Author Topic: Share your savings rate, families of 5 with household income of 90K  (Read 5773 times)

simplertimes

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I'm interested in hearing about your savings rate if you are a family of 5 and earn a household income of $90,000.  I'm wondering what some realistic goals would be for my family :)

Right now we are saving about $10-12,000 per year so 11-13%.  I know we can do better!

boarder42

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Re: Share your savings rate, families of 5 with household income of 90K
« Reply #1 on: December 07, 2015, 06:41:16 AM »
you can do lots better.. you're askine much to specific a question though..

you really should do a case study and show us where all that 80k is going b/c thats a ton of money going out on a 90k salary.

Neustache

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Re: Share your savings rate, families of 5 with household income of 90K
« Reply #2 on: December 07, 2015, 06:43:50 AM »
Well, goodness, that's very specific.  Ha!

We are a family of four who gives about 8% of our gross to our church, so maybe our church can qualify as a third child, finance wise?

We also have closer to 100K in income, but the extra 10K is rental income that all goes towards paying that mortgage on the rental house so it's not really extra income, if that makes sense.

Anyways, we save similar amounts to you, about 11K, in order to max out IRAs.  However, if I were not in school, we would easily be able to save 20K.  If we weren't also trying to pay down the mortgage, we'd save closer to 25K a year.  If my husband didn't take sitar lessons, it would be closer to 28K, and if did cheaper vacations, it would be 31K. 

It depends on your situation, but I would hope on a 90K income you could save at least 20K a year.  We don't, because of school costs, mainly.



charis

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Re: Share your savings rate, families of 5 with household income of 90K
« Reply #3 on: December 07, 2015, 08:57:07 AM »
This is a very specific question that will greatly depend on a family's  given circumstances (any debt?).

We are a family of 4 that was on about $90K/year, but bumped up to $124K in the last few months while our spending stayed basically the same.  Our Nov savings rate was 55%, not including student loan payments, which lowers the rate to about 50%.   We also have a mortgage and a relatively modest daycare monthly payment.

simplertimes

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Re: Share your savings rate, families of 5 with household income of 90K
« Reply #4 on: December 07, 2015, 09:04:40 AM »
Thank you for the suggestions to create a case study.  I did!  Aside from groceries, restaurants, and clothing, I need to work on miscellanous spending and amazon.com purchases!!!

bord

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Re: Share your savings rate, families of 5 with household income of 90K
« Reply #5 on: December 07, 2015, 11:07:51 AM »
In a similar boat. We're around 85K gross with three young kids, mortgage, low interest student debt. We max out all retirement accounts (a 403b and two IRAs) and HSA every year. I think our savings rate is just south of 40% gross income.

It is tight but we're making it. You can, too!

zolotiyeruki

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Re: Share your savings rate, families of 5 with household income of 90K
« Reply #6 on: December 07, 2015, 12:11:31 PM »
I was in that situation several years ago.  Our savings rate was about 25%, plus we were plowing an extra $1k/mo into our mortgage.  I guess that makes it about 37% or so?  If you count the principal portion of the mortgage, we were over 40%.

We have more kids, a bigger house, and live in a higher-tax state now, so our savings rate is way down...

catccc

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Re: Share your savings rate, families of 5 with household income of 90K
« Reply #7 on: December 07, 2015, 02:01:56 PM »
We are a family of 4 with around the same income and save about $35K/year.  That was how we did last year, at least...

justajane

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Re: Share your savings rate, families of 5 with household income of 90K
« Reply #8 on: December 07, 2015, 03:29:44 PM »
We are your demographic exactly! 3 kids (1-7 in age) with a 90K single income in the Midwest.

I would say we are saving around 30%. We do this without much effort and still some major splurges, including eating out more than we should (ca. $200 a month). Unfortunately we also tend to reach our 3.5K health insurance deductible almost every year. If we didn't do that, we could be doing much better.

Since I've read your case study, the main reason our savings rate is higher than yours is:

Food - we spend between $600-$700 a month.
Clothing - we spend about $50-$75 a month.

I forget your rent, but our mortgage/taxes are $1,000 a month.

We also spent 75K four years ago on an addition on our house and are about to spend another 15K on a bathroom gut job. That is not included in our savings rate, and obviously if we hadn't done these things are savings rate would have been much higher. But this is a long term maintenance thing and adds some value to the home. The addition added 40K in equity to our home.

I guess what I'm getting at is that there is obviously a lot of fat that you can cut to increase your rate. This is a good thing! I think you should shoot for a 20% savings rate by next year. That's a realistic goal.

wenchsenior

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Re: Share your savings rate, families of 5 with household income of 90K
« Reply #9 on: December 08, 2015, 09:44:56 AM »
We are not comparable in terms of kids, but support one couple (ourselves) in one house, and we help support an additional adult in an entirely separate house (cost of about 10-15K/year), so that's gotta count as at least 1.5 kids, I would think LOL.

Our take-home for the past few years has been close to yours, 90-95K/year, and we've been saving about 40-45% not counting 401k match or the principle payment of 5K/year on one house (some people count that in their savings rate). I've been nudging this rate up a tiny bit every year.

davef

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Re: Share your savings rate, families of 5 with household income of 90K
« Reply #10 on: December 09, 2015, 09:47:41 AM »
is that 10-12k in cash? At first I was discouraged that I was not doing so well because I was only saving 10-12k cash
(Family of 3 making about 90k)
But then when I looked at equity, 401k and other savings vehicles I was closer to 30-35k make sure you are using the mushtachian formula for savings calculation.

lampstache

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Re: Share your savings rate, families of 5 with household income of 90K
« Reply #11 on: December 09, 2015, 12:48:07 PM »
New to the mustachian way and couldn't find on the forums what is all is considered when trying to figure out our savings rate? Can someone share? I'm assuming it includes general savings (cash), 401k, other investment vehicles... Would you consider HSA to be a part of this? Other areas I'm missing?

We're a family of 4, 75k income. Would like to figure out what are savings percentage is too! Thanks.

meandmyfamily

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Re: Share your savings rate, families of 5 with household income of 90K
« Reply #12 on: December 09, 2015, 01:22:27 PM »
Do you count HSA contributions?  With 4 kids I am not sure I should because I feel like it will mostly likely be used over the years.  Cross my fingers that it won't be but with braces and a new hearing aid coming up it seems like it will!  We are a family of 6 with a similar income.  Not saving as much I would like but working on it.
« Last Edit: December 09, 2015, 01:42:47 PM by meandmyfamily »