Given your income you could open up an traditional IRA at your bank and put away around 250-275 of it a month there. That will get you 3000-3300 per year you can write off given your income level. This will bring your income down further. Put the money in an even distribution of mutual funds, 1 total market, 1 international, 1 bond. You can find guides on how to do this (the bogle strategy) almost anywhere.

Keep some fun money around to go the bar or something (50-70), put the rest in a savings account as your emergency fund. Do not touch it. When you get enough money, you can start putting chunks of your emergency fund in short term CDs in order to generate small amounts of money off it, while still keeping a few months of expenses around to cover you until your CDs mature.