Many of you already follow Gail Vaz Oxlade. She is wonderful :) Anyway one of her resources is her interactive budget where you can add your own budget to this nice worksheet online here. Love it! It's really fun to play with.
It's even fun to fantasize about one day having a NET (he) too! More money to play with when you have a double-income.
Anyway I plugged in my budget #s (which I wrote about yesterday) into her interactive budget. Turns out:
I'm way under what she recommends for housing (I'm at 0%, she recommends 35%).
I'm about on par with Transportation (I'm at 15.38%, she recommends 15%).
I'm over what I should be with Life (I'm at 32.69%, she recommends 25%).
I'm under what she recommends for Debt (I'm at 0%, she recommends 15%).
And I'm way over what she recommends for Savings (I'm at 51.92%, she recommends 10%).
This is all okay though because I'm still saving lots and spending less than I make. All is good.
Now she also breaks down your Life expenses into a monthly and weekly budget which is nice if you do the jars. My weekly budget for life's variable expenses would look like:
Transportation: $46.15
Food: $11.54
Entertainment: $27.69
Clothes/Gifts: $19.62
Everything Else: $27.69
For a total of $132.69 per week.
Good to know that I should be keeping my variable spending under that amount weekly.
your housing is 0%? do you live with your parents?
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing that link! It is fun to play with.
ReplyDeleteI had great fun playing around with that, and it seems I,m saving too much, who would have thought it.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't worry about Gail's suggestions for now. You're still living at home. Her suggestions is really for couples and singles. You're doing great by saving 50% of your income and you have no debt. Sounds good to me.
ReplyDeleteYes I live at home. It is a fun link to play with.
ReplyDeleteGood for you Maureen for saving too much. As long as you can manage everything else then why not?
I'm not worried about Gail's suggestions, I like to play around with the interactive budget to think about planning the future when I no longer live at home. I also think it was interesting to see how she breaks down the life budget into weekly amounts for jars.