<prompt> Human: I hear it all the time, I realize the base of it means:No debt,Spending less then you make,Having savings.but what are the benchmarks. What ratio of spendingmaking should you aim for? What is a reasonable amount of savings? If I save up for a downpayement and then spend all those saving on a downpayment and no longer have savings, are my finances no longer in order?If Im paying off a car does the 10 of your income rule still count? How much savings would you expect to have before you have a child?Help me.  <response>: Its important to remember this is personal finance. Everyones answer is not the same.The first step is to keep income higher than expenses with a decent amount of cushion. Fidelity uses the 50-15-5 method -- 50 essential, 15 retirement, and 5 short term savings, but these are guidelines. Someone making 1 million a year can not reasonably spend 500k a year on essentials. Likewise someone in poverty is living below the bare minimum, so saving is impossible. the normal answer is to keep 6-24 months in a savings account; job security plays a large role in deciding the amount. when you buy a house, you should ideally have a decent amount of cushion when you buy. You can dip into your E-fund for this, but it also means you are less secure. The monthly extra money should be used to bolster the E-fund -- you now have more responsibility and more to possibly cover. Once you are safe, the extra can be used how you want. My goal is to retire early, so I would put that extra into 401kIRAextra payments. For a kid, its hard to say; what people spend on this varies a lot by personal situations -- can grandparents do daycare? can you get all your cloths from your friend who just had a kid? will you use cloth diapers? are you going to buy the cutest baby shoes that never touch the ground? Ideally again, you want to take from the monthly cushion instead of a pool. The pool goes down and stays down; the monthly cushion comes back every month. 