Working on first budget with spouse, and keep fighting? While I hate rules of thumb...they can be great STARTING points. 50% of paycheck goes to NEEDS (rent, groceries, etc). 30% goes to FUN (carnival, vacation, being the creepy 36yo who still goes to skate parks). 20% goes to savings/debt payoff/investing Let's say your bi-weekly paycheck is $5K after taxes come out. $10K/mo should be split between your mortgage, food, utilities and transportation. $3K/mo should be spent on fun stuff...date nights, vacations (maybe you need to save a few months worth of this line item to pay for a bigger vacation), kid's sporting events, etc. $2K/mo goes to paying down student loans, investing, etc. --- There is NOT a perfect formula...just a perfect formula for YOU. My suggestion is to automate the savings/debt payoff, spend on whatever else is leftover. It's called Reverse Budgeting is WAY less of a nightmare than traditional line by line budgeting. Again though...do what works for YOU!