So I am new to the forum, after finding this about a week ago and really enjoy reading what I see here. I had a few questions (I was trying to post this in the "Ask A Mustachian" Forum, but whenever I tried to open that page it would log me out of my account so I couldn't post).
I am currently 25, getting married in September. My financial situation to me seems pretty good, but the idea of early retirement sounds wonderful, my real dream is to retire around 35 from my career as an engineer and open up a small brewery. I have been home brewing for the past year and I really love it.
What forms of savings do you count towards your percentage saved of your total income? My take home pay after taxes ranges from 3400-4500 a month (gotta love overtime pay).
My 401k is a Roth, so I get taxed first and then 10% of the pretax amount is deducted from the after tax amount. So right now I am putting away 10% which is a contribution of around 450-600 a month.
Other savings include a personal investment account where I put away 150 biweekly (300 a month), an investment group where I put in 100 monthly (This is just a group of guys from my college where we like to meet up and talk stocks and we have a little investment account going). I am partially funding a Roth IRA so we can average that out to ~200 a month. (My goal is to start fully funding this by the end of this year) Now the question is do you also count in the amount you are paying in principle towards your house? If so that is ~500 a month.
So with all of that information I am saving approximately ~1550-1700 a month which is right around 40-45%, but I didn't know if looking at my house as a "savings account" was the way I should be seeing things.
I appreciate any information and I look forward to contributing more to this forum!