Just curious, what's your personal savings rate?

[david_mcmanus]

I guess I just wanted to find out if what most people's savings rates were and if they're actually increasing the amount that they sock away each check since everything is collapsing around us.

[TJ_98370]

David,

Why don't you set up a poll about personal savings rates? That way responders can be anonymous.

[biliruben]

Ah. I gotcha now, David.

Yes. At least nationally, the savings rate (as defined as the % of disposable income, not gross) is increasing:




The bubble-heads here are probably more conservative than most, so their savings rate was probably much higher than 0 before everything started collapsing around us, and it's probably more than 5% now.

A poll is a good idea, but define it pretty clearly.

As for me, I generally like to work against trend, so I was being very conservative and saving and paying off student loans when everyone else was HELOCing up to their eyeballs.

Now, however, I'm spending and taking risks and taking advantage not having to compete with all the folks who are too broke or too terrified to do anything but hunker down and roll pennies.

Our savings rate will probably be close to zero until my boy gets out of daycare. The next 3-5 years will be a little risky, as we will find it pretty hard going if either my wife or I are out of a job for more than a year. I think that has a low enough probability of happening however, that I didn't see any reason vastly change our plans.

[biliruben]

I'm guessing also by this definition, your savings rate is actually up in the high 80s. Absurdly conservative for anyone other than a monk, in my personal opinion! Especially for someone who already owns a house.

I think it's time you buy yourself that Ferrari. You've earned it.

[david_mcmanus]

[biliruben]

<0%, 0-5%, 5-10%, 10-25%, 25-50%, >50%

[Markor]

[lamont]

My base gross salary is about $98k and with bonuses it can push that over $100k a little bit (not wall-street magnitude bonuses, but the odd $5k retention bonus here or there). My employee stock option grants are down to 25% of their exercise price so there's little revenue there. I max out my 401(k) and max out Roth IRAs, plus generate $5-$10k in cash into a trading account. I'm single and rent, and would probably be doing better at saving outside of the retirement accounts if I didn't have a roughly $20k/year scuba diving problem (in gear and vacations and training).

Doing back of the envelope math I guess my balance sheet looks like:

$100k income
$15k 401(k)
$15k income tax
$3k roth IRA
$10k cash savings to trading account
$57k spent on everything else

Of the $57k, about $30-35k seems to be rent/cellphone/internet/TV/food kinds of things (i don't like calling these "essentials" since i could live off a 1/10th of this if i really had to).

That leaves $22-$27k/yr on "other" (diving gear, vacations, toys, etc).

In summary, I'm debt-free and saving $23-$28k a year and clearly letting the terrorists win and destroying america...