Yipee, DINKS lived off one income last month

[FOBStash]

After facepunching ourselves for spending without thought the last few years ($1500 food bill a month and a cost of used car for travel in 2014 alone), hubby and I hunkered down as a New Years resolution. Saved half of our take-home (we earn about the same). Approximately 50%!! Not as badass as some of you but I'm proud of changes without really impacting our quality of life.

Most of the mindset shift has to happen with me as hubby is naturally badass already.

Our badassity:
- cancelled cable few months ago
- I brought lunch to work daily --- big change from spendy pants eating breakfast and lunch at cafe for ~$12 per day
- cooked dinner and only ate out during weekends -- used to eat out almost every night
- agreed to do only one domestic and one intl travel this year -- domestic fare is funded by voucher I earned from united
- only watch the really good movies
- got over the city bar scene
- got additional clients just last week from my photography side biz which will fund travel
- first time having a cash flow statement -- income and expense tracking

So happy with the changes and wanting to optimize the food and grocery more as it is still at $850. Biggest game changer is the cash flow statement. We have been tracking net worth but not expenses. There is truth to the saying: you manage what you measure.

Thanks to all the people here for the motivation to be badass.

Pardon the spelling/grammar, I'm typing from my mobile.

[MicroRN]

Nice work! 

[BCBiker]

If you are starting from $0, that means about 15 years to FI. Congrats!  I really like http://eatthefinancialelephant.com/ where they talk about how they are approaching FI with about at 50% savings rate.

[FOBStash]

Thanks for the link! Happy about the progress but still a lot of facepunches. $850 grocery and food is insane esp after I checked out the grocery challenge....

Will calculate savings rate again based on mmm's latest post. Hoping to break beyond 50%.

[Exflyboy]

Amazing isn't it when we consider what we thought was "Impossible".

Now you look back and say.. WTF?.. $240 bucks a month just by eating in the works cafeteria???

What WAS I thinking.

So yes spending like that was definitely FP worthy.

Having just added up our DINK spending for last year and got $28,000 (mortgage paid off) which included about $3500 in charitable giving, I can tell you you still have a way to go.

But the important thing is your now on the right path.. Keep going and get that savings rate to 60% and you'll be FI in a very short time.

Frank

[kpd905]

My big goal is to live off the lesser of our two incomes.  It hasn't quite happened yet, but we are getting there.

[lexie2000]

We were fortunate to have the forethought to do this right out of college.  Neither of us had student loans (in those days you could work your way through) and we decided to continue living like poor college students.  Our colleagues were playing KUWJ, while we were "stashing" it away - both maxing out 401ks, saving the net of one income (we too earned about the same amount), stashing any overtime pay either of us earned (salaried employees below a certain income level were paid overtime), and saving the increase in income from any promotions/raises. 

[zolotiyeruki]

That's some great progress!  The $850/mo grocery bill, though, is INSANE.  We feed our entire family of EIGHT PEOPLE on that much, and we eat well!

[johnny847]

Great progress! Keep working at it.

The $850/mo grocery bill, though, is INSANE.

+1. I can't imagine even the highest COL area justifying a $850/mo grocery/food bill.

[FOBStash]

Trying to optimize, should have said that also includes eating out, which used to be almost daily. Did a costco trip yesterday with a friend who has a membership.

[ChrisEE]

I've been an avid MMM reader for about a year but have never got involved on the boards until now.  I noticed a bunch of people linking over to my blog after BCBiker linked it the other day in this thread so I figured a good opportunity to dive in on this thread.

First off congrats on the 50% savings rate.  That has been our method since entering the work force in 2001 and has us on track for FIRE in about 2 years.  I think a really important thing that you are doing is tracking your spending.  Even with our relatively high savings rate, we have been able to cut our spending considerable in the last 2 years since beginning to track spending.  It is amazing how money just disappears without even noticing it when you don't track.  We now are well over 50% savings rate (closer to 70%) despite my wife cutting back to part time work since having our baby.

A few things to really look at that have helped us immensely since reading MMM (and other early retirement blogs) and tracking expenses:
-Taxes are your biggest expense, make sure you are looking for ways to control them (LEGALLY!)
-Any recurring expenses are easy b/c you can do it once and forget it (We upgraded our cell phone service while cutting spending by $60/mo and also cut the cable)
-Watch your investment expenses as you build your 'Stache.  These are sneaky and provide no value.

Cheers!
ChrisEE

[Cookie78]

Awesome work!

[wordnerd]

Well done! That's a lot of lifestyle change in a short amount of time! 

[NYCWife]

We are in a very similar situation. We are also DINKS who made a decision in January to begin tracking our spending, after reading through bunches of MMM posts.

In January and so far in February, like you, we have been able to save my husband's entire income and live just off mine. We feel exhilarated by this big step forward, as I'm sure you do as well.

Now it's about "gaming the system" to get each area of our budget down to its lowest level to see if we can save even more than 50% of our budget. We had a little setback this month/next month because we are in the process of moving to a more MMM apartment/neighborhood, so that will set us back for a couple months until we recuperate and keep plowing forward.

But nevertheless, it's nice to know we have a friend out there in cyberspace who is journeying along the same path as us.

Keep up the good work FOBStash! Drakmon and I are walking with you over here in NYC.

[FOBStash]

NYCWife, that is awesome! We live in San Francisco which has a high cost of living. Let's do this together. :-) I'll have an update for end of the month. Our savings rate will be very low because we used February to book all our travels for the year.

[NYCWife]

Let's do this journey together! My brother and his wife live in San Francisco, so I have definitely heard stories about COL out there. We couldn't have selected 2 more non-MMM cities if we tried. ;-)

I would love to hear what travel plans you end up making. My husband and I haven't really talked about travel plans since we decided to head down this MMM life journey a couple months ago. I'd love to hear what you and your spouse decide to do in that area.