Ask HN: How do you manage and budget your monthly income | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you manage and budget your monthly income

15 pointsipop25 comments

My resolution for this year is to better manage my money in order to start saving for a house.

I have only one income source and that being the monthly salary (100 units).

My plan is to divide the salary into smaller budgets in order to save or invest.

For example: - pay out the existing debt (around 350 units) - put money aside in 3-6m deposits (around 1.8-3.2%/year), not much, but they might cover for the inflation - buy government bonds (currently 3.5-4.5%/y) - invest in short-medium term p2p loans (eg. mintos, peerberry, 8-12%/y) - put a small amount of money aside, just to have some cash

My problem: how do I start this? How to decide how many units to invest/save where?

Thank.

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I don't. I simply have a very frugal lifestyle. The result is that on average over a year about half goes to savings.

Same!

Paycheck is automatically deposited into various savings, what's leftover is spending money.

I think your investment strategy is pretty off. Don't bother with CDs, just get a high yield savings and keep 6 months expenses in it (it's an emergency fund and it should be liquid). The rest should go into mixture of index funds and bonds (the balance of which depends on your age and risk tolerance) in tax advantaged retirement accounts.

Once you've maxed out your tax advantaged accounts, the rest can go wherever. Personally, I do mostly index funds with a little bit of crypto and individual stocks for fun.

I recommend the book The Simple Path to Wealth. I didn't know anything about finances before that book and it provides a simple, set-and-forget strategy with ample reasoning behind each decision.

My suggestion: Don't overthink or plan too much. The most important thing is to ensure that you don't live paycheck to paycheck i.e. spend everything you earn. Keep this formula simple: Cashflow IN > Cashflow OUT and you will start seeing results early on. I am a big fan of Dave Ramsey's baby steps if that works for you.

After paying off existing debt the next best thing once you have an emergency fund covered is stocks and maybe a little crypto if you're feel like future proofing yourself.

The yield on government bonds is really low at the moment and p2p loans can be finicky at best (I've lost more money than I've made from Mintos...).

Stocks have been giving great returns over the last few years and while there's almost certainly going to be a correction at some point its the only real place where you can get proper returns at the moment. You could invest in ETF (Exchange Traded Funds) which track certain buckets of funds like the S&P500 or invest in stocks individually.

Get yourself setup with a trading account - this varies by country and they have different fees etc but google should be able to sort you out here.

I don't have the necessary financial knowledge to learn how to trade efficiently. I know it's now just buy low, sell high. The problem is when and what to buy.

The only thing that I could do regarding this is use a platform like etoro and their copy feature.

Thats the great thing about Exchange Traded funds which track an index - there's no thinking to do just invest in the fund for example this is a popular one: Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO)

And when you buy this you are effectively buying, Apple, Amazon, Google, Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble Co, NVIDIA etc because the fund will go ahead and buy all the largest 500 US companies weighted by market cap.

The S&P500 has returned an average of 12% a year for the last 10 years.

Found something interesting - https://www.upmyinterest.com/article/investportfoliolt

SP 500 was -5.9% in 2018, but it went up to 31% in 2019...pretty fair.

crypto...I wanted to buy btc when it was 16k, then thanked myself I didn't (it crashed to 8k) and now it traded for 25k+...same with XRP

If you want to dabble you could buy a little bit each month over a few years. Whatever you can afford to lose. You’ll the buy the dips as well. With bitcoin no one knows the “true value” and it’s hard to assess like a stock.

Use personalcapital.com to track everything.

Put all charges onto a sold rewards card, Costco Visa in my case.

Pay off credit card every paycheck and put the rest into Ally Invest account.

Buy Etfs to maintain the balance of a solid portfolio.

Examine monthly budget from personalcapital.com and finds ways to trim expenses.

My strategy nearly matches this comment. I'd also set all bill payments to autopay so you avoid any late fees/delinquent accounts which needlessly hurts your credit. I highly encourage you to list out your regular monthly expense categories and write out what that is (e.g. mortgage/utilities/subscriptions), add that all up, and then see what the delta is every month so you know where your discretionary spending is going. Even better is to have a financial goal with a finite number so you know how you are progressing towards it (e.g. emergency fund, vacation fund, retirement, etc).

If you're struggling to pay for basic necessities, then you need to examine your spending habits and cut out unnecessary things in order to increase your savings rate.

After a base-level is established, you can have more "freedom" to either spend it on luxuries, or invest.

I personally am able to save/invest about 60-70% of my income/month, and I have about a 10% buffer each month available for "extras/fun/emergencies". If I have an expensive month (for example, December, which included a lot of travel and gift buying), then I just temper January's spending so that I can save more that month.

Not an answer to your question, but rather an observation regarding budgeting:

I daily document my account balance to the penny, which unexpectedly acts (for me) as a brake on superfluous spending.

Simply the act of penny-wise documentation compels the need to be aware of spending. Having merely a spreadsheet and a budget app, that framework encouraged me to compare my current day balance with the previous month's day, and provided a visual reward when my balance was higher.

In sum, maintaining granular data about my account led to good things.

I just have a weekly budget set to 11.000 THB. This money is used for food, small trips, clothing, groceries, etc... (10.000 THB is about 333 USD right now).

I pay my health and car insurance once a year and also health insurance for my girlfriend and daughter. That might equal another 90.000 THB total.

I try to maintain a 10.000 USD (about 300.000 THB) buffer in my TransferWise account. For emergencies or periods with no income.

Everything above I am free to invest in stock and crypto (mainly Bitcoin).

I don't have a budget in traditional sense (Excel table with spending categories and amounts allocated for each, with regularly updated actual spent amounts). I just look at the balance of my checking account when I get the statement. If it goes down month over month, I know I need to cut spending.

Everything else is automated: scheduled transfers to savings, recurring mortgage payments, autopay for credit cards, etc.

Auto deposit part of paycheck into savings account that I absolutely never every touch besides moving that money to betterment (or some other managed investment vehicle). Has never failed me. I haven’t withdrawn from that account in 15 years.

Also I get all my groceries from ethnic stores so I save at least 50% there. I also own my house outright so I don’t waste money on mortgage interest.

I never really budget to be honest. I simply spent as little money as possible. To me, it’s like people that want to lose weight. You can stick to a diet or simply choose to eat less at all times. Every time I spent, I figure out what is on discount and whether it’s a ‘want’ or a ‘need’. I will indulge once in a while on late night food though.

Same, I don't do any budget. i just don't spend a lot and prioritize what's need to be paid. Those left? That's what I save.

I think its an error to think of it in terms of relative shares, absolute quantities matter a lot in terms of specific thresholds when something is worth it or not. The question is very specific to the absolute amount you can save each month, and your tolerance for risk.

I don’t budget. I put a fixed amount into my checking account for spending every month and the rest is deposited into savings and investments.

I also try and pay expenses yearly, which for now is rent, Internet and health insurance.

Usually debt is the first thing to attack. Depending on the interest rate. I have been a fan of Dave Ramsey. He has helped a lot of people with this.

my bank automatically sorts all of my expenses and I review them and update miss characterizations. It has done through a phone app, it is effectively zero work

I keep all large expenses small my rent has never been more than $800 a month. I do this by living with people.

what bank does this?

Becu for washington, 1st tech for oregon. I'm sure others too. I only use credit unions

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