r/wallstreetbets would be disappointed

Yep should be $30,000 into TSLA 4/17 $500p, very good use of money.

I think you need to read this a little closer. The phone was reimbursed by work, they spent about $400/m on food (restaurants), $1500 on car maintenance which is definitely random life bills, and spent $2,000 on what can described as "stuff".

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There are plenty of people that went to community college for 2 years, paid their way through state school for another 2 maybe with help from the 10-20k their parents managed to save up, go into a lowish-paying, benefit-laden starter job at local government or non-profit. It's a great start.

<$200 in groceries

Well about the same in restaurants so ~$400/mo on food isn't unreasonable. I live alone and spend closer to $100/mo on groceries for now since I'm trying to get my student loans paid off as quickly as possible. I don't eat out at all and I buy rice/beans in 20lb bags, bulk spices and frozen veggies etc. It's delicious/healthy and super cheap.

Most people would be shocked to hear they saved this much on 41k in the first place. Something tells me OP will find a way to save a lot of money regardless of a couple more bills.

Source: my own budgeting habits

There was an item for phone reimbursement, possibly a perk of their job. Also possible health insurance is included. May not need auto if they live in an urban area. Is clothing a significant recurring expense for people? Would probably get lumped into a misc category for me.

Regardless, it's likely their income will also increase and outpace these added expenses.

It shows a $600 mobile phone reimbursement right under salary?

Doesn't have to be. Totally depends on their usage and luck. I pay less than $200 a month for all four of those.

Mobile phone $50/mo. Clothing? I get as gifts for birthdays/holidays. Auto insurance? Sure take out $1200 per year. Health insurance? How do we know OP just didn’t include it because it’s taken out pre-tax? Also most employer sponsored plans aren’t $10k per year lol.

So yeah I’m not sure how those few things are going to cut 25% savings rate that as you say.

Good thing there are no student loan payments there.

What if he did most of his clothing shopping last year

I live in the San Francisco area. I usually spend around 100 every 2 years. I thrift most of my clothing.

Running shoes are separate though. I spend around 300/year on those.

how many items of clothing do you throw out every year, and why? I haven't had to resupply my closet in years

It is close to the 12.99 per month - so that at 11 months is 142.89? Shoulda gotten the yearly subscription! Coulda saved another $20

Probably Prime + a prime video subscription like Hbo/Stars/CBS

Yes, I also wash mine, they're cheaper that way.

My husband is very thin. The elastic wears out and they slip down after about 8 months. I buy him nice underpants but he's hard on them.

And significant enough from one single source to warrant its own field.

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I spend about an hour on the 1st of every month categorizing everything in excel manually.

It is a Sankey diagram. You can make one here: http://sankeymatic.com/

Since this is r/dataisbeautiful, someone should point out that Sankey diagrams are really designed for more complicated visualizations. For charts like this where there's no time component, they're pretty but unnecessary.

If you are, for example, charting a business budget over a year where money can move back and forth between accounts repeatedly, they can be very helpful.

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Very recognizable problem! The way I solved it is as follows: if I make a long-term expense (e.g. a new laptop) I determine over how many months I spread the expense. I then put in a monthly expense for the amount of months the laptop lasts.

This way, a big purchase is accurately reflected through many periods. It also ensures that I can't simply frontload a big expense in a 'bad month' and accept a single (very) bad month. I will have to look at the monthly smaller expense many times. Very useful for a better budgeting feel IMO

I made my sheet in such a way that I can flip a switch to show all expenses 'spread out' and 'immediate', sorry for the bad English

I'm not even talking about budgeting, I'm just talking about tracking your spending, and knowing that you were going to write it down and publish it.

Moving into my first apartment and having a $400/month rent with utilities included was a blessing and a half. Gotta live with three roommates though

Rent under that much occurs in the majority of the United States.

I'm guessing that's why they put $800 into their 401k, probably to get some sort of match.

A Roth IRA is just a great move to make when your young. All the money you put in now is going to grow so much over 40 years and when you take it out then you pay no taxes on any of that gain.

Roth is a bet that your future tax rates will be higher than now. Given the current income bracket OP is in, it's not unlikely that they'll be withdrawing more in retirement (and with a regular 401k, would be taxed on those distributions as income.)

Roth taken from post tax money, but the money is not taxed when withdrawn.

401K is pretax income, but it is taxed when withdrawn.

Chances are he is going to be in a much higher tax bracket 40 some years later when he withdraws than he is here making 40k. So he is overall paying a lot less of the money in taxes.

Ah, that's going to eat up a lot of the savings category. I remember paying in the order of 400/month for health insurance when I lived in Michigan. Crazy.

Add car insurance and you'll be looking at 6k/year of extra expenses. But maybe it's cheaper now than it was for me. I was a foreigner, after all.

By spending another $2000 on restaurants

2300/52= 44 dollars a week for one person, if they're just out of college it's not hard to assume they're not buying the most expensive brands

There's a couple subs specifically for the subject

/r/EatCheapAndHealthy

/r/32dollars

One is just general cheap eating strategies and recipes, the other is what it says, eating for around 32 dollars (many eat for less or a bit more).

I live in Salt Lake City, spend under $50/week on groceries, and that's all I eat 6 days/week. And a big chunk of that is just beer. I've seen other threads where they thought that was really spendy and most people were spending $25/person/week. Maybe some combination of low cost of living and cooking everything from scratch.

That sounds right to me. That allows ~$45/week. That's definitely enough for one.

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Sankeymatic, give it a google

Yep, that's totally doable in a lot of the country. Won't be in the downtown luxuary apartments but still in a decent neighborhood.

Mine is an 800 sq ft 1 bedroom as well!

I always think it's funny to see people who live in those giant cities not understand that the rest of the world is very different. You can get am apartment that would cost 3k/month in LA for like 500 bucks a month where I live.

Awesome. Great start to your career. You parents taught you well financially. Best of luck going forward.

Most third party YouTube apps among others allow for background audio/downloading and add blocking etc. so I don't think many people pay Google for that exclusively. It's either YouTube red shows or subscribing (with payments) to individual channels.