Can anyone help me figure out what my monthly take-home salary will be?
"If you are not taking any of the options in the Flexible Benefit Plan, then everything is taxable. Check about ""Retirals"", the practise differs from organization to organization. Some pay it out annually and some only pay on completion of certain duration on exit. So Deduct 47K from 7 lacs. Gross of around 653,000. Total tax for this around 53,000. After tax yearly around 600,000. Individual contribution to PF@ 12% of basic around 33,600. Net Yearly around 567,225. So net take home would be around 47,268. You can easily take items 3,6,7,8 around 62,400. Thus you will save tax of around 13,000. So take home will increase 1,080."
When you enter your expected gross income into the worksheet - just enter $360000 and leave everything else as is. That should give you the right numbers. Same for State (form DE-4). I think you are trying to figure out what will be a break-even rental rate for you, so that then you can decide whether renting at current market rates is worth it for you. This is tricky to determine because future valuations are uncertain. You can make rough estimates though. The most uncertain component is likely to be capital appreciation or depreciation (increase or decrease in the value of your property). This is usually a relatively large number (significant to the calculation). The value is uncertain because it depends on predictions of the housing market. Future interest rates or economic conditions will likely play a major role in dictating the future value of your home. Obviously there are numerous other costs to consider such as maintenance, tax and insurance some of which may be via escrow and included in your mortgage payment. Largest uncertainty in terms of income are the level of rent and occupancy rate. The former is reasonably predictable, the latter less so.  Would advise you make a spreadsheet and list them all out with margins of error to get some idea. The absolute amount you are paying on the mortgage is a red herring similar to when car dealers ask you what payment you can afford. That's not what's relevant. What's relevant is the Net Present Value of ALL the payments in relation to what you are getting in return. Note that one issue with assessing your cost of capital is, what's your opportunity cost. ie. if you didn't have the money tied up in real estate, what could you be earning with it elsewhere? This is not really part of the cost of capital, but it's something to consider. Also note that the total monthly payment for the mortgage is not useful to your calculations because a significant chunk of the payment will likely be to pay down principal and as such represents no real cost to you (its really just a transfer - reducing your bank balance but increasing your equity in the home). The interest portion is a real cost to you. "Concise answers to your questions: Depends on the loan and the bank; when you ""accelerate"" repayment of a loan by applying a pre-payment balance to the principal, your monthly payment may be reduced. However, standard practice for most loan types is that the repayment schedule will be accelerated; you'll pay no less each month, but you'll pay it off sooner. I can neither confirm nor deny that an internship counts as job experience in the field for the purpose of mortgage lending. It sounds logical, especially if it were a paid internship (in which case you'd just call it a ""job""), but I can't be sure as I don't know of anyone who got a mortgage without accruing the necessary job experience post-graduation. A loan officer will be happy to talk to you and answer specific questions, but if you go in today, with no credit history (the student loan probably hasn't even entered repayment) and a lot of unknowns (an offer can be rescinded, for instance), you are virtually certain to be denied a mortgage. The bank is going to want evidence that you will make good on the debt you have over time. One $10,000 payment on the loan, though significant, is just one payment as far as your credit history (and credit score) is concerned. Now, a few more reality checks: $70k/yr is not what you'll be bringing home. As a single person without dependents, you'll be taxed at the highest possible withholdings rate. Your effective tax rate on $70k, depending on the state in which you live, can be as high as 30% (including all payroll/SS taxes, for a 1099 earner and/or an employee in a state with an income tax), so you're actually only bringing home 42k/yr, or about $1,600/paycheck if you're paid biweekly. To that, add a decent chunk for your group healthcare plan (which, as of 2014, you will be required to buy, or else pay another $2500 - effectively another 3% of gross earnings - in taxes). And even now with your first job, you should be at least trying to save up a decent chunk o' change in a 401k or IRA as a retirement nest egg. That student loan, beginning about 6 months after you leave school, will cost you about $555/mo in monthly payments for the next 10 years (if it's all Stafford loans with a 50/50 split between sub/unsub; that could be as much as $600/mo for all-unsub Stafford, or $700 or more for private loans). If you were going to pay all that back in two years, you're looking at paying a ballpark of $2500/mo leaving just $700 to pay all your bills and expenses each month. With a 3-year payoff plan, you're turning around one of your two paychecks every month to the student loan servicer, which for a bachelor is doable but still rather tight. Your mortgage payment isn't the only payment you will make on your house. If you get an FHA loan with 3.5% down, the lender will demand PMI. The city/county will likely levy a property tax on the assessed value of land and building. The lender may require that you purchase home insurance with minimum acceptable coverage limits and deductibles. All of these will be paid into escrow accounts, managed by your lending bank, from a single check you send them monthly. I pay all of these, in a state (Texas) that gets its primary income from sales and property tax instead of income, and my monthly payment isn't quite double the simple P&I. Once you have the house, you'll want to fill the house. Nice bed: probably $1500 between mattress and frame for a nice big queen you can stretch out on (and have lady friends over). Nice couch: $1000. TV: call it $500. That's probably the bare minimum you'll want to buy to replace what you lived through college with (you'll have somewhere to eat and sleep other than the floor of your new home), and we're already talking almost a month's salary, or payments of up to 10% of your monthly take-home pay over a year on a couple of store credit cards. Plates, cookware, etc just keeps bumping this up. Yes, they're (theoretically) all one-time costs, but they're things you need, and things you may not have if you've been living in dorms and eating in dining halls all through college. The house you buy now is likely to be a ""starter"", maybe 3bed/2bath and 1600 sqft at the upper end (they sell em as small as 2bd/1bt 1100sqft). It will support a spouse and 2 kids, but by that point you'll be bursting at the seams. What happens if your future spouse had the same idea of buying a house early while rates were low? The cost of buying a house may be as little as 3.5% down and a few hundred more in advance escrow and a couple other fees the seller can't pay for you. The cost of selling the same house is likely to include all the costs you made the seller pay when you bought it, because you'll be selling to someone in the same position you're in now. I didn't know it at the time I bought my house, but I paid about $5,000 to get into it (3.5% down and 6 months' escrow up front), while the sellers paid over $10,000 to get out (the owner got married to another homeowner, and they ended up selling both houses to move out of town; I don't even know what kind of bath they took on the house we weren't involved with). I graduated in 2005. I didn't buy my first house until I was married and pretty much well-settled, in 2011 (and yes, we were looking because mortgage rates were at rock bottom). We really lucked out in terms of a home that, if we want to or have to, we can live in for the rest of our lives (only 1700sqft, but it's officially a 4/2 with a spare room, and a downstairs master suite and nursery/office, so when we're old and decrepit we can pretty much live downstairs). I would seriously recommend that you do the same, even if by doing so you miss out on the absolute best interest rates. Last example: let's say, hypothetically, that you bite at current interest rates, and lock in a rate just above prime at 4%, 3.5% down, seller pays closing, but then in two years you get married, change jobs and have to move. Let's further suppose an alternate reality in which, after two years of living in an apartment, all the same life changes happen and you are now shopping for your first house having been pre-approved at 5%. That one percentage point savings by buying now, on a house in the $200k range, is worth about $120/mo or about $1440/yr off of your P&I payment ($921.42 on a $200,000 home with a 30-year term). Not chump change (over 30 years if you had been that lucky, it's $43000), but it's less than 5% of your take-home pay (month-to-month or annually). However, when you move in two years, the buyer's probably going to want the same deal you got - seller pays closing - because that's the market level you bought in to (low-priced starters for first-time homebuyers). That's a 3% commission for both agents, 1% origination, 0.5%-1% guarantor, and various fixed fees (title etc). Assuming the value of the house hasn't changed, let's call total selling costs 8% of the house value of $200k (which is probably low); that's $16,000 in seller's costs. Again, assuming home value didn't change and that you got an FHA loan requiring only 3.5% down, your down payment ($7k) plus principal paid (about another $7k; 6936.27 to be exact) only covers $14k of those costs. You're now in the hole $2,000, and you still have to come up with your next home's down payment.  With all other things being equal, in order to get back to where you were in net worth terms before you bought the house (meaning $7,000 cash in the bank after selling it), you would need to stay in the house for 4 and a half years to accumulate the $16,000 in equity through principal payments. That leaves you with your original $7,000 down payment returned to you in cash, and you're even in accounting terms (which means in finance terms you're behind; that $7,000 invested at 3% historical average rate of inflation would have earned you about $800 in those four years, meaning you need to stick around about 5.5 years before you ""break even"" in TVM terms). For this reason, I would say that you should be very cautious when buying your first home; it may very well be the last one you'll ever buy. Whether that's because you made good choices or bad is up to you." I'm pretty sure this isn't a /r/personalfinance question. Sounds like you have that on lock. You are asking some existential questions. Maybe find a way to travel or vacation for a month. Don't sacrifice what you have worked for in a temporary feeling of doing the wrong thing. This is assuming that you are now making some amount X per month which is more than the income you used to have as a student. (Otherwise, the question seems rather moot.) All figures should be net amounts (after taxes). First, figure out what the difference in your cost of living is. That is, housing, electricity, utilities, the basics that you need to have to have a place in which to live. I'm not considering food costs here unless they were subsidized while you were studying. Basically, you want to figure out how much you now have to spend extra per month for basic sustenance. Then, figure out how much more you are now making, compared to when you were a student. Subtract the sustenance extra from this to get your net pay increase. After that is when it gets trickier. Basically, you want to set aside or invest as much of the pay increase as possible, but you probably have other expenses now that you didn't before and which you cannot really do that much about. This mights be particular types of clothes, commute fares (car keepup, gas, bus pass, ...), or something entirely different. Anyway, decide on a savings goal, as a percentage of your net pay increase compared to when you were a student. This might be 5%, 10% or (if you are really ambitious) 50% or more. Whichever number you pick, make sure it's reasonable giving your living expenses, and keep in mind that anything is better than nothing. Find a financial institution that offers a high-interest savings account, preferably one with free withdrawals, and sign up for one. Each and every time you get paid, figure out how much to save based on the percentage you determined (if your regular case is that you get the same payment each time, you can simply set up an automated bank transfer), put that in the savings account and, for the moment, forget about that money. Try your best to live only on the remainder, but if you realize that you set aside too much, don't be afraid to tap into the savings account. Adjust your future deposits accordingly and try to find a good balance. At the end of each month, deposit whatever remains in your regular account into your savings account, and if that is a sizable amount of money, consider raising your savings goal a little. The ultimate goal should be that you don't need to tap into your savings except for truly exceptional situations, but still keep enough money outside of the savings account to cater to some of your wants. Yes, bank interest rates these days are often pretty dismal, and you will probably be lucky to find a savings account that (especially after taxes) will even keep up with inflation. But to start with, what you should be focusing on is not to make money in terms of real value appreciation, but simply figuring out how much money you really need to sustain a working life for yourself and then walking that walk. Eventually (this may take anywhere from a couple of months to a year or more), you should have settled pretty well on an amount that you feel comfortable with setting aside each month and just letting be. By that time, you should have a decently sized nest egg already, which will help you get over rough spots, and can start thinking about other forms of investing some of what you are setting aside. Whenever you get a net pay raise of any kind (gross pay raise, lower taxes, bonus, whichever), increase your savings goal by a portion of that raise. Maybe give yourself 60% of the raise and bank the remaining 40%. That way, you are (hopefully!) always increasing the amount of money that you are setting aside, while also reaping some benefits right away. One major upside of this approach is that, if you lose your job, not only will you have that nest egg, you will also be used to living on less. So you will have more money in the bank and less monthly expenses, which puts you in a significantly better position than if you had only one of those, let alone neither. "There is no magic formula to this, quite simply: earn, cut expenses, and pay.  It sounds like you can use a little bit of help in the earning area.  While it sounds like you are career focused (which is great) what else can you do to earn?   Can you start a low cost of entry side business?  Examples would include tutoring, consulting, or even baby sitting.  Can you work a part time job that is outside of your career field (waiter, gas station, etc...)? One thing that will help greatly is a written budget each and every month.  Have a plan on where to spend your money.   Then as you pay off a loan throw that money at the next one. No matter if you use the smallest loan first or highest interest rate first method if you do that your debt payments will ""snowball"", and you will gain momentum. I'd encourage you to keep good records and do projections.  Keeping good records will give you hope when you begin to feel discouraged (it happens to just about everyone).  Doing projections will give you goals to meet and then exceed.   The wife and I had a lot of success using the cash envelope system and found that we almost always had money left over at the end of the pay cycle.  For us that money went to pay off more debt.     Do you contribute to a 401K?  I'd cut that to at least the match, and if you want to get crazy cut it to zero.   The main thing to know is that you can do it. I'd encourage you to pay off all your loans not just the high interests ones." If you set a savings amount now and leave it totally fixed you're likely to massively undershoot or overshoot.  What is more likely is that you will adjust either your savings or your retirement expectations as things go along.  If it turns out you have $10M (2010 dollars) at age 50 perhaps you'll retire early, and if you have $10k perhaps you'll buckle down and work much longer or save much more. So I think what you are looking for is an assurance that if you budget to save x% of your salary over n years, and you get an after-inflation after-tax return of y% pa, you will eventually be able to retire on an income equivalent to z% of your working income.  It's pretty easy to calculate that through a future-value formula.   For instance, one set of values that works is saving 20% of income, 5% real return, 30 years = final income of 66% of working income.  Or save half your income and within 14 years you can retire and keep spending the amount you were previously spending.  Resist the temptation to crank up the assumed return until you get the value you want. I think it would be great hubris to try to make this very precise.  Yes, probably you will get raises, of course there are taxes to take into account (probably higher while you're saving), inflation and returns will vary from year to year, et.  You can guess at them.  But they'll change, and there are bigger things that are unpredictable: your personal life, your health, the economic future of your career or industry.  I reckon this simple formula is about as good as you will get. The equation is the same one used for mortgage amortization.  You first want to calculate the PV (present value) for a stream of $50K payments over 20 years at a10% rate.  Then that value is the FV (future value) that you want to save for, and you are looking to solve the payment stream needed to create that future value. Good luck achieving the 10% return, and in knowing your mortality down to the exact year. Unless this is a homework assignment, which need not reflect real life.  Edit - as indicated above, the first step is to get that value in 20 years:  The image is the user-friendly entry screen for the PV calculation. It walks you though the need to enter rate as per period, therefore I enter .1/12 as the rate. The payment you desire is $50K/yr, and since it's a payment, it's a negative number. The equation in excel that results is: =PV(0.1/12,240,-50000/12,0) and the sum calculated is $431,769 Next you wish to know the payments to make to arrive at this number:  In this case, you start at zero PV with a known FV calculated above, and known rate. This solves for the payment needed to get this number, $568.59 The excel equation is: =PMT(0.1/12,240,0,431769) Most people have access to excel or a public domain spreadsheet application (e.g. Openoffice). If you are often needing to perform such calculations, a business finance calculator is recommended. TI used to make a model BA-35 finance calculator, no longer in production, still on eBay, used.  One more update- these equations whether in excel or a calculator are geared toward per period interest, i.e. when you state 10%, they assume a monthly 10/12%. With that said, you required a 20 year deposit period and 20 year withdrawal period. We know you wish to take out $4166.67 per month. The equation to calculate deposit required becomes - 4166.67/(1.00833333)^240= 568.59  HA! Exact same answer, far less work. To be clear, this works only because you required 240 deposits to produce 240 withdrawals in the future. I call bullshit.  $7 an hour, both parents working 40 hours a week.  Assume they pay no federal income tax (is this a govt hand out?) so they take home say... $500 a week, combined, to be generous.  That's $2000 a month.  Daycare for two young kids, you did say a family right?  That's $1000 a month.  Now, shelter and heat.  Are you working in a city where you can ride the bus, and pay $1000 a month for a small apartment, or in the country where you can get a house for $650 a month, but then have to own two cars and pay for gas?  Do I need to go much further? Your total salary deferral cannot exceed $18K (as of 2016). You can split it between your different jobs as you want, to maximize the matching.  You can contribute non-elective contribution on top of that, which means that your self-proprietorship will commit to paying you that portion regardless of your deferral. That would be on top of the $18K. You cannot contribute more than 20% of your earnings, though. So if you earn $2K, you can add $400 on top of the $18K limit (ignoring the SE tax for a second here). Keep in mind that if you ever have employees, the non-elective contribution will apply to them as well. Also, the total contribution limit from all sources (deferral, matching, non-elective) cannot exceed $53K (for 2016). "I got $3394.83 The first problem with this is that it is backwards.  The NPV (Net Present Value) of three future payments of $997 has to be less than the nominal value.  The nominal value is simple:  $2991.   First step, convert the 8% annual return from the stock market to a monthly return.  Everyone else assumed that the 8% is a monthly return, but that is clearly absurd.  The correct way to do this would be to solve for m in  But we often approximate this by dividing 8% by 12, which would be .67%.  Either way, you divide each payment by the number of months of compounding.   Sum those up using m equal to about .64% (I left the calculated value in memory and used that rather than the rounded value) and you get about $2952.92 which is smaller than $2991.   Obviously $2952.92 is much larger than $2495 and you should not do this.  If the three payments were $842.39 instead, then it would about break even.   Note that this neglects risk.  In a three month period, the stock market is as likely to fall short of an annualized 8% return as to beat it.  This would make more sense if your alternative was to pay off some of your mortgage immediately and take the payments or yp pay a lump sum now and increase future mortgage payments.  Then your return would be safer.   Someone noted in a comment that we would normally base the NPV on the interest rate of the payments.  That's for calculating the NPV to the one making the loan.  Here, we want to calculate the NPV for the borrower.  So the question is what the borrower would do with the money if making payments and not the lump sum.   The question assumes that the borrower would invest in the stock market, which is a risky option and not normally advisable.  I suggest a mortgage based alternative.  If the borrower is going to stuff the money under the mattress until needed, then the answer is simple.  The nominal value of $2991 is also the NPV, as mattresses don't pay interest.  Similarly, many banks don't pay interest on checking these days.  So for someone facing a real decision like this, I'd almost always recommend paying the lump sum and getting it over with.  Even if the payments are ""same as cash"" with no premium charged." "I'm going to answer your questions out of order. Emergency fund: Depending on how conservative you are and how much insurance you have, you may want anywhere from 3-12 months of your expenses on hand. I like to keep 6 months worth liquid in a ""high-yield"" savings account. For your current expenses that would be $24k, but when this transaction completes, you will have a mortgage payment (which usually includes home-owners insurance and property taxes in addition to your other expenses) so a conservative guess might be an additional $3k/month, or a total of $42k for six months of expenses. So $40-$100k for an emergency fund depending on how conservative you are personally. Down payment: You should pay no less than 20% down ($150k) on a loan that size, particularly since you can afford it. My own philosophy is to pay as much as I can and pay the loan off as soon as possible, but there are valid reasons not to do that. If you can get a higher rate of return from that money invested elsewhere you may wish to keep a mortgage longer and invest the other money elsewhere. Mortgage term: A 15-year loan will generally get you the best interest rate available. If you paid $400k down, financing $350k at a 3.5% rate, your payment would be about $2500 on a 15-year loan. That doesn't include property taxes and home-owners insurance, but without knowing precisely where you live, I have no idea whether those would keep you inside the $3000 of additional monthly home expenses I mentioned above when discussing the emergency fund. That's how I would divide it up. I'd also pay more than the $2500 toward the mortgage if I could afford to, though I've always made that decision on a monthly basis when drawing up the budget for the next month." Since you brought up the salary thing a few times; yes, if the manager was hired at a 50k salary, he should still be taking home his 50k, plus his tips. That's the difference between being an owner and just an employee.   If you want your managers more invested, try a small salary + % over profits each month as a bonus. $400/week + 10% of profits, defined as over X amount in sales each month. Or something more appropriate pay and expectation wise for your location.a A common rule of thumb is the 28/36 ratio. It's described here. In your case, with a gross (?) salary of £50,000, that means that you should spend no more than 28% of it, or £1,167 per month on housing. You may be able to swing a bit more because you have no debts and a modest amount in your savings. The 36% part comes in as the amount you can spend servicing all your debt, including mortgage. In your case, based on a gross (?) salary of £50,000, that'd be £1,500 per month. Again, that is to cover your housing costs and any additional debt you are servicing. So, you need to figure out how much you could bring in through rent to make up the rest. As at least one other person has commented, the rule of thumb is that your mortgage should be no more than 2.5 - 3 times your income. I personally think you are not a good candidate for a mortgage of the size you are discussing. That said, I no longer live in England. If you could feel fairly secure getting someone to pay you enough in rent to bring down your total mortgage and loan repayment amounts to £1,500 or so a month, you may want to consider it. Remember, though, that it may not always be easy to find renters. In general you will take home more in the US than in Canada. There are so many variables that is is impossible to provide a comprehensive answer that will cover all bases: so here are a few hand-waving statements. Two example calculator web sites for Canada and the US (chosen somewhat at random through Google, show that making $50,000 of either currency for the upcoming tax year in Canada you would expect to pay about $9,100 and for the US $5,900.  Missing there are the state taxes, however, which also vary wildly. The deductions, adjustment and credits in both countries can really add up, so if you have specific questions, you should consult a tax specialist. Similarly, both countries provide various tax sheltered investment structures that change the game somewhat over the long term.