smaller-than-a-townhome 1950's 1100 sq foot house (which also had original flooring, bathrooms, etc). We still got a 1950's house, but a little bigger, and that had been renovated in the late 1980's.

I won't give my income publicly, but I am an associate professor at an Carnegie R1 school. We are about the 70 percentile in WA state (though that varies up and down a little depending on how many summer months I have filled with research grants).

Just payroll taxes, income tax, tithing, and 401k eat up over a third of our gross income. Throw in are other large-ish monthly costs of mortgage, cell, car insurance, car payment, utilities, and it is eaten up a lot more. We have sat down and broken down all our expenses and there isn't anything extravagant. We don't go on expensive vacations (usually camping and backpacking). We don't have expensive toys (e.g. bikes, skis, boats, side-by-side, etc). We buy most of our food "non-processed" and make things from scratch, but also don't go the route of organic and other premium quality foods.

We hit the end of every month and wonder how we had so little surplus, which definitely wouldn't allow us to do another 7.5% to savings. Now, this last year maybe we could have if we didn't help our oldest with college, but we committed to our kids that we would cover their first year of college.