Science says: this is how much money you should have saved by your thirties

Don't call me when it comes to getting the best saving tips. I'm really a disaster when it comes to managing my budget. By the way, that's nothing new; the urge to trade all my money for nice things has been there since I was young. As a child, I lived with my family almost in the backyard of the local shopping center and loved to sniff around the lip glosses, perfumes, and metallic eyeshadows (don't judge, it was the 2000s). I always came home with a new trinket for my collection. Back then, it was just a few euros, but nowadays I have adult money, and that habit unfortunately hasn't changed. I don't even think about saving money unless I'm saving for something big. Do I have money left at the end of the month? Then I've already opened the Asos app before I could even say the word ’saving‘ in its entirety.

This awkward habit has now caught up with me and has really shoved my nose in the facts. The Nibud advises to set aside 10 percent of your net income every month (and to keep it in your savings account). With an income of about €30,000 (the average income of people in the age category 25-35), you should have saved €3000 by the end of the year. If you stick to this formula, you would have saved about €3000 by the age of 25, and this could rise to – don't be shocked – €18,000 in your savings account by the time you're thirty. EIGHTEEN THOUSAND. Now, I'm not completely clueless and I do have something in my savings account, but nowhere near €18,000. I must say that I don't often talk about this with my peers, so I have no idea if this is the most normal thing in the world for other people, but I find it wild. Still, it should be achievable if I start putting some strict lines through my monthly expenses. Anything is better than that eternal dance where I pull that monthly hundred euros off my savings account just as quickly as I put it on.

Source: Raisin | Image: Sex and the City HBO