I make $35k currently, as my "base pay." (I take home approx. $22,500/year after taxes and other deductions). For the past several years, my employer has paid out a % of profits (weighted against your time with the company, performance, "tardies," etc) as a quarterly bonus and that has bumped me up to about $37k a year, gross. They discontinued that this year. Luckily for me, I never counted on those bonuses as anything more than money to be stuck into savings.
I just had a performance review, and my supervisor told me he's going to recommend that our boss, the owner of the company, sit down with me for a wage review. I anticipate a 2k-3k increase.
I'm putting 5% of my pay into a 401k, with a 3.something% employer match. Not enough, I know. I KNOW I should put whatever this raise turns out to be into an IRA or ROTH IRA, but OMG I want a house. I'm debt-free, and in the process of saving 10k for an emergency fund, then 50k for a downpayment, and at this rate, that's going to take me over 9.5 years. (Yes, that's with saving 28% of my take home pay. Just shoot me now.)
FI/ER doesn't really feel like a reality for me - I'm afraid to even hope for more than retiring in my 60's. I could shave 21 months off the time it would take me to save up that money if I got a $2k a year raise and applied it towards that savings goal! The now, now, now part of me thinks that buying a home at 38 instead of 40 is TOTALLY worth it, but I know it's really not.
The house: I want to buy a 120-150k house, which is "starter home" prices where I live. I'd be financing 70k-100k, and that's really all I can afford. I pay $750/mo in rent now, and I'd need a mortgage payment less than that in order to still be able to afford insurance & taxes. Plus of course increased utilities, and likely more in gas money.
FWIW, I hate apartment living *so freaking much.* But to rent a house such as I would like to buy would be more expensive than I'm paying in rent, setting me back even further.
Please help convince me to put it in an IRA! So much of me wants to live for the now (or, 8 years from now) because who knows - I might not even LIVE to retirement age.