There are recurrent questions I see all the time on different personal finance blog site, how should I allocate my expenses in percentage of my income? Where should I allocate my expenses? What are the usual categories I should allocate my budget to?
In a blog post publish in 2014 on the Budget Express site (In French), Dominique Lamy presented a list of the most considerable budgeted expenses in relation to your revenue. In 2016, those percentages have not changed (see the chart below).
The percentage can vary from one budget to another. There are factors that can influence those variations like your age group, where you live, your revenue, the style of life you are looking for, etc.
This is just an example of the distribution of budgeted expenses. It’s great to think of those as categories. You should start by putting your own number besides those categories to be able to calculate your own percentage. Obviously Budget Express is a great tool to be able to help you summarize your expenses by category.
- Savings : 5 –10%
- Urgency fund : 5 –10%
- Housing (rent, mortgage, taxes, insurance) : 25 –35%
- Grocery : 5 –10%
- Services (Cable, electricity, phone) : 5 –10%
- Transport (car, bus, rental) : 10 – 15%
- Clothes : 2 – 7%
- Education and leisure : 5 –10%
- Health (Insurance, dentist, glasses, prescriptions) : 5 –10%
- Debt reimbursement : 5 –10 %
Image 1 (Click to enlarge)
Original date : 11-20-2017