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Comment by johnward | Hacker News Reader

Not to be a dick but it sounds like you just make a lot of money. I'd consider owning a house and 2 cars to be pretty garish compared to the average middle class family. The luxury of being able to travel is something not many people have. Plus if you have ever had a parent help you with any significant expense you are much luckier than the majority of people. This sounds like one of those /r/personalfinance threads where the op finally paid off debt by cutting expenses, cooking at home, getting $200k windfall from a grandparent dying, etc.

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> Not to be a dick but it sounds like you just make a lot of money.

I do not. I make just over $70k a year now (a lot more than a few years ago) and before we had kids, we cut back so that my wife's income at the time went entirely to paying off debts. Our home is worth ~135k (three bedroom in a nice cheaper US city), and our cars are nothing to write home about but they get us where we need to go. My total income now is higher than our combined income was then. Like I said before, planning goes a long way.

Your comment does come off as a bit dickish, by the way. You made a lot of assumptions about me that are not true.

Just for the record when someone says "not to be x" they are almost always about to be X. I was wrong. You are in a situation similar to me though. About the same income/housing price with a wife and first child on the way. There is no way I'm saving 20% in the foreseeable future though. I have two car payments though. One that will be paid off this year and the other I'd like to get rid of but I'm too upside down right now.

> There is no way I'm saving 20% in the foreseeable future though.

Absolutely understandable. We certainly went through a few years where we were just happy that we didn't have debt and could live off my income. Good luck with your own journey!

I have yet to pay off the house, but my wife and I (similar situation to the two of you) managed to pay off $47k in debt (credit cards, student loans, and car loans) in two years. In the months that followed, we saved a six-month emergency fund. We just stuck to a budget, and put every other penny on debt. We followed the Dave Ramsey plan. People poo poo him for not being sophisticated enough, but it's about changing behavior, not doing math.

Anyway, I just noticed that you said "no way," and I wanted to provide a counter example. Good luck!

I'm taking the snowball approach right now too. Maybe I will eventually get to where I can put away 20% but for now that extra money goes to paying down debt. Aside from $100 a month that goes into an emergency savings fund and 4% into my 401k.

When I started the snowball, I stopped contributing to the 401k, in an effort to be as focused as possible. I think that's one of the great strengths of Dave's plan. Being focused solely on one goal at a time gives you a quick feeling of accomplishment as you start racking up wins. If you spread your efforts out across too many goals, you may get discouraged when you don't seem to be making fast progress on anything.

For what it's worth, you're in roughly the top 30% of earners globally. Whether that constitutes "a lot of money" depends on your definition, but we often forget just how little most people on this planet live on so I wanted to throw it out there.

I think we can safely restrict our sampling to much less than the global population when discussing someone quitting their job in SV.

Which is why I have a lot of sympathy for the majority of people on the planet. For the typical HN commenter, though, who is either highly compensated or at least in an industry with a lot of job security, I have to roll my eyes when people act so baffled as to how one can possibly save money.

I am well compensated now, but right after college I was making 15k a year (it was in the arts) and I still managed to save money.

He also lives in a place that is far more expensive.

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