I’m considering. 
I’m unsure if I want to track closely for mental health reasons. If I do, I’m in.
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I’m tracking over in the $20k thread because I’ve been in the favor of the Income Fairy these last few years, but wanted to follow along here and cheer everyone on. So excited to see everyone do awesome shit. :3
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I’d like to join! I appreciate the debt repayment rule, or else I wouldn’t be able to do it (which is a sign that I need to change my lifestyle!)
ETA: So my pre-tax income without any freelance work is $41,200 = saving $8240 or $687/mo.
Minimum student loan payments $467, 403b contribution $50 (no employer match), leaves $170 per month. My emergency fund is totally depleted right now, so I’ll put it there. I also need to save for taxes, and I don’t know yet what my living situation will be in fall 2020 but I anticipate moving, so I need to find that money too. And I want to start an IRA or 401K. If I stick to the plan, I would end up with $2030 in my emergency fund at the end of the year. But that never happens. I’ll probably have to do a lot of adjusting as I go along.
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So… for me I guess it is my IRA, savings that will not be spent in 2020, and mortgage principal that would all count? Do I include my employer contribution in the IRA or only my money? I know I can’t do the 20k challenge, but maybe this one. I will have to crunch rough numbers to see if it is even feasible…
I am embarrassed to say that I track very little, I just throw random chunks of money in savings or extra house payments when I get commission checks…
Also… after writing the above stuff I had a thought. How do I track if I am salary plus commission? I get paid weekly, but usually 2x a year I get a large-ish commission check.
ETA The commission checks can vary wildly, so there is no good way to pre-plan anything other than my salary.
ETA2 (Sorry!) My employer pays my health insurance, is that considered income and/or savings?
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You can include your employer contribution to your IRA, 401K, Pension, SEP, or HSA as part of your overall savings rate but you must include that percentage in your total income as well.
I.e. if you make $40,000 base salary a year and get an additional 3% employer contribution on your 401k or $1,200, your overall salary would be $41,200 Meaning if that was your only savings, your savings rate would be $1200/$41,200 = 2.91%
This is out of income, not salary, so like anyone with variable income, your total income for the year will come out of that. So like the windfall rule, you can save that money towards the overall amount, but the commission counts toward your overall income.
Example: if you get $40,000 in salary, but $10,000 in commission for the year, your pre-tax income will be $50,000. You save $8,000 overall, which would be 20% of your salary. But including the extra $10,000 you get in commission, your savings rate will be $8,000/$50,000, or 16%.
Most employers will allow you to set aside a base percentage for all income - salary AND commission or profit-sharing/bonus checks to go into a separate account or towards your retirement accounts.
On your paystub you will have your Year to Date (YTD) compensation and that will include your commission if you need help figuring it out.
We only consider cash compensation so you health insurance doesn’t count or anything like commuter or tuition benefits, but what your employer puts in your HSA (health savings account) can count if you like towards your overall saving since it is yours to keep and rolls over year to year.
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THANK YOU!
I should probably look over this past year to see if I am even close to 20%…
With very quick math, I am at 25% ish of straight salary for 2019. Can I count only salary and ignore commission here?
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I want badges and a sticker. Do I want badges and a sticker badly enough to do what sounds like a lot of confusing math?
I’m putting 11% into my 401k so I only need another 9%. (I can choose to include or not include employer match, right?)
I would have to figure out what percentage I will be contributing to my HSA.
I would have to figure out how much I am paying in mortgage principal, and what percentage that is.
What about if (when) I get a raise? I would have to re-figure out all the percentages…
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For 2020 I’ll save 20% of my income, which allows me to set a goal for my variable income as well.
Including my hourly positions and freelance projects I’d like to shoot for 50k take home pay and then save 20% of that, i.e. 10k. 80% of savings will go to debt payoff and 20% of savings to my 401k.
I would also like to open a Roth IRA this year, so, if my income ends up being more than 50k, I will plan to dedicate the remainder of savings to that.
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I’m new here! I’m going to give this a shot. I’m self-employed so my income is a little weird, i.e. I have a few expenses like insurance paid out of my business, but since my current salaried income is pretty low ($19K), 20% of that is a pretty big chunk. I’ve got small emergency funds, so my big goal this year is debt repayment. I’ve got personal credit card debt, mostly from starting up my store, so if I can pay off $3,800 of that, I will be a happy girl.
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Okay, I can do this! My big goal is to pay off my final student loan and that’s just a little less than 20%. The goal after the loan is gone is to save a 3 month EF, so that should put me right around 20%. I’ll have to run official numbers, but this should be a good goal for me!
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If paying off debt counts I can DEFINITELY do it. I’m probably already paying 20-25% of my income to that most months 
. I absolutely want to keep hammering on that, but I need to sort out a more specific savings goal as well.
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Ok, so in keeping with the $20 theme, my addition is going to be that I need to put at least $20 per week into my Roth and $20 per week into my high interest savings account. Ideally more, but with the debt thing this should be achievable even in difficult months, and it doesn’t disrupt the theme!
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Just noting for my own records that 20% of my gross income is $12,600.
I figure I’ll check in every month. The first few months my savings will be less because I’m trying to cashflow a $3,000 minimum spend to get a big airline miles bonus, which I have to do by mid-March.
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I’m in!
I appreciate the many categories for savings being allowed. I’ll track using my wage stubs as well as my post tax accounts/budget.
Annual income: $36,000
Savings goal: $7,200
Possible sources:
- Invested Pension Plan
- Roth IRA
- Emergency Fund
- 529 College Savings
Also participating in the BINGO challenge!
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Annnd here we are! Last day of the month, day of lots of paydays for me.
YTD post-tax income: $3,725
Cash Savings YTD: $1,617.19
Traditional IRA: $200
January Percentage: 48% of post tax income
??? of pre-tax income; will calculate end of year
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Just calculated for January:
24.57% of gross income toward debt repayment (CC & personal loan)
9.27% toward savings: combination of savings accounts, Roth contributions, and HSA contributions. I separated the part of my HSA contribution that’s going directly to a medical bill… actually, that’s not even calculated in my debt repayment above, but wherever, I’m comfortably over 20% here!
33.84% between the two categories.
I may end up taking some money out of savings to pay for taxes I owe: if I do, I’ll adjust accordingly. My spreadsheet has more detail and should make it easy enough to adjust!
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January was a slow savings month because instead of saving I am cashflowing a $3k minimum spend to get an airline miles balance. (Which I achieved! The money is just sitting there waiting to be used to pay my card. Win!)
Put $436.11 into my 401k.
Put $150.88 into my “moving” savings fund (to be spent in 2021 or possibly 2022.
Total: $586.99
20% of my income is $12,600, so I have $12,013.01 to go. Oof!
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37% of after tax income invested this month.
Too bad my extra mortgage payments can’t count towards this or I would be at 59%…seeing this percentage written out completely blows my mind. Can’t wait until the end of the year when I hopefully have it paid off!
ETA based on anomalily comments below - the regular and extra principle mortgage payments put savings up to 88% of my income.Wow.
Please note that I only include my income, not SO’s.
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Mortgage payments towards principal count!
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I like the monthly update idea. I want to keep this fairly simple, so I’m just going to track how much I save vs my goal. There seems to be about eleventy thousand different ways to calculate your savings rate and I’ve never actually come to a good conclusion about that.
Okay, here we go for January!
$569 - 401K
$20 - Roth IRA
$450 - Emergency fund
$200 - Car fund
Total: $1,239 / $11,250 = 11% of the way there
I am not normally able to save that much cash per month, but it was a 3 paycheck month, so, woot!
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