So after finishing my taxes, the only prudent thing for me to do was to assess how I did. I manged to save at a 20% clip which certainly isn’t bad. However to achieve some of my goals for the next couple years, I may have to bump my rate into the 25-30 range. This is doable. My fixed expenses should remain about the same, and I imagine I should be able to trim my variable expenses.

Spending Pie


Spending Percentage
Savings 19.1% I have a big category called food and entertainment. That’s reflective of two things. 1. I don’t really cook in manner to sustain myself. 2. I don’t do the best job tracking all my daily expenses. I used to use Quicken, but I found the Macintosh version less than ideal with respect to downloading all my account information.
Housing 17.6%
Auto 1.3%
Utilities 1.8%
Taxes 26.2%
Other Loans 8.8%
Gifts 4.0%
Vacation 2.0%
Food & Entern. 16.7%



I find at least for myself doing this kind cash flow analysis not very useful on month to month basis. There are just too many variable expenes month to month that prevent me from obtaining an accurate picture of how I’m saving or spending. I may attemtp to this same analysis at the end of the 1st Quarter (March 31st), and see if that proves useful.