The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Ask a Mustachian => Topic started by: socal0218 on July 12, 2015, 10:53:55 AM
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Relatively new here so please go easy on my ignorance. In the last few months I have been soaking up information from any and all sources I can get my hands on. Podcasts, blogs, more popular financial personalities, and forums of individuals' experience. I have learned in addition to MMM, there is another guy interviewed on the Dough Roller podcast that has become financially independent in 10 years.
How much does having a high earning dual income come into play when establishing FI? Both MMM and the Dough Roller interviewee were both married in their 20s and each have 6 figure incomes in addition their spouses.
I live in Southern California, which is a high cost of living area. I try to offset that by having a roommate to share the living expenses. I'm also selling my obnoxious SUV next month and biking to work. I live about 6.5 miles away from the office. Should I consider getting more roommates? Currently the two of us split a 2b/2ba apartment in the same city I work in.
I make about 85K base salary, but with benefits I'm over 100K. That seems to be about the median for the city in which I reside in.
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All that matters is what your after-tax savings rate is. That's it. Obviously it's a lot easier to get that number to be high if you're making a ton of money. But cutting spending is a huge part of it too.
See this post for more info on how savings rate determines time to FI:
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math-behind-early-retirement/
Here's an example of how one guy got to FI by 30 with a ~$40k income by living on $7k/year:
http://earlyretirementextreme.com/