Over the past few years we have enjoyed the advise that MMM has dished out, which has changed our thought process immensely. While our co-workers have joined the "I don't make enough money ...." bandwagon of complainypants people over the years, long ago we jumped off that train and started down a new path of optimizing our spending and savings rates.
Although not as extreme as MMM himself or some others here, we do a pretty good job limiting our spending. Despite some anti-mustachian vices like day trips, Disney, wine and having a new vehicle, our 180 degree turnaround has been somewhat unnoticed as its now pretty much on auto pilot. We never really thought about it until our recent purchase of a new build townhouse.
Going through the loan process we noticed that we had pretty much no debt on our loan documents, which was surprising to the mortgage broker. When asked for our asset paperwork and closing costs (@ $30K), we had no problem coming up with them. Our co-workers and family now think that we have recently hit the lottery, when all that we did was change our relationship with our money.
When visiting our bank, the teller tries to get us to open up credit cards and money market accounts at, get this, 0.005% interest due to our new savings account balance. We thank her for the offer and politely decline every time. These types of things are now a weekly occurrence and it wasn't from earning a ton of additional income. We simply increased our savings rate by using our money more efficiently.
We have a decent combined income of @ $115K and feel pretty good about our current setup moving forward. Due to our new savings rate and having all of our accounts on auto pilot, both of us can max out our 401K's and IRA's every year. Combine that with our employers retirement contributions and we invest nearly $60K per year without even really thinking about it. Its quite the change from where we were five years ago with a few hundred in savings and minimal retirement accounts.
Well, thats our story. I will forever believe that watching where your money goes is much more powerful than waiting for a larger paycheck. If you are able to do both though, then my hats off to you!