Last Year by the Numbers
I’ve shared before that every year my partner and I review our numbers, celebrate the wins, and learn from the losses. 2024 was no exception, so in the spirit of transparency, I’m sharing here with you today.
Year end money summary
This is our final installment of the Everything I Spent series — totaling up the full year into one great big summary. As a reminder, my husband and I are 41/40 with three kids ages 14, 11, and 9. We both work full time outside the home.
Full Year Need/Save/Want Percentages
Needs = 40%
Save = 32%
Short-term Savings = 14% of take-home pay
Long-term Savings = 18% of take-home pay
Wants = 28%
I was a bit surprised by these percentages. I would have sworn we were averaging more like 50/25/25, but we’re saving more than I estimated and spending a bit less on needs.
Our Needs number includes our housing, utilities, insurance, transportation costs, groceries, kids’ expenses, and health costs. Wants include all elective spending — like our fun spending, dining out, subscriptions, and giving. Savings include our short-term and long-term savings, like our Christmas fund and ROTH IRAs, respectively.
Why are we saving so much more than the recommended 20%?
Well, this is intentional. While we were paying off debt ten years ago, we missed out on significant saving and interest-earning time. So we’re being aggressive now so that we can relax later. Bear in mind, we live in a home that we bought long before home values sky-rocketed in our area. Now we’re in a position where it would cost us a ton to relocate into a larger home here, so we’re staying put for the foreseeable future.
Other numbers:
Savings Interest = $2,200
Cash Back benefits from credit cards = $1,250
That’s $3,450 of passive income. We earned about 4.2% interest on our high-yield savings accounts this year and our cash back credit cards earned us some extra dollars just for spending as we ordinarily would.
We invested $14,000 into a 401K + another $14,000 into a ROTH IRA + $4,000 into our HSA investment account + $10,000 for our kids’ educations.
Over the course of the year, our investments grew $78,000, and our total net worth grew by $106,000.
Our debt (mortgage balance) decreased by $12,000. We’re only 11 years away from paying it off!
However, our savings amount stayed about the same. We spent from and refilled those accounts, but most of the savings surplus went to investing, as you can see by the numbers. Our savings priority is retirement through aggressive investing.
When we look at a full year, these numbers can be pretty large and impressive, but I assure you, it’s really just one day at a time. Bit by focused bit, we’ve clawed our way to a place where we’re finally on track to live a debt-free life of freedom. And you know what? By educating yourself on money basics, using tools to help you manage and monitor, and being conscious of your money mindset, you can do the same!