Attendings - savings question

Just out of curiousity what percentage of your income do you save per month (which can be put into debt, savings account, IRA's, etc)? DH and I are still trying to sort out our new attending life, and want to make sure we pay our debts, save, etc. He already has enrolled in the groups retirement fund, but we are trying to figure out how much above that we should be saving ( or put away into debt etc, as above). Just wanted to see what the consensus was.

[MrsK]

We are not attendings yet but for at least the first 5 years of my law practice I continued living like a starving student and put as much as possible into debt repayment and savings. Every raise I've ever gotten has gone into savings too. The faster you can pay debt and the sooner you start saving the better off you'll be.

[migirl]

We are about 6 months into attendinghood and live on about 40% of DH's take-home pay. The other 60% gets put toward retirement/college/etc.

[poky]

Also not attending yet, but we have zero debt, and are currently socking something like 15-20% of gross into savings every month (saving up for residency interviewing/move). If we get an average EM attending salary, and I quit work, and lived on what we live on now, we'd have something like 60% left over to save.

[Vanquisher]

We are new to attendinghood. Buying a house this week, but no real savings right now. We are aggressively, aggressively paying down debt.


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[Vishenka69]

We are saving about 30-40% (that includes cash savings, investments, college and retirement plans).

Not there yet but we are planning to save at least 50%. The first couple of years our priority will be saving to buy a house, then we'll concentrate on aggressively paying off student debt, then other savings after that. It will be interesting to see if we can make it happen. Obviously we don't know what DH will be making yet, but like Poky we are going on an "average".

[DCJenn]

Currently I'm putting 3% of my pathetic social worker salary into the company plan and my husband is putting a mere 1%. However, after the albatross of the DC house is gone, we will be able to finish of the lingering consumer debt. Once he's not renting a stupidly expensive apartment in DC then we'll be in much better shape.

I have always maxed out my retirement plans though so we've got all of my 403(b) plans rolled into Roth IRAs.

Jenn

Thanks guys. That gives me some idea of what is average. We still need to find a really good finacial advisor. That is on our to do list this upcoming year.

[DCJenn]

I always forget to add that he's got a pending pension from the military that goes up every year he stays in- if he stays for 30 years he can get 75% of his pay at retirement as his pension. That makes things much less dire for us.

Jenn