Yes, the money is crazy. It disappears surprisingly fast. I am married with a baby; wife doesn't work currently. We own a house. That all accounts for the larg

Yes, the money is crazy. It disappears surprisingly fast. I am married with a baby; wife doesn't work currently. We own a house. That all accounts for the largest single block of expenses. So: housing, food, medical, diapers. Then utilities incl phone and internet. Everything except medical gets scrutinized to some degree. Past that: retirement & stocks. Vanguard pioneered index funds and the Standard Advice for people who don't want to fuss about it is "max retirement yearly in the standard vanguard index fund". Standard advice is save 15% of your income. Misc other costs: We eat out too much. I have professional memberships incl the ACM and I donate to political races I believe deserve support (shoutout to the irreverent bookmarking site). We have a gym membership - we tacked on a babysitting membership for the kiddo so we can put him in babysitting when we go. It's pretty expensive but invests in FutureUs's health, which pays off in ways non-financial and financial. And it saves on finding a babysitter 3x/wk. We have a car and hope to move to a place where we can sell it. The car has a "proc effect" cost of about $1000 once a year beyond the usual car ownership costs. A substantial part of my savings for the past decade went towards a down payment on the house we now live in. We're still adjusting towards that. I advise donating some towards church or other charity; I strongly believe that those of us blessed with resources have a duty to share with those not blessed. oh yes - hobbies. I got into oil painting. That's been fun and VERY expensive. I buy nonfiction books and read them. At $12/book, that's not cheap in volume. Lately I got interested in kettlebell based workouts, so I got a couple of decent quality ones and didn't really think too hard about the money. I don't expect them to wear out or break, so it's a lifetime investment in health. so on and so forth. Disciplined investing is how you should be thinking about money.