Does my budget look right? Fresh grad

Damn bro you forgot toilet paper and shit :(

I feel like 10 bucks per meal for lunch and dinner seems a little low unless you plan on cooking it yourself.

Meal prep and cut down those food costs. Otherwise, looks decent for SF.

Look bad, no money for pooping in pants

Sounds about right. You should budget the discretionary $1000.

Health, dental, and renters insurance. Are your parents paying for this?

Transportation. Are you going to buy a car? Are you ever going to take an Uber?

Toiletries/haircuts. How often will you go to the barber?

Clothing. Do you already have a good professional wardrobe? Your stuff will wear down eventually. And it sounds like you're gonna get fatter too.

Anything extra should probably be put into a taxable brokerage account or maybe a Roth. Investing $12k before bonus in SF is good. If you put the entire bonus towards investments you'll be in much better shape by the end of the year.

Yup, sounds about right, except you're missing a few items, as RE Analyst 1 mentioned above. Your total remaining cash should be closer to ~$400/month once you've factored everything in.

Also wait until you get your bonus, and see just how much of it you actually get to keep (after taxes and everything). That's gonna be another fun post to read from you.

Let this thread be an awakening to all the clueless kiddies that think coming here is "making it big"

Welcome to the Bay, OP, where $200k is middle class.

Posts like these make me glad I’m in Texas but also feel like I’m missing out in living in a big city.

I’m about to start in Chicago doing IB as a SA. I currently live in a LCOL city… how does Chicago compare?

Making $90k in SF, contribute 10% to 401k (firm doesn’t match), max my Roth, $2150 rent, maybe $650 on total food and dining. Saved like $700 (very grateful to not have debts)

Honestly I accept that I’m not saving too much working this job. It’s my first job and I’ll make much more over the course of my career, so whatever, I save what I save. But I realize that’s a privileged perspective. I am also a big spender and it’s a tough habit to kick.

Another note: transportation (even though i take the bus) has been mad expensive here… but i don’t have any good muni bus routes near me so i have to take golden gate transit

Dude I have absolutely no idea why everyone is saying your budget seems good. You’re literally paying 2600 for a studio and eating out every single day. You should have roommates. I’m moving to SF in a week to work in FiDi. My rent is $1k with max $100 in utilities. I have my own bathroom and will live in a nice apartment in nob hill with two young people. Think about it, if I save $1.5k/month more than you just on housing that’s 18k in post tax dollars and about 25k of your salary. And broooo $900+ on food a month?? Stop being a lazy tard man, pinch your waist and feel the fat every time you want to waddle to Jimmy John’s at 12pm from the office - cmon. Make food at home and eat rice/pasta, a protein and veggies. For your own health make food. 5 days a week prep healthy food and have your weekends be the days you eat out. Why move to SF to be paycheck to paycheck? Do you want to buy a house sometime in your 20s early 30s?

Another tool to use is an app called TooGoodToGo. It’s an app that restaurants opp into to sell the food they’d originally toss at the end of breakfast, lunch, and dinner service. FiDi has a ton of options. It’s $3-5 and you’ll usually get a decent amount of food - you just won’t be able to pick what you want. This is just an option to save if you really want to eat out.

My classic advice on all these threads. 

1. Those who are backed by mom and dad
2. Those who end up broke
3. Those who are financially responsible on their own

If you are #3 and you look around at others on how to live you will end up in bucket 2. 
Your budget is not responsible. A few reasons why:

• Rent—spending 2600 on rent all in is just too much. I get it is the Bay Area, but both living alone and in a nice area is not the financially right decision for someone out of school. First off, on the roommate thing, living with others is a great experience for you developing as a person, but it also is almost always substantially cheaper. Yes, roommates can suck, but you live with it in exchange for way cheaper rent and pocketing an additional 2-5k a year. The general rule of thumb is you should not spend more than 30% of your gross on rent. For you this is 2400, so you are about 10% over budget on the maximum amount of rent you should be spending. I would get if you are an IB analyst and you are getting the single to just tough it out through a hard 2 year period, but you are point blank spending too much on rent. More appropriate would be getting a roommate and finding something closer to 2200 max all in. I get it’s the Bay Area, but you can find that. 
• The food—yeah, your food budget is just dumb. It’s dumb for a lot of reasons, but personally weekend food spend should not be $300. Your grocery budget looks like a family of 4s budget. There are a lot of ways to be crafty about this, but the most basic is just start getting a rotisserie chicken as a meal on the weekend. For dinners, there’s a lot of ways to do better. I get eating out at work tbh, it’s not always practical bringing food in.
• You are whiffing on additional expenses. A plane flight for Christmas, a birthday gift, moving all add up substantially. The rule of thumb here is everyone’s budget is 1.25 what they think it is. So your 3k a month spend is almost certainly ~4k.

For context, while I’m in a low cost of living city, my rent is about $1900 all in and my monthly budget ends up being roughly 4.3k. However, random expenses make my true budget closer to 5.5k a month. Things like weddings, health expenses, gifts, moving, clothes, really add up.

I’ll also add, I’m no longer really constraining my spending as much as not going crazy. My income is 5-10x more than yours. The real key to saving is not upgrading your life style each step of the way. In theory you can be fine if you keep your lifestyle flat for the next decade, but people like to feel like they are making progress and significant others will have you upgrading, so the issue with your budget is you are starting way too high and it’s only going to get worse.

• Investing I would recommend doing the 401k up to the match offered by your company, then switching to your Roth IRA, then just bundling cash savings in a money market account until you have 6 months of expenses then switching to maxing your 401k. 401ks do allow loans to yourself in certain situations, but having 6 months of expenses should come before really maxing your 401k. As others have mentioned, a strategy might be waiting until your bonus and allocating a larger portion of your bonus to the 401k at the end of the year. Missing a year of 401k contributions just isn’t that large of a deal especially if you are contributing to a Roth.

In general, your budget is worse than you think, but the most important thing is not increasing each year. While you are starting at a point that is excessive and over budget, if you get raises in the coming years and stay at the same levels of spending you will be fine. Nonetheless, you are correct in understanding how hard it is to save money. There’s really no way to save without having a huge delta between “what you can afford” and what you make. The reality is if you want to buy a house, go to grad school, and hit other financial goals, you need to save in your 20s and 30s if you aren’t backed by mommy and daddy.

Id check out the below to really get a grasp on your spending:

https://www. monarchmoney.com/referral/3u56ti62bd
 

My take on it.

Your lunch spending is totally fine. Bringing a packed lunch will probably be depressing, not as tasty, and only save you a few bucks.

Your weekend and dinner spending is really high in my opinion. You need to learn how to cook. It is not hard. Some months, I will not go to restaurants at all.

Have no idea how utilities come out to $200 for a studio, unless you are including like wifi in that lol.

Yea we are getting shafted by uncle sam. At the same time nothing is getting better in the city. Lots of misbehavior that gets totally ignored.