A working professional who thought earning ₹1.3 lakh a month would end their money worries has captured social media's attention with a reality check. Laying out their monthly budget, they demonstrated how rent, EMIs, household expenses, and subscription fees eat away their earnings, leaving barely ₹10,000 for emergency savings.
“My ₹1.3 lakh salary somehow disappears every month. I earn ₹1,30,000 a month, which sounded absolutely insane to me when I was younger. I genuinely thought earning this much would mean I could finally stop thinking about money,” a Reddit user wrote.
Also Read: ‘If your salary is less than ₹1 lakh, don’t come to Bangalore’: 9-to-5 employee’s advice
The individual shared a detailed breakdown of the expenses:
₹30,000 - Rent
₹12,000 -Parents/family
₹8,000 -Groceries
₹6,000 -Electricity + internet + phone
₹7,000 - Petrol/transport
{{/usCountry}}₹7,000 - Petrol/transport
{{/usCountry}}₹15,000 -EMI
₹10,000 -SIP/investments
₹5,000 -Insurance/medical
₹4,000 -Eating outside
₹3,000 -Subscriptions because apparently I need 47 different OTT apps
₹5,000-Random UPI payments I have absolutely no memory of making
₹5,000 - Clothes, toiletries, household stuff
₹10,000 - “Miscellaneous” (the biggest scam category in personal finance)
Total: ₹1,20,000.
The person added that the remaining “ ₹10,000 doesn't feel like ₹10,000.” The individual expressed that they once thought earning in lakhs would help them have a "completely different life,” but the reality seems very different.
“Meanwhile I'm sitting at home calculating whether ordering a ₹250 meal is a financial decision. I don't even know where the money goes anymore. Nothing here is particularly luxurious. It's just a hundred completely normal expenses quietly eating my salary alive,” the person wrote, adding, “ ₹1.3 lakh sounds rich until you have ₹1.3 lakh worth of responsibilities.”
What did social media say?
An individual suggested, “3000 for subscriptions? Do you even watch all? Subscribe for only 1-2 months to each OTT one after the other- change when you're bored of the library... and there is so much on YouTube.”
Another suggested, “Download a spend tracker app for you to see where each penny goes. Visibility of spends is half the battle when it comes to budgetary management.”
A third posted, “Your salary isn’t randomly disappearing tbh. Your fixed life is just expensive. Rent + family + EMI alone is ₹57k. Add groceries, bills, petrol and insurance, and roughly ₹75-80k is committed before the month properly starts. The suspicious part is the ₹18k under subscriptions, random UPI and ‘miscellaneous’. Don’t even cut it immediately, just stop calling it miscellaneous and name every expense for one month. Also, ₹10k SIP + ₹10k remaining means you’re still keeping ₹20k, or around 15% of your income. It could be better at this salary, but it’s very different from the entire amount disappearing.”
A fourth wrote, “Expenses are way too high for this salary. You are living an upper-class life with a middle-class salary.”
(Disclaimer: This report is based on user-generated content from social media. Hindustantimes.com has not independently verified the claims and does not endorse them.)