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Originally Posted by genuinegirly
Honestly, I don't see my goal as unrealistic in the slightest. Where do you live, Martian, and what kind of lifestyle do you lead? I can't imagine spending $10,000/year on myself, much less $60,000.
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You will most assuredly not be able to live off of $10 000 per year once you're finished college. Please don't make plans based on that assumption. My rent alone is half of that.
As I said, I live fairly simply myself. I have a small bachelor apartment, which is cheap to rent and also cheap to heat. I don't drive anywhere that's less than two miles from home. I don't eat out very often, and my only luxuries are my musical instruments (which I don't include in regular budgeting, since they're a special type of expenditure). At this level of income, I don't have enough money to save any significant amount for retirement funds. I can and do save, but my savings exist to cover more immediate concerns. As I said, I don't have the luxury of thinking forty years or more into the future right now.
Therefore, if I wanted to put away 50% of my income and maintain my admittedly simplistic lifestyle, I would need to make
at least $40 000 per year. All of this assumes just myself to support.
When you're single and in your twenties it's easy to get by on a relatively low income. Once you hit your thirties and start a family things get more complicated. Children are a major expense, plus there's mortgage payments and car payments and little league and education funds and all the other sundries that go along with having a family. My estimate of $60 000 - $90 000 per year being the minimum income level necessary for your strategy assumes that supporting a family will require a minimum household income of $30 000 per year, and at least $45 000 for a comfortable 'average' lifestyle.
Consider ASU2003's numbers; those are for a single (I'm assuming relatively young) man with no dependants. He's accounted for $20 000, and doesn't have any numbers posted for a car, heating, electricity, water or any of the other 'real world' expenses that seem to get discounted so often. Add those in, plus the cost of dependants, then double it so that you can invest 'more than half' of your income and suddenly you've got a pretty big number.
I am dealing strictly in household income, here and anywhere else in this thread. In regards to spouses, boyfriends or any other sources of income, I will simply point out that proper strategic planning dictates relying on those other people as little as possible. That revenue stream may not always be there, and it would be best if you treated it that way.