Piracy
Being born into a rich western country.
Not having kids.
Bullshitting my way onto a high salary career track and just learning shit as i go.
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.
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Learning about long term index fund investing in my early 20s.
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.
My buddy traded his for rent
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.
Not buying a boat
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
