How much of monthly salary (after TDS) should I aim to spend on monthly expenditures?

Tell your city, no. of dependents and monthy income.

It could be <10% for someone earning 5 LPM with no dependents but >20% for the same person in a metro with 2 dependents.

In 2024, aim to keep your spend to essentials. If you can keep it below 30-35K and save the rest, that would be ideal.

Reasons:

1. Market is bad, jobs are transitory so don't trust that your salary is permanent, assume you are overpaid. People still employed in Tech are accruing pays from the 2022 booms but they are the first on the list when downsizing.

2. At start of the career, your essential expenses should not be a function of your salary. At this career stage, salaries are volatile. So if you are earning way high (say in hand 1-2L+), it is easy to be accustomed to expenses at these high levels. That is classic case of getting stuck as a high salaried professional but never accruing wealth and getting rich (HENRY). No offense but there are 31yo professionals on GV which think that 2L/mo expenses are essential and cannot cut-down further. They fail to understand that their high salaries are enabling their lifestyle.

3. Having a fat savings cushion will open up big career opportunities when you are ready to take risks. Money in the bank is important.

Yo my rent is almost 30%. How tf you guys are managing in 20%?

For more context, I'm currently in Blr, graduated last year so don't really have any dependents now, but I'm trying to build up an amount to buy a house in my hometown as fast as possible. My current monthly salary is close to 6 figures post TDS