Bader’s Advice
I’m excited that people are beginning to leave comments on my blog! I found two fantastic aggregators. One is the Personal Finance Aggregator and the other is the Kuwait Blogs Aggregator. I have been trying to follow blogs in both aggregators and leaving comments whenever I can. Now people are beginning to share their advice with me and it’s a wonderful feeling!
Bader left me a comment on my Monitoring my Progress post saying,
Hope you reach your goals even sooner, I have a system I’ve been using for a while now, each salary I get, I divide it as follows, 40% of it goes to my savings, 30% is divided up into a daily allowance, and the other 30% is used for bills and anything I plan to buy like cloths, a cell phone i’ve wanted, etc. Now, lets say that my daily allowance is for example 20kd, its not everyday that someone would spend 20 kd, sometimes more and sometimes less, it realy depends on what day it is. If you spend less than your allowance on any given day, you add that to your next days allowance, so if you spent 10kd today, tomorrow you would have 30kd and so on,because on work days, you might not spend much but on your off days you may spend way over your daily allowance but you have the remaining allowance from days that you didnt finish your allowance. Sorry for writing so much, Im really bad at explaining things
Also setting goals, like ur doing, is also necessary. Hope this helps. All in all, I wish you the very best.
I love reading on how people budget and try to pay off their debt or increase their savings. Thank you, Bader, for your input.
I decided to take Bader’s budget and apply it to my own total pay of KWD 1163. The current budget I have for myself is to limit myself by spending only 663 per month. I will try to deal with cash only by withdrawing 100 at the beginning of every week and leaving 163 in my account for emergencies or extra expenditures (birthdays, etc.). The remaining 500 from my salary will go towards my savings.
The table below demonstrates my money breakdown according to Bader’s 40-30-30 % rule and my own budget.
| Saving |
% |
Daily Allowance |
% |
Miscellaneous |
% |
|
| Bader |
465 |
40% |
349 |
30% |
349 |
30% |
| Kuwaiti Woman |
500 |
43% |
400 |
34% |
263 |
23% |
As you can see from the table, we nearly have the same percentages allocated to Savings, Daily Allowances and Miscellaneous expenses. The one that is drastically different is the miscellaneous category. Bader budgets 30% of his salary on bills and purchases. I choose to keep mine on emergency standby in case I have obligations during the week like birthdays or surprise expenses.
Now I’m curious about how others out there save their money. Do you deduct a specific amount or a percentage of your salary?
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You’re welcome,Kuwaiti woman. Great table BTW. It really does keep you focused on achieving your goals. I like the way you keep track of your savings.
GoodLuck…you are on the right path!
Good luck with the budget! I don’t set a budget because it just doesn’t work for me. My spouse and I are pretty low with unplanned purchases and have not a whole lot of latte factors to get rid of or minimize. We do track expenses though, down to the cent. This way we are able to identify our spending habits, the spikes and factors to our spending… that’s why we just didn’t bother budgeting after tracking expenses for months.
All the best!
I know it sounds funny, but we never budgeted, not really, we always saved and invested first, and lived on what was left over, which often wasn’t much!
The first year we were married, we decided we wanted to go on safari to Kenya and Tanzania for a month, so for a year, we didn’t go to movies or eat meat or do much of anything that cost money.
We were 26 when we went - for a month - and all these old people kept asking us how we could afford to do the trip. We sacrificed.
It became a way of life - we always balanced, having a good life now, but always putting away money for the future FIRST. Like you are doing.
Tasha & Intlxpatr, you are both right. It really depends on what your goals are. Also, being single is a little different, a person would have less responsibilities and less expenses which would make it easier to save money. All you would have to do in order to reach your goals is to control your spending. The reason I set a budget for myself was because I was tried of not having money in my pocket. I would get my salary at the end of the month and 10 days later I would have nothing. And in Kuwait, there no weekly checks, its just one salary at the end of the month, so if you spent it all, you would have no money for the rest of the month. I would resort to asking my parents for gas money. I know that my budget will be changed and possbily canceled, once I get married, but since I have no rent and no kids, I just have to control my spending habits. I have cousins that were employed for years before they got married, and have nothing in the bank to show for it. Once they got engaged, they took out loans so they can pay for their marriage expenses(wedding, furniture, ETC). I dont know when I will get married, all I know is that I want to be debt free when I do.
I know, I know, I got carried away again
It is SO hard, in a world that stresses HAVE IT ALL NOW to do what you, Kuwaiti Woman, and you, Bader, are doing. It takes steel resolve! All around you, people are spending and borrowing!
I worked in Kuwait for a year and found earning once a month was not bad. I think it made me save more because the next pay day seemed so far. Having no bars and clubs also helped because I was still in my mid-20s then and I could have easily jumped at any opportunity to have fun
Bader thank you for inspiring me to create the table
It is a useful way to keeping track of expenses and I am working on keeping a weekly table as well.
Amu thank you!
Tasha it is interesting how everyone keeps track of their expenses differently. I agree that having a salary once a month is more useful than a weekly payment that may result in greater spending.
Intlxpatr that was an admirable accomplishment. Unfortunately a lot of people are not willing to make sacrifices and that’s why you see the high number of people in debt.