excel months in advance. It keeps me honest on what I need to pay with that check and makes me all happy when I see I'm sticking to it. I'm one of those people that need routine and structure to keep myself honest to a budget (or study schedule).

I don't usually pimp products, but YouNeedABudget is way better than Excel for just that. I did the same as you but now I use YNAB. Every dollar, current and future has a job, basically it's assigned to something. You can plan out as far in advance as you want. You can determine in x amount of time in the future you want to spend x amount and it will tell you how much to put towards it each month. It's amazing to see exactly where each dollar goes now, and in the future.

Cyberscum

No expenses other than basic utilities...I went through that phase and learned quickly from the mistakes of others.

I put about 2.5k into investments other than the employer matched minimum.

About 1.5k into savings.

The rest (basically what's made from my side business is what we play with for the month).

My advice, downgrade everything until you get back on your feet. Treat debt like people are trying to steal from you (which they are) and find hobbies that don't include money.

Good luck