My 2017 Expenses – Need Suggestion/ Guidance/ Tips/ Advice to Improve Savings

This looks similar in terms of total spending to what I was doing on my own in a medium COL city out of college, but I'd strongly suggest you categorize things better so you can figure out where you spend your money. For example, you have Whole Foods, Aldi, Sprouts, Costco, HMart. Is that all grocery/pantry? What about Target, they also sell grocery, but could also be clothes along with JCPenny. You've got Tmobile and Republic wireless -- add that together for just Cell Phone. It's impossible to tell what your vacation costs were. I see some expedia, six flags citypass, and whatnot, but no direct hotel charges. Just drop that all into vacation and/or entertainment.

It's also hard to see if we're not familiar with what things are, like DCU? Is that a Credit Union for your savings account? Is that paying off student loans? What about STASH? Is that your drug budget?

Some things jump out at me though

State Farm = renter's insurance? That's fine. Your AAA is concerning though for Auto, $854 every 6 months. You can probably get that lower without cutting coverage unless $2K was paying off the balance of a brand new car and/or you're under 26. See about bundling the renters and auto and shop around for rates. Is that $750 car service plan really saving you more than $750 per year? If the 2K was a super cheap car lease, $750/yr maintenance should not be required.

You have a car but significant expenses on Uber/Lyft. Are those related to vacation travel? Or are they to get around while your car is in the shop? Or are they a designated driver for when you go out?

Where did the $800 in ATM withdraws go? That's over 2% of the spending.

So overall I'd suggest updating your spreadsheet to get some higher level categories. From there, see what jumps out at you to drill in to as something you can possibly cut. So long as you're happy with your savings rate you can actually spend money on things you want. If that's food, clothes, hobbies, toys whatever. It's your life so make sure you enjoy it.

I live somewhere else, so I spent closer to 6k on housing (a mortgage, in my case). Next year that will be zero, as it will have been paid off in full after about 3 years.

You spend more on uber & lyft than you do on fuel, which is an interesting data point.

What is stash? Savings? How about DCU?

Is comcast cable? Or just internet? If it's cable that's an easy thing to cut out.

I don't see much that is outrageous in this budget. A lot of it is obscured by names of businesses, like walmart.

I think I spend less across the board, except fuel. Counting planes, cabs, fuel, car, insurance, rentals, and possibly a car payment (DCU?), you spent a LOT on transportation. My expenses in that category this year were registration, insurance at about $400, fuel, and a few oil changes I did myself. I bought my car (1996 Jeep) outright several years ago.

The entire 2nd column is totally fine, I'd ignore that altogether.

If you want an easier-to-parse budget, I would do this:

Categorize everything, like this:

* Housing

* Car Ownership

* Other transportation

* Groceries

* Eating Out (subway etc)

* Entertainment (zoo, movies, etc)

* Essential Utilities (electric, internet imo)

* Non-essential Utilities (cable tv imo)

* Medical

Then look at those numbers. I think you'll find your car ownership column is too high, and the rest is probably within your limits. To make it less expensive, own an older vehicle without payments or don't own one at all if your city can support that.

You will almost certainly be able to save money in eating out and groceries, and non-essential utilities. I do not recommend saving money in recreational, you aren't overspending in that category imo.

35k/yr sounds reasonable for a professional living a regular white-collar existence in a major US metro. Obviously you can cut out Uber and take the bus, cut out Whole Foods and shop exclusively at Wal Mart, cut out Six Flags trips, etc. and all of that's going to make a difference of about $1-2k/yr.

How's your salary? It's probably easier to increase your salary than it is to scrimp and save to get your expenses down a couple thousand.

A) You can do this more effectively if you group your expenses by what you bought rather than where you bought it. At WalMart, were you purchasing video games or necessary clothing or holiday gifts or groceries? At Whole Foods, were you buying prepared meals or rice and beans? And wtf are DCU or STASH?

B) The best way to cut your expenses is to start with the biggest ones. Where do you live? Your rent is pretty low for SF or NY but pretty high for just about anywhere in Kansas or India. You're spending a lot on various car-related expenses AND a bunch on cabs. Do you really need a car where you live? Can you get by with transit? Or with a bike and the occasional cab? If you are in a car-dependent location and happy with it, can you find a place with lower rent?

C) Figure out which of your expenses are fungible and which aren't. Medical expenses aren't so much. But you could probably spend less at restaurants if you tried, and less at supermarkets if you prepared more meals from scratch.

D) You don't show how much you're saving or really what you're spending on, so it's hard for me to determine whether you're being frugal or extravagant relative to your income. If you're not saving at all and want to increase your savings to a respectable 10%, you've got some work ahead of you in terms of how you think about money. If you're saving 48% of your income and want to inch that up to 50%, that's likely a much easier task. If you're trying to edge up from saving 80% to 82%, you may have run out of places to cut.

1) I've never broken down my expenses this way. See point A above. It's normal for housing to be your highest expense. It's normal in much of the US for transportation to be the next highest expense, followed by food. (Medical can be a crapshoot where it's an enormous expense or nearly nothing.) In other places it's typically in the order housing, food, transportation and virtually zero on medical.

2-3) I spend about 50% more on housing to have access to transit, and my annual transportation costs are less than one month's rent. I live in a relatively expensive location and spend only about 25% more than you per year - which allows me to save over 50% of my take-home pay. How do I do that? A few things:

a) Max out pre-tax savings accounts (401K [with employer match!], IRA).

b) Auto-transfer money from each paycheck into investment accounts so it's not available to spend.

c) For any purchase that you don't absolutely NEED to have immediately (and be strict with yourself about what that means), wait a week to buy it, then re-evaluate how much you really want it.

d) Set yourself budgets for various categories, and stick to them - a weekly budget for groceries, one for restaurants and entertainment, etc; a weekly or monthly budget for optional purchases (e.g. games, fancy soaps, whatever it is you tend to spend money on because you want it instead of need it). You can save this up and roll it over for larger purchases (e.g. new electronics). A monthly budget for utilities (so you can watch whether you really need to spend as much as you do on electricity, or data overages, or pay-per-view or whatever). An annual budget for vacations, one for gifts, etc.

And finally:

e) Let yourself splurge once in a while on something small that you want but don't need - an ice cream cone or a fidget spinner or whatever. It helps the strict management of your expenses continue to feel like a choice rather than a straitjacket.

What is DCU? Also what is AAA? What is "car" - is that car loan?

I see you have another entry for car service plan which looks expensive to me at $750. I pay around £220 a year for servicing and a similar amount for insurance - my car expenses - excluding petrol amount to around £70 a month. Your electricity bill looks high too - are you running an aircon? My electricity bill is around £240 a year or less. My rent is £6k a year (I share with partner - we have a two bed cottage in the countryside). Your Comcast bill (I assume for Internet) and T-mobile combined is nearly $1k - I pay around £300 a year for Land line, internet and mobile phone, but I have no smartphone / plan, just pay as you go and I only really use the mobile for emergencies.

It's possible if you could get into some kind of shared living arrangement you could reduce your housing costs. I'm thinking something along the lines of a shared house or shared apartment to get the rent down. I guess it depends though on exactly where you live - I know that California has crazy accommodation costs.

I am the OP. (i lost that password somehow)

Some clarifications...

Annual Package - $105,000

Withholdings - $25,000 - (TAX+INSURANCE+ETC,.)

Expenses - $35,000

Savings - $45,000

DCU - Digital Credit Union - Auto Loan

AAA - Auto Insurance

Stash - https://www.stashinvest.com/ - I did a investment of $1000 in some ETF's.

Comcast - Just internet.

Car Service Plan - I took a premium service which covers some expenses for 10 years. I agree i could have avoided it. It is a one time cost, not yearly.

Electricity - Sawnee - Yes we have a air conditioning unit for both cold and heat. 4 months a year have to use it full time other time we use it 3 hours a day.

I will check on the categorizing part.

The Met Museum is "donation suggested", because the land was donated by the city on the condition they kept the entrance free for everyone... But they make it seem like the $20 fee is mandatory.

I think you should x-post this to reddit.com/r/financialindependence/

One thing I saved a lot of money on last year was with farm CSA's, where you put upfront $500 or so and then receive a box of veggies and eggs every week for the entire season that works out to about $20/week (or $15/week depending on single person). This assumes there is some farming where you live but BC, Washington, Oregon, California all have these CSA schemes. Because I consistently had so much food around I stopped eating out so much as well. Before I did this I would usually stop by a grocery store on my way back from the university lab every night and spend about $10CAD, so $300/mth or so VS $80/month, for 5 months.

Thanks for submitting this - it actually inspired me to compile numbers for my 2017. The results were scary.

* $22k on student loans (good expense, I'm done with them now)

* $29k on rent (studio in SF, moving in with roommate this month to cut expense in half)

* $11k on restaurants (holy shit)

* $4k on groceries (not bad, but coupled with restaurants is very bad)

* $3k on alcohol (holy shit)

* $5k on clothing (meh not the worst)

* $17k on car payments, gas, insurance, etc (got rid of car so no more of this. pro tip - don't sign 3 year leases and then move to SF)

* 2k on Uber/public transportation (uber pass ftw towards end of year)

Going forward, 2018 will be a VERY good year in comparison since I'll be able to cut out MOST of these costs. But it's still disgusting how much money I wasted last year.