We have always saved for retirement. Even when the market went down in 2008, we just kept going. Though now we have an active financial planner and we watch everything ( no more mutual funds with high fees). First home cost as much as we made in a year. That doubled in value when we sold it. Second house was much more expensive and we factored in making more money each year which happened but at an irregular rate. Costs related to the property have been crazy. Now ready to downsize and will have no mortgage soon! But have decided to send kids to private school and then college ( so lots of expenses ahead). Have saved for college too but think the kiddos are heading down an expensive path so might need to bolster that some as it hasn’t grown as fast as costs.
We have a rule, if either one of us spends more than $250 on something we check in with the other person. I am really cheap ( really frugal). Use coupons, shop online. Never buy brand names but buy value, will wait a long time to get something we want. Go on expensive vacations every other year. Go on regular vacations every year ( this includes either Spring break or Winter break). But shop carefully for airfares and hotels. Go on frequent weekends. Don’t spend money in restaurants like we used to. I rarely buy clothes except for the kids.
In our 20s and 30s spent a lot of money traveling and in restaurants. Don’t really regret it as once we had kids we could’t do that anymore. In our 40s wished we had some of it in the bank! I think we’ll be fine in retirement and the kids will have a great education. After that, it’s all a bonus.
Nrdsb4 - we started a little Roth IRA back when the kids were younger, so we had that. I worked for a school district, and retired from that job so am receiving a very small defined-benefit pension (unfortunately with no COL increases) DH works for the city, as do I now, and we’ll both receive a defined-benefit pension as long as the city stays solvent. We were fairly young parents, so have spent the last 8 years post-college-tuition, socking away as much money as we can through deferred comp, and in the small ROTH IRA we started a long time ago. We also paid off the house and have no debts, and will both receive social security, and we inherited some IRA’s when my parents died fairly recently. Barring all sorts of unforeseen issues, we should be fine in retirement, and we hope to retire in a few years around age 60.
We also know how to be uber-frugal, so could sell off the home (our city’s housing prices have sky-rocketed in recent years) and move somewhere cheaper if need be. Honestly, I don’t know how it all worked out. I remember looking at the college planning information and realizing we had no savings and no idea of how much “surplus” money we had each month to pay for college - because up to that point, we HAD no surplus money. We used all of it to build the house and pay off the cars before the first went to college. Luckily, the strategy that I was using (pay as you go, with cash if you can, and live as frugally as you can comfortably) worked for us.
Yeah, we did pay as you go and live as frugally as possible, plus I was able to get part-time jobs when our kids were in college to help with the big expenses. It helped that the college allowed tuition and expenses to be spread out over 10 months than all in huge lump sums. It also helped that there was no extra charge for putting the college payments on our CCard so we had slightly longer to come up with the funds to pay it off and got 1-2% cash back or points for flights from the CCard. Every little bit helped.
@Happytimes2001 and @anxiousmom have good points. The age at which we started our families can make a difference, as can how long we were in school and earning little if anything. When one is self employed, incomes can vary a lot. Sounds like many of us here have the same mindset. Be frugal, live below our means, and save for college and a rainy day.
I suggest saving for the sunny days, too, such as trips to see children in school productions two weeks before graduation.