#39 Where Does My Money Go?

I'm interested in seeing a breakdown of where my money goes and crucially how much % of my gross pay am I actually saving.

Gross Pay	$5,750.83
Tax	$1,495.47	26%
National Ins	$384.44	7%
Season Ticket For Commuting	$274.67	5%
Childcare Vouchers	$124.00	2%
Fixed Spending	$1,302.81	23%
Variable Spending	$1,020.00	18%
Debt repayment	$331.65	6%
Pension Payments	$287.54	5%
Fidelity World Tracker Fund	$50.00	1%
Expected Savings Per Month	480.25	8%
	Overall Total	100%

This is based on my monthly budget, which as we know I've only stuck too once so far in over a year. Therefore the 8% expected savings per month can be ignored.

Using gross is interesting as I can see the amount of tax paid etc however as this cannot be changed it doesn't provide a fair reflection upon how much of money which could be saved in theory is being saved.

Therefore, here are the net figures...

I have added the net pension cost to me to the net pay to enable a 100% view of the book;

Net Pay + Pension Net Contribution	3,351.48
Fixed Spending	$1,302.81	39%
Variable Spending	$1,020.00	30%
Debt repayment	$331.65	10%
Pension Payments	$166.77	5%
Fidelity World Tracker Fund	$50.00	1%
Expected Savings Per Month	480.25	14%
	Total	100%

Disappointingly the amount of my available pay being saved is exactly the same = 6%.

If we stuck to the budget this could be increased by 14% to 20%.

Once debts are re-paid this can be increased by a further 10% to 30%.

What concerns me most is that over the last 18 months~ we have only stuck to budget once.

What that means is that excluding my pension which can only be accessed at age 55 we're only actually saving 1% of my take home pay.

That is ridiculously absurdly low.

 According to this chart referenced by Mr Money Mustache  this means I'll retire in 98.9 years. Great.

Therefore, priority has to be increasing the savings rate by sticking to the monthly budget, paying down the debt and increasing the automated savings each month rather than rely on cash savings.

When it comes to 2017 aims for the year I think this will need to one of the key drivers. Replacing the debt repayments with direct debits into savings to increase our savings % to 16%.