I heard the Mad FIentist talking about maxing out his 401K (or equivalent) contribution at 100%. Although I haven't figured out how it is possible to contribute 100% of your paycheck to your 401K because of insurance deductions, etc., I figured I would give it a try.
Also, the trend in the high tech industry is to match 50% of all contributions. It is basically $9000 of free money per year if you contribute the maximum of $18,000 in your 401K (2016).
Naively, I set my max contribution to 75% of my pay which is the maximum allowed on the Fidelity website. It didn't affect my next paycheck so I punched the numbers into a spreadsheet and calculated that my paycheck would actually be negative at that rate. Now I have the 401K contribution rate set at 69% which after the 15% ESSP contribution leaves me with a whopping $32 in net pay.
Between the 401K, the match and ESPP I will have saved $31,304 in 50 working days. It really helps that 3 days are holidays, otherwise I would need to work 53 days for the same savings :).
After that I'll keep plugging away saving. Initially, I calculated that I would save just a hair under $100K for the year but I think $95K may be a bit more reasonable.
=== Update===
To be more realistic, I think I should take expenses out of my number because I am not awesome enough to live on $64/month. Also, some stock grants vested so I'll add those in too.
Stock grants: $1749 (roughly at today's market price)
Expenses: $2400/month (I don't have the actual available right now so this is slightly high to be conservative)
Expenses total for time period: $4199
Total saved in 50 working days: $27,105