Budgeting and the 60% Solution

August 29, 2007 · Filed Under Expense/Income Tracking

The 60% solution is a budgeting method I’ve seen mentioned on a couple of blogs. The basic concept is to limit your committed expenses to 60% or less of your total income. Then commit 10% each to retirement savings, long-term savings, short-term savings for irregular expenses, and fun money. Looking at my budget for last month my committed expenses are quite easily under the 60% limit. I don’t actually follow the 10% guidelines for what to do with the rest of my money but as the article indicates once you have your committed expenses at 60% it is simple to save money.

Since I have a lot of debt to repay I don’t think the 10% guidelines work too well for me. Right now I just put as much extra money as I can towards debt. Since I’m frugal I don’t worry that I’ll waste my money without specific guidelines on where to spend it. I use Pear Budget to do my budget and it works fine for my simple needs. I use it more as a way to track my income and expenses than as an actual budget.

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3 Responses to “Budgeting and the 60% Solution”

Simple Budgeting Guidelines, Dealing With Credit: The Gigantic Roundup » Money and Personal Finance Blog In Silicon Valley on September 2nd, 2007 4:29 pm

[...] Fisted Miser: Try out this budgeting guideline: allocate at most 60% of your income to spending and the rest to savings. Simple and [...]
Moolanomy weekly roundup #7: “Budgeting” edition | Moolanomy on September 9th, 2007 8:32 am

[...] Fisted Miser, Budgeting and the 60% Solution — offers an alternative to budgeting. This is pretty much how I budget, so I can definitely [...]
Steve on September 10th, 2007 2:07 pm

We use the 60% Solution budget. I view the numbers more as guidelines or goals to strive for. We’re not at 60/10/10/10/10 nor do I ever expect to be there exactly but I do like the general categories. It’s the perfect budget for people that don’t like the strictness of a budget as far as I’m concerned.