>If you save a reasonable percentage of your take-home pay, like 50%, and live on the remaining 50%, you’ll be Ready to Rock (aka “financially independent”) in a reasonable number of years – about 16 according to this chart
In what universe is saving half your paycheck a reasonable percentage?
That's what I was thinking... About a year ago, I started making $40k/year. It's just barely enough to get by. Most of my take-home goes to rent, student loans, and other expenses that I can't lower. And I'm fairly frugal as it is -- I try to keep my food expenses down, I don't visit restaurants very often, I don't have cable tv, I don't really even have much furniture. I do my best to take super frugal vacations. I don't have any credit card debt or vehicle debt.
Saving 50% of my income is not possible for me without living in an untenable situation.
Bear in mind that payments against the principle of a mortgage count as savings. My wife and I have been saving abut half our earnings for some time now, despite having kids.
It helps that I have a reasonably well paid Tech job and she's on a starting Nurse's salary (She's Chinese so had to re-educate/qualify from scratch which set her back a bit), but we were saving 1/3 while she was studying Nursing.
In what universe is saving half your paycheck a reasonable percentage?