Ever since I started this website I’ve published a monthly update tracking all my retirement and investment accounts. The purpose was that putting it out there in the public view would force me to really stick to a savings plan and maximize the potential of my investments. I don’t know what you all think of the updates, but every time I write one I have one thought - “Damn, I need to save more money!”
That’s why I’m setting the following goal for myself starting in the new year:
Save 50% of my gross income.
It’s an admittedly lofty goal for myself. I went through my history on Mint.com before sitting down to write this post and right now it looks like I spend about 70% of my gross income. So I need to cut back about 20% to meet my goal! I paid off my car loan earlier this year which will help out a lot. And once I switch over to a non-contract smartphone plan I’ll cut even more spending out over the next year. What I need to cut back on after that will take a more detailed analysis of my budget this past year, which I plan to do over the next few weeks.
Sam, over at Financial Samurai, mentions quite often how in order to retire early he regularly saved 50-70% of his after tax income. While I have no illusions of being able to retire by the time I’m 40. I do think that adopting a more aggressive savings philosophy will offer me the following benefits:
- Making up for lost time – I will readily admit that I squandered the majority of my early – mid 20′s financially. I’m lucky I never got myself into too much debt, but after graduating college I spent two years doing just about nothing before finally putting my degree to use and landing a job at a “too big to fail” bank about 6 months before the financial industry went over the brink. Needless to say it’s been a rocky career path ever since. By saving aggressively now, I can close the gap on some of those missed years and take advantage of the power of compounding while I’m still pretty young.
- Force Prioritization – While I do a good job of sticking to my current budget, there is still a lot of wasteful spending that I could cut back on (advance apologies to anyone who owns Chipotle stock!). Setting a goal of living off of half of my income will force me to really prioritize my discretionary spending and cut out the things I can really do without.
- More Investment Opportunities – It’s only natural that if I’m saving a lot more money, I’ll have more money to invest! And that brings a much bigger smile to my face than all those burritos! Contributing more to my 401(k), Roth IRA and savings account will naturally be part of the plan. In addition I’d like to start to focus on building some investments in non-retirement accounts. Such as finding a rental property, investing in a regular brokerage account, building a CD ladder, and adding to my P2P lending portfolio.
- Less Stress – More money saved means more of a safety net against the unexpected. Home & car repairs, medical bills and even a stint of unemployment will be less daunting and cause less stress because I’ll be more prepared to handle them (provided they don’t happen in the too near future!)
So, will I be able to meet the goal of saving 50% of my gross income? Honestly, I don’t know. It is a pretty big goal and it’s going to take a lot of work to achieve, but what good are goals if they don’t give you something to strive for? Even if I fall short of 50%, as long as I improve upon my current savings rate I’ll consider it a win.
Do you think you could live off 50% of your income? Want to take the challenge with me?
Are you already living off of half your income? Share your secrets! I may need the motivation when this gets really tough!
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We are currently living on less than half of our combined incomes. It’s definitely a task, but well worth it.
How did you manage to get to that level of saving? Did you have to cut back, or did you prevent yourself from spending a lot more as your earnings rose?
Good goal mate!
And nice job surviving at a too big to fail back until today! That’s no easy task in this environment!
Thanks! I’ve gotta say your last few posts on savings goals by different age ranges gave me the push to try and step up my savings game over here.
We’re living on less than 50% of take home pay, here’s some tips:
- increase income, we’ve gone from $36k to $120k in 5 years through job changes and side consulting work.
- moved in with in-laws to help each other financially.
- make side income unreachable by having it go into a s-corp
- keep living like we still only make $36k
Wife stays home and takes care of our kids and cooking so we don’t have to go out to eat.
Going from $36K to $120K is huge!
I’m sure many people will wonder how it can be done in 5 years. It’ll help folks from reducing their complaining about income!
I think living like you did when you made less money and avoiding “lifestyle inflation” as they call it, is huge.
$36k-$120k in 5 years is very impressive indeed! What field do you work in if you don’t mind me asking?
I’m a web programmer. It took changing 2 employers as wells as I’m still working 10-20/hrs week for my previous employer at $65/hr.
What I did to get here is looked at the job postings of the $100k+ job postings to see what kinds of things I should focus on studying and projects to work on. It started actually 6 years ago when our electricity was cut off and I was working at Taco Bell to bring in enough money to turn them back on, but that’s for another day.
We are living on less than 50% of our combined incomes and saving the rest and it requires a conscious effort to keep it up but it’s worth it for us. It was the reason I can celebrate my debt freedom in just a few days as opposed to over 1 1/2 years from now and I wanted really badly to be debt free. I believe you can do it, if that’s what you really want. Good luck to you!
Wow, awesome job getting rid of your debt like that. What did you find was the hardest part of saving 50% of your incomes?
I would say not buying all your wants at once even though financially you technically could. So it’s now about planning when to buy the wants while striving to have more put away for the not too distant future…a balancing act for sure.
I think living off of 50% of your income is a tremendous goal and based off of your current track record you should be able to come close. Cutting 20% will be a challenge but I’m sure you could at least do 10% without trying too hard.
For other people out there, it simply comes down to how much they make. It’d be nearly impossible for somebody that nets $2000/month to live off 50% of their income. However, somebody that nets $6k or 7k/month would have a lot easier time.
I’m pretty confident I can find another 20% to cut out. It may be hard to KEEP it cut out, but thats the challenge I guess
Income for sure plays a part, but somebody netting 6-7k/ month is probably also accustomed to a “higher” standard of living. So its not necissarily any easier for them to cut back to 50%.
I admittedly don’t do a very good job at all of keeping track of my expenses. But depending on how one views debt repayment, I also manage to live on far less than 50% of my income. This is largely due to still living at home with my parents. But after squandering years worth of income, I intend to save up enough to be able to maintain a frugal and efficient lifestyle once I do finally leave.
Depends on the income. My guesss would be that we certainly could do this once the dreaded loan is paid off (in about two months time). However, I have always been ‘increase your clothe’ kind of girl so my focus in on increasing income not only decreasing out-goings. And not simply saving – the beauty and opportunities come when you invest it rather than save it.
We live on less than half of our income, and the rest is all going towards paying off investment real estate or other investments.
We still live like college students in many ways – we have upgraded our lifestyle very slowly, which helps keep spending down quite a bit even though our incomes have increased quite a bit over the past couple of years.
It depends on the income, of course! We live off of about 60% of our income. Aside from my debt obligations, we live almost entirely off of my wife’s income and the remainder of my income is saved. It’s handy since I don’t actually have a job for part of the year.
I lived off half of my income when I was working corporate, then was even down to 25% or something. I started getting rent money and other investments’ dividends on top, but I lived off 25% of my salary, or 15% of total income. Everything was calculated in terms of “how long will I have to stand this crappy job”. So if a new gadget was worth one day of work, I probably didn’t buy it.
haha, I’m all to familiar with “how long will I have to stand this crappy job” calculations!
It’s such a good goal! I came close this year, if you count paying down liabilities “saving” which I do.
Oh yay, what a fabulous goal. I’m here to cheer you on! I’m also a compulsive saver so squirreling away 50% or more of income seems pretty standard to this gal.
Thanks
I hope I can make it to the point where this feels standard!
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That is a great move. I wish I could do that now, but can’t. If I could, I would absolutely save that percentage. Saving as much as possible when younger, and investing that amount, will allow compounding to do its magic. The more the better!
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This is a great goal! I’ve decided in the new year to make saving my #1 priority. I plan to max out my Roth as well as save 10% in a taxable account. This is in addition to what I save in my 401k. I doubt I can get to 50% in 2013 but I’m on my way getting there.
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Savings 50% of your income really depends on your income level. Obviously your expenses plays a big part but in order for me to save 50% of my income I would need to have an after-tax income around $36k for this year. Luckily my income is well over that so everything else goes straight to savings, mainly investments.
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I’m currently able to save 50% of my income. I realize I’m privilaged to be able to do so. I’ve been saving/investing since late 2007. Like you I got a pretty late start, but being able to save 40%+ even for these few years I’ve long since surpassed the average man in savings.
I should cross my first large mile stone around the end of 2013, which I’m looking forward to. Not $1M but…
My goal’s been to be able to buy a nice central apartment in the capital. We’re in a housing bubble though, which makes it very hard for me to “step-in”. Bubbles are the worst, you can KNOW about it, yet chosing to not participate means you’re making less money than a cluesless fool that’s “in it”. sigh.
Good luck on your quest.
Congrats on being able to save so much for the last 4+ years.
Where do you live that a real estate bubble is still inflating? It’s got to be tough knowing one is happening, but like you said you’re almost helpless against it. You could rent and hold off on buying, but no one knows when or IF a bubble will burst. Good luck, I hope your decision works out for the best.
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