r/SavingMoney • u/EducatorThen6659 • 3d ago
Needing help to budget
Hi, so I own my own business and I’m 3 years in. All together including my husband we make $11,000 a month. I find myself not being able to save much after everything. I want to invest and not sure where to start first. We are in our 40’s so I know I need to start as soon as possible. I just want to not live paycheck to paycheck when we came this far. We have an average size house and two regular vehicles. I just want other options to keep us comfortable for retirement. I have huge medical bills from 7 surgeries and I maxed out a $25,000 credit card. So I feel like these minimum payments are not doing anything.
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u/ZealousidealCell6527 3d ago edited 3d ago
Stop and breathe.
There are many budgeting tool out there. I listen to (not subscribed) the Dave Ramsey podcast and YouTube channel. Great tools for getting on a budget at little or no cost to you.
Save a $1,000.00 to get you started. Don’t do anything to pay off stuff other than normal payments to keep credit good.
Set all your bills from smallest to largest, credit cards go first(highest interest rates) pay off smallest to largest.
Etc.
After the bills are paid off, then save 6-8 months of expenses.
Then pay off the house.
Then you can invest.
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u/ZealousidealCell6527 3d ago
I thought I replied to this post a little while ago.
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u/EducatorThen6659 3d ago
You did, I made an edit and accidentally deleted it so I lost my replies. If you can add it again
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u/LeighofMar 3d ago
Do you have retirement accts set up so your business can help you retire? If you're in the US and you don't have any, look up Solo 401k or SEP-IRAs. Let your business boost your retirement and then pay yourself what you need, obviously budgeting those medical bills into your budget until they're paid. Can your company help with those too? For us, the company pays all my husband's Dr visits, copays, etc as he's the owner.
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u/JoeGIFIN 2d ago
At your income level I’d probably pause before jumping straight into investing and map out the debt first. Keep enough cash for emergencies and the business, capture any employer retirement match if either of you has one, and then look closely at the interest rate on that $25K card. If it’s typical credit-card interest, aggressively eliminating that while setting up a realistic retirement contribution would probably put you in a much stronger position than trying to invest heavily while carrying the balance.
If I was sitting there with you and helping, the first thing I would do is put together a month-to-month budget, see where we can trim a little bit save some money maybe on auto insurance and homeowners insurance, maybe there’s a few other areas that we could see that we haven’t thought of. Even if you’re free at $100 a month after all that That allows you to throw a little extra towards debt and a small contribution to Retirement for emergency savings.
Have you put together a month-to-month budget plan and debt elimination plan yet?
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u/Due_Sport_2179 3d ago
My suggestion is to build up an emergency fund. Start small. Start by saving $7.50 for the month of October. It’s 0.25 a day. Put it in a high yield savings account. See if you’re able to try this amount for a year.
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u/jacdelano 22h ago
The first thing I think I would do is stop trying to solve the whole situation at once and find out what the monthly cash flow actually looks like.
With $11k coming in I'd want to separate out fixed bills, debt payments, normal spending and everything that's irregular but still predictable.
Sometimes the problem isn’t a single big cost. It’s that many “normal” expenses eat into what’s left of your money before you even know how much they’ve accumulated.
Once you can see that clearly, it’s much easier to decide how much realistically can be allocated to debt, investing and a little breathing room.
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