His Hers Money

As you can tell, both Hers and I have been remiss in posting for a long time. I think we just got burned out, especially Hers. For me it was always coming up with topics to write about. I mean, there are only so many stories about using coupons that you can write! I think that I’ve come to the conclusion that we’re really not into what most would consider ‘frugal’ living. We both make above-average salaries since the median household income is currently $61,500 according to the IRS.

I’ve been reading RichSlick’s blog a lot lately. A lot of what he writes about doesn’t directly apply to us since we only invest in mutual funds in our 401k’s and IRA’s but there IS a difference in your life when you have disposable income. We’re lucky enough to be able to max out our retirement accounts while at the same time finally getting out of debt and putting money into an account for a down payment on a home. For us, budgeting means putting money aside so that we can go eat a $200 meal at one of the country’s best restaurants if we want.

Now don’t get me wrong, there are growing pains and issues. I’ve always been too much of a big spender and just now have my credit card debt under control. I have Hers to thank for that. She started being fiscally responsible right out of college and has continued down that path to this day. Early retirement is in sight, we’ll be almost debt-free this winter with only a single car loan left over, and we are going to start looking for an investment/retirement property in Colorado. Life is good. It always could be better though. So we’re going to continue this blog while we continue our life journey together. We hope you’ll join us.

In order to fund our retirement dreams we, like most people put money away each month towards our retirement. So, the question is how much? After reading Grace’s post When it Rains, It Pours, and No One Believes Us where she says “We have retirement funds that demand a whole lot more than $100 a paycheck if we’re going to have any kind of life after work.” I thought I might post exactly what we put away each month towards our retirement.

His Roth IRA: this is a new investment for Him. This year it looks like His Roth will not be fully funded as we are just starting it, but we are setting it up to take $400 a month out. Next year we will be starting in Jan and plan on continuing with $417/month

Her Roth IRA: $417/month in order to fully fund it this year.

Both His and Hers are putting $1200/month in our 401k’s for a total of $2,400/month. That gives us a grand total of $3,034 a month in retirement savings.

$500 more per month goes into our retirement home fund.

All of these amounts are automatically taken out of our paychecks and/or checking accounts so we never even have the opportunity to spend even a cent of it. Our grand total each month is $3,734 for a yearly total of $44,808. We have a financial planner who tells us how much we need and keeps us on track.

We also have monthly savings that go towards other things which I will get into in my next post, but this wraps up our automatic retirement savings.