Our Household 61% Savings Rate is Taking a Hit

Just before we moved to Memphis, TN we were saving 61% of our household income. We were living in a 2 bedroom apartment in California and lived modestly in most every way. Our biggest secrets to saving 61% of our income are: 1) If married and no infants, both spouses must work, 2) Mind your own business and become a home-body.

Now, we've moved into a 3000+ square foot house (got a great deal) and have no substantial furniture and no second income (wife temporarily unemployed).

We'll work hard to eek out a 20% savings rate. Over the last 2 days we've spent about $2k ($900 went to a mattress, $400 on landscaping materials/lawn care equipment, etc). We've agreed to limit further house expenditures to $500/month. This should be reasonable since both of our cars are paid for and we will not buy a new one until we’re done spending on our house. Once my wife gets re-employed we should be able to goose up our savings rate to around 40%. Time will tell on whether or not we stick to the budget and how successful we are in closing the gap between the 20 and 61% savings rates.

BTW: This is a repost. This article ran for more than 24hrs on my website w/o being picked up by pfblogs.org. Article re-posted to help ensure that it gets cataloged at pfblogs.org.