an aggressive savings plan

It has been over a year since I started working at my full time high paying electrical engineering job. While my closets are full and happy, my savings account is not. I have paid off my student loans and put some into my savings account, but the majority has gone to clothes, the shore house, booze and generous presents for my family and friends (I'm such a giver). My 401k is maxed out, so I have that going for me. I was going through the numbers and it is kind of ridiculous how much money I could have easily saved at this point but didn't.
I still live at home, which I really don't mind at all cause my parents are pretty awesome and its a great savings opportunity that I haven't taken full advantage of yet. However, I would like to eventually move out and ideally I would like to buy a place instead of rent one. Renting annoys me and often the rent price is pretty similar to a morgage price and after renting, you end up with nothing. So my plan is to live at home, probably until next year around this time, and save up a ton of money so I can buy myself an adorable little place. I know it's going to be hard to change my shopping mindset (from buying pretty much whatever I want to actually thinking about what I'm buying and trying to not spend as much). The fact that I have built up a pretty fantastic wardrobe over the past year will hopefully make it a little easier. I definitely have enough pretty dresses to last the rest of the summer. And this is going to be the first winter where I am actually looking forward to wearing all my winter clothes (sweater and jeans and boots and scarfs and LAYERS yay!) from last year. I hope it won't be as hard as I think it's going to be. I don't want to be on a 'budget' really, like I don't want to allocate a certain amount of money each month for certain things, but I am just going to focus on putting more cash into my savings. I'm working on changing my direct deposit to put a certain amount of each paycheck directly into my savings. Out of site, out of mind. Can't buy whatever you want when all of your cash is in your savings account rather then your checking, right?

So what this means really is I'll probably have less 'look what I bought' posts and more creative reworking of old clothes, thrift store visits and DIY posts. Oh, and maybe even more furniture and home accessories posts.

Peace and aggressive savings plans,

TheFashionHead