What percentage do you spend on Needs/Wants/Savings?

[PRICEPLUS]

40% savings
50% needs
10% wants

I supoose the mix changes from time to time but as I get older I find I need less and less!

[MonkeyMama]

Needs: 80%
Wants: 10%
Savings: 10%

Oh yeah, the mix changes often. Wants have always been pretty low on the list - they are probably higher than they have ever been. Recently put our son in preschool and hired a gardener - and I put our "allowances" in the wants.

There is a lot in the need category that could probably move to wants. I was just reading an article about this earlier - so I included the items mentioned in the article - what was "need." I do not agree those are all need - LOL. For 1 - cable was included. Our big house is not a need, but it has paid off substantially... Not everything is black and white. About 80% of the needs is mortgage and health insurance (yes the insurance in insane). & the rest is insurance, utilities, food, car expenses, which altogether doesn't amount to that much. Our needs and savings have overall taken huge priority over wants, over the years.

I did not include the extras outside of my base salary. The true picture this year should be more like this:

Needs: 62%
Wants: 8%
Savings: 30%

Oh yeah there are a lot of wants in the need category - hehe. We aren't hurting for anything over here.

[tinapbeana]

needs (basic food, shelter, water, utilities, required insurances, legal obligations such as taxes, debt, contracts): 41.43%

wants (extra grocery money, expanded cable and land line, allowances): 30.36%

savings (other than those from 'needs' like taxes & insurance): 28.21%

~~~
EDITED b/c i had some things duplicated in the need and want columns. boy, i must really need and want electricity!!!

[Aleta]

She said in the beginning of the book that I personally didn't like but came to understand later on after reading it. She said that she wanted to get the readers off to a big start by saving the big bucks not the coupon saving, rolled penny saving, etc. I personally have never seen anything wrong with that but you'll never get where you need to be if that's all you're doing. She wants you to start analyzing where you can cut expenses including checking your insurances to see if you can get a better deal so that you CAN be saving more. She not against coupon clipping but she thinks you should see where in the big arenas that you are losing money. Once I did the %'s, I really did see what was taking our money and was keeping us from the 50/30/20.

She will also analyze if your wants percentage is too small. There's alot of sage advice in there and you just have to go outside the box to see what she is saying.

[fairy74]

needs 45%
Wants 35%
savings 20%

[vishenda]

50
30
20

count me in =)

[PrincessPerky]

[quote=PrincessPerky]previously we were at about 70% needs...right now it has gone down closer to 60% due to a raise.
/QUOTE]


Oooh I feel so tecnical, I got excell to actually state my percents, like hard numbers!

course there is still the missing money... (the err row)

Needs -62.3%
Wants -9.9%
Savings -9.4%

total -81.6%

err 18.4%

and I was right in my head calculations! Now to find where the err loot is going.

[tinapbeana]

hey, perky? are you putting in gross salary and then budgeting off of net? that ERR looks to me like taxes, insurance, etc.

[PrincessPerky]

noo, its net, I actually don't know where the paperwork on gross is..so I skipped it, I know not very exact of me, but, well.hey I am new at this! But thanks for the idea!