... how? Either your mortgage is very small, or you have somehow managed to save an incredible amount of money. It's really the latter that I'd like to know more about.
It's a relatively small mortgage, I bought it for $138k. (This was near the bottom of the mortgage crisis, but also the house is ~50 years old and outside of a small town in Ohio).
As I mentioned in the other comment, my savings rate has been trending upward for a while, and I now save about ~40-45% of my take-home pay.
But, even when I lived in the bay area, earned less money, and paid twice my current mortgage in rent, I was still saving ~15% of my income.
I don't consider myself deprived: we eat out, buy fancy phones, etc. We have a separate bank account just for giving that gets some money automatically transferred in each month. Our car is a 15-year-old civic that looks terible, but we don't drive that much and it still runs great. We'll probably replace it soon, but I kind of want to see how long it will go at this point ;)
Like I mentioned in my other comment, http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/ has a lot of great advice. There's a few sites like that one, but MMM is my favorite.
What you're doing sounds like what I want to shoot for. I'm almost 30 now, and for the last 2 years I've REALLY ramped up my savings. My goal, is to retire sometime in my mid 40s, so that I can work full time on my own projects. Lofty goal to say the least. I also realize that to do that, I'll need to find a cheap home.
Been reading up on mrmoneymustache, some great tips there. Thanks for the link!
> It's really the latter that I'd like to know more about.
Whatever nfriedly's situation may be ... you won't get to the latter until you understand the former. In other words: You can't "save an incredible amount of money", without first "saving some money".
Okay sorry I rushed to judgement. We're in the same boat then. Except I just lost a job and am on the verge of having to dip into savings for the first time ever. Very disturbing feeling. Immediately changes a lot of opinions.