This is pretty much what we did also. All our friends think we are poor but we paid off both student loans within 5 years, bought and paid off a car in 3 years before it was totaled (thanks for running a redlight, Bill in WDSM, you *******).do it! You don't notice right out of college. We did it because we had a wedding, DH was still in college (two rents!) and one income...when DH started working, we still lived like it was just my salary. Didn't get a nicer apartment or new car (though we did get me a newer car - after the wedding), lots of furniture - you see a lot of new grads go a bit crazy on 'buying adult stuff'. I saw single coworkers new out of college getting nicer apartments on their sole income that DH and I were avoiding on two incomes.
That doesn't mean you don't occasionally go have a nicer dinner or nice vacation and just dump everything into a retirement account. You still want to enjoy some benefits of working..........just don't go crazyI was looking at our spending recently - assuming that it had gone up as our income has gone up and we've done things like buy clothes from nicer places/not use Olive Garden as date night - and our monthly spending was actually the same as it's been the past three years. Technically lower because my student loans got paid off. It's gone higher now the past six months because of house stuff (and will stay now with the mortgage being higher than rent), but I was really proud of that fact!
It really hasn't been that hard.
