- EdibleSource ( @EdibleSource@lemmy.ml ) 60•8 months ago
Being born into a rich western country.
- TheSanSabaSongbird ( @TheSanSabaSongbird@lemdro.id ) English15•8 months ago
Yeah, me too. I pat myself on the back for this one nearly every day. Probably the best financial decision I ever made.
- CanadaPlus ( @CanadaPlus@futurology.today ) English6•8 months ago
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.
- mrbubblesort ( @mrbubblesort@kbin.social ) 49•8 months ago
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.
- SurpriZe ( @SurpriZe@lemm.ee ) 1•8 months ago
Did you move to Vietnam?
- mrbubblesort ( @mrbubblesort@kbin.social ) 1•8 months ago
Close, it was Japan
- SurpriZe ( @SurpriZe@lemm.ee ) 1•8 months ago
I’ve heard the Japanese have extreme xenophobia these days. How do you survive? Is it hard to make local friends?
- GiddyGap ( @GiddyGap@lemm.ee ) 34•8 months ago
Most of the things mentioned in this thread are mostly dumb luck and not necessarily active financial decisions.
- Chahk ( @chahk@beehaw.org ) 17•8 months ago
Kind of the point. A lot of financial “success” is nothing but dumb luck.
- CanadaPlus ( @CanadaPlus@futurology.today ) English3•8 months ago
If there was an active financial decision you could make and reliably get rich, everyone would do it.
- GiddyGap ( @GiddyGap@lemm.ee ) 1•8 months ago
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.
- CanadaPlus ( @CanadaPlus@futurology.today ) English4•8 months ago
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?
- TheSanSabaSongbird ( @TheSanSabaSongbird@lemdro.id ) English2•8 months ago
I even specifically said as much in my comment.
- JamesBean ( @JamesBean@kbin.social ) 29•8 months ago
- 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.
- ninjan ( @ninjan@lemmy.mildgrim.com ) English0•8 months ago
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?
- JamesBean ( @JamesBean@kbin.social ) 1•8 months ago
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.
- bestusername ( @bestusername@aussie.zone ) 24•8 months ago
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!
- unknowing8343 ( @unknowing8343@discuss.tchncs.de ) 6•8 months ago
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.
- bestusername ( @bestusername@aussie.zone ) 1•8 months ago
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.
- TheOlympian ( @TheOlympian@kbin.social ) 24•8 months ago
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.
- Original ( @Original@beehaw.org ) 4•8 months ago
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!
- kralk ( @kralk@lemm.ee ) 2•8 months ago
I was gonna say buying a house too. Mortgage payments are 1/3 what my rent was, and rents have doubled since then.
- hamburglar26 ( @hamburglar26@wilbo.tech ) 1•8 months ago
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.
- TurtleCalledCalmie ( @beercupcake@sopuli.xyz ) 1•8 months ago
This is wholesome sorry. I am happy for you both anons and that you have doggo a great loving home <3
- amzd ( @amzd@kbin.social ) 22•8 months ago
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
- GiddyGap ( @GiddyGap@lemm.ee ) 12•8 months ago
Ahh, European public transportation. Not an option in the US unless you live in NYC and rarely leave the city.
- GreatAlbatross ( @GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk ) English2•8 months ago
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.- amzd ( @amzd@kbin.social ) 1•8 months ago
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.
- GreatAlbatross ( @GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk ) English1•8 months ago
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!- amzd ( @amzd@kbin.social ) 1•8 months ago
Average car insurance cost in London is 1200-1600, surely yours isn’t less than half that?
- GreatAlbatross ( @GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk ) English1•8 months ago
That’s the benefit of not-london and a small car: It’s under £500!
- intensely_human ( @intensely_human@lemm.ee ) 21•8 months ago
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.
- Original ( @Original@beehaw.org ) 11•8 months ago
The amount of stress that immediately goes away when you are able to stop the paycheck to paycheck cycle is priceless. Nice work!
- intensely_human ( @intensely_human@lemm.ee ) 3•8 months ago
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
- JackbyDev ( @JackbyDev@programming.dev ) English16•8 months ago
Mined a Bitcoin in college.
- CanadaPlus ( @CanadaPlus@futurology.today ) English8•8 months ago
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.
- HumbleFlamingo ( @HumbleFlamingo@beehaw.org ) 13•8 months ago
Vasectomy like 10 years ago. Kids are expensive.
- RagnarokOnline ( @RagnarokOnline@programming.dev ) 13•8 months ago
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.
- TheSanSabaSongbird ( @TheSanSabaSongbird@lemdro.id ) English12•8 months ago
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.
- dan ( @dan@upvote.au ) 3•8 months ago
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.
- CanadaPlus ( @CanadaPlus@futurology.today ) English1•8 months ago
I’ve never thought about it like that, but it makes good sense.
- sh00g ( @sh00g@kbin.social ) 11•8 months ago
-
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.
-
- Dandroid ( @dandroid@dandroid.app ) 11•8 months ago
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.
- Thorny_Insight ( @Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee ) 11•8 months ago
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.
- tryptaminev 🇵🇸 🇺🇦 🇪🇺 ( @tryptaminev@feddit.de ) 5•8 months ago
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.
- Thorny_Insight ( @Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee ) 2•8 months ago
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€