re: General Investing/Saving for a beginner

Only you can decide what is right for you but my personal philosophy is as follows:

1) Put 15% of your salary away into retirement accounts from your first paycheck in the real world and keep putting 15% in until you are able to retire. You shouldn't ever have up the percentage later in life. You'll likely avoid ever having to adjust to increasing your savings rates later in life and if you work a long time you'll be able to lower that rate later on.

2) Establish your emergency fund. Decide how many months of safety you want to have in there. Some people like 3 months, some people like to have 9 months worth of emergency money in there.

3) Establish a budget and figure out where you want to spend your money. Do you want to spend your money on a car payment, rent for a nice apartment, mortgage for a house, travel, eating out, etc. Figure out what you want to be the priority so you can decide how much to spend on the others. Some like to spend money traveling while others like to have a nice house over traveling. Figure out what you want.

4) Make sure that you have a minimum amount of disposable cash each month to cover whatever may pop up. I personally like to make sure that after all my monthly obligations are met (bills, clothes, food, gas, utilities, etc.) that I have at least $1k left in my budget unaccounted for. This allows me to comfortably cover random appliance repairs/replacements, car repairs, etc. without depending on carrying a balance on a credit card or taking on a new loan. Those months I dont need it I put that money into savings for whatever I'm saving for (usually a big purchase like down payment, big trip, etc.).

You also need to consider whether you value maximizing your financial returns on your money or valuing financial freedom. This will impact how you budget. Some people like to not pay off loans and rather invest disposable cash into investments with higher returns than the interest rates on the loans. This helps accumulate cash faster but it comes at the cost of flexibility. Some people like having zero debt and feel that freedom/flexibility has a worthwhile value for them.