For me that was one of the worst financial moves ever made.
Plex server go brrrrr
How so?
Well, for the amount of money I spend on hard drives and other hardware I could subscribe to Netflix for about 30 years.
How much disk space do you need?
I have a simple 500GD HDD ($25) and a 230GB (?).
I also have $120 worth of DVD and CD for ~$60 thanks to Goodwill
Fits nicely.
My current raw capacity is at 160 TB.
Wild! I've got about 40 TB myself, and have never come across someone with more... let alone four times more.
I'm at 208RB raw, but actually only have 120TB in active use
40 TB was my previous capacity and based around a really cheap 2 bay NAS with a mess of external USB drives attached and no backup ... and is now pretty much full.
So I ordered a 12 bay NAS (with, for now 6x 20TB disks) to bascially replace the entire old setup. I'm also planning to put the new setup in RAID 5 or 6, so it will only have an effective storage of 80-100 TB.
The f do you store on all that space? Raw blu-ray rips?
Just a lot of stuff. TV Shows/Series take up by far the most space. For example, just the Simpsons in 1080p (h264) takes over 500GB.
Do you actually watch all of the stuff you download, or is it more like a digital hoard?
No, that would be literally impossible. The total of playtime of what I downloaded in the last year is over 1 year and 7 months (+5 months if you include music).
I love the acronym dink. It sounds so insulting but people use it very casually and it's funny hearing people calling each other dinks.
What does it stand for?
Dual income no kids.
DINKWAD
Dual income no kids with a dog
Ty
Double Income No Kids
I'm a fan of dildo which is dual income, little/large dog owners.
Being born into a rich western country.
Yeah, me too. I pat myself on the back for this one nearly every day. Probably the best financial decision I ever made.
There's still many nuances people get wrong all the time. Did you pick financially independent parents?
Fuck! No, I fucked that one up too and accidentally picked a crazy Haight-Ashbury 1967 hippie together with a seriously damaged Vietnam vet, the two of them getting involved in weird cultish shit long before I was born.
It was a poor decision on my part. No one to blame but myself.
No one to blame but myself.
Eh, live and learn. Next time!
You need to pull yourself up by your birthstraps.
Underrated answer. Meritocracy is a lie, folks, even within the West. If you do everything perfectly you will climb a little bit, and only on average. All the counterexamples you're thinking of are people who won a lottery of some kind. And of course, birth is also a lottery.
A literal move actually. 20 years ago I moved from America to a country with universal health care. That has saved my family probably close to a quarter million bucks in health care fees alone.
Not to mention the headache. It feels like every time I get treatment I have to argue with my insurance until they eventually cave (assuming it's something they actually cover). I asked my mom if this is how healthcare is really like and she said "yeah it's just the culture, it's normal" acting as it having to beat the fuck out of a metaphorical piñata to pay for life saving treatment is ok or acceptable. Like why the fuck can't you just pay for the treatment that I fucking pay you to cover?
Oh god, I hear ya. A long while back I needed some serious treatment and ended up in a hospital for two weeks. It was the first time I had ever gotten truly sick, so I was dreading the final bill. But when the docs said nah you're good, it's covered, just take your meds and come back in a week for your follow-up, I damn near died a second time :P
Did you move to Vietnam?
Close, it was Japan
I've heard the Japanese have extreme xenophobia these days. How do you survive? Is it hard to make local friends?
Bullshitting my way onto a high salary career track and just learning shit as i go.
I think I surprising amount of people are likely just "faking it". I hope one day we can collectively cut the BS and all admit we don't know what we're doing.
I think the main problem is that requiring and checking if someone can learn a skill you need is a lot harder than just making the skill a requirement for the job right out of the bat.
Determining if someone can actually learn certain things on the job is pretty difficult in an interview setting, it’s way easier to just do a technical interview.
The alternative is probably something like a probationary period where you work with no guarantee of continuing but that’s a massive waste of time for everyone involved and not fair to the candidate.
In my experience, if you go with the candidate that seems the most well rounded, you’ll have the most success. Going with someone that’s a technical genius with no people skills makes it harder to fit them in a spot where they’ll shine - at least in a smaller company
The first paragraph was easy for my previous employer. At the start of the interview, my interviewer pointed out the wallpaper of his brand new grandson. During the interview he noticed that I kept looking at his monitor. When he asked why I was doing that I asked why he had it on the lowest resolution. We switched places and I changed the resolution. The wallpaper disappeared and my heart felt like it had stopped.
Thinking quickly, I said that if the picture was on the hard drive that it would have reloaded and it obviously hadn't been downloaded so it must have been in an email. He smiled and said that I was right and I spent the rest of the interview in his chair and I got a call that day asking if I could come in that day.
I think it's fair considering companies want 4 plus years for an entry position.
I honestly can’t deal with all the theatrics of securing a job (interview and first months/year included). This was a setback at first since when people asked me stuff I didn’t know I’d just say “I don’t know” or at most “I heard this and that but never worked with it”.
Thankfully I ended up at a place that appreciated that frankness and that gives me room (and incentive) to learn new stuff. Every year so far I end up in a new project with different technologies to use and learn. My ADHD brain is extremely satisfied.
I would love to hear your story if you're willing to share.
Briefly: phd at Super Prestigious Institution. Fuck it, left science because didn’t want to languish making like $50K/year as a postdoc for like 6-8 years, with no guaranteed path forward. Pivoted toward money & people management. At every step up the ladder, I didn’t know shit. So what? I figured it out. Not that hard. Real talk: I benefitted substantially from elitism. I’m mid forties, salary about $220K, should hit $250K/year in the next 2-5 years.
Thanks for sharing.
Most of the things mentioned in this thread are mostly dumb luck and not necessarily active financial decisions.
Kind of the point. A lot of financial "success" is nothing but dumb luck.
Yeah, half of these comments are just: I bought a house.
If there was an active financial decision you could make and reliably get rich, everyone would do it.
Not necessarily rich, but there are active financial decisions you can make that will set you on the path to longterm prosperity. Buying a house at what happened to be exactly the right time and making a $100,000 in 3 years in the process is not one of them. That's just dumb luck.
I mean, "consistently save in a diversified portfolio" would be a pretty boring answer, but it would be an answer I guess. I'm not sure what the equivalent for the poor would be; stay away from substances, maybe?
I even specifically said as much in my comment.
damned Reddit immigrants
Not having a car (always living/renting in walking or biking distance of my work)
Moving in with my partner straight out of college so we could split expenses
Moving (with partner) to a low-cost-of-living city for the first 5 years after college
Putting most of my medium-term and long-term savings into low-expense-ratio, passively managed index funds starting in my early 20s
Buying almost exclusively second-hand clothes, furniture, and cookery
Borrowing all desired books (and many desired movies and TV shows) from the library
Only buying games when they are bundled or otherwise on steep discount years after release
Pirating any other media in which I'm interested if its distributors make it even remotely difficult for me to buy it at a reasonable price
Planning all dinners in advance every week before grocery shopping (leads to almost never eating at restaurants or ordering takeout, and almost no food waste because grocery list is based on actual meals)
Now, if I had to choose the best financial move out of that list? Probably the index funds. Though not having to pay for a car (or car insurance, or car registration, or car repair and maintenance, or parking, or fuel) is a close second.
I'm contemplating moving even further towards the lifestyle you have but I struggle with balancing "live for today" vs "live for tomorrow". In some ways I think we live too much for today, we rarely wait more than a month or two with buying whatever we feel we "need". We go on vacation abroad every other year at least and do activities monthly that most other families in our neighborhood do maybe yearly or quarterly. Partly because we have much higher income than our neighbors but we could of course save more and if we really buckled down we could likely by financially independent in less than 20 years.
How do you balance and how do you think regarding these matters, what's your philosophy?
I've never felt I'm not living for today. Admittedly, most of what I want to do is consume a variety of media within the comfort of my home. But we also travel abroad every other year or so, and that's probably the biggest 'entertainment' expense in our lives. If we need a car to visit someone or somewhere outside the range of public transit or biking, we just rent one for the weekend (probably happens about once a year). We don't have to hesitate before choosing to do that because we know we're living well within our means the rest of the time.
The thing is, once you're in the habit of doing this stuff, it doesn't feel like an imposition. It's just the way your life works. It was actually a bit of a struggle to remember all of those points when I was writing up that list yesterday, because it's all just natural to me now. There are probably a few more things we do along these lines that haven't occurred to me.
And at that point, the savings are just a natural choice for what to do with all the surplus money. It's not even 'living for tomorrow.' It ceases to be an either/or situation. It's living for today in such a way that you can continue to live for today throughout your entire life.
Also, there are a huge number of non-financial benefits on offer here, too: walking and biking at times you'd otherwise be driving is excellent for your health; planning meals allows you to choose healthier options, cut down on red meat consumption, etc; meal planning, buying second-hand goods, and not driving reduces dependency on online mega-retailers, international sweatshop labor, and environmentally harmful practices; making use of the library system indirectly supports its continued existence for folks who have no other options; and on and on.
Anyway, I wouldn't recommend trying to do all of this at once if it's all a change for you. I'd recommend slowly introducing each of these practices over time so you have time to get used to each in isolation.
In 2017 my landlord raised my rent from $1k to $1100 a month for the place I rented with my daughter because I finally broke down and got her a dog. I was annoyed because this wasn't in the lease but I was month to month by this time and figured I could probably get a house around me for the same cost and at least I'd be building equity. I closed in 2018 on a $120k fixer upper on 12 acres. I got a $30k rehab loan and my mortgage/insurance/property tax payment ended up being just over $1100. I spent 7 months in major renovations.
Fast forward to today, I have a 2.875% mortgage rate with just over $1000 a month all in payment (early COVID refi saved me about $100/month), my house was just appraised for $415k, and I was able to sell 5 acres of the land for a total of about $160k.
A free shelter dog ended up turning $150k into $575k. 10/10 would recommend.
I was gonna say buying a house too. Mortgage payments are 1/3 what my rent was, and rents have doubled since then.
I'm in the process of buying right now, and my mortgage is similar to my high rent and the overall cost of ownership is higher, but it'll be worth it just to get off of the uncertainty of ever increasing rent. At this point it feels like now or never with how batshit insane the housing market has become.
Life changing circumstances, but big props on you for having the confidence to go through with it! Life presented you with the opportunity and you seized it!
This is wholesome sorry. I am happy for you both anons and that you have doggo a great loving home <3
Leaving Sydney for a cheaper quieter life in Central West NSW!
Nice 4 bedroom home with views, 1200m² block with trees, quiet area, school almost across the road, close to everything else and best of all, a tiny manageable mortgage!
Yes! Particularly if your job is industrial, get a house somewhere else, but not on the city. Try to find a place with good public transport to the city, tho. Cities will be slowly quitting car infrastructure.
Industrial? There a hundreds of everyday jobs that pay the same no matter where you live in Australia.
And I didn't leave Sydney to spend 4hrs on a train.
Learning about long term index fund investing in my early 20s.
The Bogleheads philosophy is basically to buy everything with a 2 or 3 fund portfolio.
Total Stock Fund
Total Bond Fund
Total International Fund
The linked documents will explain those in more detail, but the concept is to buy everything so you always have bought the biggest winners, not to bet on a handful that will all lose or win, but at bigger expense to you.
They'll tell you how much to buy of each and what type of account to keep it in to max tax effectiveness.
It's not complicated once you read the source, and anyone should be able to understand it, it's not written to be cryptic or to sell you something. You can put your money anywhere you choose and it works the same.
I've followed it for about 15 years or so and have been very happy. There's no checking on stock news or any of that BS, you just develop a plan you're comfortable with, and then stick to it. The more hands off you are, the better honestly.
Wow, thank you!
Of course! The hardest part is usually just getting started, so there's no need to overcomplicate.
For those also saying "well look at this rich person with money to invest over here," you can also read this stuff and be a step or two ahead when you do get to invest, because one of the first things it explains is prioritizing where to put money. Fill up one level before moving on to the next, but by reading ahead, you know what to do when you get there so you are prepared.
Money for us non-uber rich folk works best with time, so the sooner you get in the game, the more success you should have overall. They call this "getting rich slowly" which doesn't sound exciting, but that's the point. Most people don't want to be on an emotional roller coaster with their money, they'd rather be on a lazy river ride that gets then where they want to be.
Bogleheads is great. There's also a book called "common sense on mutual funds"
Thanks
The nice thing is that, physically it’s the easiest thing in the world. The only complicated part is not trying to game it or convince yourself that you need more than the 2 or 3 fund portfolio.
Just buy a Total market index fund, some sort of bond fund and maybe some total market international stock fund
This is primarily a sailing channel but Clark has a series of finance videos that are excellent.
As 2023 was beginning I set a goal that I would have $5k in the bank no matter what.
Up to this year I’ve been living paycheck to paycheck. But resolving to save up $5k pushed me out of that for the first time ever.
I never did hit $5k. But I stopped living paycheck to paycheck. I haven’t checked my balance before paying rent since february of last year. I always have enough, and I just pay the bill.
The amount of stress that immediately goes away when you are able to stop the paycheck to paycheck cycle is priceless. Nice work!
It also helps that I’ve got a little financial system going.
I get paid every two weeks. My rent is about 1200. Each paycheck is about 1200 - 1400. Paid every two weeks. Each paycheck, 1000 goes into my “bills” account, and the remainder into my “spending” account. So each paycheck I get about $300 for groceries, coffee, entertainment, whatever.
All the bills are on auto-pay to draw from that bills account, and the 1000 per paycheck is enough to cover all my bills plus save some. So my savings is accumulating in the bills account.
I also got myself a credit card for the first time
in twenty years, and now my phone bill’s being auto-paid from that, with the CC being auto-paid from the bills account.
That structure helps too. But I wouldn’t have been able to start it without a lump of cash on hand
Mined a Bitcoin in college.
Pretty much the same. Bought some Bitcoin in high school in the early 10's. It was just a novelty and I was a kid, so I didn't buy much, but if someone was kidnapped or something it would be worth it to go through my old drives.
BTC recently got approved to be traded as an ETF by the SEC, so now's a good time to find that drive cause the price is only going to go up over the next 5+ years.
Yeah, I'm not going to get rid of any. I was doing everything on thumb drives at the time, though, so it would be a bitch to actually try and find the exact one I used.
Of course, the value of the things will go to 0 whenever Q-day happens, and hopefully sooner when people realise it's a badly designed cryptocurrency. Maybe I should dig the old wallet up just to move things to an alt coin.
My buddy traded his for rent
Deciding not to get a car; it saves ~400.000 euros in my lifetime which at 40k net a year income means 8-10 year earlier pension
Ahh, European public transportation. Not an option in the US unless you live in NYC and rarely leave the city.
I'm so jealous. My work is only a mile away, which in a perfect world I could walk in 10 mins, but because of many slow crosswalks and busy intersections it's like 30 mins freezing my balls off. Plus there's a section of road that's 40mph (64kmh) with no sidewalk, and a bridge that forces pedestrians onto the high speed road. It's both slow and basically suicide if I tried to make a habit of walking.
There's another route but the intersection I would need to cross is excruciatingly slow. I had to sit for 15 minutes before I could cross. Plus it's another 40mph road and if someone runs a red I basically die.
Damn if I hear this I am so glad to live in the Netherlands. Infrastructure here is designed such that everybody takes a bike or walk if within a few miles, on safe roads
It's unfortunate that much of the US is stuck in a feedback loop of people saying "walking sucks, I'll drive", roads and driving infrastructure are improved at the cost of pedestrian infrastructure, more people say "walking sucks", and repeat. Eventually you get like 12 lane highways at the cost of many sidewalks, bike lanes and tram/train lines being bulldozed.
Eventually everybody has to drive because pedestrians have been squeezed out of the equation. It saddens me that people don't realize how nice walking could be, because they have only experienced poor pedestrian infrastructure. Even people like me who would love to walk have to choose driving or a death wish.
That being said it is slowly improving, many towns near me are implementing bike lanes, and more side walks. Unfortunately the bike lanes are the "safety paint" variety but it's at least something. As mentioned before my little town is renovating town square and it's a lot more walkable. Unfortunately not that helpful for me because the town square is only like 600 feet in size (200 metres) in size, but again, it's something.
I would love to visit Amsterdam just to walk my little butt off haha
40mph is 64kmph not 93kmph but yeah that’s still uncomfortable to bike besides if it’s busy. I’d say instead of posting it here, send a letter to your local government.
My bad, I have changed it now. Thankfully my town is already working on it, I'm just waiting for the pedestrian infrastructure to spread beyond the town square.
I keep meaning to look at exactly what my small car costs per year.
Last estimate was £1000 a year on fuel, parts, and maintenance.
Which is equivalent to 50+ hours of car club use.
For now, I have too many "shit, I need to get this large/heavy object 5 miles away" moments to make it worth it.
But long term, I kinda like the idea of not having to worry about the car.
Insurance and depreciation are the bigger costs I think, but even ignoring those; if you have “heavy objects” less than once a week it would probably still be cheaper to just rent a van when you need it. Convenience might be an argument but yeah that’s what you pay the big bucks for.
That figure actually includes depreciation and insurance! In fact, almost half of it is just the bloody insurance... Though I should possibly make an allowance in the figure for future repair work, as it's an older car.
I think once my big project (and associated last second trips to the builder's merchant) is finished, I'll have a go at living without the car.
My housemates may not be too happy about the private taxi service shutting down though!
Average car insurance cost in London is 1200-1600, surely yours isn’t less than half that?
That's the benefit of not-london and a small car: It's under £500!
Working with my SO to start budgeting each month. We now have a system in place that works for us and a habit of getting out in front of expenses.
Budgeting helped us see that increasing your income is far more powerful than reducing spending, so we’re focused on spending to gain skills and increase our top line right now.
Choosing to be child-free.
Same here! Spent about $100 for my vasectomy after insurance. Best $100 I ever spent really, saved me hundreds of thousands.
Accidentally buying a modest house in what at the time was a "distressed" neighborhood because it was all we could afford. 15 years later the neighborhood has been gentrified and is highly desirable. The property has tripled in value and the land is now worth more than the house itself.
Anyhow, it was dumb luck on my part and again, mostly had to do with the place being affordable and relatively close to my wife's parents.
the land is now worth more than the house itself.
This is usually the case. When the value goes up, pretty much all of the increase is due to the land value increasing. Land is a limited resource that's always in demand, especially in desirable areas. The house itself is actually going down in value over time due to depreciation.
In my area it's not uncommon for at least 70% of the value of a property to be in the land, and the house itself accounts for less than 30% of the value. There's a lot of houses built in the 1940s to 70s in highly desirable areas.
I've never thought about it like that, but it makes good sense.
I decided to basically stop buying anything unless I absolutely needed it for about two years. I put everything I had towards paying off my car and student loans. I had holey socks and shirts, torn up shoes, etc. Refused to spend money.
As a result, I was able to invest the money I was paying on my car and loans and eventually worked enough for a down payment on my current house.
God bless those clothes.
Haha, thanks for catching that.
Paying off my fucking car. New cars are a scam guys, don't be stupid like me 6 years ago.
Doesn't have to be if u keep it long enough. The problem is folks usually get upselled long before it sarts being a good deal.
It was accidental.
So I started working at a startup right after I graduated college. They couldn't pay a competitive wage, so they gave me a ton of stock. A year into working there, about half the company was laid off. I survived. They begged us not to leave the company by giving us more stock. I started interviewing elsewhere, because I have bills to pay, but I never got any other jobs. Then one day they handed me an envelope. It contained paperwork for even more stock. I thought it wasn't going to be worth the paper it was printed on, so I kept looking for other jobs. Never found one.
Well, a few years go by and the company starts doing very well. Then we got bought out. Suddenly all the worthless stock they gave me was worth a fuck ton of money. The buying company bought ALL of it. Even unvested shares. One day they wrote me a really, really big check, then I went and bought a house.
It was absolutely life changing, and I tried to throw it away at every chance I got. I got so lucky.
Never buying into the crypto hype when several of my friends and coworkers told me to. (Maybe I would’ve made money, but probably not.)
Buying crypto is pretty much akin to buying a scratch off ticket. You might get lucky, you might not. Depends wholly on timing and aforementioned luck.
When you scratch the ticket, you get the result. But with bitcoin if you didnt sell it, chance is a few years later it got higher again.
It is still total gambling, but not like scratch tickets.
I'm in the States so dunno how this translates... But my parents made get a 500usd limit credit card when I was like 14. It had been the best decision that I've made. My credit is so dn good now that I can get what ever I want easily approved. That and they insisted I make a home purchase at like 23- right be fore the mortgages went nuts. My mortgage is like a quarter of what others pay for a rental...
Thanks ma and pa 🤜🤛
By dumb luck I bought a house right before the housing market lost its goddamned mind.
$145K for a 3 bedroom on an acre of land. It’s more than doubled in value since I bought it, and I pay less than $1000/mo at 2.9% interest.
I keep getting letters from my mortgage company offering me $80K in a cash-out refinance at like double to triple my current interest rate and I’m like “how about blow me?” I’m riding that interest rate until the wheels fall off.
Buying a house during covid when I saw rent was increasing drastically for no apparent reason. I could barely afford it at the time but thanks to inflation and a couple raises, I'm comfortably sitting on a house that's now worth 50% more than I bought it for, and paying way less than current rental prices. Rent is insane right now.
Move abroad, halve my taxes, triple my income, reduce my cost of living by nearly 80%, effectively increased my savings rate by ~1100%, from 500 EUR/month to now >5k EUR/month. That's 5k in fixed savings (investment plan), plus whatever else I don't spend accumulates in my savings account.
I'm curious where'd you moved
All over the world. Germany -> Luxembourg -> Norway -> Liberia -> Tanzania -> Kenya -> Nigeria -> Madagascar -> China; and next month to Malaysia.
Luxembourg was great for starting to build some wealth thanks to the super low taxes, Norway was to improve my career opportunities, and in Africa I really started to make bank since those contracts included living & "hardship" allowances that are untaxed, I invested most of that and also used it to fund an executive MBA.
To China I already came with 15+ years work experience and entered on c-level with a great salary package; and there are no taxes on foreign income here, including foreign capital gains.
Malaysia is a stopover for a few years also for tax purposes, they have no capital gains either and the company I work for is registered in Hong Kong, which in China would be considered onshore and thereby taxable. So in Malaysia I can sell my share package for free after 2 years of residency.
Also much nicer climate and friendlier people than in China.
Thanks for the detailed reply! Definitely an interesting journey, and I glad to hear it's financially good. Good luck.
I wish I was smart enough to be accepted by another country. I was looking up that French legion army the other day haha.
I guess European citizenship really helped initially. But for most lesser developed countries it's often sufficient to have special skills that are in demand there. And I'm not talking about academia; there's also demand for construction skills, meat processing and other stuff out there.
Two of the most successful people I've met during my years on the roll were a German butcher who is now running a sausage empire in Asia, and a Swedish carpenter who is now working as general manager for an NGO in Kenya, building schools all over Africa. Neither of them are university graduates.
In fact most graduates I meet are middle to upper level manager who've been sent by their respective companies to work abroad, which absolutely means they have a decent income, but they all run into a glass ceiling at some point. And many struggled hard to readjust when they were eventually called home; whereas the more entrepreneurial types just carved a niche for themselves.
Securing a long-term fixed rate mortgage just before the war in Russia. Other than that it’s basically been any time I saved money rather than spending it.
Nitpicky but where in russia is a war going on? You mean the russian attack on ukraine right?
Starting investing into index fund ETFs
I only started about 3 years ago but even if I stopped putting in more money right now it would still keep paying me interests around 2000 to 3000€ each year for the rest of my life and it's 100% passive income. In my case it's all invested back into the funds though.
The second best move was starting to track my finances. It's almost impossible to not change your spending habits once you actually see where all the money is going. Almost anyone can cut atleast 100€ a month from their grocery bills by just being a little more mindfull about what you buy. That's 1200€/year or 12k€/10 years.
Almost anyone can cut atleast 100€ a month from their grocery bills by just being a little more mindfull about what you buy.
Yeah no. I spent about 150€/month on groceries before, now after the inflations about 180€/month. The only way to safe 100€/month there would be to skip meals.
From what you write you seem to be in the top 1-10% of people by income, and the numbers you put out only work for people in the same priviledged situation.
I said almost anyone for a reason. Just because general advice doesn't apply to you specifically, doesn't mean it doesn't apply to the average person then either.
Average monthly cost of groceries in my country in 2020:
Single person: 300€
Single parent, one child: 350€
Couple: 550€
Single parent, two childs, 620€
Couple, two childs: 760€
Vasectomy like 10 years ago. Kids are expensive.
Don't fall for trends. Save instead, and spend on true passions.
What if your passions/passionate-spendings START all the trends?
For the first few years of my career after college which has a pretty generous 401k company matching scheme I put the maximum amount possible into my retirement accounts and lived well within my means to build up a nest egg. Now that I am married I have dialed back my investments so we can afford to live a little bit nicer with the knowledge that we have a really great start in our retirement accounts.
My wife and I moved in together two years before getting married. This made living substantially cheaper for both of us and made us positive that we wanted to live together and could tolerate each other prior to tying the knot :).
I got a vasectomy mid-last year. My wife and I both agreed long before marriage that we only want to adopt. Adoption is obviously very expensive, but now we have the peace of mind of knowing we have full control over when we start to invest in that process to expand our family. No "accidents" can happen which is very liberating.
I have a similar story as your first point. It boils down to tucking away money with each financial gain. I put in enough to my 401k to get the full match, then with each raise, increase the amount invested by the raise. I'd already learned to spend within my limits and had no credit card debt, so each raise was "new money". Years later, after adjusting our financials to pay for daycare, when the daycare expenses dropped (infants are most expensive, costs drop down as they age), we started putting into a college savings and some for school expenses. We had saved up enough to pay for private school, which was less than daycare. Now that private school is done, college is paid for, we're paying down the mortgages. We locked in at 3% years ago. The house will be paid off when the kid graduates HS and we turn 55 and are eligible for the employer's retirement program, including health care. We plan to travel in those years where we're young enough to be healthy and old enough to have some money tucked away.
Oh, we also did the same for cars. When the car was paid off, we'd put the same money into a separate bank account and when it was tome to look for a new car, we had almost enough to pay for it outright.
Of course all of this can only happen when you have the skill to spend with your means.
I bought gas before it went up $0.30/gal
Fuck it, I'll add to all the silly replies too.
I bought a brand new car in 2015 before new/used cars became more expensive (and all the shitty smart features were added).
Buying $109 worth of Bitcoin back in 2014. I was going to buy a year cloud mining contract, but the company (hashop) went out of business before I could. (I dodged a bullet there) I then proceeded to spend bits of it here and there (coincidentally, my second worst financial move) until I had about $70 worth left, which I put in a paper wallet and forgot about.
In 2020, I was able to sell most of the Bitcoin, and bought a vehicle, which helped me get through college and made me more eligible when I met the girl who would become my wife.
All this to say, I made some dumb decisions that just happened to turn out well for me. YMMV
Staying unemployed to get free healthcare.
It makes sense the way the system works. For housing and insurance. You go from poor with government housing and insurance and then when you get out of mud you go back to being homeless and not having insurance.
Like it doesn't make sense for me to look for a job with better pay because if I get better pay I will lose out on the help. I wouldnt be able to afford anything. The pay increase I could get wouldn't be enough to live off at the prices of non subsidized housing and insurance.
There's not really incentive for success.
I got kicked off Medicaid for making like 50¢ over their limit iirc. The pay raise set me back.
Not your fault. Should be free for everyone, then your work income would just be icing on top
Big brain move.
Leech
Remember luck is just the intersection of preparation and opportunity.
Saving 60% of my take-home pay was the smartest financial decision I ever made. Difficult to execute, but very rewarding long-term in the behaviors I developed.
Was saving 60% of my income the most impactful financial decision I ever made? No, I had some luck in other areas. But this level of self-discipline helped me develop the skills to handle good luck later
How in the actual hell do you save 60% of your take home? Do you have an exceptionally well paying job? Single and living a ramen noodles and tent lifestyle? Would love to hear more because I can't even fathom how an average person could achieve this level of saving. I struggle with saving just 20% after all the bills are paid, and I consider myself frugal. Sure I have a Netflix subscription, but I don't go on vacations or carry a car note, my wardrobe is fruit of the loom package teeshirts and simple jeans, my PC is from 2016... What's your secret?
Living at home (free rent)
Eating only at work (free food), no fridge at home.
No car (public transit pass)
The percentage isn't the important thing, its developing the attitude that you can happily live below your means. FWIW it was 60% post-tax, not pre-tax
At some point it becomes a game, how little can you get by with.
Fair enough, cutting out housing and food expenses would definitely go a long way, that's easily the majority of my personal post-tax costs.
I'm glad those opportunities were available for you to get on your feet and built a cushion. My parents booted me out with 70k in student debt, though it's been a decade and I've dug myself out of it and built a life, it still feels like there's no escaping the treadmill.
It wasn't huge in terms of actual numbers, but it still feels like my biggest win. I bought my first car for like $750. It needed some work, but I fixed it up. Before long, I crashed it. It was totalled. But, it was a 1973 Dodge Charger. I started pulling parts off of it and selling them on this new thing called eBay, and by the time I ran out of parts, I had made more than twice what I bought the car for.
Buying a 3K€ coin which turned out to be worth 5K€ +
Putting a few hundred in bitcoin in 2019.
Neither of which will make me rich or even well off, and in fact both are actually completely wild guesses (=gambling). So I can't in good conscience recommend this as a strategy.
Buying a house. Got lucky and bought before the pandemic, and even then just barely scraped together a downpayment by borrowing from inlaws.
It's crazy how having a mortgage have us access to so much cheap credit. We were able to pay off all consumer debt and even most of our student loan debt. Even with all our debt bundled in the mortgage we're still paying far less than we would to rent an apartment.
It's nuts
Vasectomy BEFORE kids
That's not how it works. At least not if the vasectomy is done correctly.
Having mine in a few weeks. Wish me luck!
Good luck with your kids!
Plan on sitting and doing nothing for 3-4 days! Especially that first day.
It’s allll luck. I have multiple friends who felt absolutely nothing after the procedure! Just like something was “off” for a little while. No pain at all!
Hopefully the person we’re responding to has the same experience.
Selling my home, car, boat and living a simple RV life without kids.
Forget the financials, the lack of stress has made it so very worth it!
What happened to your kids?
He sold them.
On the downside, sad to see the kids go, but on the upside, you get a free pair of Nikes every month.
Bought a house in 2012. It's now worth almost 3x what I paid for it then. So wildly unfair.
Bought mine in 2017. Mine is double. It makes zero sense
Getting a master's in electroacoustic music. Everyone told me I was going to stay poor forever, I decided to still do what I really wanted and it's going pretty well.
print("Hello World")
>>> print "hello World"
File "", line 1
print "hello World"
^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
(The one without the parentheses is older Python 2, the example with is newer Python 3)
What's the work-life balance like where you work?
Living like a pauper for a few years and paying the mortgage off early.
Also not joining the rat race, and buying new shiny shit for the sake of it.
Also not joining the rat race, and buying new shiny shit for the sake of it.
I still don't 100% get the mentality here. Otherwise intelligent people will sink huge money into luxury shit; it doesn't seem to bother them at all if you point out that someone else made up the whole concept of diamonds or whatever to get their money.
Started a small mutual fund and retirement fund when I was just starting out and still in undergrad. I did not have much and was fully self sufficient. But someone came to my job and showed us how retirement plans worked and convinced me to start one. Same with a mutual fund. I never put more than $20-$40 in each because I didn’t have much but boy did that pay off.
I purchased a small condo in the city with some of the money I put away in #1. Just sold it recently (20 years after purchasing it; lived in it for 5 years, rented it out for a profit for 15 years). I made a lot of money off that sale. More money than I’ve ever seen at once.
My spouse and I have always lived below our means. Now we’re not frugal - we go out for nice dinners, travel, have kids. We also have good jobs. But, when we purchased a house we could have afforded to get one that was $600k and instead opted for a smaller townhome in a nice neighborhood for almost half the price. Living this way has paid off more than I could have ever imagined. Both of us don’t have to work. We travel whenever we want. We could technically both stop working in our 40s/50s and probably be fine. It’s a feeling of freedom. We’ve never over-extended ourselves. When our colleagues and friends were buying expensive homes and expensive cars and extending themselves, we just didn’t do that.
Getting out of renting and locking in a 30 year fixed interest rate of 3.25%.
My monthly housing payment is no longer going up every year.
My old apartment is already $300 a month more than I'm paying on my mortgage. It was only $200 a month less when I bought the house.
Buying property was definitely the one for me. It's a huge hurdle to get into, years of planning and prepping, but I've never felt more financially stable or secure as after buying property.
Now I gotta go fix that stupid thing in the kitchen...
No kids
2 Studying
Using a budget manager (YNAB)
I’m really bad with saving money and even having enough ready for regular bills on my own. I was always on zero before the end of the month and struggled hard when there was something unexpected. Now everything is planned ahead, I have some savings and yearly expenses are just ready to pay when needed.
It needs some time to adjust to it and I had to restructure my categories a few times until it worked for me (still not perfect).
Though I don’t feel like I’m getting my money’s worth anymore from YNAB. It keeps getting more expensive, the updates are slow and it seems very US focused. If I ever find the motivation, I want to build something on my own (I’m a web developer from Europe who’s getting a bit tired of web developing)
I tried YNAB once. Wasn't thrilled about the price as well.
Now I'm looking at selfhosting an instance of Actual Budget.
Getting an industry job rather than a postdoc after I finished my PhD.
Ha, couldn't handle living in poverty for 4-5 more years?
Edit: I'm glad you got out. Chasing the academic dragon is rarely worth it in my opinion.
Making a budget and sticking to it every month. I am able to save 17% of what i make and put it into Monero to avoid it getting eaten by inflation.
Buying bitcoin during COVID. Nearly tripled my investment.
Studying hard on my first year university. My GPA started high so I had a bunch of scholarships and grants. It's easy to maintain a high GPA than to bring a low GPA to a high level. I religiously apply to scholarships and grants also. I paid maybe 1/4 of my tuition fees.
Things to note:
My 4 year bachelor degree in healthcare only cost $25,000-30,000 including books.
The gov't even gives 60% back of tuition paid as tax refund every year until the gov't party changed a few years after I finished.
Also gov't gives out cheap educational loans especially for low income families back then.
Not in US.
Which Country is this ?
It's either my best or my worst: I bought a house with my SO that we got for about half of the value
Changing jobs instead of showing loyalty to employers who couldn’t give two shits when it was time to let me go.
Buying used shit
This is a great move generally. I’ve never bought a new car in my life and I generally buy other expensive stuff used as well. I’ve only ever bought a couple of new guitars for example and I’ve found it’s not worth the upcharge over used.
Boardgames and video games are nice to have new but most of the time the people I buy them from have been super careful with their stuff so you hardly notice it’s been used.
Same thing with clothes. People buy so much shit that they hardly (if ever) wear it before selling it on. I’ve bought Chucks with the tags still on for half of what they’re sold for in retail. Same thing with jeans.
Also it’s generally better for the environment to buy used.
Yeah, I buy like everything exept hard drives and ssds used.
getting accidentally hired and finally making enough.
story: every job I've ever applied for in tech didn't work out. I was a dishwasher until right before covid when someone recommended me for a cybersecurity position. Before that I had obsessed about FIRE or living in a car or being careful about too much starbucks or avocado toast... without making enough for a car or health insurance. That job paid ~half of what cybersecurity should pay, but was AMAZING. My next job paid just a hair under average, three years later. night and day, able to afford to exist without help.
financial advice be damned. I couldn't "find" anywhere with lower rent. I was in the lowest cost of living possible regionally. What needed to change was the PRIMARY job's income rate, not adding some side hustle. Either make rent cheaper or find a higher wage.
I'm not making enough to consider your next fancy moves like getting a house.
In life it's been mostly pure luck, but one of the few things I really recommend is to keep in the loop about rebates, programs and services offered by my federal and provincial government. Stuff like rebates on first time home buying, electric bikes, and energy efficient equipment is nice cause I bet I saved at least 3000$ total.
In recent time tho the biggest one has been getting a bicycle. I got an e-bike but even a regular bike helped me stop paying through the nose for gas when I was just burning it mostly sitting in traffic.
Going all in on the stock option program, even if it was a little risky. I remember the argument: There's no lottery or casino that'll give me odds like these. I also left when we'd grown to the point where middle management didn't want to understand that when the program ran out (4 years) and had to be restarted at the new validation, that was basically a static pay cut for me. I get paid a lot more now, but I still made more from stocks than work last year.
Second, our apartment. It's a lot like a row house, except it's in the city. The other part backs right up to the park.
Third, maxing out parental leave with both of our kids at a company that (as, more or less, a recruiting gimmick) topped up parental leave pay from the capped 80% to, iirc, 100% with no cap. They turned out be quite dumb about this and had shuffled me into a corner when I came back. I was ready to put my back into it, but well, I guess not then.
When you say "restarted at the new validation," what do you mean?
Pretty sure it should be "valuation"
Yeah, that. Typo. It had grown by a factor of 7 or so. So, basically, that part of the pay was cut by 85%
The question stands.
Yes, typo
Having kids made me go back to college and get a better job (pell grant covered cost back then as we were poor as fuck). So that was probably #1. Without kids I would not have bothered so even though they are expensive it's been a net benefit bigger than any other single factor.
Leaving my deadbeat ex is a close second, though. Getting into a more functional relationship with someone who can and does hold down a job.
Budgeting (with YNAB 4).
Getting my spending and saving planned made money a lot more useful. It might seem paradoxical, but having a system of limits ultimately gave me more financial freedom.
Also, changing jobs. Don't be afraid to jump if you've got marketable skills.
Idk if I really made the moves so much as they fell into my lap but I really made out well off of covid.
In 2020 I had 2 goals, start seriously saving for a house, and have a wedding.
I moved into a much smaller apartment that was closer to work in Jan of 2020, we planned to spend the year mostly outside the house anyway.
But with the excess savings from not doing anything, combined with the weddding money, combined with the absolute floor for mortgage rates and a panic dip in the market, and a seller who was in a big hurry to get out of the house that was clearly too small for their large family we could just barely afford a house. Cost us 800k.
For the next 3 years we put all our money into paying down the mortgage. Then this year we sold for 1.2mil and bought a bugger much more suited to our need house for 600k, far away from both our works.
Now when our mortgage renews* in 2 years and we go to a much higher interest rate we will probably keep the same monthly payment, we have big cash for reno, paid off our ev and had the pocket change for a reception.
* in canada the longest you can lock in a rate is 5yrs
Med school
Switching to an IT degree at the last minute, would have been a history teacher otherwise.
Bitcoin.
Moving to Switzerland.
Funny. Mine was moving out of Switzerland 😅
Indeed that is a bit funny, showing how one-size-fits-all really doesn't exist.
Investing at 21 my entire college fund. I wasn't going to use it anyway.
I don't think I could pick just one thing as success is usually a combination of things (including dumb luck).
However, if I had to, I would pick staying positive and never giving up on success.
People always say, "The best financial moves are actually the thoughts we had along the way..."
Buying a home.
Dave Ramsey financial planning/yellow envelope method.
Moving in with my parents, saving, buying real estate and then renting it out.
There are ways of making money without damaging society.
Invested in Tesla
How much have you been able to make? Also, does that mean you've sold it? Do you keep investing in it? Do you try and time it to invest a bit then sell a bit? If you haven't sold any are you just assuming it will never crash or are you waiting for the right moment to sell?
Sorry for all the questions, I just don't get how it works
bluyonder
Just pure luck for me. I wanted to support Elon with his Spacex venture. Spacex is a private corporation so I invested Tesla instead at around $20. It' s worth over ten times that now. So if Elon doesn't screw it up too bad I made some money. I don't trade stock. I'll probably hold on to it until I need the money. It will be there or it won't.
I sunk about 70k into $TSLA in 2020. Sold the brokerage shares to pay off my mortgage and buy a Model X for my family. The stock also grew my kids’ UTMA accounts to pay for about half of college, or perhaps large down payment on their future home.
There were a lot Tesla of haters back in 2020. There are probably more now. But whatever your opinion may be, that company has changed the world for the better. Accelerated the transition to electric transport: just like they said they’d do. I’m excited for the second generation to succeed: Rivian, BYD, and other companies who’re serious about it.
Best financial move I ever made? Latch on to a company that has purpose and a great product, then cash out for the things that matter. I just wish I’d had capital back when Apple launched the iPhone!
(P.S. to all the haters who’re gonna come at me with downvotes: I have more dollars than the number of downvotes you’ll ever be able to dish out! So come at me brah.)
I know you didn't mean to (which is honestly great) but you come off as the perfect caricature of a tesla investor. This could almost be one of those copypastas
I’ve thought about that before. 😂
In all honesty, $TSLA made a lot of people rich 3 to 4 years ago. I’m not the only one.
I honestly don’t care which companies do it, but I’ve always been interested in green investing. When so many governments are pouring money into energy transition, there’s bound to be profit to be made.
Getting lucky isn't a viable plan. Tesla has never been a sound investment. Also, if you wanted to gamble, Bitcoin would have been better. Tesla's like the worst of both worlds.
Piracy
For me that was one of the worst financial moves ever made.
Plex server go brrrrr
How so?
Well, for the amount of money I spend on hard drives and other hardware I could subscribe to Netflix for about 30 years.
How much disk space do you need?
I have a simple 500GD HDD ($25) and a 230GB (?).
I also have $120 worth of DVD and CD for ~$60 thanks to Goodwill
Fits nicely.
My current raw capacity is at 160 TB.
Wild! I've got about 40 TB myself, and have never come across someone with more... let alone four times more.
I'm at 208RB raw, but actually only have 120TB in active use
40 TB was my previous capacity and based around a really cheap 2 bay NAS with a mess of external USB drives attached and no backup ... and is now pretty much full.
So I ordered a 12 bay NAS (with, for now 6x 20TB disks) to bascially replace the entire old setup. I'm also planning to put the new setup in RAID 5 or 6, so it will only have an effective storage of 80-100 TB.
The f do you store on all that space? Raw blu-ray rips?
Just a lot of stuff. TV Shows/Series take up by far the most space. For example, just the Simpsons in 1080p (h264) takes over 500GB.
Do you actually watch all of the stuff you download, or is it more like a digital hoard?
No, that would be literally impossible. The total of playtime of what I downloaded in the last year is over 1 year and 7 months (+5 months if you include music).
So the majority is just ... archiving.
Would Tdarr help?
Don't forget some people run RAID, which means you need duplicates of the HDD. That really adds up.
My only pain is destroying all those VCD/SVCDs and shitload of DVD-Rs full of .avi files.
All garbage when watching from modern high def TVs.
Not having kids.
Get that sweet DINK litestyle
I love the acronym dink. It sounds so insulting but people use it very casually and it's funny hearing people calling each other dinks.
What does it stand for?
Dual income no kids.
DINKWAD
Dual income no kids with a dog
Ty
Double Income No Kids
I'm a fan of dildo which is dual income, little/large dog owners.
Being born into a rich western country.
Yeah, me too. I pat myself on the back for this one nearly every day. Probably the best financial decision I ever made.
There's still many nuances people get wrong all the time. Did you pick financially independent parents?
Fuck! No, I fucked that one up too and accidentally picked a crazy Haight-Ashbury 1967 hippie together with a seriously damaged Vietnam vet, the two of them getting involved in weird cultish shit long before I was born.
It was a poor decision on my part. No one to blame but myself.
Eh, live and learn. Next time!
You need to pull yourself up by your birthstraps.
Underrated answer. Meritocracy is a lie, folks, even within the West. If you do everything perfectly you will climb a little bit, and only on average. All the counterexamples you're thinking of are people who won a lottery of some kind. And of course, birth is also a lottery.
A literal move actually. 20 years ago I moved from America to a country with universal health care. That has saved my family probably close to a quarter million bucks in health care fees alone.
Not to mention the headache. It feels like every time I get treatment I have to argue with my insurance until they eventually cave (assuming it's something they actually cover). I asked my mom if this is how healthcare is really like and she said "yeah it's just the culture, it's normal" acting as it having to beat the fuck out of a metaphorical piñata to pay for life saving treatment is ok or acceptable. Like why the fuck can't you just pay for the treatment that I fucking pay you to cover?
Oh god, I hear ya. A long while back I needed some serious treatment and ended up in a hospital for two weeks. It was the first time I had ever gotten truly sick, so I was dreading the final bill. But when the docs said nah you're good, it's covered, just take your meds and come back in a week for your follow-up, I damn near died a second time :P
Did you move to Vietnam?
Close, it was Japan
I've heard the Japanese have extreme xenophobia these days. How do you survive? Is it hard to make local friends?
Bullshitting my way onto a high salary career track and just learning shit as i go.
I think I surprising amount of people are likely just "faking it". I hope one day we can collectively cut the BS and all admit we don't know what we're doing.
I think the main problem is that requiring and checking if someone can learn a skill you need is a lot harder than just making the skill a requirement for the job right out of the bat.
Determining if someone can actually learn certain things on the job is pretty difficult in an interview setting, it’s way easier to just do a technical interview.
The alternative is probably something like a probationary period where you work with no guarantee of continuing but that’s a massive waste of time for everyone involved and not fair to the candidate.
In my experience, if you go with the candidate that seems the most well rounded, you’ll have the most success. Going with someone that’s a technical genius with no people skills makes it harder to fit them in a spot where they’ll shine - at least in a smaller company
The first paragraph was easy for my previous employer. At the start of the interview, my interviewer pointed out the wallpaper of his brand new grandson. During the interview he noticed that I kept looking at his monitor. When he asked why I was doing that I asked why he had it on the lowest resolution. We switched places and I changed the resolution. The wallpaper disappeared and my heart felt like it had stopped.
Thinking quickly, I said that if the picture was on the hard drive that it would have reloaded and it obviously hadn't been downloaded so it must have been in an email. He smiled and said that I was right and I spent the rest of the interview in his chair and I got a call that day asking if I could come in that day.
I think it's fair considering companies want 4 plus years for an entry position.
I honestly can’t deal with all the theatrics of securing a job (interview and first months/year included). This was a setback at first since when people asked me stuff I didn’t know I’d just say “I don’t know” or at most “I heard this and that but never worked with it”.
Thankfully I ended up at a place that appreciated that frankness and that gives me room (and incentive) to learn new stuff. Every year so far I end up in a new project with different technologies to use and learn. My ADHD brain is extremely satisfied.
I would love to hear your story if you're willing to share.
Briefly: phd at Super Prestigious Institution. Fuck it, left science because didn’t want to languish making like $50K/year as a postdoc for like 6-8 years, with no guaranteed path forward. Pivoted toward money & people management. At every step up the ladder, I didn’t know shit. So what? I figured it out. Not that hard. Real talk: I benefitted substantially from elitism. I’m mid forties, salary about $220K, should hit $250K/year in the next 2-5 years.
Thanks for sharing.
Most of the things mentioned in this thread are mostly dumb luck and not necessarily active financial decisions.
Kind of the point. A lot of financial "success" is nothing but dumb luck.
Yeah, half of these comments are just: I bought a house.
If there was an active financial decision you could make and reliably get rich, everyone would do it.
Not necessarily rich, but there are active financial decisions you can make that will set you on the path to longterm prosperity. Buying a house at what happened to be exactly the right time and making a $100,000 in 3 years in the process is not one of them. That's just dumb luck.
I mean, "consistently save in a diversified portfolio" would be a pretty boring answer, but it would be an answer I guess. I'm not sure what the equivalent for the poor would be; stay away from substances, maybe?
I even specifically said as much in my comment.
damned Reddit immigrants
Now, if I had to choose the best financial move out of that list? Probably the index funds. Though not having to pay for a car (or car insurance, or car registration, or car repair and maintenance, or parking, or fuel) is a close second.
I'm contemplating moving even further towards the lifestyle you have but I struggle with balancing "live for today" vs "live for tomorrow". In some ways I think we live too much for today, we rarely wait more than a month or two with buying whatever we feel we "need". We go on vacation abroad every other year at least and do activities monthly that most other families in our neighborhood do maybe yearly or quarterly. Partly because we have much higher income than our neighbors but we could of course save more and if we really buckled down we could likely by financially independent in less than 20 years.
How do you balance and how do you think regarding these matters, what's your philosophy?
I've never felt I'm not living for today. Admittedly, most of what I want to do is consume a variety of media within the comfort of my home. But we also travel abroad every other year or so, and that's probably the biggest 'entertainment' expense in our lives. If we need a car to visit someone or somewhere outside the range of public transit or biking, we just rent one for the weekend (probably happens about once a year). We don't have to hesitate before choosing to do that because we know we're living well within our means the rest of the time.
The thing is, once you're in the habit of doing this stuff, it doesn't feel like an imposition. It's just the way your life works. It was actually a bit of a struggle to remember all of those points when I was writing up that list yesterday, because it's all just natural to me now. There are probably a few more things we do along these lines that haven't occurred to me.
And at that point, the savings are just a natural choice for what to do with all the surplus money. It's not even 'living for tomorrow.' It ceases to be an either/or situation. It's living for today in such a way that you can continue to live for today throughout your entire life.
Also, there are a huge number of non-financial benefits on offer here, too: walking and biking at times you'd otherwise be driving is excellent for your health; planning meals allows you to choose healthier options, cut down on red meat consumption, etc; meal planning, buying second-hand goods, and not driving reduces dependency on online mega-retailers, international sweatshop labor, and environmentally harmful practices; making use of the library system indirectly supports its continued existence for folks who have no other options; and on and on.
Anyway, I wouldn't recommend trying to do all of this at once if it's all a change for you. I'd recommend slowly introducing each of these practices over time so you have time to get used to each in isolation.
In 2017 my landlord raised my rent from $1k to $1100 a month for the place I rented with my daughter because I finally broke down and got her a dog. I was annoyed because this wasn't in the lease but I was month to month by this time and figured I could probably get a house around me for the same cost and at least I'd be building equity. I closed in 2018 on a $120k fixer upper on 12 acres. I got a $30k rehab loan and my mortgage/insurance/property tax payment ended up being just over $1100. I spent 7 months in major renovations.
Fast forward to today, I have a 2.875% mortgage rate with just over $1000 a month all in payment (early COVID refi saved me about $100/month), my house was just appraised for $415k, and I was able to sell 5 acres of the land for a total of about $160k.
A free shelter dog ended up turning $150k into $575k. 10/10 would recommend.
I was gonna say buying a house too. Mortgage payments are 1/3 what my rent was, and rents have doubled since then.
I'm in the process of buying right now, and my mortgage is similar to my high rent and the overall cost of ownership is higher, but it'll be worth it just to get off of the uncertainty of ever increasing rent. At this point it feels like now or never with how batshit insane the housing market has become.
Life changing circumstances, but big props on you for having the confidence to go through with it! Life presented you with the opportunity and you seized it!
This is wholesome sorry. I am happy for you both anons and that you have doggo a great loving home <3
Leaving Sydney for a cheaper quieter life in Central West NSW!
Nice 4 bedroom home with views, 1200m² block with trees, quiet area, school almost across the road, close to everything else and best of all, a tiny manageable mortgage!
Yes! Particularly if your job is industrial, get a house somewhere else, but not on the city. Try to find a place with good public transport to the city, tho. Cities will be slowly quitting car infrastructure.
Industrial? There a hundreds of everyday jobs that pay the same no matter where you live in Australia.
And I didn't leave Sydney to spend 4hrs on a train.
Learning about long term index fund investing in my early 20s.
Are there any resources you'd like to recommend?
Bogleheads Guide to Investing - First Edition PDF
Book Summary on Bogleheads Wiki
Bogleheads Wiki
This is somewhat of a speed run of the book.
The Bogleheads philosophy is basically to buy everything with a 2 or 3 fund portfolio.
The linked documents will explain those in more detail, but the concept is to buy everything so you always have bought the biggest winners, not to bet on a handful that will all lose or win, but at bigger expense to you.
They'll tell you how much to buy of each and what type of account to keep it in to max tax effectiveness.
It's not complicated once you read the source, and anyone should be able to understand it, it's not written to be cryptic or to sell you something. You can put your money anywhere you choose and it works the same.
I've followed it for about 15 years or so and have been very happy. There's no checking on stock news or any of that BS, you just develop a plan you're comfortable with, and then stick to it. The more hands off you are, the better honestly.
Wow, thank you!
Of course! The hardest part is usually just getting started, so there's no need to overcomplicate.
For those also saying "well look at this rich person with money to invest over here," you can also read this stuff and be a step or two ahead when you do get to invest, because one of the first things it explains is prioritizing where to put money. Fill up one level before moving on to the next, but by reading ahead, you know what to do when you get there so you are prepared.
Money for us non-uber rich folk works best with time, so the sooner you get in the game, the more success you should have overall. They call this "getting rich slowly" which doesn't sound exciting, but that's the point. Most people don't want to be on an emotional roller coaster with their money, they'd rather be on a lazy river ride that gets then where they want to be.
Bogleheads is great. There's also a book called "common sense on mutual funds"
Thanks
The nice thing is that, physically it’s the easiest thing in the world. The only complicated part is not trying to game it or convince yourself that you need more than the 2 or 3 fund portfolio.
Just buy a Total market index fund, some sort of bond fund and maybe some total market international stock fund
This is primarily a sailing channel but Clark has a series of finance videos that are excellent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XK5ocXPhTg
Thank you
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=9XK5ocXPhTg
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
As 2023 was beginning I set a goal that I would have $5k in the bank no matter what.
Up to this year I’ve been living paycheck to paycheck. But resolving to save up $5k pushed me out of that for the first time ever.
I never did hit $5k. But I stopped living paycheck to paycheck. I haven’t checked my balance before paying rent since february of last year. I always have enough, and I just pay the bill.
The amount of stress that immediately goes away when you are able to stop the paycheck to paycheck cycle is priceless. Nice work!
It also helps that I’ve got a little financial system going.
I get paid every two weeks. My rent is about 1200. Each paycheck is about 1200 - 1400. Paid every two weeks. Each paycheck, 1000 goes into my “bills” account, and the remainder into my “spending” account. So each paycheck I get about $300 for groceries, coffee, entertainment, whatever.
All the bills are on auto-pay to draw from that bills account, and the 1000 per paycheck is enough to cover all my bills plus save some. So my savings is accumulating in the bills account.
I also got myself a credit card for the first time in twenty years, and now my phone bill’s being auto-paid from that, with the CC being auto-paid from the bills account.
That structure helps too. But I wouldn’t have been able to start it without a lump of cash on hand
Mined a Bitcoin in college.
Pretty much the same. Bought some Bitcoin in high school in the early 10's. It was just a novelty and I was a kid, so I didn't buy much, but if someone was kidnapped or something it would be worth it to go through my old drives.
BTC recently got approved to be traded as an ETF by the SEC, so now's a good time to find that drive cause the price is only going to go up over the next 5+ years.
Yeah, I'm not going to get rid of any. I was doing everything on thumb drives at the time, though, so it would be a bitch to actually try and find the exact one I used.
Of course, the value of the things will go to 0 whenever Q-day happens, and hopefully sooner when people realise it's a badly designed cryptocurrency. Maybe I should dig the old wallet up just to move things to an alt coin.
My buddy traded his for rent
Deciding not to get a car; it saves ~400.000 euros in my lifetime which at 40k net a year income means 8-10 year earlier pension
Ahh, European public transportation. Not an option in the US unless you live in NYC and rarely leave the city.
I'm so jealous. My work is only a mile away, which in a perfect world I could walk in 10 mins, but because of many slow crosswalks and busy intersections it's like 30 mins freezing my balls off. Plus there's a section of road that's 40mph (64kmh) with no sidewalk, and a bridge that forces pedestrians onto the high speed road. It's both slow and basically suicide if I tried to make a habit of walking.
There's another route but the intersection I would need to cross is excruciatingly slow. I had to sit for 15 minutes before I could cross. Plus it's another 40mph road and if someone runs a red I basically die.
Damn if I hear this I am so glad to live in the Netherlands. Infrastructure here is designed such that everybody takes a bike or walk if within a few miles, on safe roads
It's unfortunate that much of the US is stuck in a feedback loop of people saying "walking sucks, I'll drive", roads and driving infrastructure are improved at the cost of pedestrian infrastructure, more people say "walking sucks", and repeat. Eventually you get like 12 lane highways at the cost of many sidewalks, bike lanes and tram/train lines being bulldozed.
Eventually everybody has to drive because pedestrians have been squeezed out of the equation. It saddens me that people don't realize how nice walking could be, because they have only experienced poor pedestrian infrastructure. Even people like me who would love to walk have to choose driving or a death wish.
That being said it is slowly improving, many towns near me are implementing bike lanes, and more side walks. Unfortunately the bike lanes are the "safety paint" variety but it's at least something. As mentioned before my little town is renovating town square and it's a lot more walkable. Unfortunately not that helpful for me because the town square is only like 600 feet in size (200 metres) in size, but again, it's something.
I would love to visit Amsterdam just to walk my little butt off haha
40mph is 64kmph not 93kmph but yeah that’s still uncomfortable to bike besides if it’s busy. I’d say instead of posting it here, send a letter to your local government.
My bad, I have changed it now. Thankfully my town is already working on it, I'm just waiting for the pedestrian infrastructure to spread beyond the town square.
I keep meaning to look at exactly what my small car costs per year.
Last estimate was £1000 a year on fuel, parts, and maintenance.
Which is equivalent to 50+ hours of car club use.
For now, I have too many "shit, I need to get this large/heavy object 5 miles away" moments to make it worth it.
But long term, I kinda like the idea of not having to worry about the car.
Insurance and depreciation are the bigger costs I think, but even ignoring those; if you have “heavy objects” less than once a week it would probably still be cheaper to just rent a van when you need it. Convenience might be an argument but yeah that’s what you pay the big bucks for.
That figure actually includes depreciation and insurance! In fact, almost half of it is just the bloody insurance... Though I should possibly make an allowance in the figure for future repair work, as it's an older car.
I think once my big project (and associated last second trips to the builder's merchant) is finished, I'll have a go at living without the car.
My housemates may not be too happy about the private taxi service shutting down though!
Average car insurance cost in London is 1200-1600, surely yours isn’t less than half that?
That's the benefit of not-london and a small car: It's under £500!
Not buying a boat
Working with my SO to start budgeting each month. We now have a system in place that works for us and a habit of getting out in front of expenses.
Budgeting helped us see that increasing your income is far more powerful than reducing spending, so we’re focused on spending to gain skills and increase our top line right now.
Choosing to be child-free.
Same here! Spent about $100 for my vasectomy after insurance. Best $100 I ever spent really, saved me hundreds of thousands.
Accidentally buying a modest house in what at the time was a "distressed" neighborhood because it was all we could afford. 15 years later the neighborhood has been gentrified and is highly desirable. The property has tripled in value and the land is now worth more than the house itself.
Anyhow, it was dumb luck on my part and again, mostly had to do with the place being affordable and relatively close to my wife's parents.
This is usually the case. When the value goes up, pretty much all of the increase is due to the land value increasing. Land is a limited resource that's always in demand, especially in desirable areas. The house itself is actually going down in value over time due to depreciation.
In my area it's not uncommon for at least 70% of the value of a property to be in the land, and the house itself accounts for less than 30% of the value. There's a lot of houses built in the 1940s to 70s in highly desirable areas.
I've never thought about it like that, but it makes good sense.
I decided to basically stop buying anything unless I absolutely needed it for about two years. I put everything I had towards paying off my car and student loans. I had holey socks and shirts, torn up shoes, etc. Refused to spend money.
As a result, I was able to invest the money I was paying on my car and loans and eventually worked enough for a down payment on my current house.
God bless those clothes.
Haha, thanks for catching that.
Paying off my fucking car. New cars are a scam guys, don't be stupid like me 6 years ago.
Doesn't have to be if u keep it long enough. The problem is folks usually get upselled long before it sarts being a good deal.
It was accidental.
So I started working at a startup right after I graduated college. They couldn't pay a competitive wage, so they gave me a ton of stock. A year into working there, about half the company was laid off. I survived. They begged us not to leave the company by giving us more stock. I started interviewing elsewhere, because I have bills to pay, but I never got any other jobs. Then one day they handed me an envelope. It contained paperwork for even more stock. I thought it wasn't going to be worth the paper it was printed on, so I kept looking for other jobs. Never found one.
Well, a few years go by and the company starts doing very well. Then we got bought out. Suddenly all the worthless stock they gave me was worth a fuck ton of money. The buying company bought ALL of it. Even unvested shares. One day they wrote me a really, really big check, then I went and bought a house.
It was absolutely life changing, and I tried to throw it away at every chance I got. I got so lucky.
Never buying into the crypto hype when several of my friends and coworkers told me to. (Maybe I would’ve made money, but probably not.)
Buying crypto is pretty much akin to buying a scratch off ticket. You might get lucky, you might not. Depends wholly on timing and aforementioned luck.
When you scratch the ticket, you get the result. But with bitcoin if you didnt sell it, chance is a few years later it got higher again.
It is still total gambling, but not like scratch tickets.
I'm in the States so dunno how this translates... But my parents made get a 500usd limit credit card when I was like 14. It had been the best decision that I've made. My credit is so dn good now that I can get what ever I want easily approved. That and they insisted I make a home purchase at like 23- right be fore the mortgages went nuts. My mortgage is like a quarter of what others pay for a rental...
Thanks ma and pa 🤜🤛
By dumb luck I bought a house right before the housing market lost its goddamned mind.
$145K for a 3 bedroom on an acre of land. It’s more than doubled in value since I bought it, and I pay less than $1000/mo at 2.9% interest.
I keep getting letters from my mortgage company offering me $80K in a cash-out refinance at like double to triple my current interest rate and I’m like “how about blow me?” I’m riding that interest rate until the wheels fall off.
Buying a house during covid when I saw rent was increasing drastically for no apparent reason. I could barely afford it at the time but thanks to inflation and a couple raises, I'm comfortably sitting on a house that's now worth 50% more than I bought it for, and paying way less than current rental prices. Rent is insane right now.
Move abroad, halve my taxes, triple my income, reduce my cost of living by nearly 80%, effectively increased my savings rate by ~1100%, from 500 EUR/month to now >5k EUR/month. That's 5k in fixed savings (investment plan), plus whatever else I don't spend accumulates in my savings account.
I'm curious where'd you moved
All over the world. Germany -> Luxembourg -> Norway -> Liberia -> Tanzania -> Kenya -> Nigeria -> Madagascar -> China; and next month to Malaysia.
Luxembourg was great for starting to build some wealth thanks to the super low taxes, Norway was to improve my career opportunities, and in Africa I really started to make bank since those contracts included living & "hardship" allowances that are untaxed, I invested most of that and also used it to fund an executive MBA.
To China I already came with 15+ years work experience and entered on c-level with a great salary package; and there are no taxes on foreign income here, including foreign capital gains.
Malaysia is a stopover for a few years also for tax purposes, they have no capital gains either and the company I work for is registered in Hong Kong, which in China would be considered onshore and thereby taxable. So in Malaysia I can sell my share package for free after 2 years of residency.
Also much nicer climate and friendlier people than in China.
Thanks for the detailed reply! Definitely an interesting journey, and I glad to hear it's financially good. Good luck.
I wish I was smart enough to be accepted by another country. I was looking up that French legion army the other day haha.
I guess European citizenship really helped initially. But for most lesser developed countries it's often sufficient to have special skills that are in demand there. And I'm not talking about academia; there's also demand for construction skills, meat processing and other stuff out there.
Two of the most successful people I've met during my years on the roll were a German butcher who is now running a sausage empire in Asia, and a Swedish carpenter who is now working as general manager for an NGO in Kenya, building schools all over Africa. Neither of them are university graduates.
In fact most graduates I meet are middle to upper level manager who've been sent by their respective companies to work abroad, which absolutely means they have a decent income, but they all run into a glass ceiling at some point. And many struggled hard to readjust when they were eventually called home; whereas the more entrepreneurial types just carved a niche for themselves.
Securing a long-term fixed rate mortgage just before the war in Russia. Other than that it’s basically been any time I saved money rather than spending it.
Nitpicky but where in russia is a war going on? You mean the russian attack on ukraine right?
Starting investing into index fund ETFs
I only started about 3 years ago but even if I stopped putting in more money right now it would still keep paying me interests around 2000 to 3000€ each year for the rest of my life and it's 100% passive income. In my case it's all invested back into the funds though.
The second best move was starting to track my finances. It's almost impossible to not change your spending habits once you actually see where all the money is going. Almost anyone can cut atleast 100€ a month from their grocery bills by just being a little more mindfull about what you buy. That's 1200€/year or 12k€/10 years.
Yeah no. I spent about 150€/month on groceries before, now after the inflations about 180€/month. The only way to safe 100€/month there would be to skip meals.
From what you write you seem to be in the top 1-10% of people by income, and the numbers you put out only work for people in the same priviledged situation.
I said almost anyone for a reason. Just because general advice doesn't apply to you specifically, doesn't mean it doesn't apply to the average person then either.
Average monthly cost of groceries in my country in 2020:
Vasectomy like 10 years ago. Kids are expensive.
Don't fall for trends. Save instead, and spend on true passions.
What if your passions/passionate-spendings START all the trends?
For the first few years of my career after college which has a pretty generous 401k company matching scheme I put the maximum amount possible into my retirement accounts and lived well within my means to build up a nest egg. Now that I am married I have dialed back my investments so we can afford to live a little bit nicer with the knowledge that we have a really great start in our retirement accounts.
My wife and I moved in together two years before getting married. This made living substantially cheaper for both of us and made us positive that we wanted to live together and could tolerate each other prior to tying the knot :).
I got a vasectomy mid-last year. My wife and I both agreed long before marriage that we only want to adopt. Adoption is obviously very expensive, but now we have the peace of mind of knowing we have full control over when we start to invest in that process to expand our family. No "accidents" can happen which is very liberating.
I have a similar story as your first point. It boils down to tucking away money with each financial gain. I put in enough to my 401k to get the full match, then with each raise, increase the amount invested by the raise. I'd already learned to spend within my limits and had no credit card debt, so each raise was "new money". Years later, after adjusting our financials to pay for daycare, when the daycare expenses dropped (infants are most expensive, costs drop down as they age), we started putting into a college savings and some for school expenses. We had saved up enough to pay for private school, which was less than daycare. Now that private school is done, college is paid for, we're paying down the mortgages. We locked in at 3% years ago. The house will be paid off when the kid graduates HS and we turn 55 and are eligible for the employer's retirement program, including health care. We plan to travel in those years where we're young enough to be healthy and old enough to have some money tucked away.
Oh, we also did the same for cars. When the car was paid off, we'd put the same money into a separate bank account and when it was tome to look for a new car, we had almost enough to pay for it outright.
Of course all of this can only happen when you have the skill to spend with your means.
I bought gas before it went up $0.30/gal
Fuck it, I'll add to all the silly replies too.
I bought a brand new car in 2015 before new/used cars became more expensive (and all the shitty smart features were added).
Buying $109 worth of Bitcoin back in 2014. I was going to buy a year cloud mining contract, but the company (hashop) went out of business before I could. (I dodged a bullet there) I then proceeded to spend bits of it here and there (coincidentally, my second worst financial move) until I had about $70 worth left, which I put in a paper wallet and forgot about. In 2020, I was able to sell most of the Bitcoin, and bought a vehicle, which helped me get through college and made me more eligible when I met the girl who would become my wife. All this to say, I made some dumb decisions that just happened to turn out well for me. YMMV
Staying unemployed to get free healthcare.
It makes sense the way the system works. For housing and insurance. You go from poor with government housing and insurance and then when you get out of mud you go back to being homeless and not having insurance.
Like it doesn't make sense for me to look for a job with better pay because if I get better pay I will lose out on the help. I wouldnt be able to afford anything. The pay increase I could get wouldn't be enough to live off at the prices of non subsidized housing and insurance.
There's not really incentive for success.
I got kicked off Medicaid for making like 50¢ over their limit iirc. The pay raise set me back.
Not your fault. Should be free for everyone, then your work income would just be icing on top
Big brain move.
Leech
Remember luck is just the intersection of preparation and opportunity.
Saving 60% of my take-home pay was the smartest financial decision I ever made. Difficult to execute, but very rewarding long-term in the behaviors I developed.
Was saving 60% of my income the most impactful financial decision I ever made? No, I had some luck in other areas. But this level of self-discipline helped me develop the skills to handle good luck later
How in the actual hell do you save 60% of your take home? Do you have an exceptionally well paying job? Single and living a ramen noodles and tent lifestyle? Would love to hear more because I can't even fathom how an average person could achieve this level of saving. I struggle with saving just 20% after all the bills are paid, and I consider myself frugal. Sure I have a Netflix subscription, but I don't go on vacations or carry a car note, my wardrobe is fruit of the loom package teeshirts and simple jeans, my PC is from 2016... What's your secret?
Living at home (free rent)
Eating only at work (free food), no fridge at home.
No car (public transit pass)
The percentage isn't the important thing, its developing the attitude that you can happily live below your means. FWIW it was 60% post-tax, not pre-tax
At some point it becomes a game, how little can you get by with.
Fair enough, cutting out housing and food expenses would definitely go a long way, that's easily the majority of my personal post-tax costs.
I'm glad those opportunities were available for you to get on your feet and built a cushion. My parents booted me out with 70k in student debt, though it's been a decade and I've dug myself out of it and built a life, it still feels like there's no escaping the treadmill.
It wasn't huge in terms of actual numbers, but it still feels like my biggest win. I bought my first car for like $750. It needed some work, but I fixed it up. Before long, I crashed it. It was totalled. But, it was a 1973 Dodge Charger. I started pulling parts off of it and selling them on this new thing called eBay, and by the time I ran out of parts, I had made more than twice what I bought the car for.
Buying a 3K€ coin which turned out to be worth 5K€ + Putting a few hundred in bitcoin in 2019.
Neither of which will make me rich or even well off, and in fact both are actually completely wild guesses (=gambling). So I can't in good conscience recommend this as a strategy.
Buying a house. Got lucky and bought before the pandemic, and even then just barely scraped together a downpayment by borrowing from inlaws.
It's crazy how having a mortgage have us access to so much cheap credit. We were able to pay off all consumer debt and even most of our student loan debt. Even with all our debt bundled in the mortgage we're still paying far less than we would to rent an apartment.
It's nuts
Vasectomy BEFORE kids
That's not how it works. At least not if the vasectomy is done correctly.
Having mine in a few weeks. Wish me luck!
Good luck with your kids!
Plan on sitting and doing nothing for 3-4 days! Especially that first day.
It’s allll luck. I have multiple friends who felt absolutely nothing after the procedure! Just like something was “off” for a little while. No pain at all!
Hopefully the person we’re responding to has the same experience.
Selling my home, car, boat and living a simple RV life without kids. Forget the financials, the lack of stress has made it so very worth it!
What happened to your kids?
He sold them.
On the downside, sad to see the kids go, but on the upside, you get a free pair of Nikes every month.
Bought a house in 2012. It's now worth almost 3x what I paid for it then. So wildly unfair.
Bought mine in 2017. Mine is double. It makes zero sense
Getting a master's in electroacoustic music. Everyone told me I was going to stay poor forever, I decided to still do what I really wanted and it's going pretty well.
print("Hello World")
>>> print "hello World"
File "", line 1
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
(The one without the parentheses is older Python 2, the example with is newer Python 3)
What's the work-life balance like where you work?
Living like a pauper for a few years and paying the mortgage off early.
Also not joining the rat race, and buying new shiny shit for the sake of it.
I still don't 100% get the mentality here. Otherwise intelligent people will sink huge money into luxury shit; it doesn't seem to bother them at all if you point out that someone else made up the whole concept of diamonds or whatever to get their money.
Started a small mutual fund and retirement fund when I was just starting out and still in undergrad. I did not have much and was fully self sufficient. But someone came to my job and showed us how retirement plans worked and convinced me to start one. Same with a mutual fund. I never put more than $20-$40 in each because I didn’t have much but boy did that pay off.
I purchased a small condo in the city with some of the money I put away in #1. Just sold it recently (20 years after purchasing it; lived in it for 5 years, rented it out for a profit for 15 years). I made a lot of money off that sale. More money than I’ve ever seen at once.
My spouse and I have always lived below our means. Now we’re not frugal - we go out for nice dinners, travel, have kids. We also have good jobs. But, when we purchased a house we could have afforded to get one that was $600k and instead opted for a smaller townhome in a nice neighborhood for almost half the price. Living this way has paid off more than I could have ever imagined. Both of us don’t have to work. We travel whenever we want. We could technically both stop working in our 40s/50s and probably be fine. It’s a feeling of freedom. We’ve never over-extended ourselves. When our colleagues and friends were buying expensive homes and expensive cars and extending themselves, we just didn’t do that.
Getting out of renting and locking in a 30 year fixed interest rate of 3.25%.
My monthly housing payment is no longer going up every year.
My old apartment is already $300 a month more than I'm paying on my mortgage. It was only $200 a month less when I bought the house.
Buying property was definitely the one for me. It's a huge hurdle to get into, years of planning and prepping, but I've never felt more financially stable or secure as after buying property.
Now I gotta go fix that stupid thing in the kitchen...
2 Studying
Using a budget manager (YNAB)
I’m really bad with saving money and even having enough ready for regular bills on my own. I was always on zero before the end of the month and struggled hard when there was something unexpected. Now everything is planned ahead, I have some savings and yearly expenses are just ready to pay when needed.
It needs some time to adjust to it and I had to restructure my categories a few times until it worked for me (still not perfect).
Though I don’t feel like I’m getting my money’s worth anymore from YNAB. It keeps getting more expensive, the updates are slow and it seems very US focused. If I ever find the motivation, I want to build something on my own (I’m a web developer from Europe who’s getting a bit tired of web developing)
I tried YNAB once. Wasn't thrilled about the price as well. Now I'm looking at selfhosting an instance of Actual Budget.
Think I will try it out, thanks!
!actualbudget@feddit.de
Not buying that over priced concert ticket for $200.. oh wait. I did that.
Getting an industry job rather than a postdoc after I finished my PhD.
Ha, couldn't handle living in poverty for 4-5 more years?
Edit: I'm glad you got out. Chasing the academic dragon is rarely worth it in my opinion.
Making a budget and sticking to it every month. I am able to save 17% of what i make and put it into Monero to avoid it getting eaten by inflation.
Buying bitcoin during COVID. Nearly tripled my investment.
Studying hard on my first year university. My GPA started high so I had a bunch of scholarships and grants. It's easy to maintain a high GPA than to bring a low GPA to a high level. I religiously apply to scholarships and grants also. I paid maybe 1/4 of my tuition fees.
Things to note:
Which Country is this ?
It's either my best or my worst: I bought a house with my SO that we got for about half of the value
Changing jobs instead of showing loyalty to employers who couldn’t give two shits when it was time to let me go.
Buying used shit
This is a great move generally. I’ve never bought a new car in my life and I generally buy other expensive stuff used as well. I’ve only ever bought a couple of new guitars for example and I’ve found it’s not worth the upcharge over used.
Boardgames and video games are nice to have new but most of the time the people I buy them from have been super careful with their stuff so you hardly notice it’s been used.
Same thing with clothes. People buy so much shit that they hardly (if ever) wear it before selling it on. I’ve bought Chucks with the tags still on for half of what they’re sold for in retail. Same thing with jeans.
Also it’s generally better for the environment to buy used.
Yeah, I buy like everything exept hard drives and ssds used.
getting accidentally hired and finally making enough.
story: every job I've ever applied for in tech didn't work out. I was a dishwasher until right before covid when someone recommended me for a cybersecurity position. Before that I had obsessed about FIRE or living in a car or being careful about too much starbucks or avocado toast... without making enough for a car or health insurance. That job paid ~half of what cybersecurity should pay, but was AMAZING. My next job paid just a hair under average, three years later. night and day, able to afford to exist without help.
financial advice be damned. I couldn't "find" anywhere with lower rent. I was in the lowest cost of living possible regionally. What needed to change was the PRIMARY job's income rate, not adding some side hustle. Either make rent cheaper or find a higher wage.
I'm not making enough to consider your next fancy moves like getting a house.
In life it's been mostly pure luck, but one of the few things I really recommend is to keep in the loop about rebates, programs and services offered by my federal and provincial government. Stuff like rebates on first time home buying, electric bikes, and energy efficient equipment is nice cause I bet I saved at least 3000$ total.
In recent time tho the biggest one has been getting a bicycle. I got an e-bike but even a regular bike helped me stop paying through the nose for gas when I was just burning it mostly sitting in traffic.
Going all in on the stock option program, even if it was a little risky. I remember the argument: There's no lottery or casino that'll give me odds like these. I also left when we'd grown to the point where middle management didn't want to understand that when the program ran out (4 years) and had to be restarted at the new validation, that was basically a static pay cut for me. I get paid a lot more now, but I still made more from stocks than work last year.
Second, our apartment. It's a lot like a row house, except it's in the city. The other part backs right up to the park.
Third, maxing out parental leave with both of our kids at a company that (as, more or less, a recruiting gimmick) topped up parental leave pay from the capped 80% to, iirc, 100% with no cap. They turned out be quite dumb about this and had shuffled me into a corner when I came back. I was ready to put my back into it, but well, I guess not then.
When you say "restarted at the new validation," what do you mean?
Pretty sure it should be "valuation"
Yeah, that. Typo. It had grown by a factor of 7 or so. So, basically, that part of the pay was cut by 85%
The question stands.
Yes, typo
Having kids made me go back to college and get a better job (pell grant covered cost back then as we were poor as fuck). So that was probably #1. Without kids I would not have bothered so even though they are expensive it's been a net benefit bigger than any other single factor.
Leaving my deadbeat ex is a close second, though. Getting into a more functional relationship with someone who can and does hold down a job.
Budgeting (with YNAB 4).
Getting my spending and saving planned made money a lot more useful. It might seem paradoxical, but having a system of limits ultimately gave me more financial freedom.
Also, changing jobs. Don't be afraid to jump if you've got marketable skills.
Idk if I really made the moves so much as they fell into my lap but I really made out well off of covid.
In 2020 I had 2 goals, start seriously saving for a house, and have a wedding.
I moved into a much smaller apartment that was closer to work in Jan of 2020, we planned to spend the year mostly outside the house anyway.
But with the excess savings from not doing anything, combined with the weddding money, combined with the absolute floor for mortgage rates and a panic dip in the market, and a seller who was in a big hurry to get out of the house that was clearly too small for their large family we could just barely afford a house. Cost us 800k.
For the next 3 years we put all our money into paying down the mortgage. Then this year we sold for 1.2mil and bought a bugger much more suited to our need house for 600k, far away from both our works.
Now when our mortgage renews* in 2 years and we go to a much higher interest rate we will probably keep the same monthly payment, we have big cash for reno, paid off our ev and had the pocket change for a reception.
* in canada the longest you can lock in a rate is 5yrs
Med school
Switching to an IT degree at the last minute, would have been a history teacher otherwise.
Bitcoin.
Moving to Switzerland.
Funny. Mine was moving out of Switzerland 😅
Indeed that is a bit funny, showing how one-size-fits-all really doesn't exist.
Investing at 21 my entire college fund. I wasn't going to use it anyway.
I don't think I could pick just one thing as success is usually a combination of things (including dumb luck).
However, if I had to, I would pick staying positive and never giving up on success.
People always say, "The best financial moves are actually the thoughts we had along the way..."
Buying a home.
Dave Ramsey financial planning/yellow envelope method.
Moving in with my parents, saving, buying real estate and then renting it out.
There are ways of making money without damaging society.
Invested in Tesla
How much have you been able to make? Also, does that mean you've sold it? Do you keep investing in it? Do you try and time it to invest a bit then sell a bit? If you haven't sold any are you just assuming it will never crash or are you waiting for the right moment to sell?
Sorry for all the questions, I just don't get how it works
Just pure luck for me. I wanted to support Elon with his Spacex venture. Spacex is a private corporation so I invested Tesla instead at around $20. It' s worth over ten times that now. So if Elon doesn't screw it up too bad I made some money. I don't trade stock. I'll probably hold on to it until I need the money. It will be there or it won't.
I sunk about 70k into $TSLA in 2020. Sold the brokerage shares to pay off my mortgage and buy a Model X for my family. The stock also grew my kids’ UTMA accounts to pay for about half of college, or perhaps large down payment on their future home.
There were a lot Tesla of haters back in 2020. There are probably more now. But whatever your opinion may be, that company has changed the world for the better. Accelerated the transition to electric transport: just like they said they’d do. I’m excited for the second generation to succeed: Rivian, BYD, and other companies who’re serious about it.
Best financial move I ever made? Latch on to a company that has purpose and a great product, then cash out for the things that matter. I just wish I’d had capital back when Apple launched the iPhone!
(P.S. to all the haters who’re gonna come at me with downvotes: I have more dollars than the number of downvotes you’ll ever be able to dish out! So come at me brah.)
I know you didn't mean to (which is honestly great) but you come off as the perfect caricature of a tesla investor. This could almost be one of those copypastas
I’ve thought about that before. 😂
In all honesty, $TSLA made a lot of people rich 3 to 4 years ago. I’m not the only one.
I honestly don’t care which companies do it, but I’ve always been interested in green investing. When so many governments are pouring money into energy transition, there’s bound to be profit to be made.
Getting lucky isn't a viable plan. Tesla has never been a sound investment. Also, if you wanted to gamble, Bitcoin would have been better. Tesla's like the worst of both worlds.