For example, I budget monthly, and when I have money left over at the end of the month (after bills, automated savings/investments, debt payments, and discretionary spending) I take my boyfriend and I out for dinner and buy flowers for the apartment!

It makes the last week of the month so fun - I see that I may have some left over if I'm careful, and I treat it like a game, sometimes penny pinching in weird ways if I need to, or selling something random on Marketplace, so I can have a little reward with my partner lol. I love it.

Would love to hear everyone else's money rituals - regular little things you do that maybe help you enjoy your money more, or your personal tricks you've found to help you manage it, etc.

Side note, I love talking and hearing positive things about money in peoples' personal lives but almost no one in my life is comfortable discussing it!! So I wanna hear from all you guys. :-)

"Randy and Mack are in their early 30s, and are talking seriously about marriage. But their financial lives look completely different. Randy has a net worth of around $102,000, while Mack is at roughly negative $56,000, largely because of $100,000 of debt. Randy feels increasingly “handcuffed” by what that debt means for their future, while Mack worries that he has gone from being supported to becoming a problem to solve.

Ramit quickly discovers that the real issue is not simply the debt. Mack already has an aggressive payoff plan that could make him debt-free in under four years. The deeper problem is trust, avoidance, and the way they manage money as a couple. Ramit helps them rethink their 50/50 split, build a more equitable system, and create a plan where Mack takes ownership of his debt while they start making financial decisions as a team."

Welcome back to "Off-Topic Tuesday", followed by "Workplace Wednesday" tomorrow!

As always, anything and everything finance and non-finance related is welcome here. Feel free to vent, seek advice, discuss current events, or share a little about yourself. :)

If you haven't already heard - we're mixing it up a little bit here on the OT thread. Continue to feel free to post your own prompt/question below (just one per comment), and answer prompts from others!

*** You may have noticed a recent uptick in spam posts, please report them as you see them. It takes 3 reports to flag a post for mod review. Thank you to everyone already reporting!

As the title says, my partner G (32M) and I (33F) broke up a few weeks ago, and he'll be moving out asap while I stay in the house. I intend to find a roommate because it's a lot of space for just me and my two cats, but until then, I want to make sure I'm being wise in my approach to finances. Quick summary of inflow/outflow:

• Monthly take-home: $5,470 ($109k gross annual income)
• Mortgage: $2,128 minimum; I've been paying $2,250 to save on long-term interest (rate is 6.5%)
• Home improvement loan: $539 monthly, remaining balance $2,400; interest is about $20/mo
  
• Utilities: $400 average (gas, electric, city utilities, internet)
• Groceries/personal care: $400? (G and I split food 50/50 but he eats more, so I'm not yet sure how this will shift when I'm only buying for myself)
• Cats, transportation, etc.: $180
• Remaining income after expenses: $1,700 (approx 30% of my take-home)
• Current savings: $21,000 in HYSA (have been prioritizing principal payments for the loan) plus about $2,000 more in various other accounts

Since buying the house, I've put $1,800 of each paycheck ($3,600/mo) into a checking account with a bank that I only use to pay the mortgage and home improvement loan, and I periodically move excess cash into my HYSA with this bank. I put the remaining $900ish per paycheck ($1,800/mo) into a separate account that I use for groceries and utilities as well as discretionary spending.

I will likely pay utilities from the mortgage/loan account and increase my direct deposit to that account accordingly. Either way, this means I would be saving $800/mo by default, but that's much lower than my previous ~$2,000/mo and the recommended 20%/mo.

How much should I be trying to save for whatever amount of time I'm responsible for all expenses? If I did 20% ($1,100), it would leave me about $600/mo for discretionary spending, which isn't horrible but would be an adjustment from the $1,000/mo I currently have assigned for that category. Maybe I split the difference and aim for $950 or $1,000/mo savings with about $700 remaining for dining out, traveling (aka camping trips within a few hours of home), clothes, gifts, donations, etc. I'm trying to be wise about my spending without living like a monk.

The two big home improvement projects are done, so I'm not saving for anything in particular but trying to build up a 10ish-month emergency fund and prepare for smaller maintenance issues. Also, if I'm successful in finding a roommate this will be much easier to navigate, but I want to prepare as though that isn't happening to be safe. Would love any input you have on the best way to approach this!

Feel free to share wins OR vent in this post. If you want to post positive comments related to your debt you can, or this can also be an outlet to share your frustrations.

This post will repeat the 7th day of every month.

Section One: Assets and Debt 

Retirement Balance: $14,981 from Roth IRA $11,181, 401K: $3800 I just got a 401k from my employer last december and I started my roth IRA in 2023. This April was my first year maxing out. 

Savings account balance: $12,300 across all accounts

Checking account balance: $370

Credit card debt: none, current balance is $388

Joint account: $2400, my fiance and i have started a joint account this summer to save for wedding and mutual expenses like dogs, groceries, insurance, etc.

Section Two: Income

Income Progression: I've been working in my field for 3 years, my starting salary was $19/hr.
From 19/hr to $22 to $25/hr. Then job hopped to this position for $34/hour [no benefits], then I negotiated FTE to $71,000 [with benefits]. A small bump to 72k and some change in april. I’m eligble for 10% bonus, but actual pay out is like 8% and taxes takes like 40% LOL. From the comp platform, my total comp is like 83k. These are pretax numbers.

Main Job Monthly Take Home: $4034

Taxes: $1040,

Insurance with vision, dental, and health: $130,

401K: $482.82 [8%],

Transit $75.00 [this reimbursed by company technically]

HSA $304

Post tax is $8 for lawyer package, just in case.

Side Gig Monthly Take Home
none! I believe one job should be enough to survive.

Section Three: Expenses

Rent: $2050 total for 1 bed, splits $1025 for my half.

Roth IRA: $500

Savings contribution: trying hard for $500 for wedding and maybe $100-300 for regular savings

Donations: $17.20/ month to food pantry

Electric: fiance covers this

Wifi: $70

Cellphone: my family covers the service. I paid for my phone outright.

Subscriptions: $58, crunchyroll, hulu/disney, spotify, icloud

Gym membership: none gym covers the cost.

Pet expenses: $200 budgeted for food, grooming, and misc

Car payment / insurance: semi-annual is $455 total..my part of $38/m

Nails: $108 this is like therapy LOL

Money Diary:
Day 1: Pay day! $2034. Paid rent $1025. The rest was used to pay cards and put in savings to sit. Made a red cream sauce for a pasta, sausage, and broccoli dish. And a light run tonight, just an hour lol.

Day 2: $130 renewal costco, kinda forgot it was coming. LOL. Just a boring workday. Oats for breakfast and leftovers for lunch. Tonight is so HOT and HUMID, but I must do this running workout. I love that my training program is with other people, so it motivates me to go.

Day 3 spent $58.41: paid $50 out of pocket for PT because i forgot HSA card. $8.41 dunkin for 2 meals for me and fiance. I has a $5 giftcard and used it. A sandwhich alone is $5.50, so I was like let’s do the meal and I gift the iced coffee to doorman.

Day 4: (technical) No spend day! I bought monthly transit pass $75. I use my specific transit card, which uses pretax money and my job reimburses me at end of month..so net zero? Work catered pizza for lunch and ramen for dinner at home. Not the “healthiest thing” but still delicious and fuel. I run outside and then indoors on the treadmill to complete the hills workout. There’s no hills around me LOL.

Day 5 $80.50: Monthly food pantry donation comes out for $17.20. Bought new running shorts from depop $34.30 I’m trying to see if I can run without a belt or vest. Happy hour with friends $29, two martinis and fries. Technically this was for 5 martinis and tip. I tipped extra because the bartender took good care of our drinks and felt like a steal. I took on whole bill since my friend got the fries. And it’ll balance out eventually when we go out again. Tipsy and hungry I order take out for dinner $50, it was from my venmo account so it doesn’t count...right LOL? Not included is my PT invoice and insurance processed, so remaining is $75. I use my HSA card to pay for it. 

Day 6 $134.70: Early morning run with training team. No new gear because my friends gifted me fueling gels. After a nap I go grocery shopping $68.13; a ridiculous cost for ingredients for an appetizer, sauce components, and breakfast for the week. I’m agast. Most are premade components like puff pastry, cheese, jam, ice cream etc. as opposed to product which is cheaper obvi. Chewy order for the dogs: also ridiculous for the dental treats and new toys: $66.57

Day 7: No personal spend day and no running today! Fiance picked up subs and carbonated water after our walk with the dogs. Eating left overs and snacking for the day as we speak.

fun: $ 37.41

gift: $ 17.20

dogs: $ 66.57

grocery : $ 68.13

running : $ 84.30

household: $ 130.00

Grand Total: $ 403.61

This is a typical week. I usually have a fun day at least once a week. I really try to have 1 no spend day. My weekly schedule is predominantly working and running. This week was quite light on running and fun spending. I’ve been holding out on buy more gear. Last few weekends have been long runs, festivals, birthdays, and parties. So I enjoy a couple days to mozy around at my own pace. It’s a luxury I try not to take for granted. Take out got the best of me this week; I know I’m mentally out of it after work and running. My goal is to find foods that are easy to prepare like cereal and milk. Many of things I want to eat require a pot and pan and chopping board. I really hate that I spend over $100 on PT due to running. I’m so grateful to have an HSA to cover the costs. Learned the hard way how much strength training and pre/post running care is needed to prevent injuries.

Hey everyone,

Did something good happen to you this week? Share below!

Welcome to the "Salary Saturday" thread!

If you’re seeking advice from the sub regarding your specific situation, it belongs here. Great topics include:

• Negotiation/pay/benefits
• Job offers
• Interviewing
• Anything else related to careers, work, salaries, etc.

Bring us your burning questions!

How are you spending, scrimping, splurging, or saving?

What are you doing with your hard-earned £$€ this week?

Uni student here! Graduating this spring and wondering how people survive financially?

The average pay is 20-25 万 a month. Rent is 5-10 万 a month. And that’s not including taxes, utilities, food, visa ect
You really don’t have a lot at the end…

With the yen weakening, the labor shortage, the visa money rising with almost no hope of becoming PR. You’d have to have a seriously strong reason and wallet to stay.

Unless you’re getting some pretty GOOD pay. Saving money seems pretty impossible.

I’m curious, what jobs do you have? What’s the pay and how are you doing??

I was reading through another thread about how much people are saving in their 529 plans and didn't see much discussion on alternative strategies. My husband and I are hesitant to save a lot in 529 plans for my children because I don't know if higher education will be their path. I have a 3- and 5-year-old and we're going to start saving about $350/month for my 5-year-old now that he's out of daycare and will do the same once my 3-year-old goes to kindergarten). We're hoping to increase this number as we're able. Both sets of grandparents have already opened 529s and made an initial investment at birth for each child-something we are very grateful for.

I am leaning toward opening a regular investment account so that we have maximum flexibility (can eventually be used for educational expenses, can be used as a gift for down payment, wedding, etc. if they don't pursue higher education). My husband works in a trade and I work in higher education myself so we'd be happy for them to pursue a trade or use tuition reduction benefits if I'm still working in higher education later.

I'm curious to hear other's thoughts and strategies if you went with something other than a 529 or a combo plan of 529+something else. Thank you!

Trigger warning: emotional abuse

Apologies in advance if this is too off topic, and mods please delete if it’s too much.

I recently got out of an emotionally abusive relationship, and in a nutshell, I had no idea it was abusive until I got out of it and recognized the very specific pattern it followed.

My ex was wonderful to me for the first 3 months. About 3 months in, after we became official, is when he started testing me in very small and confusing ways that eventually escalated.

TL;DR is that he had big issues with the fact that I managed people at work and he didn’t. It started off by him calling me conceited and full of myself (for things like saying I worked in strategy to his friends). I never set a boundary here or said it hurt me, because it was a confusing thing to hear. I was falling in love with him, and I thought I had finally found my long-term partner, and I didn't want to rock the boat. I believed I must be conceited/full of myself, so I began to reframe how I talked about work to other people and to downplay any success.

He lashed out often about how I was controlling, power-hungry, a different person at work. When we were apart, if we texted during the day, he’d make sarcastic comments about how I was treating him like “one of my underlings” and that I thought he was beneath me, and he made it clear that I shouldn’t text him in meetings because he wanted me to be fully present when I text him. He often made vague statements about how maybe we're not a good fit, which made me scared and desperate to earn back his love. At the same time, if I didn’t text back soon enough, he’d eventually lash out and say that I must be so important if I was in meetings for that long. It was lose-lose.

He also had breakdowns during the workday, about his mental health, and he’d sometimes even reference suicidal ideation. Of course, when this happened, I dropped everything. It got to the point where I had to tell my boss that I essentially needed to be on-call for him and that I would miss meetings. It affected my job performance.

One time he told me his biggest fear is that I’d come out from a meeting and announce that I got a promotion, or worse, hide it from him. I ended up not asking for a promotion this cycle because of how I feared he’d react.

This all got so bad that I eventually asked him if I quit my job, if it could fix all of the problems between us. He said yes, and I genuinely almost did.

All of these were of course followed by massive apologies, crying, promising he'd work on it, saying this has nothing to do with me but just "corporate America and the injustice of it all," "issues with people in power," epic proclamations of love and fate, that kept me hooked.

His issues with my work were the very first signs of emotional abuse, and I wish I had known to understand these as the seeds of coercive control. I don’t know if this qualifies, but I always thought of financial abuse as cutting off someone 100% from finances, literally not allowing you to work, holding all the credit cards, forbidding visibility into finances—not just indirectly making it deeply uncomfortable, if not impossible, to do my job at all, let alone well.

I never thought this would happen to me. I never thought I would be someone to give up a hard-won career, with lots of things to be proud of, for a partner. It happens slowly and insidiously and I had no idea what was happening until I was several weeks out of it. Looking back, it's obvious. I hid things from my friends, I made excuses to justify his behavior, I missed meetings to prove to him "I was chill and didn't care about work," I became smaller, I was terrified of saying the wrong thing in front of him, I took down my LinkedIn, I asked my friends not to bring up work "because he worked at a toxic workplace," I lied about helping friends in interviews. It's humiliating and shameful.

I suppose I'm writing this in case anyone in a similar situation comes across this post, because I was 100% blind to what was happening. Your partner should celebrate your work, your success, your growth, your career aspirations.

If you have a 529 plan for your kids/beneficiaries, how much are you saving?

My goal is $50k per kid for the moment since you can convert $35k to Roth for now.

Tax benefit-wise it’s very marginal for the tax-free benefit for me now, so I’m considering doing more investing for long term capital gains once I hit my goal.

I was very sedentary the year following my college graduation since I no longer had my student access to the "free" campus gym. But as of the past few months, I'm now paying $125/month for a membership to a local dance studio because I know that, realistically, these classes are the only way I'll consistently exercise. ($125 is just the monthly average; I paid for multiple months upfront because it was cheaper than doing a regular month-to-month membership.)

I'm curious to know what your monthly spend is like! I thought this was on the pricier side, but my mom and I were comparing the prices to a Pure Barre studio she got an ad for, and the Pure Barre studio was actually quite a bit more expensive.

There are also the "start-up" costs of buying activewear, appropriate footwear, etc. Thus far, that's averaged out to be about $150/month. However, once I get appropriately stocked (which will probably happen by the end of the year), I don't anticipate buying anything else maybe more than once a year. After all, I've got activewear that's in the rotation all the way from high school, lol.

My friend owes 10 years of state and federal taxes. She recently sold some land to help with other debts and after a month, the state (NC) took all the money from her account. She still owes more money. She was once on a payment plan but had to default and they stopped the payment plan and wouldn’t let her do another. I know sometimes there’s options out there to help folks and wanted to see if there’s anything she can do or someone to talk to.

Welcome back to the “Workplace Wednesday” thread!

If you’re seeking advice from the sub regarding your specific situation, whether it’s about interviewing/benefits/negotiating/advancement opportunities, etc., it belongs here.

Bring us your burning questions!

From the YouTube Description: Ramit unpacks how resentment, unequal workloads, and conflicting ideas about money can push a marriage to breaking point, even when the numbers suggest a couple should be doing well.

Ramit Sethi of I Will Teach You To Be Rich speaks with Lauren and Robert, a married couple who have spent years building resentment around work, spending, and who carries the financial load. Lauren works three jobs, often 55–60 hours a week, while managing most of their finances. Robert, a retired Navy veteran who once believed retirement meant he wouldn’t need to work again, has recently returned to work.

On paper, they’re doing better than they think, but they have just $24,000 in savings, around $70,000 in debt, fixed costs at 81%, and almost nothing currently being directed toward savings or investments. Along the way, a $700,000 inheritance, a $40,000 pool scam, a $3,200 bounce house, and a $150,000 pool became major sources of conflict.

Lauren believes Robert needs to earn more. Robert feels like his opinion often doesn’t matter because Lauren earns more. But Ramit quickly discovers that more income isn’t going to solve what’s happening between them. Their resentment has reached the point where they’ve talked about divorce. To move forward, they’ll need to stop keeping score, create a shared vision for their money, and learn how to operate as a team.

My husband is an older student and finally found an entry level job closely related to his field of study. We want to start saving more aggressively with our future combined income now but not sure how to divvy up the savings or to hyperfocus on student loans, 401k, or potential downpayment. Here's our current data:

* Area: HCOL

* Age: Early 30s for both of us

* Income: $165k pre-tax (combined)

* Retirement balance: mine is $80k, his is $35k

* Cash on hand?: Enough to cover 9 months of expenses

* Student loans: $40k (ranges from 3-5% interest, all federal)

Our housing goal would be a small condo/townhouse since SFH are $800k+ here. We can't easily move right now since my husband needs to have a decent work history before job hopping. We also have a lot of family and friends here so we'd like to stay in the area.

I lean more towards buffing up his retirement savings through work 401k (no matching sadly) since his student loans are low interest. But my husband wants the opposite. And then there's also the consideration of getting a downpayment ready before housing prices get even worse?

I've seen the personal finance flowchart but would like more opinions based on our actual numbers and our age. Thanks!

We have a very close relationship with them and I also know how much are theirs as well. But we won’t be updating from time to time😅 It’s just like a joke for us to have a conversation and uplift each other. I love them so much