You ask: How do you do it????

In response to my last post, I received the following question:
"How are you putting away $1,000 per month?"

The answer? I work really f'ing hard at it (f-bomb for emphasis). Here's how.

1) Low rent. The single most important factor. My rent is only 12 percent of my monthly income after taxes. This is no accident. I could easily be paying twice or three times that. When I chose not to live in the "trendy" city neighborhoods in my early 20's, a lot of colleagues and friends thought I might as well fall off the planet. But I could not, would not justify paying a rent that was at at the time roughly 50 percent of my monthly income.

My apartment, in its own sleepy, funky suburbia, isn't the most glamorous. It wasn't the nicest one we saw. It doesn't even really have a kitchen, the appliances are old and I have a Barbie-pink bathroom (really). But it does boast an AMAZING location, just one block away from the Metra and the el, and is walking distance to our downtown (restaurants, bars, shopping, gym, banking, etc.). It has two huge bedrooms, two bathrooms and free parking. So what if my "chandelier" is bright turquoise with fake candles and a plastic chain? Or if my carpets are ugly?

I knew when we started renting here that we had a savings goal in mind. I knew the place was small and the layout was cramped. But for the money, it was just what I needed at the time. No more. No less. The trick for me was understanding that I can't have everything I want all the time, at least not right away. And lucky for me, my rent hasn't been raised in four years.

(Sorry New Yorkers, this lesson probably doesn't apply to you :(

2) Staying power. I've been working at the same job for seven years. And I put everything into it. The first couple years were really tough; I made hardly anything. But after five years with the same company, I started to make some nice headway with my salary. I've said before that while it's popular to spend your 20's extending your education, "finding yourself" or floating from job to job, there's a lot of opportunity to be had by staying loyal to one place. It's an old-school idea, but some of the most successful folks I know under 30 have been working at the same company for a number of years.

3) Cap your spending. I don't buy anything, really. I've had the same TV for 10 years and the same computer for five years. I have the same god-awful table and chairs that I had in college, and I bought all the rest of my furniture at discount stores. I got my bed at Sam's Club in 1999 and most of my current apartment decorations came from Ikea. I'm very careful about my discretionary income. Although my monthly income has steadily risen, my lifestyle has not. I don't go to fancy restaurants, and I limit my spending at bars and clubs. Instead of raising my monthly expenses, I just keep raising the amount that goes in my savings and my 401k. That way, I never notice that my lifestyle lags far behind my income.

4) Go without. I don't have a car, and I don't drive. I walk or take the train and the bus everywhere. I'm trying to learn how to drive now, so I'll probably eventually need to purchase some insurance. But B and I have one car between us, and right now we only drive it about once per week. I hitch rides and sometimes chip in for gas. I hitch rides a LOT with people who do drive. But other times, I'm stuck waiting in the snow, the rain, the wind, the cold ... it's just no big deal to me because I don't really know anything else.

Another BIG without... I don't have any kids yet. This isn't something everyone can control, or would want to, for that matter. And it's definitely something that's difficult for me to explain to others sometimes, while other times it's difficult for myself to deal with. It just hasn't happened yet. But I can guarantee you that if I had kids I wouldn't be saving as much, if anything at all.

5) Live for experiences. (Picture at right is me and B ocean kayaking in Monterey Bay on vacation in 2006)...

When I do splurge, I've learned that I'm much more satisfied spending on experiences than I am on things. So I'll drop a lot on a vacation (a budget vacation, of course, that uses free miles and credit card points) that allows me to spend time planning and prepping throughout the year ... and that lives on in my mind forever when it's over. Some people like to spend on big entertainment systems or name brand clothes or house decorations or whatever. I don't. For me, it's much more about the memories in my mind than the art on my wall. Make sense?

So that's really it. Those are my big secrets. Who knows if they're right or wrong, and who knows if they'll help you at all. I'm just a girl trying to save some money and having a good time doing it.