Ratios

[mommy4ever]

Ok, My personal favorite gal, Gail Vaz-Oxlade, has some % of income that she recommends people follow.

Housing: 35%
Transportation: 15%
Life: 25%
Debt: 15%
Savings: 10%


When I plug my numbers in my housing is at 22%, Transportation: 7%, Life: 21.5%, Savings 15%, debt 15%.

We only use 80% of our earnings in our new budget if we stick to it. Where it gets sticky is in the Life, which includes, groceries, entertainment, gifts, clothing, etc, variables that can get way out of hand if not careful.

So we have nearly 20% of our net income to allocate to where ever we want. Right now, I'm doing the EF in a big way. I want to have a few months mortgage and groceries covered. Then I'll go back to incinerating debt.

I was actually quite pleased with the %, we come in under in 3 areas and are over in a great way, savings. We'll be way over in that area the next 2 or 3 months though, then we'll be over in the debt repayment, only because we'll be snowballing big time.

How do your numbers fit together?

[Early Bird]

I assume that housing includes utilities, taxes, house repairs, and homeowner's insurance? If so, we're over the 35%

Our transportation is probably lower, because we have older, paid-for cars.

We don't have consumer debt, but we do have a mortgage.

So, I'd say, that of our take-home:

• housing: 42%
• auto: 8%
• savings: 5%
• life: 40%

But ... we save up and then spend money on house repairs and car repairs; I put those 'savings' into the appropriate spend-category.

Life is a funny category. Everything from groceries to personal allowances to charitable contributions to medical copays to vacations got put in that category.

[Momto2Boyz]

Interesting. When I was a loan officer, we calculated something like this, to basically check to see if you could repay the loan. Your total amount of debt (not including utilities, day care, etc.) could not exceed 45% of your total income.

Here is how we stack up:

Housing: 14% (does not include our home owners insurance...going to lump that into transportation, just easier that way since our insurance is all together)
Transportation: 3% (includes all insurance and gas...car is paid for...but doesn't include periodic repairs)
Life: I don't know what you would account for that...we have 9% of our monthly income dedicated to miscellaneous expense
Debt: 0% (we have no debt)

I'll even go further (these are straight out of my Jan '09 budget):
Groceries: 8%
Utilities: 9.5% (includes cell phones)
Savings: 36%

That total's 79.5%. The rest goes to other misc things that I won't list out, but include things like preschool tuition and things like that!

[Cricketlegs]

I may plug my numbers into quicken and see what they say.

[mommy4ever]

Utilites, she lumps with house, insurance, mortgage, repairs, condo fees etc..
Life includes tuitions, groceries, entertainment, allowances, clothing,
transportation is gas, repairs, laon payments/lease, insurance

Not necessarily just debt.

[missmanny]

I'll get back to you on this one, I have filled out Gails Spreadsheet (available on her website) I just have to find where I have saved it and I will post it.

We have no consumer debt and don't own a home yet so ours from memory is very low in those departments, I save around about 40% of my income.

[Denvergirlie]

I assume one was to base this off of net take home pay and not gross? I mean I have little ability to affect the difference between my net and gross. I could change it by 6% of my gross as I do have 6% pre-tax going into a 401K but can not affect taxes, et al.

So based on net take home here are our numbers (not including the 6% 401K):

Housing: 26%
Truck: 5%
Life: 13%
Debt: 0%
Savings: 56%

I don't expect this job to last forever thou, so most likely will not continue to put away so much in savings in the future, but are certainly socking it away for the time being.

[missmanny]

From my budget spreadsheet (taken from her website) here are my figures...

It is important to note though that we are renting at the moment and are saving to buy a house, our house repayments will be much more expensive then our rent is once that happens.

Housing 23%
Transport 7%
Life 29%
Debt 0%
Savings 41%

sheese, I look good on paper - the reality isn't quite this pretty...

[dcompton]

Based on take home:

Housing: 24%
Transportation: 4% (I included gas with this - no gas, no transportation!)
Life: 23%
Debt: 0%
Savings: left up to $49%

Life is a guess. I don't itemize a budget. I budget a lump sum monthly to be used for everything that isn't a "bill." I plugged into her calculator this amount. Some months it may be under, some months over.

Also I did not include the things that are already accounted for through payroll deductions like health insurance. I realize that skews the percentages, but I didn't have the documentation here at work to figure it out. So, about half of my take home pay goes to expenses of all kinds.

[rachelMcK]

Here are mine:

Housing - 20% (will be going up to 30% next month for 2 months)
Trans - 6%
Debt - 45%
Savings - 0%
Life - 29%

Interesting way of looking at things. I never realized that this is what I spend per month. Life seems a little high, but i think that has more to do with us caving and going to mcdonalds or places like that about once a week. Need to stop that.