How much did you cut your spending when you got serious about ER?

[Gone Fishing]

We were always pretty frugal compared to our peers, but still managed to cut our spending 25% when we decided to get really serious about ER around 2 years ago.  How much were you able to cut?

[Cookie78]

I was pretty frugal before also, but would spend all the savings on travel (because why not... I hadn't figured out I could invest it yet). I also didn't track my spending or have any idea what the value of my pension was. I remember once, about two years before discovering MMM I sat down with 'the guy who pretended to be helping me with finances and investing, but really was just trying to sell me unnecessary life insurance' and he calculated I was saving over 10%. I don't imagine it was too much more than 10%.

So far this year (it's still within my first year after discovering MMM) I'm around 64% savings rate.

[Cromacster]

Wife and I went from saving about 25%  two years ago and now save around 55%.

We cut quite a bit, but I don't really feel like it was cutting.  It was more about becoming more mindful of where we were spending.  The best and probably easiest way we did it was by increasing our 401k's to the max.  When we reduced our take home by 20% it forced us to reduce our spending.  Before that we were more or less just spending that money mindlessly.

[seanc0x0]

I was totally not frugal before I discovered RE. I was mostly just saving the 16% in my work DCPP (8% from me, 8% from employer... so probably saving more than most honestly). I was spending more than I earned mostly on toys and unnecessary luxuries (eating out, quality booze, etc.).

I've always chafed at the amount of time that work consumes, so when I discovered I could get that time back, I cut pretty drastically. Unfortunately, I didn't have the tools in place at the time to really assess how much. I have two kids, which is a pretty big impediment to saving at the moment. One is 4 and one is 9 months, and my wife is currently off on mat leave. She goes back in a couple months, which should help quite a bit with saving despite the impending jump in expenses (daycare).

Thanks to all of this, I'm currently under 40% savings, but hope to increase that as the kids get out of the expensive daycare and into school.  I'm sure other costs will crop up though (I really hope my kids don't get interested in organized sports!)

[Lady Fordragon]

My husband and I were also fairly frugal before discovering MMM and the idea of ER.  We probably went from saving 10-20% to now saving about 75% this year.  The way that we cut our spending was by quickly paying off all loans - mortgage, student, and cars (commence face punching) - and not increasing our spending even as our salaries increased.  Other ways that we cut spending were by cooking more at home, not using our A/C in the summer, and by biking to work more!  :-)

[Retired To Win]

We were always pretty frugal compared to our peers, but still managed to cut our spending 25% when we decided to get really serious about ER around 2 years ago.  How much were you able to cut?

I took my basic living expenses down from $26,000 a year to $15,000 a year.  I've been able to nibble at it some more since then, and so my basic living expenses are now in the $13,500 a year range.

[Cookie78]

I was pretty frugal before also, but would spend all the savings on travel (because why not... I hadn't figured out I could invest it yet). I also didn't track my spending or have any idea what the value of my pension was. I remember once, about two years before discovering MMM I sat down with 'the guy who pretended to be helping me with finances and investing, but really was just trying to sell me unnecessary life insurance' and he calculated I was saving over 10%. I don't imagine it was too much more than 10%.

So far this year (it's still within my first year after discovering MMM) I'm around 64% savings rate.

Also, I forgot to mention, pre-MMM I'd save up enough over time to easily be able to take 3-6 months off from work or between jobs to go travel quite a few times. It was similar to what I'm doing now on a smaller scale, but it didn't occur to me on my own that I could save up enough to quit working permanently!

[DoubleDown]

Went from ~$7500/mo. to ~$4000/mo (including house payment). It should go down to about $3000/mo. when kids are grown and gone.

[Vertical Mode]

Cut my spending by ~50% almost immediately. I wasn't especially frugal beforehand, but I turned things around quickly once I found MMM and took it all in. I think I've finally settled into what that new equilibrium looks like, and I know I'm not even being as efficient about it as I could be. Just bought a facepunch-worthy mocha while out for coffee with a buddy yesterday, in fact ;-)

-Moved to a cheaper neighborhood (but still plenty nice) = cut my rent payment by 40%.
-Got a bike and started using it every single day. In fact, biking enabled me to find cheaper housing since I could decouple from mass transit and the housing premium of living nearby.
-All but went cold-turkey on bars. This wasn't nearly as hard as I expected it to be. I tallied up my expenses for the previous year and almost had a heart attack with my spending staring me in the face, so I got religion real quick.
-Started credit card churning to make the money that I do spend work harder for me.

These were the low-hanging fruit for me, but just these few adjustments allowed my progress to really take off over the last 2 years. My projections for FIRE have really accelerated!

[celticmyst08]

In 2014, Pre-MMM, we were saving ~15%. We each got a raise midway through this year, totaling around $17,000 between us, so we just bumped up the 401k contribution and didn't even notice the money was ever there. I'm also going back to school, which doesn't allow us to save as much as we'd like since we're paying for my tuition/books out of pocket (~17k/year). So far this year we have saved an average of 50%, with our best months being almost 65%.

Most of our excess spending has been on travel. We're getting into travel hacking now so hopefully we can cut out some of those expenses and raise our savings even further.

[BlueMR2]

In theory (budgeted), 10%.  In practice it's been -10%...

There really wasn't as much fat to be cut as I expected.  Mostly small things.  Unfortunately, since starting running our plan, we've had a ridiculously bad run of luck with house and car repairs.  Keeping the cost down by doing more work ourselves, but is still eating up all our other savings plus more.

[Rosy]

At the time I was struggling with staying on track with my brand new budget plan and new extra income of $1638. The plan called for saving every penny of the $1638 once I paid off my cc's with it. Calamity hit as soon as I had paid off my cc's, between the emergency, a $1000 dental bill and one horrific month of simply blowing it all I was a financial mess for three months.

I do credit the fine people on this forum with helping me find my bearings and the support I needed - put the money back that I splurged plus the cost of the emergency and dental bill and simply stuck to my plan. So 50% savings up to this month - holding steady:)

Even better, the new plan is to save between 15% to 35% cut from my regular budget - we'll see how it goes. October will be the first test month for that.
I'm already retired, but need to shore up - Mr. R. is slowly coming on board and his savings have gone up by roughly 10%, still a work in progress.

[2Birds1Stone]

We were always pretty frugal compared to our peers, but still managed to cut our spending 25% when we decided to get really serious about ER around 2 years ago.  How much were you able to cut?

Went from a 30-40% savings rate, to 60-70% savings rate. Partially due to cutting spending, partially to increasing income.

[druth]

My income has changed so SR isn't a great metric for me, but I went from spending about 2k/month to more like 1200-1500.  Of course I just blew all my savings on a house, but hopefully its a purchase that pays off over time. :)

The biggest change I made was tracking every single purchase I made and giving myself an allowance.  If I wanted a big thing I had to save up for it by underspending for a few weeks.  After doing this for a while I was able to slowly cut back my allowance amount without any hardship(I was already spending less than I was 'allowed').  I did this for about 6 months, and it really cut back on mindless spending.

[iamlindoro]

I think I cut spending about 50%, since I was saving essentially nothing and went to over 50%.  The income has gone up slightly, and we have had some spendy stuff like travel here and there, but have managed to keep the savings rate at a minimum of 50%.

[forward]

I'd never looked at it before you asked this question, glad you did.  I cut spending by about 33% and now have a consistent saving percentage of 65%.

[zephyr911]

If you go back five years, I was making over $100K and saving only a few percent of it.
I'm making slightly less now but recently surpassed 50% savings, am now around 60%, and my goal for the next year is 75%.

[FrogStash]

We have always been pretty budget minded, but MMM gave us a tangible goal and helped us realize that RE was actually possible for people like us with a little effort and a little time.

We cut cable, switched electric companies, cut coffee bill by 80%, cut work lunch budget from $50 a week to $20, opened a brokerage account and started riding our bikes.  In general we are way more conscious of retaining our little green employees.

These cut our expenses immediately by 10-15%

We are now aggressively seeking to pay off the mortgage.

We are still unwinding some of our consumer habits.  Over the next two years the following obligations retire and we will cut our expenses by another 30-40%
Cars will be paid off Q4 2016
Student loans paid off Q1 2017
Kids old enough to go to public school!!!!

The money from those obligations (aka expensive choices) will then go to the mortgage, as will any increases in income.  Once the mortgage is gone we will be saving over 80% and one of us will technically be bare bones FI.  The planned dual simultaneous FIRE will be within reach.

[Mississippi Mudstache]

Good question, but not one I could easily answer. My discovery of the ER community coincided with two drastic financial events in my life: the bank finally agreed to take back the home that I purchased right out of college (Jan 2008) that served as an albatross around my neck for the first five years of my working life, and my wife and I had our second child who was born with multiple disabilities and severe health problems. Our son's health care currently costs us around $8,000-10,000/year in addition to insurance premiums (which we would be paying anyway), but getting the house off our books has more than outweighed those costs. As a result, we've reduced our overall spending by, I would guess, about 15%. We save somewhere between 40-50% of my paycheck. My wife is a SAHM.

[Zikoris]

I'm not sure about overall spending, but my grocery bill cut in half! That was easy enough - I decided to stop being a lazy sack of sh** and start going to the grocery store myself rather than getting weekly orders of strictly organic and local everything hand-delivered into my kitchen. That and going close to zero-waste.

[cb1504]

Hi All,

I'm a Newbie, but I've always been frugal.  The thing is, I would save money on the everyday necessities and spend it luxuriously.  Well I guess I've had about enough of luxury.  Rather than spending on luxuries, I now save 50% of my take home pay and budget. I seem to be happier with the money in savings.  Today I bought a beautiful, new to me, sofa from Craig's List and it cost me $125.  Being single, I usually spend that much per month on NOT cooking for 1 and eating out lunches & dinners.  So it looks like I'll be cooking from the cupboard for the next 2 weeks.  As I type this up I can see that I spend $250 each month for food.  I can probably scale back that budget item some. ;)

Have a GREAT day!

[Aussiegirl]

Went from ~$7500/mo. to ~$4000/mo (including house payment). It should go down to about $3000/mo. when kids are grown and gone.

Doubledown - sounds like a great achievement - tell us more.....

[Threnn]

CUt it by approx. 60%. Wasn´t a spendthrift before, just really got my shit together afterwards.

[clarkfan1979]

I our savings rate was around 10% before MMM and now it's around 30%. We could still probably do a lot better but we really haven't deprived ourselves of anything that we really want. We just changed a few small habits. We still travel a lot. If we get tired of traveling, our  savings rate will probably go up.

[Bob W]

This is a great thread.  Very impressed and motivating.

[use2betrix]

My spending has gone down a little but my priorities have changed. Prior to MMM I had already been tracking every dollar which helped a lot.

It did convince me to invest more as opposed to paying off my 3-4% interest rate debt. It's convinced me to max out my 401k, and now dumping money into vtsax.

Also, because of all this, I have a much larger cushion of savings. I do contract work and now that I have a cushion I can take a little time off in between contracts to find better paying work as opposed to being desperate and taking whatever comes a long. This can mean a $20/hr+ kind of difference.

[david51]

          Since I have been a tightwad from youth(its just my DNA) I don't believe I have cut any spending.  I did learn about Republic Wireless here,(works great, love my 11$ bill) but since it was my first phone I can't count it either.  I probably am more spendy now that FIRE is my lifestyle.

[golfreak12]

We've been tracking our expenses since the beginning of the year and we've been averaging $3K/month. This is just us two living in Fla. The $3K includes a $872 mortgage/tax/insurance. Our fixed expenses run around $1300/month.
- No cable, cell phone bill is free, so there was nothing we can cut back except for food, utility and entertainment.
We were able to cut it down to $2500 this month which is 16.7% saving.
Wife just got a part time job which will be less free time for going around town and spending more money together.

[arebelspy]

Our spending didn't change before or after we got serious about ER.

We spent the exact same, for the most part.  We even tried to purposefully increase in some areas, but it didn't pan out.

We did discuss how we could cut, and get to ER even faster, but decided it wasn't worth it, and we'd keep spending as we wished, rather than cutting out.

[redbird]

My spending did not change pre- or post- FIRE. I've always lived with a Mustachian mindset (though I never knew it until later). While I still worked, as I got bonuses and salary increases, I didn't really change my standard of living. I was happy with my life at the level it was at, so that just meant more and more money I got that could go into savings/investments.

I'm a very logical person and I evaluate enjoyment/usage of something I spend money on versus the cost. I am not a cable cutter, for example, because I never HAD cable. Cable TV was never worth the high monthly costs to me because I would not watch enough hours to make the cost feel worth it.

[Malum Prohibitum]

Savings rate was 0% just a few months ago.  In October, it was 31%, calculated by dividing the amount saved (all in my 401(k), so that was easy to determine) by the sum of the amount put in the 401(k) and the amount deposited into my personal checking account (I hope that is a good way to calculate it).

I also saved a few thousand extra in a savings account, but I am not counting that yet, as it is earmarked for getting rid of some 0% debt before it runs interest next summer and property taxes.

I also paid off my business debt in October, but I am not counting that, either, as I am keeping my personal savings rate separately.  It does, however, improve my financial picture, so, all in all, things are looking up!

So far for November, I know, it has only been a week, my savings rate is 47%.

We'll see if I can keep that up for the month . . .

[VTD0918]

Savings rate before getting serious about ER was probably 50% now it's 85% and like most maxing out the 401k and 457k help pushed my savings up and spending down. I  enjoy eating out so working on getting that costs down a bit more.

[Tom Bri]

I only found MMM a few months ago. Little has changed because we were in deep cut-expenses mode for years before that. I only work part time and was a full time student until just last month! We are in negative savings rate, since last year I made about $16K and we spent about $25K, including school costs. Now that I have graduated, I need to get that big job and get back to saving. We have a good cushion, but not quite to even minimal fire yet, so I need to work a few more years.
What MMM did for me was focus my attention on some areas I had not considered. I still have the minivan sitting in the garage, but have stopped driving it, and now take the small car to work. Planning to replace it soon with a MMM type car, probably a Prius.
We also just went to all the local insurance offices to see if we could get a better deal than the one we have had the last ten years on cars/house. I was happy to find that our insurance agent must be pretty solid, as all the other places we talked to could not find us any major savings.
Our phone was already $1o/month, and internet $15/month (very slow dsl).