Comment by devuo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by devuo | Hacker News Reader

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What I'm currently doing with my net salary:

~10% food

~10% utilities

~12% or more judiciously applied in historically stable investment funds and in savings towards future vacations/gadgets

~33% spent in housing

~35% spent (or not spent) in everything else, eating out, buying random stuff, clothing, etc.

Since a small scare, I always maintain an emergency fund easily accessible which covers 7 months of expenses at my current levels (housing, utilities & food)

Besides all of these I still have the luxury of living in a country where there's an unemployment pay that covers an hefty percentage of your last gross salary for at least 2 years since the day you became unemployed.

I can't tell you how less anxious and relaxed I became since the day I completed my emergency fund and started making proper savings and investments.

Is that net after investing in your 401k?

12% for saving seems a bit low (unless you happen to be making 250K+, which then, ignore my advice).

Parent strongly suggests that they don't live in US.

The utilities thing was what I found crazy. I was paying about 1-2% of take home pay to utilities at my place in California, despite making what I assume is far less than most people here.

I'm not the parent, but utilities for me in Uruguay are closer to 10% of my take-home pay than to 2% (electricity alone is 5%). I pay 5,6 URGP per kWh (about 22 U.S. cents).

According to Google, it's twice the price paid on average in the U.S.

The same goes for most other utilities. They're usually NOT included in rent contracts, that's another sticker shock foreigners have (also, houses have no basic appliances when rented out).

Most groceries are also way more expensive. Third world doesn't mean cheap, sadly. Only labor is cheaper (and some locally produced and nonexported goods, or subsidized).

Ah good point, I didn't catch that.

My first salaried job was at $60k, which came out to roughly $3000/month take-home.

Utilities were split among roommates, but about $60-100 depending on the time of year. If you add in other recurring costs like internet and mobile phone, that can easily go up to $200-250, which is about 8%, so the parent's 10% isn't too far off (especially if you have to pay for heating/AC in more extreme climates).

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