Here's my budget spreadsheet for anyone interested

[gabrieltheworshipper]

@resjudicata

Bullshit

Oh? Every industry that’s not fast food jobs pays large wages? Education pays a lot after a couple years, hmm?

No. Of course not, stop being stupid

Industry determines how little or how much you will make.

What industry are you in… and why is your large salary not considered good lol?

So earning 15k more than minimum wage is not comparatively good.

Of course it isn’t when you earn 3x minimum wage lol. The industry matters, and you picked a good one

Not every gets the opportunities you’ve clearly been bathed in

When I was studying a couple years ago, pretty easy to get a minimum wage (or slightly above) job.

Right. You got one, two. Three minimum wage jobs? That means all minimum wage jobs are exactly like the ones you had?

Anecdotes are usually very limiting, but not yours because you’re very insightful

 

[resjudicata]

@gabrieltheworshipper None of this has any relevance to your claim that a combined wage for two people of 120k is good/comfortable.

Not only is it very close to the entry level salary for most people in a skilled role, factoring in student loans and today's cost of living its quite shit.

 

[snlmommy]

@resjudicata And yet less than half of NZ households sit above 120k hence its certainly above average.

 

[resjudicata]

@snlmommy If that household has two people working fulltime (which is the context of the comment your responding to), then they have either just started their careers or are working jobs with little to no barrier to entry and/or competition. So I don't know what your point is.

To be in the top 20% of tax payers (who pay something like 70% of all income tax) you only have to earn 70k or more. It's not hard to earn 70k with a degree/trade and a couple years work experience.

 

[snlmommy]

@resjudicata The point is that what you consider "good" may be different from what much of the rest of the population considers "good".

Most people may be happy to be in the top half of earners and a 120k household income is exactly that. Also what you consider "not hard" (i.e. The 70k p.a.) is again not easy for most evidenced by the fact that again, most people earn under 70k p.a.

 

[dinomangino]

@spinny I wouldn't have thought so.

 

[woodpecker]

@spinny I remember when $100K was an unfathomable amount of money! I started making that 6 months ago but with interest rates rising it still feels like swimming backwards and it hasn't brought more enjoyment to my life in terms of spending. Still very frugal and spending conscious to accommodate the increase in food costs and doing anything with friends outside the home!

 

[spinny]

@woodpecker yup sadly, with inflation everything goes a notch up. and as we know, pay seldom keeps pace with it, even with pay rises.

 

[christopher30]

@prodigalsun Think less about the income/expenses and more about the amount saved afterwards. ALL the numbers have been amended from my own actual ones (as noted in the post).

 

[legionwrex]

@christopher30 Crikey that’s impressive. Makes me feel lazy. But I’m fortunate to be old, mortgage free, and earning more than I could ever dream of spending. And now my kids have left home and don’t cost me anything! Best of luck and thank you for the generosity of sharing

 

[woodpecker]

@christopher30 Thanks for sharing! Spreadsheets are the bomb!

I do something similar with an app called Spendee, which I highly recommend for folks who like colours, emojis, some gamification for keeping track of their spending.

 

[jerseychristiansuperstar]

@christopher30 Late bloomer - how do you track budgets month on month? e.g. compare July's spend vs August spend (mainly things like food etc). Copy and paste a new tab?

 

[christopher30]

@jerseychristiansuperstar I spent a lot of time (years) tracking our spend from month to month to give us an idea of spend rates etc. I didn't use this spreadsheet for this, but that data helped define the values initially.

I probably review the values two or three times a year with a few hours of csv exports from the bank to check spend rates etc. There are much better apps that can do this but I can't be bothered with them right now.

 

[jerseychristiansuperstar]

@christopher30 Yeah I started playing with mybudgetpal, then it got too frigid. So probably just going to end up with a tracker, trawling through expenses for a few months to see where we land at. Then prob use something similar to yours to stay within budget.

 

[elliee]

@christopher30 Hey mate, hope you had a good xmas. Thanks for sharing the spreadsheet, I've found it super helpful especially as a noob in money matters. Can I ask how you organised the spreadsheets that you used for tracking your spending (e.g. did you have your categories pre-defined or did you decide on the various categories after analysing your spending)? I'm thinking on doing something similar, or perhaps searching for a suitable app, and just wanted some insight from someone that clearly knows what they're doing. Happy to chat via dm too if you'd prefer. Thanks!

 

[christopher30]

@elliee Hey there. We used the base categories that I have in the spreadsheet. They are what we defined and helped set out the expenses spreadsheet I shared. There wasn't much point in refining it down into more detail for us like food->booze+greens+dry+whatever but you could if you wanted to.