I saved ~95% of my income in first 2 years. Bankers don't have a comparatively more expensive lifestyle in Australia. Why would they? In fact, I spent so much time in the office and ate on my AMEX and caught taxis home every night, my only expense was the odd drink on Friday night and bus fare in the morning. But in reality, I was so tired on Friday and Saturday and Sunday, I don't even go out and drink.
I don't know what grad base salaries are now. I'd imagine they're somewhere around 100-115k? It was 95-105k in my days. Excluding bonuses.
At the end of the day, in your earlier years both professions are small money after taxes. IB is also blood money. It's a lot higher, but you trade your time and health for it. That's all - there's no magic to it. If you spent that time and health doing other things, maybe you would've made the same money give or take. That said, it's an easy route that requires no thinking (just doing) and can help you save some starting capital if nothing else. Hence if a person gets in to IB and then as a result lives a far more expensive lifestyle so they end up saving as much as they do as an accountant, then in my opinion that person is very stupid and should go be an accountant instead with less stress, less workload and less working hours.
At the end of the day, the key to success is to make your capital work for you. Even better, it's to make other people's capital work for you. This is in effect what all the books like Rich Dad, Poor Dad (ps I've never read them), The Richest Man in Babylon (again haven't read it) are all about despite the 300 pages of other non-essential stories/anecdotes. That's why our society is called capitalism.
