I worked for 10ish years in sales and saved money with the intent to either buy a house or buy a business. My story is kind of shitty. I grew up in a 300 square foot home with my parents and after I went to community college I got loans and went to school. In the summers my parents used up the 100 square foot I lived in for themselves so I didn't have anywhere to sleep. So I couch surfed for 3ish years. I slept in a lot of basements on piles of clothes, pillows or what ever.

When I got out of college I had exactly $1,000 that I saved from doing construction jobs. I bought a car, defaulted on it and it was repod. That sucked. So I went and got a sales job that had a company car, it paid $11ish an hour. With out the car payment and at the time I lived in the fucking ghetto with rent of $260 per month, combined with my girlfriend's job we saved $500 a month. For the next 10 years I traded up sales jobs until I was selling tech and the last year I made something like $300k. I had a used car, my girlfriend was now my wife, and our total bills, including apartment were around $1,300. She was making $75000 in tech also. So we banked big.

Time came to start the business, I needed to put up $70k and didn't take a salary for something like 5 years realistically. I really still don't, just don't need it.

I just lived really below my means since I don't like being homeless or having my car taken away. Over time people tend to get pay raises, better jobs, smarter, more educated and the pay goes up. My lifestyle didn't adjust much upwards. My wife hadn't been in an airplane in her life until she was 25 and then it was for a work trip. We took our first vacation probably when we were 30. We just lived like broke assed people. Still do. Cept the vacations are better. And the house. And the cars.

Today I'm plunking away at CodeAcademy trying to learn Python for giggles.