Budgeting

[dancerjodi]

I was thinking of budgeting earlier today, and coincidentally came across a mention of this site http://betterbudgeting.com/ in Self Magazine (I canceled the subscription incidentally, and this is my last issue - I had it at the office to flip through while a particularly big query was churning). Its pretty neat, and I like their Black Belt Budgeting concept.

The article in Self (the August issue) also mentioned that to prep for retirement, one should have 12 times their annual salary in reserve (at the time of retirement I'm assuming, probably based on living 12 or so years past age 65, adding that income to benefits that one would gain through SS, assuming its still around then). They suggest that the best way to do this is to invest 12% of your salary via 401k or otherwise. That's neat in concept I guess, but Brian and I need to get out of our high interest debt before tacking something like that.

It was a cool article, and worth checking out if you have access to. They suggest things for people of each decade (in their 30's, 40's and 50's) to do and have guidelines for investing for your child's college education, scaling back spending, and other useful tidbits.

Comments

[julishka.livejournal.com]

i figured my 401k contribution to not affect my take home pay. since it's all pre-tax, when you make the contribution, it's possible it'll change your tax bracket. it'll reduce your taxable income, so it might all work out the same. (i think i'm at 10%.)

and once it's done, you just get used to it.

if you leave your company, you can roll the current amount into another plan or IRA penalty free. if you take the money out, however, there are taxes/penalties/fees which might eat into 20% of the value.