1) Lived within our means for the first five years of our marriage, with a savings rate of 10% before taxes. And at the point, saving 10% was
hard . . . our list of needs, forget about 'wants' was extensive. It was not a fun point in our lives and I for one felt
very frustrated at how much we were saving. (I was in my early 20's and had not yet developed any self discipline
)
2) Held our standard of living fairly steady once the promotions and raises began occurring, which meant from five years onward we lived increasingly below our means, bumping up our savings rate each time our income went up until it reached about 60%. Which was pretty much our savings rate for the last 10 years of our working life. Again, hard, because it is possible that one of us (
)
really wanted to move to a fancy and more expensive home at the beach, but the more disciplined one of us resisted, because doing so would have delayed our FIRE substantially. And then, ironically (or not?), we got there eventually anyway in FIRE, because of the combined impact of all of the above and below items. And which I also view as the positive impact of a certain amount of LBYM even once FIRE'd.
3) Allowed ourselves to blow 10% of our combined annual bonuses, then saved the remaining 90%. Toward the end of our careers, out bonuses were running about $200,000 annually combined, so that was a good chunk of change being added to our already-in-place 60% savings rate.
4) Some incredible good luck, when a company one of us had vesting stock in was sold, at which point the stock immediately became fully vested, rose in value dramatically, and was sold by us for a profit of about $1M. We used a portion of the gains to pay off our home, and slowly invested the remainder over the period of a year.
So really, other than item 4) above, which neither of us feels we can take specific credit for (sometimes you are just in the right place at the right time), it was a slow and steady 'race' of 30 years. Which, by the way, it seems many people don't really want to hear. They seem to want more of a magic bullet type of answer, which I don't think many of us have. The truth is that it's more likely to be a slow and steady 'slog' as boring as that is.
I am also increasingly humble about the good luck of simply being born with a certain amount of brain capacity, and a certain lack of mental instability. Within our respective families we can see that some are impacted by one or both of these through no fault of their own. So I am waaaaay less cocky about our financial achievements than I was back in the day. We can all pat ourselves on the back to a certain degree, but I do think we also need to acknowledge that a certain amount of luck was also involved, even if that luck was simply the amount of personal drive, ingenuity, or brain capacity that we were born with.