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Comment by toyg | Hacker News Reader

Good luck doing that with kids and a mortgage.

Have a kid and mortgage, but saving 60% of household post-tax income. We do what we can to stay lean, and have been doing that for the past decade. That means some sacrifices (e.g. no car(s)), but it's worth it for the peace of mind.

Most people on this site are highly paid software engineers. If you have one or even two of those salaries but live like the mean or even median family, you will be able to save quite a lot. If you choose not to, that's fine too. But to me, living like the median family is quite comfortable already. I'd rather use the rest of the money as a safety net.

Something like living without car is very difficult to pull off in suburban UK, I can’t even begin to imagine how one could do it in places like US or Australia. We have one car and already it limits our opportunities and the ones of our children so much that we’ve been discussing getting another for years.

I’m sure I could save more (we do eat out a bit), but nowhere near 60% of income. You must be making waaaay more than the median.

In fairness to you, the UK (and rest of EU) doesn't have the outrageous levels of pay for SWEs that coastal US seems to enjoy. (Starting salary for new college grad of 100K USD is far from unheard of here.)

The trick is to not live in the suburbs if you can avoid it. They're money-sucking black holes :) I know it hurts to hear, since having a house and a back yard is part of the western dream, or having grown up in that environment we even feel entitled to it. We imagine our children will be emotionally scarred if they don't get their backyard, but the truth is it reflects more on our own preference than our kids.

Long story short, if you make average decisions (as compared to people in your socioeconomic group), then you'll end up with average outcomes: ones of living pay-check to pay-check, and worrying about losing your job over stuff like age discrimination.

By the way, we make about $170k household income, in Northern Europe, which is definitely more than the median here, but the difference in post-tax income is less than you'd think, with a maximum tax-rate of 55%.

> The trick is to not live in the suburbs if you can avoid it. They're money-sucking black holes

Interesting considering living in the city with anywhere near the same quality of life of living 5-10 miles away will cost 2-3x more money.

Outside of money, I'd much rather sit in my backyard and look at the marsh/water over seeing some drunk/high person passed out in front of my house.

I see you're in Europe which, based on my travels, is a much more city friendly place. Public transportation options are good, services are good, and based on my limited research there are still decent city apartments for reasonable prices. One day I play to live in Europe for a period of time and it will definitely be in a city.

I agree that suburbia can be expensive (house and garden maintenance are money pits), but city-centre living over here tends to be much worse under most parameters (from real estate and grocery prices to noise, pollution, crime and so on), because it's entirely geared towards younger people.

Also correct me if I'm wrong, but education is entirely free in Norway including university, right? In the UK universities are not free, and if you want a decent chance to get in the best ones you'll also have to pay for highschool. That's a huge amount of money right there.

We make above the median and we take home about $77k after tax. We can save about 25% of that when we don't eat out, but more than this we'd have to wear plastic bags and generate our own electricity.

It's absolutely possible and depends mostly on your savings rate / controlling your lifestyle expansion.

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-sim...

I chose not to completely control lifestyle expansion, but still managed to get to a point where working would be optional by 45 (last year for me) even with a mortgage and two young kids.

If you take a typical SWE six-figure salary and spend all of it, it won't happen. If you take that same salary and save 35% of it, you face a lot less pressure from any possible age-discrimination bogeyman at 45.

Imagine the cost of college alone.

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