"according to the Department of Commerce, American households save less than 1% of their income these days."

I guess I know quite a few people that live paycheck to paycheck in rather large houses with hardly any furniture, pocket cash or vacations. I'm stating to think this is the norm.

Savings to me can be 401k, IRA, savings accounts, paying your mortgage off early and brokerage accounts assuming you are using low risk for the long term. Anywhere an asset or pile of cash exists that you can use/sell/liquidate.

I did my numbers at tax time and i'm about 24%. I might be saving too much but i sleep like a baby at night.

 

that is hard for me to figure out. we have 20 rental properties and we simply try to pay them off quicker. My net worth has gone up significantly with each one since we buy crappy houses and fix them.

I would imagine I save at least 30%. Not sure how i would actually calculate it since I have a pile of loans, etc.....

 

I am a little over 20%. Would like to do a little more but need a raise and since I am single the mortgage payment is all mine to make. My sister is the opposite. Wants to max out her ability to have the nicest house and nicest car and just barely makes the payments. I will not buy what I can not pay cash for with the exception of my residence and one car loan limited to $300 a month, not because it is all I can afford, but because it is all I want at least double that amount in deffered comp account each month. Then add regular pension savings and roth.


I don't own a cell phone, and don't get every movie channel on cable, blah blah. Cutting out the crap adds a couple extra grand a year to savings but my friends would rather make cell phone calls about nothing in their cars. Not owning stuff like that will add up to about $100k when you retire, or you can make stupid calls.

Most conversations go like this, "Hey honey I am heading to Target, do we need anything? No? I guess I could have called you from the office but if we both have these phones we can annoy the crap out of others and spend an additional grand a year. Oh, you think we need some dishwashing detergent? I will take a picture on the camera phone and send it to you. I will call you back when I get to the detergent isle" That would be my coworker. Nice guy, single income, three kids, NO RETIREMENT SAVINGS. I wish him well. He is up to his eyeballs in debt from really frivoulous purchases. Swaps cars every six months, cell phone and pager, (why?) all kinds of junk and always broke. His motto is, "Life is full of payments."

To each their own, living like that would scare the crap out of me.

 

I hate when people think they need to talk on their cell phones at the mall, restuarant, grocery store, etc.......


[QUOTE=vader1,Aug 1 2005, 10:36 AM]Most conversations go like this,

 

As soon as I have the house paid off and a couple mill in retirement savings it is all beaches and Mai Tai's.

Just gotta keep going for another 15 years and earn an average of 10% annually. 15......long.......years. Only 5,480 days to go.............

 

I save 20.67% of my gross income each year. I'm including company matches and bonuses I put right to my 401K.

I still rent as house prices are too high here in FL, but rents (the TRUE VALUE of a property) are not. I will continue to rent at a low price and save the rest. I have a feeling real estate is not going to be climbing much in the short/medium term; in this area I think declines are likely.

I had plenty of CC debt, but recently saved enough cash to pay it off. It looks like I'm on track to retire by 55, maybe 50 if I play my cards right.

 

Saving? Whats that?

 

Amen brother.

 

Luckily for me............ i have ~20 rental houses....with no mortgages at all, they make about $75-80k of NET income.....

I currently owe about $250k on them all.... so hopefully in 2-3 years they will be paid off (i actually intend to sell 2-3 of them at roughly $55k each so that will knock a bunch of debt out of the way).

so...in theory I could "retire" anytime after I knock the debt down to about $100k or less......i am currently 36 years old..... my wife and I both work currently and both do pretty well, so that certainly helps save $ quickly to pay these off..