When did you start seriously saving.

[virginia]

SteveR- If I'm not being too nosey- what kind of income were you working off of to be able to RE in 15 years?

 

[SteveR]

SteveR- If I'm not being too nosey- what kind of income were you working off of to be able to RE in 15 years?

Check for a PM.

Some things are best kept from prying eyes here.

 

[Southpaw]

I started saving when I was about 26, after grad school. Started out slow as I paid off debt, but now, at age 38, I put 15% pre-tax and 9% post-tax salary into my 401(k). 401(K) is worth about $235,000. My pension would get me a lump sum payment of $65,000 if I quit today (if only!). I have about $135,000 of my own $ squirreled away in mutual funds and such. I've also paid off the mortgage on my house. I could probably sell my house for $210,000 or so, though I have no intention of selling it right now.

All in all I've done pretty well after a few bumps early on. But I'm still working, so I'm not there yet.

 

[novaman]

I got married at 24 right out of dental school. Bought my practice the next year (1989) at 25 and spent the next 6 years paying off all my debt from school and the practice purchase. We finally started actually putting money away in 1995 at the age of 31, in a SepIRA and my wife's 401k. We really kicked it up a notch in 2001 in my practice 401k. Today we've got a NW of 3 million with an investment portfolio of 1.6 mil.

We've made some horrible investments, but we've also made some good ones. I think the big key was that we lived like poor college students the first 8 years of our marriage.

 

[ylm23]

Saving early doesn't always get you what you want if you save stupidly. I had a great job right out of college in the mid-90's and was maxing my 401(k) before the tech bust. I had a broker I trusted (here's the stupidity) who, since I was so young, had me invested aggressively in tech stocks and didn't catch the wave when things started to go sour so at 26 I had about 1/3 of what I had put in. Then law school and the attendant loans and stupidly not putting $$ into an IRA ... then jobs without 401(k) so I was better off paying down the private loans before their i-rates skyrocketed rather than putting the money in after-tax investments - after fully funding the measly IRA of course.

At least DH's new job is fed gov't with its attendant pension so with what we are saving now - which doesn't include any raises for him, or me ever working again - he could retire around 55 and we'd be OK.

The bottom line is it isn't a competition with anyone but yourself - as long as you end up with enough money to fund the life you want at the time you want to do it, it really doesn't matter when you start.

 

[kaudrey]

I started saving systematically when I got my first job out of college, at 21. I have always put the maximum allowed into my 401(k), and at about 25 I opened a brokerage account.

I'm 38, and my invested assets recently topped $500K. I also have equity in my townhouse.

For comparison, I looked back at my records. When I was 34, I had $220K invested.

Karen

 

[sagenx]

Hi, i am 37, American but living abroad, in South Africa. Saved nothing until I was 31 and then got the chance to work in a tax free environment offshore where all expenses where covered. Managed to save most of that money and used it as a bravery cushion to try my own business and also invested in two small properties in 2002. They shot up, sold them in 2005 and 2006. Made the bulk of my savings from those which is now just over 200,000 US equivlant or 1.4 million rand. But am now seeing that the big savings is coming as I put away all of the money I would have spent on taxes which i now avoid by putting most of my expenses through the business. Business is doing really well, so add to the 200,000US close to another 100,000 in cash in the business and then of course the value of the business which must be close 300,000 now as it is doing very well. Planning on saving as much as i can, we rent now that we sold the property. Found this site because i dont know much about investing and want to retire early, and have decided to read up, read a couple of books, but have a long way to go, but things seem to be moving, got lucky on the property thing as I had no clue that the markets would shoot up, sounds like its a global thing!

 

[kumquat]

I have to jump in I guess. DW and I tried saving, it didn't work! There is NO WAY to start saving. So what did we do? Easy, we stopped spending. I'm a firm believer that if you think you should start saving you will fail. Don't try to save, stop spending, it works better.

 

[SteveR]

It would appear that there are many paths to FIRE. We each have found what works for us and have done so successfully. Congratulations to everyone that has made it or is well on the way. For those just starting...keep the faith; your turn will come in due time.

 

[dinomorea]

Well this is one thing to which I could never become an expert! Forget about being an expert I am even bad than a novice when it comes to save money. Now that I am employed and getting a not so bad pay pack I still cant manage to save like before when I used to work part time and get paltry pays. Maybe this is something which I will learn the hard way as without savings things cant go for long.

 

[unclemick]

1966 - age 21 first full time job out of college.

Dean Witter broker - invested in stocks/mutual funds cause that's what engineers did.

Note - no load mutual funds were rare and index funds, IRA's, 401k's, Roth weren't even heard of. I believe some 403's were around mainly for teachers.

Paid a sufficient amount of dues via the school of hard knocks/learn by doing.

Superhard core Boglehead with a Curmudgeon certificate. 85% Target 2015, 15% dividend stocks.

heh heh heh - this stupid software gave me a hard time so now I'm 3 and even more curmudgeonly.

 

[REWahoo]

1966 - age 21 first full time job out of college.


heh heh heh - this stupid software gave me a hard time so now I'm 3 and even more curmudgeonly.

Your Curmudgeoness, Sir. If you will go down to the lower right corner of this page and click on "Contact Us" and ask the nice folks behind the green curtain to combine all your user names under Unclemick, I'm sure they will take care of you.

 

[Moemg]

Age 33.Divorced with two kids .Realized I needed to start saving for their college and I never stopped !

 

[FIREd]

Before age 25, we never saved a dime. We began saving for a downpayment on a house at 25. We began saving for retirement at 26 (401Ks). We started maxing out retirement accounts at 27. But we truly started saving (by that I mean saving money became a focus of ours) at age 29.

 

[NinjaPigeon]

Around the beginning of 2005. That was the first time I got a decent paying job. I signed up for the 401k to get the match, and through some bad math on my part ended up contributing 10% instead of the 4% to get the match. After a little while I bumped it to 20% and never looked back.

Last year was an awesome saving year for me - managed to break six figures in income and saved about 50% of it. This year, my expenses are up and my pay is down, so I will probably drop to 20% of gross. Two steps forward, 1 step back

 

[fazerman]

DW and I started seriously paying off debt and saving as soon as I graduated from college,I was 24, she was 21. I had racked up 30k in student loans and my first job was in a very high cost of living area so LBYM was the key. I started right away with 6% into 401k to max out the employer contribution. My first raise after 1 year all went into adding to 401k so it was now at 15%. Second raise I started putting $ into Employee Stock purchase, ~ 8%. After 3 years of struggle, the 30k debt was gone and we had saved 10k for a down payment on a house(and then we moved to a lower cost of living area).

We continued LBYM attitiudes. Kept saving as much as possible, never less that 10% of gross, no matter how dire our situation (DW became "Domestic Engineer" when the babies started coming). "Domestic Engineer": Fancy title for a wonderful woman who is willing to trade her paying career to stay home and raise children for no pay and longer hours.

Here we are, 13 years later. ~$425k in 401k/IRA/Stocks/Cash. We have ~ $300-400k net worth in real estate (home + rentals) that we don't count the equity as retirement assests since we plan to stay in the house.

The rental property, well, that's an issue for a different forum, let's just say it's not as easy as just collecting rent on the 1st.

 

[Celany]

I started seriously saving about 4 1/2 years ago. It was the new year of 2002/03 when I finally tallied up all my debt & started reading about money.

I started by reading your money or your life & MSN money (mainly because I had a hotmail account, so I tended to go to MSN for a lot of things). Luckily for me, there were a lot of articles about Roth IRAs, so I worked my tail off & with the help of a 0% for the life of the debt CC, I was able to fill up my 2002 Roth IRA before it was time to submit income taxes.

For the first 6 months of 2003, I lived on $200/mo for all discretionary spending. That included groceries, medication, doc visits, everything. It was really hard, but I feel like it put me in a good mind-set to evaluate wants versus needs.

I've been a LBYM-er since, & put 30% of my gross away per year (although I'm a bit confused as to exactly how to word that - as 10% of what I put away is 401k (pre-tax) & the other 20% is post-tax, PLUS the company match isn't included in that percentage...).

It's kind of crazy, because I wish I had a little bit more to spend each month, to hit the sweet spot of 'enough'. So I look at my salary & I'm like 'wow, I still don't make enough to spend enough to feel like it's 'enough'. Then I remember that 30% of that is being banked & I feel a bit relieved.

 

[JohnDoe]

Looks like I am one of the few who never went to college. I started putting 20% per yr into my 401k at age 19 - 1 yr out of high school.

Now wife and I save over 25% per yr.

I only wish I found this site or knew what I was doing 15 yrs ago.

 

[GatorBuzz]

I started about one year ago at the age of 31. I documented my story last week in the "Hi, I am" forum, so I won't do it here. But I will say that the awakening that took place when we started paying attention to our finances has had many residual effects. We've become much more aware of many things from the need for a will to what we eat to getting out of the mentality of keeping up with the Joneses. Getting our finances in order had a domino effect on the rest of our lives. We have maxed out our 401k and IRAs this year and are doing other investments as well. What an eye-opener this past year has been.

 

[success108]

Today, our net worth is slightly over $1.25 million. We have zero debt and own our home free and clear...I'm 34 and DH is 37.

That's impressive! Are you both retired?

It took me almost 10 years to graduate from college, I travelled all over the US and lived life on a bare-bones budget during that time. I graduated at the beginning of the year and just joined the workforce.

Married, save all of my income and part of SO's income. Currently at almost 140k, still a ways to go...

 

[Lagrange Multiplier]

I started seriously saving right out of college. I graduated in 1990, right as the economy took a nosedive. I was able to find "real" work only after taking a job at a mall shoestore for a couple of months, a humbling experience after having graduated with highest honors from one of the state schools. The "real" job was a $7.50/hour, no benefits, no vacation contract position at a local employer. I got to watch my (slightly older) peers, most of whom weren't all that talented or hard-working, make pretty good money, participate in a retirement plan, and make time-and-a-half for overtime.

I think it took me about eight months to realize that they were going to string me along as a low-paid contractor indefinitely. I had been expecting to move out on my own and buy the stuff I'd thought I'd finally treat myself to (home entertainment, mostly). But on one summer afternoon, when the chief engineer ordered everybody to report to the complex courtyard and began passing out envelopes of cash to the entire staff (except contractors) for making a critical deadline, I pretty much resolved to save as much f*** y** money as possible so that I would never, ever have to endure such humiliation again.

 

[eridanus]

After grad school (25), I goofed off for 2-3 years. I got the 401k match, but I didn't seriously start saving until I was about 28. I now save about 30% of my income.

 

[jblack]

about the same as eridanus but i skipped grad school...

enrolled in the 401k (no matching) for first couple of jobs out of college but didn't max out. then got serious around 25 when i joint MegaCorp that had a match, plus other comp benefits that increased as I advanced. now able to sock away 30-40%

 

[Bigritchie]

I started saving when I was around 8 or so, and could mow yards, had my own little lawnmower business till 18, and worked 30-40 hours per week, while playing sports in school, then during summers I worked as much as possible after 15.

By the time I hit 18, I had around 90k or so to open my business.

If I ever do have kids, I wanna see if I can start super early with them, lol, like chanting "save money, save money" to my wife's womb.

I really kick myself sometimes for not working even harder and being even smarter with my cash as a young kid, as I did get stupid at one time and buy a couple of corvettes, if I had been really smart, I could have probably retired a few years earlier instead of 30.

 

[yona]

OKLibrarian

I feel a lot like a late bloomer on this front compared to many of you because of those early setbacks (we're 30/31 and only have about $50K net worth), but we're going to keep living like college students (aside from owning a house) for as long as we can put up with it to try to catch up. fortunately we're not big spenders, as long as we stay out of Borders and the comic shop respectively.

You are still young, and it looks like you have the right attitude.

I finished my army service at age 21 and went to China to study Tai Chi and Chinese, so I started my first full time job only at age 27. But I don't regrets those years in China, I learned a lot, got married and enjoyed the freedom. At age 28 I was relocated to Hong Kong and only then I started saving seriously. That was in 2001 and I put all my savings to Hi Tech stocks (I always had a good timing).
All the money that I saved - about 20K was gone. But then I decided to study about the stock market more seriously. I started reading books - lynch, Graham, Neff etc…
We were always been very frugal. My wife spent most of the years rising our kids, but even in the two years she had a full time job, we didn't have 100K of total income.
But, we never had a car, I bring my lunch box to work, we almost never travel etc.. So we were able to save more than 50% of our income. It was not difficult as we always knew that this is temporary and it will pay off later when we RE.

In Jan 2005 we already had 200K in stocks. Then I read interviews with Buffett where he said that if had managed a portfolio with less than 10 millions, he could have guarantee more than 50% return a year, by buying very undervalued small caps. I slowly change my portfolio to small caps, I found companies with PE of 2 and 3, companies that trade well below thier net cash (cash less total liabilities). This strategy paid off. Fast forward two and a half years and the 200K grown to 900K.