The following is a post by Sydney, aka Mrs. Samurai. She’s one of the most frugal people I know, which is one of the reasons why we get along so great. She’d rather go to Target than Prada. That’s the secret to financial independence right there. Whoo hoo!

Did you just receive a black tie wedding invitation and are in a bit of a panic over the dress code? I was in the same boat!

Here’s my own story about how I figured out how to dress to the 9s for a black tie wedding for cheap. After doing research, it look like we had to spend over $1,000 for the two of us to attend. But it’s totally possible to look the part without spending a fortune.

Let me tell you a sad story.

In order to comfortably raise a family in an expensive coastal city like San Francisco or New York, you’ve got to make at least $300,000 a year. You can certainly raise a family earning less as many do, but it won’t be easy if your goal is to save for retirement, save for your child’s education, own your own home instead of rent, and actually retire by a reasonable age.

Although $300,000 is a lot compared to the median household income in the United States of ~$62,000, it’s not an outrageous sum of money once you look at the realistic income statement I’ve put together for this article.

All expenses in my example use current prices. I’ve also cross checked the expenses with my family’s monthly expenses now that we have a son to make sure they are within reason.

I use $300,000 in this post because I also believe it is close to the ideal income for up to a family of four to experience maximum happiness.

At $300,000, you aren’t paying an egregious amount in taxes, you probably aren’t killing yourself at work if both parents are working, but you’re still earning enough to live a comfortable lifestyle anywhere in the world.

Half the US population lives on the coasts, therefore, this post is directly targeted at folks who need to live on the coasts because of their jobs, schools, or families.

Finally, this post should also provide insights to non-coastal city residents on how good you’ve got it if you enjoy living where you are. $100,000 – $150,000 is a rough non-coastal city household income equivalent.

We know the average spending for American households over the age of 65 is a surprisingly high $45,756 a year or $3,800 a month according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Given the average Social Security benefit is only $17,532 a year, or $1,461 a month, the average retiree likely has a significant amount of retirement savings in order to account for the missing $2,339 a month.

With no debt, life in retirement is quite comfortable for current Americans in traditional retirement age.

But how much is the average expenditure across all ages? Surely, the average American can’t be spending too much while working in order to have so much in retirement. Let’s take a look at the latest available data from the BLS.

After gaining 12 lbs during my freshman year in college, I had to spend $35 to buy a pair of new jeans. $35 might not sound like a lot to you, but it was a lot to me at the time because I only made $4/hour working at McDonald’s.

Wasting 10 hours of my life because I couldn’t resist the buffet line pissed me off. So of course I did a lot of dieting research and discovered the magic bullet to weight loss: eat less.

With such simple logic, I decided to keep track of what I ate and slowed my food intake as I approached 2,000 calories. I also educated myself about world hunger. Knowing there are over 700 million malnourished people in the world made it harder to stuff my face.

By the middle of sophomore year, I was back down to my fighting weight of 160 lbs. Given I’m not an infallible machine, I’d have a cheat day once a week. This release day has helped keep my pants size the same for the last 22 years. Although I admit, old jeans are getting very snug nowadays!