Author Topic: Increase Your Saving Rate!  (Read 1892 times)

BlueHouse

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Increase Your Saving Rate!
« on: August 03, 2016, 09:42:34 AM »
I'm aiming for a cumulative saving rate in the 60-70% range for the year.  I want to track it monthly to help me stay on track.

Cumulative Saving Rate as of:
Jun:   didn't record
Jul:    71%
Aug:
Sep:
Oct:
Nov:
Dec:

Choices

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Re: Increase Your Saving Rate!
« Reply #1 on: August 03, 2016, 10:13:51 AM »
Great job so far. Good luck!

Do you have all debt paid off and a good emergency fund?

BlueHouse

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Re: Increase Your Saving Rate!
« Reply #2 on: August 03, 2016, 01:59:50 PM »
Great job so far. Good luck!
Do you have all debt paid off and a good emergency fund?
Thanks.  Only debt is a large mortgage.  I count early principal payments in my savings rate and the ratio at which I pre-pay my principal and contribute to liquid savings is about 1:2 this year with the goal to recast that mortgage to lower minimum payments. 

dandypandys

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Re: Increase Your Saving Rate!
« Reply #3 on: August 03, 2016, 02:01:42 PM »
Awesome!
I have no idea what mine is. It would take a bit of time to figure out, even though i use Mint and Personal Capital- I need a fancy spreadsheet i think.

BlueHouse

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Re: Increase Your Saving Rate!
« Reply #4 on: August 10, 2016, 09:01:58 AM »
Awesome!
I have no idea what mine is. It would take a bit of time to figure out, even though i use Mint and Personal Capital- I need a fancy spreadsheet i think.
Funnily enough, it wasn't until I stopped using the fancy spreadsheets and software packages that I could believe my own savings rate.  I've been using Quicken for over 20 years and I think the level of detail that I kept led to too much detail and not enough of a "big picture" outlook. I was so focused on making sure everything balanced out (T-Account thinking), that I couldn't see the forest for the trees.  I still use Quicken so I can track individual purchases and pay bills, etc, but for the big picture stuff, I started a new spreadsheet where I just add in  my income each month.  When I move money from my checking account to one of my savings categories, that counts as saving and goes into the "saving" column. No need to balance accounts.  No need to identify where the money came from and decrement that account.  Anything that remains in my checking is assumed that it will be spent.  So then just divide saving/income and you're there.  Simplify, simplify, simplify.  My previous methods were much too complicated and I kept arguing with myself about what constituted spending vs. savings.