I save 50 percent reloading 9mm. I save 67 percent reloading .45.
Others who cast their own bullets save even more.
There are a few qualifiers here. One is that you must buy your components in bulk to get the costs down. That means bullets by the thousands, powder by the 4# or 8# keg, primers in sufficient quantity that if you're ordering them online that you spread the hazmat fee over lots of primers.
That's a largely unwritten element of reloading to save money--you have to buy essentially $500 or $600-worth of components to get to that level of savings.
Further, you have to factor in your time. If you reload on a single-stage press, you're going to be hard-pressed to produce more than 100 rounds an hour. If you're shooting WWB at $21/box for 100, that means you'll save...maybe $10 or $11 an hour. Not so hot.
But if you eventually get a progressive press (I have the Hornady LnL AP), you can produce at much higher rates. I can comfortably do 300 rounds per hour on mine (I can go faster but it's not a race, the goal is good ammo, not fastest ammo).
That essentially "pays" me over $30 an hour to produce 9mm ammo (It's how much I save myself, per hour--10 cents per round). With .45 ACP, the "savings" are as much as $66 per hour. Who do you know that has a part-time job that pays them $66 per hour?
It will take you a while to get to that level. I started reloading in September of '08, about 16 months ago. I started on a single-stage press (I'd advise you to start there too, you learn better IMO that way and you'll want a single-stage press anyway when you get to a progressive). I learned the different steps of reloading, taking it easy as I learned them, and added capabilities as I progressed.
[I had to learn on my own; I had nobody to show me. If you have a friend who reloads who can help you learn, you'll learn faster.]
That said, let me echo what rfwobbly said--there are a lot of other, excellent, reasons to reload other than simply saving money. I have never been out of ammo during the shortage. I can fine-tune my ammo to my guns, and it's better ammo than store-bought. I find reloading relaxing, it's fun, it's fun to try out new things as I work up loads, I can experiment with different bullets, and I've learned a lot about my guns and guns in general.
