“Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship.” Benjamin Franklin
How soon you can be able to retire or become financially independent depends on your savings rate as a percentage of the pay that you take home. Obviously the higher the better and the shorter time you will have to spend working. I think its far easier to try to save more than it is to try and make extra money – for me anyway. Also how much you spend and save is something that is well within your control.
10% is the recommended minimum amount that you should be setting aside for your long term savings or retirement. However if you want to speed things up because maybe you started the savings game late or you just want to be safe as possible then I think you should try and up this to as high a percentage as possible. I have heard of people saving upto 75% and my goal for this year was to save just a little under 50%. So far I have failed this month and one reason for that is that I was not tracking my expenses daily which is key because its the little expenses that will sink you. I think my savings rate this month should come in around 22% so it will be interesting too see how I will manage to catch up next month – especially considering that I have an overseas work trip planned and I will need to take that opportunity to do a bit of shopping for my son and myself. Planning will be key here.
By savings I mean long term savings and not money you are saving to buy a car, furniture,holiday – non of that. Savings should be your permanent investment capital that is always invested and whose sole purpose is generating financial independence.
Happy investing
Financial Independance in Africa 
very well written, the small things that captures little attention are detrimental to the progress of any business.