How I discovered "The $42,000 List"

Our savings adventures started a few years ago. We have slowly eliminated things in our life. It wasn't a decision that was made over night, it was a slow process. After a couple of years, I sat down with an Excel spreadsheet and I made a list of things that we used to buy (or things that we almost had to buy) and calculated the cost. It was fine enough to see a couple of dollars in savings for the small items, but I was curious about how it would add up over the course of a year. I multiplied the savings by the times per year I would save and the tiny numbers grew. I had a lovely grand total that was huge, but then I realized that those were "after tax" dollars - the dollars that I had available to spend. So, I added back the income tax to get a gross amount - $42,000! That is how much money we would have to make in salary to pay for all the things we gave up. No wonder we were in debt by tens of thousands of dollars before!