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.
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Yeah, half of these comments are just: I bought a house.
Staying unemployed to get free healthcare.
Not your fault. Should be free for everyone, then your work income would just be icing on top
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.
Big brain move.
Piracy
Don’t fall for trends. Save instead, and spend on true passions.
What if your passions/passionate-spendings START all the trends?
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 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.
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.
Not buying a boat
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.
Learning about long term index fund investing in my early 20s.
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).
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.
Being born into a rich western country.
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.
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
