Savings rate

Save $1,500 of a $5,000 monthly take-home and your savings rate is 30%. It matters more than your salary because it works on both sides of the equation at once: it determines how fast you accumulate and how little you need to be free.

At a 10% savings rate, financial independence takes around fifty years. At 50% it takes about seventeen. At 65% it takes roughly a decade. This is arithmetic, not motivation.