Early Retirement Extreme is great, isn’t it? Jacob is a real inspiration to me, even if our lifestyles are very different right now.

I think the big difference between the two of us that makes you able to save 40% of your income and me… well, almost nothing right now is a) your income, and b) your housing expenses.

You do earn more than I ever did at my best full-time job, and right now I’m only semi-employed (I prefer to say “launching my freelance career”), to boot, so I probably only made about $20-30K in 2009. Of course, I’m also married, and my husband makes around what you do, but of course two of us tends to mean double the expenses.

Housing expenses are the biggie in my life, since we have a mortgage that eats up roughly $3,000 a month. It was manageable when I had a full-time job, and I was socking away some money, but since losing my job it’s really much more of a struggle to get through each month. Buying a house is one of those things that, if I had to do over again, I wouldn’t do! (I’m sure Jacob would agree).

Bleh, I feel like the worst frugality blogger EVAR lately, which is probably why I haven’t been posting.

I don’t think it’s entirely unreasonable to save that much. I live in SoCal, I’m 28 and single, and I’m making ~$75K a year. I’ve got about $80K in my 401K, $30K in a Roth IRA, and $20K in a brokerage account as a house fund. I put $200/wk ($867/mo) into the brokerage account, $5K/yr into the Roth, and about $1300/mo into the 401K. My savings rate (gross income) is over 40%, and I’m trying to get that higher (just found http://earlyretirementextreme.com and he’s an inspiration, and is also how I found this site :). I think the two biggest savings for me are that I don’t have a car payment (paid cash for a used one) and my rent is fairly cheap ($520/mo studio, includes utilities). I still go out to eat occasionally, travel in the US about once a month, internationally about once per year (frequent flyer miles from the credit card == 2 free tickets to Australia, where I visited friends and friends of friends so that we had free places to stay, and I’ve returned the favor when they visit the US), have (non-free) hobbies, and live a fairly comfortable life. I don’t buy things very often though, other than food. I want a new phone, or an iPhone, but I don’t need one. I finally bought a new computer last year, but it was on sale and replaced one that was 8 years old. I have a TV that was a hand-me down (15 years old or more maybe?), but still works just fine. I’m not the most frugal person on the planet by far, but I’ve come to realize experiences are what’s important, and stuff just makes my small apartment more cluttered. :D

PS, on the cats: I had an ex living in a 100 sq. ft. apartment (5×20), with two cats. He and the cats all survived just fine for about 4 years. The cats just learned to run in a smaller space, and to have fun hiding under the futon. :)