Disposable income

My wife and I bring in around $270k into the house between us a year (both of us earning very similar amounts) which sounds high, but we live in SF... It is NOT cheap. Our monthly rent/bills total up to around $5,000 a month. That's not including stuff like pet food, food shopping etc.

My take home is around $6800 a month, $2,500 of that goes towards bills and stuff. The remainder... Left alone.

We have a lot of disposable income and frankly, we save. We just don't think about what we have and don't spend. If we need something, we'll just up and buy it without thinking about it.

Edit: We rent, don't have kids, have a golden retriever, no vehicles here which we will have soon. We want kids in around 5 years, but before then we are saving pennies as best we can on this wage before returning to Europe where pay is awful in the tech industry.
 
Care to qualify that?

Pension funds so not sudden flourish because the things they are investing in fail. The opposite is true.
 
Just bank it.

I also don't have much expendable but occasionally, when I don't have a holey pair of trousers or socks that need replacing, I catch myself sitting, racking my brains to figure out what I want to spend it on when I don't really want to spend it on anything, It's almost like I'm fully bought in to the cult of capitalism!
 
vincent1989 said:
Just bank it.

I also don't have much expendable but occasionally, when I don't have a holey pair of trousers or socks that need replacing, I catch myself sitting, racking my brains to figure out what I want to spend it on when I don't really want to spend it on anything, It's almost like I'm fully bought in to the cult of capitalism!
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Yes I get that. Browsing tat on ebay looking for something to buy, I think I'm addicted to the Royal Mail missed delivery cards.
 
Telecaster said:
Yes I get that. Browsing tat on ebay looking for something to buy, I think I'm addicted to the Royal Mail missed delivery cards.
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Honestly mate, forget you have it. It's worked for me, I'd always try and find a use for money and more often than not spend it. Now I just don't care what's in the bank and it's worked wonders.
 
agnes said:
Honestly mate, forget you have it. It's worked for me, I'd always try and find a use for money and more often than not spend it. Now I just don't care what's in the bank and it's worked wonders.
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Yes I could do that, but when you read on here all the schemes people have going for money I feel a bit guilty not making it work for me some how. More so considering I don't earn much so increasing my assets seemed like the smartest thing to do.
 
Invest it then, play around with stocks, you learn a new skill, it's fun and you can control what you lose (which you will eventually unless you get good at it haha). If it's really burning a hole in your pocket and you wish to try and make something from it. This is the option.

Or, could go super risky and invest in a new electronic currency in the hopes it takes off.
 
Maybe obvious but...holidays?

There is so much on this world to see. If I don't take at least 5 holidays a year then I'm not satisfied.

I've saved hardly anything over the last 10 years since finishing uni as I've traveled so much and don't regret it. Although now the time has come to start thinking about saving to buy a house and build an empire with my girlfriend :p
 
agnes said:
Honestly mate, forget you have it. It's worked for me, I'd always try and find a use for money and more often than not spend it. Now I just don't care what's in the bank and it's worked wonders.
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Same here. Not just with the bank, either. I think Scottish Power owe me about £700 now. Maybe more. I don't know. I pay by direct debit and I'm overpaying. Sure, I could get it back. But I don't care. I have no use for that money, so I'll leave it there. I can get it back any time I want, so there's no need to.

I don't even know when I get paid any more. I look at my bank account only to detect any errors or thefts. I had an amusing one a while back - a company had accidentally taken £800 on a direct debit instead of £8. Probably caused by someone entering the amount in pence when the data entry software was set up for the amount to be in pounds or someone misreading 8.00 as 800. They put it back a couple of days later. It wouldn't have been amusing if it had caused any problems, but having some spare money and ignoring it prevented that being a problem. There's a couple of thousand hanging around in that account.

vincent1989 said:
Just bank it.

I also don't have much expendable but occasionally, when I don't have a holey pair of trousers or socks that need replacing, I catch myself sitting, racking my brains to figure out what I want to spend it on when I don't really want to spend it on anything, It's almost like I'm fully bought in to the cult of capitalism!
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Same here. I spent a while looking at monitors a few weeks ago because a new monitor is the only object I want and don't have and I have this money to spend. Then I found some sense and closed the browser window. The monitor I have is fine. I'd gain very llittle from buying another one. I was going to spend money mainly for the sake of spending it. So I didn't.

Excuse me while I go look at some new monitors :)

EDIT: 33 posts in a GD thread and no mention of the obvious solution to the OP's dilemma. Shocking. I'll have to step up to meet that shortcoming:

Post your excess money through my letterbox :)
 
If you are in the 40% tax bracket - salary sacrifice into a pension is the way to go... IF you want to save.

Otherwise, treat yourself!
 
lol @ 40% tax, pensions, holidays! I'm a blue collar pov with a spare few quid at the end of the month not some IT whizz on 80k a year. 5 holidays a year, I haven't had 5 holidays in my life.
 
Telecaster said:
lol @ 40% tax, pensions, holidays! I'm a blue collar pov with a spare few quid at the end of the month not some IT whizz on 80k a year. 5 holidays a year, I haven't had 5 holidays in my life.
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With that money, why not save up for 3 months and get a cheap flight to somewhere in Spain or Italy? Genoa for example, stay in a hostel and go explore for 4 days.

Boom, holiday in Italy.
 
agnes said:
With that money, why not save up for 3 months and get a cheap flight to somewhere in Spain or Italy? Genoa for example, stay in a hostel and go explore for 4 days.

Boom, holiday in Italy.
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or just goto another country / area within the UK - thats also good :p
 
We're currently saving $1000 (~£500) a week and have been since we arrived in NZ in October, however, we have dipped into that, we spent around $7k (£3500) on a 11 night cruise to Vanuatu / New Caledonia. We are hoping to start our own business up over here soon, so that's what we're saving for.
 
agnes said:
My wife and I bring in around $270k into the house between us a year (both of us earning very similar amounts) which sounds high, but we live in SF... It is NOT cheap. Our monthly rent/bills total up to around $5,000 a month. That's not including stuff like pet food, food shopping etc.

My take home is around $6800 a month, $2,500 of that goes towards bills and stuff. The remainder... Left alone.

We have a lot of disposable income and frankly, we save. We just don't think about what we have and don't spend. If we need something, we'll just up and buy it without thinking about it.

Edit: We rent, don't have kids, have a golden retriever, no vehicles here which we will have soon. We want kids in around 5 years, but before then we are saving pennies as best we can on this wage before returning to Europe where pay is awful in the tech industry.
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Similar to me when I was i the US, but had kids so was burning 3.5k a month.

We moved back to Switzerland, so the salaries are actually a bit higher (we pull in around 300k combined). Taxes narrowed and house prices similar to San Francisco. Problem is daycare costs us 5k a month and you have to healthcare yourself.
 
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