[bigato]

That means that for each five months working, you build up reserves enough to last you one month without working. It's not a lot, but it's something. Now make some effort to push it to a 33% savings rate, and for each three months worked, you'll have one month of expenses saved. And so on. At some point, it becomes a game of cutting expenses and raising income.

If you get to live on 20/25% of your income and invest the rest, in 5 to 6 years you should have enough invested to pay your expenses for the rest of your life, assuming an yearly average return of 4% over inflation. This formula was made popular by Jacob from Early Retirement Extreme blog/book/forum/wiki: http://earlyretirementextreme.com