Finding it hard to invest with monthly budget

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For me, personally, I’d pay it with cash if I could and wouldn’t finance unless I had too.

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My mortgage is 3% and my truck note is 4.2%.

My high yield savings gets 4.1% and my brokerage averages well more than that YoY. I’ll finance stuff all day long as long as that holds true

Sounds like you just had a few large expenses this year. It happens to anyone over time. I will say did you "have" to buy your kid a vehicle? How much was that? If thats part of the reason you werent able to put a decent amount into savings this year those are the decisions you have to ask yourself if its worth making because its definitely not something you have to do.

Curious as to how much the vehicle was for the kid, how much you paid over insurance for a vehicle for yourself and the A/C unit. Income wouldnt hurt either to see if we can tell these expenses really hurt your savings rate this year.

Sounds like the mortgage is pretty low.

So we put 15% to 401k and also get a match on that so we do save for retirement but it seems like after that life tends to consume the rest with unfortunate events. If I put away savings then it eventually is used up with life events listed above such as cars (basic cars which are used and around 20k), AC repairs, tires, etc
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You're doing fine.

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Kids vehicle was 15k and I came out of pocket around 8k to buy myself another car since the old was totaled. My car was 20k. The a/c unit was around 6k. Income was roughly 180k

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Sounds like buying the kid a car really hurt you here, especially one that expensive. Thats the one I would question since you said you werent able to save much this year but threw $15k of cash towards an unnecessary thing. Even if you wanted to help your kid out, what was wrong with $6k car maybe?

But I would also question where else your money is going if your mortgage is less than $1,500/mo and you're grossing $15k/mo which net is probably around $10k-$11k after tax/benefits? Even with those big expenses, yes it would cut into your savings rate but thats the equivalent of a out $2,400/mo ($29k/12mo) which seems like you still should have had money left over to save after paying for other expenses.

Still though I go back to the $15k car for the kid, thats $1,250/mo you could have saved along the way this year not buying that. Or if you got a cheaper $6k car it still would have been $750/mo in savings. That just seems to be what hurt you the most this year.

its called life. Investing is a luxury not a need. If you want more disposable budget, cut back the monthly expenses. Or, kids dont "need" cars.

Personally i'd warn about getting too caught up in saving. You have to enjoy life while you can. No point in having tons of money in retirement and not being physically able to enjoy it.

How much do you already have invested? If you have a nice nest egg already you may be able to throttle back a bit until you replenish your cash reserves. Also as was said in another post, enjoy some money now, who knows what you'll have to deal with when you're old and can't do the things you want. I need to tell myself that sometime!

Years like this happen. You have not necessarily done anything wrong. It is generally the right thing to do by paying cash for those events.

It is the years that you don't have this many big expenses where you can prepare. The "pay your self first" mentality works in normal circumstances. Set up something to automatically put some money aside. Fund an emergency fund first to pay for things like this. Start with a small amount that you can leave there except for the big events like a car or HVAC replacement. Once this fund is established with a reasonable amount, add a 2nd automatic funding of investment money.

The key to getting these going is to start small so that you don't need the money on a normal basis. Be disciplined. If you go too large, you will find too many instances to need the money for "normal life". Rome was not built in a day.

None of this works if you don't " spend less than you make" while not in emergency mode. This usually means cutting some discretionary spending.

I find the biggest mistake people make is waiting for the time they have extra money to invest. I always tried to put money into investments regardless of my economic situation.