Are you talking about only the money that you are putting away for retirement, or do you include money that you are saving for emergency funds, home repairs, auto repairs, etc?
I have a budget at this point where I have allotted funds in my savings account for things like "home repair" "auto repair" "vacation" "furniture/appliance" "emergency" (my larger emergency stash is invested), and I add small amounts to each category on payday.
Just wondering if some/most/all of you consider this money "saved" or money "spent"?
I have a checking account, and I have savings/investment accounts. Every time money moves into or out of my life, it must move through the checking account.
I get a paycheck, it goes into the checking account.
I don't need to spend all of that money in the checking account, some moves into Savings, or an investment account. Anything that goes into a Savings Account or an investment account is "Savings" and gets added to a box in my spreadsheet called "Savings".
If I have an unexpected large expense that isn't covered in checking, I transfer money from Savings to checking or from an investment to checking. This transaction means I subtract the transferred amount from my "Savings" cell in my spreadsheet.
It's pretty straightforward and easy to track this way. I have another cell in my spreadsheet that calculates Savings/Income and that is my savings rate. My goal is to try to keep a high savings rate throughout the year.