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

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/ http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/ has a lot of great advice. There's a few sites like that one, but MMM is my favorite.