Anyone here been able to save 70% Of Their Income?

[james.hendrickson]

I saw a new story on the web about this today...evidently some guy on Quora claimed to have made 117K, but had expenses of just 40k, meaning he saved 66% of his income.

Have any of you managed to do this? If so - thats AWESOME, how did you do it?

Best,

James

[corn18]

I saw a new story on the web about this today...evidently some guy on Quora claimed to have made 117K, but had expenses of just 40k, meaning he saved 66% of his income.

Have any of you managed to do this? If so - thats AWESOME, how did you do it?

Best,

James

Taxes on $117K would be about $30k. If he had expenses of $40k, that means he either lived off of $10k or saved $47k, which would be 40% of gross pay. That's what I save.

[rennigade]

Just another clickbait bs story.

[kork13]

I'd bet that the $40k annual expenses did not include taxes (as stated, I question anyone's ability to live on $10k-$20k/yr) which would take it to around 40%-50% savings rate. THAT is completely possible, and my wife and I have been doing that since we got married. Our intention, though, is to only live off of my income (we earn close to the same, I'm ~10% higher than her) to give her the flexibility to stop working and/or go part time whenever we decide to do that.

The highest my savings rate has ever been was at about 55% of gross income... And I was a boring bachelor living overseas with not enough time off.

[Singuy]

My wife and I save about 70-80% of our post tax income yearly.

Our income post tax is about 280k/year (maxed out 401k for 1 person is included in the taxes for this calculation).

We spend about 45k/year. This includes property tax, hoa, home insurance, food, gas, vacation, clothes, and any other misc.

No car, student loan, or mortgage debt. Paid everything off with our aggressive savings plan the past 3 years. This puts us at about 83% income saved (85% if you count 401k).

I put about 20k/month toward investments currently(lending club, vanguard, peerstreet).

My wife and I are just built this way. Yesterday we were at the BMW dealership getting a service done on a used car we bought for 20k. I want to upgrade to something bigger and the new X5 was staring right at me. "599/month" is what the lease said. With all said and done, I'll be shelling out 26k the next 3 years leasing this brand new car. At first I was like "huh it's about 3% of our post tax dollars..not bad. Then I slapped myself because I just remembered there's a 4 year old infiniti jx35 I was looking at for 23k used.

[Jluke]

Follow up article said 5 out of 4 Americans aren't good at math

[james.hendrickson]

Just another clickbait bs story.

Here is the link...

https://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-be-saving-70-of-your-salary

[sv2007]

Have any of you managed to do this? If so - thats AWESOME, how did you do it?

We save more than 70% after tax income for sure. Our investment income greatly exceeded our combined earnings before wife retired. Now that I'm working, I don't think we use more than 50% of my take home; combined with no mortgage or other debts, so... let's see

my 50% remaining income, our investment income at > than my whole income; that's at least 75% saved.

[tripods68]

I listen to many people on podcast who have done more than 70% of their income. It's a matter of intentionality to most people that achieve this high rate of savings.

If we didn't have a mortgage with extra mortgage payment, would be savings close to 70% of our income and that's living very comfortable in high Cola like California.

Also most people who makes more tend to inflate their cost of living. Be like Mustachian.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oD72lYjjFvs

[TexasHusker]

Sure doesn't sound like much fun.

[sv2007]

I listen to many people on podcast who have done more than 70% of their income. It's a matter of intentionality to most people that achieve this high rate of savings.

If we didn't have a mortgage with extra mortgage payment, would be savings close to 70% of our income and that's living very comfortable in high Cola like California.

I think the key is having a high income. We don't really track our spending, but there's only so much that we want; so, even without control, our spending is about the same each month (with a few exceptional months of expensive vacations/purchases). Once the income exceeds that typical spending by 3x, one pretty much automatically saves 70%.

It would be very hard for lower income people to save 70% because everybody must spend on the basic needs. So, % saved isn't what I'd call a fair comparison for everybody. In fact, low incomers shouldn't be discouraged by the high savings rate of high income people.

[MonkeyMama]

We saved 70% of a $60k income. We just chose not to live up to our income post-college. The driving motivation for us was extreme high cost of housing. But doing this enabled us to get into a home in less than a year.

OF course, most people over-react. I kept the same lifestyle I was already used to (which was just fine) and I was able to give myself a 25% spending raise since I no longer had college expenses. We had never borrowed for anything, so I am sure having no debt payments helped.

We did also save 50% for about 3 years until we had kids and my spouse stayed home. We just saved our raises. (This was after we got into a home and had significant raises). I share because in either case these are not generally long-term choices. Most people do this so that they can retire or scale back. I will say that we will probably never have any big income motivation. My spouse "retired" after that and I've taken a very flexible job while having/raising kids. The only reason I could ever see doing high income/high savings again would be maybe to save for college and/or if spouse found work that he was passionate about. Other than that, we've just never had to work very hard because of our early high savings rate.

My parents also have a 70% savings rate in early retirement. They have a medium income/no tax situation, in addition to having very little in expenses. Early retirement can be very tax efficient. They drive luxury cars, have a nice home, and travel all year. Plus they like ridiculously expensive toys. They do okay.

[GoodSteward]

My wife and I save about 70-80% of our post tax income yearly.

My new hero. lol Nicely done!

[Singuy]

My parents managed to save between 50-70% of their income on post tax 45k/year raising one child(1990s money). We lived in very cheap apts and probably went out to eat once a year. Aggressive saving led them to invest into a business making 200k/year post tax and became FI just 3 years later. They retired when they were 53.

My dad carried two jobs most of his life working $10/hr while my mom was a waitress in a Chinese restaurant. Not exactly your typical middle class jobs.

So if you really want to save 70%, you can pretty much do it on any income level..just need to work double jobs, rent cheaply(with roommates), and never do anything fun..lol.

[frugal saver]

Not impressed.

From the article: This wouldn't work very well if we were earning $25k or $30k each -- living expenses are a lot more vital than discretionary expenses. But we're both college educated and earned comfortable salaries and so it was pretty easy to save for financial freedom.

I remember a series of articles about people making "normal" money--like $30 to $40k a year in today's dollars--that saved large portions of their salary using all kinds of tips and ideas that they would share with people. They used to be called "supersavers" but when I google it now I'm only getting stories about people making over $100k to begin with.