You earn $75,000 a year (pre-tax) and live with your SO. What lifestyle would you lead?

I make $120K before taxes. Contrary to it seems, it's not "unlimited money". I come from a modest background and I have lived through many tough days where I had no money for essentials. Now I'm married and do not have kids and am the sole earner in my family. I take financial care of my mother who lives in another country. I live in an "okay" neighbourhood and my home is very modest compared to what I could be spending.

I don't spend a lot of money but for the past two years, I have fully repaid money I borrowed from friends and family for my education, which totalled about 30K. I still have about 38K in student loans (less than $300 a month payment) but I am in no hurry to pay it off because it's very low interest (less than 4%) and since student loan interest is also tax deductible. I can do better than 4% in the stock market.

It's good to not have to think about budget when buying groceries or anything I want but I don't buy a lot of crap. I buy like 3 or 4 items of clothing a year. Last year I bought a car after about 7 8 years being without one. It was a used Lexus which I got for $18.5K. I paid cash.

I have 9 credit cards, about 7 checking accounts with different banks and never use cash for anything. I've synchronized all my bills and payments on a single day of the month and make sure to pay everything in full. So I never pay interest on credit cards. However, I take full advantage of 0% credit card offers but I realize that it's a double edge sword and you have to be VERY responsible to pay it off before interest starts - which is always harder than you think. But if you can manage it, its free money!

I enter and go through and manually categorize each and every transaction from all my cards, loans and accounts into quicken as well as mint. I am fully aware of how much money I have and how much my credit card balances are. Of course it wasn't always like this. I'm still paying for some mistakes of the past.

I'd be happy to answer any questions.

/r/Frugal Thread