Savings target · GBP
Save £100,000 in 36 months
Saving £100,000 in three years means £2,778 a month, £641 a week, or £91.26 a day. Here is where that comes from in a kakeibo ledger.
- Every fortnight£1,282
- Every week£641
- Every day£91.26
- Entries to make1096 days
Money stops coming out of discretionary spending alone at £50 a day, where the rule is drawn. This target sits above it.
A cost this size per day is not found in the small lines. It is found by changing one large recurring commitment, and the sooner that is admitted the sooner the plan becomes real.
Three years is long enough that the plan should be automatic and boring. The interesting work is making sure the money sits somewhere it is not casually spendable.
What this asks of your income
The ladder simply runs the division backwards: £2,778 a month is twenty percent of £13,889, ten percent of £27,778, and thirty percent of £9,259. Find your own income on it and you know what you are asking of yourself.
- 10%£27,778 a month take home£25,000 left to live on
- 15%£18,519 a month take home£15,741 left to live on
- 20%£13,889 a month take home£11,111 left to live on
- 25%£11,111 a month take home£8,333 left to live on
- 30%£9,259 a month take home£6,481 left to live on
The dark slice is £2,778, the same money on every rung. What changes behind it is the pay packet it has to come out of, which is the whole reason a savings rate is a better question than a savings amount. The marked rung is twenty percent.
Which envelope pays for it
Kakeibo sorts spending into four envelopes rather than dozens of line items, and that is what makes a question like this answerable.
- Survivalwhat keeps the lights on: rent or mortgage, the weekly shop, energy, council tax, travel
- Optionaltakeaways, subscriptions and the shopping you would not miss
- Culturea course, a museum membership, books
- Extrathe irregular hit: car repairs, a wedding gift, the vet
£2,778 a month, carved
- Optional45%£1,250
- Culture15%£417
- Extra15%£417
- Survival25%£694
Total moved to savings£2,778 a month
Splitting it across Optional, Culture, Extra and Survival is one way to arrange it, and the Survival line is the honest part: at £2,778 a month, no rearrangement of takeaways, subscriptions and the shopping you would not miss covers the whole figure. Survival means fixed costs, so that share is a housing, transport or insurance decision rather than a willpower one.
A six figure target is a multi year commitment in everything but name, and it is worth being explicit about the tradeoff it represents before starting.
The four questions, against this target
The method is four questions asked once a month, in that order. Here they are with this page's numbers in them. The long version of each, with the reflection prompts, is in the four questions guide.
- 01How much money do you have?Everything that lands in the month, before anything is committed. The plan below only works from a real figure rather than a remembered one.
- 02How much would you like to save?£2,778 a month, or £2,800 if you would rather set a round standing transfer and finish early.
- 03How much are you spending?Recorded by hand, in four envelopes, as it happens. This is the part that makes the £100,000 possible, and the part every method skips at its peril.
- 04How can you improve?Answered once a month for 36 months, in writing, against the running total rather than against a feeling.
£91.26 a day is above the £50 a day line, so part of the money has to come out of fixed costs rather than out of Optional. It stays above the line on every horizon on the grid; 66 months is where the arithmetic first clears it.
The same target in another currency
Or work from your own figures in the save an amount by a date calculator, and start from the method itself in what is kakeibo.
Common questions
- How much do I need to save each month to reach £100,000 in 36 months?
- £2,778 a month. Set it to £2,800 and you arrive early with a small cushion, which is usually worth more than the exact figure.
- What is that per week and per day?
- £641 a week, £1,282 a fortnight, and £91.26 a day across roughly 1096 days.
- Which kakeibo category should the money come from?
- Start with Optional. On this target it carries about 45 percent of the monthly figure, which is £1,250. The ledger tells you the specific lines within a fortnight.
- What happens if I miss a month?
- The shortfall spreads across what is left. Missing one month here adds about £79.37 to each remaining month, so it is recoverable, and the monthly reflection is where you decide whether to absorb it or move the date.
£2,778 a month is arithmetic. Holding it is the ledger.
Kakeibo works because you write the spending down as it happens and read it back once a month. The app does the totals so the writing down is the only work left.
