Cad
scientia potentia est
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The fact that you spend less and have a fairly modest lifestyle makes it easier to retire, not harder. You don’t need nearly as much to be able to be financially independent.
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Retirement... (i.e. what are you going to be after you've grown up)
- Thread starter Haus
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Captain Suave
Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
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This. Much like losing weight, the best way progress financially is to control what you eat. That doesn't mean you have to live like a pauper, but it's a necessity to line up your income against an honest budget so that you understand what effect incremental expenses are going to have on your plans.
Lambourne
Bronze Baronet of the Realm
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It absolutely is. You're about where I was in 2014, same age and I also had 50k in student debt and a house that had basically zero equity in it. I made a bit more than that but I'm also in Europe where income taxes are substantially higher so take-home probably wasn't that far off. I found Mr Money Mustache around that time and it gave me enough of a mindset change to get to work.
Started by setting the goal of paying off my student loans which meant dumping what savings I had into it. It felt completely useless at the time, going from 50k to something like 42k. Cut a bunch of useless spending and kept chipping away at it. Ended up beating my target date by 4 months. That freed up a few hundred more from repayments and interest and I started putting the amount I saved from that towards my mortgage. Once I knocked a bunch off that, the bank gave me a better rate on the remainder, which saved me more money again. Started saving/investing at that point. That snowball of getting interest to work for you instead of against you absolutely works and the longer you keep going, the better it gets.
11 years on, I'm debt free and could pay off my house tomorrow if I wanted to. I probably won't be a multi-millionaire like some people here, but once you are debt free you really don't need that much income to live comfortably.
fris
Vyemm Raider
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Like others said, very much yes. The biggest thing is living on less than you make. There's a bunch of good YouTube channels that might motivate you; Dave Ramsey, Graham Stepan, The Money Guys. Will give you a rounded view on how to think about money.
Furry
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All the financial people talk about having an emergency fund, which is cash you let rot in a bank for some unknown reason? To me they are all retarded. I keep 1000$ in the bank, so I don't fall victim to arbitrage. It floats up and down some, but 6 months of cash? Eat a dick lmao.
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Khane
Got something right about marriage
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Yea well you're cool with making $8/hr so $1000 in the bank is basically 6 months of cash isn't it?
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Furry
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Fucker
Log Wizard
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Luxury cars are mostly a con job. 75% of them are pinched out as lease tax write-offs, and that's the only thing that keeps those companies afloat. At one point, a Mercedes Benz was a wonderfully engineered tank of a car that lasted 100's of thousands of miles. These days, they are just cheap blingy piles of carbage designed to last 1 week longer than the lease.
Meanwhile, other manufacturers like Honda, Kia, Hyundai make near luxury vehicles at a fraction of the price as any MB or BMW. BMW have always been trash, but in the past they had power and handling to make up for it. These days, a little Tesla Model 3 will blow it into the weeds....but doesn't require $10k new rear shocks after 3 years. Yep, Air suspension on a BMW X5 is $5k per corner.
My GF had a little Honda CR-V for almost FIVE years. She sold it to the dealer for slightly less than she paid for it. Not including insurance and gas, she paid $300 a year to drive it. Try that with anything European. It was exactly precisely as new when she sold it.
Luxury cars are just status symbols to show off to people you don't know, don't care about you, and won't pay your monthly car payment. What a neat idea, lol.
If people actually valued things like quality and value for dollar, the lines at Honda dealerships would be miles long and the wait lists measured in years.
Houses are kind of the same. I looked at a McMansion in Green Bay. Owned by a former Packer. Huge. Indoor BB court and pool. Massive open design kitchen to living room. 3 story picture windows. The house was built on 2x4's and filled with Lowe's quality cardboard doors and cheapo fixtures. Giant first floor office.
But the whole house was RV/Motel 6 cheap. Squeaky stairs, cheap carpet. Wobbly banisters. Very high utility bills because it was slapped together. IIRC, the property tax was $50k a year. LOL. GF didn't want, and she doesn't want anything big or extravagant...just cozy and well built. Well, we have that now, but I want it on water.
My point is, the only thing luxurious about most luxury brands is the price tag. I don't particularly cotton to paying to fuel up some billionaire's yacht or private plane.
Haus
I am Big Balls!
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I am one of those who believes in keeping a 6 month emergency fund when you can. But I agree with you that you don't keep it in cash. At minimum keep it in an interest earning account (I have a flat out "savings" account with some cash in it making 4.2% APY right now) to buffer against inflation. But the point is keep some funds in a position where you could liquidate them quickly in the case of an emergency.
In this day and age that could easily be that you have funds in a brokerage account, and a credit card you could use the moment of the emergency, and then liquidate brokerage funds to pay off the card within a week or two. Or keep it in a crypto exchange where you invest in whatever crypto dream you're chasing, but could swap it for USDC/USD and transfer it back to your checking account post haste.
Now, do I also have a puddle of cash I keep around, Yes. But some of that is psychological due to being raised by a post depression era grandfather who trusted banks exactly as far as he could throw one. Also, some of this is tiers of emergencies....
- Phone/internet/power out and shit hitting fan (think Katrina evac) - Cash is king.
- Bad car breakdown - It's going to take days most of the time to fix so you have time to liquidate/move assets to cover the expense.
- Paying for dubious and potentially illegal services to rid yourself of that pesky nemesis who has been thwarting your plans? Once again, cash is king.
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Mahes
Silver Baronet of the Realm
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I would be out in the street if 50k a month was what I needed to manage my retirement. That equals what me and my wife make as a salary in like 3 months? That is way beyond anything I am going to entertain. We live a life of service that happens to take care of us better than most in this country. She is an RN with 20 years of ICU experience and I work Wastewater for the city.
Nobody in my family distant or close, makes the kind of money that affords them a retirement of 50k a month. Then again, as I think about it, pretty much everyone served in one function or another. My dad was military and my brother in law is a teacher...and so on.
Again, I do not see me having a major retirement where I party every night and go around the world. I am happy in my home that will have been paid off. I know a lot of people who are much worse off for savings and some who go into retirement with a mortgage. I am relatively healthy with good family genes. My mother is still alive and takes care of her horses every day. When I do retire, barring the collapse of society, we should be fine.
Nobody in my family distant or close, makes the kind of money that affords them a retirement of 50k a month. Then again, as I think about it, pretty much everyone served in one function or another. My dad was military and my brother in law is a teacher...and so on.
Again, I do not see me having a major retirement where I party every night and go around the world. I am happy in my home that will have been paid off. I know a lot of people who are much worse off for savings and some who go into retirement with a mortgage. I am relatively healthy with good family genes. My mother is still alive and takes care of her horses every day. When I do retire, barring the collapse of society, we should be fine.
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Haus
I am Big Balls!
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This is an area I have one concern. I know Alzheimer's is the demon that hunts my family. Every grandparent I have had was suffering from it or another variant of age related dementia when they passed. I also know looking at the ages of deaths around what I estimate my genetic clock will tick to. Complication?
Mrs. Haus
and I have no kids. (long depressing story for another thread), so I have to face wanting to save more to accommodate for the potential of needing to be cared for and not having kids to chip in the way my sister and I do with my mother (who is in her mid 70's and showing the signs of the demon catching up with her already). I guess I'm just really going to hope Tesla/Boston Dynamics/Some rando Chinese company is going to have kick ass AI driven home health care bots I can buy reasonably within the next 20 years.. heh
Mahes
Silver Baronet of the Realm
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Yeah my mortgage is 8 months in advance. I have an emergency fund that draws some interest and a house fund that does the same. I also keep a petty fund(Couple of thousand) at the house that I often rotate through as expenses come up. Once the house is paid off, I will add a medical fund that takes care of the parts we have to pay for. I am considering next year buying some gold as kind of a hedge. I figure gold never really goes down in value but it is a fairly universal form of wealth.
Diversify........
fris
Vyemm Raider
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Kirun
Buzzfeed Editor
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I could, easily.
Between watches, clothing, and my love of exotic cars, I'd have no issues with it.
An area where I'm super simple is with housing. 1000-1500 sq. ft is my max need. Wife and I live in a 2164 sq. foot home now and most days our spare en suite bedroom seems like a total waste.
Furry
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The thing that triggered me the most was going to a seamstress in a third world shithole. I'm not much of a clothes guy, but the absolute insanely good quality of fabric there blew anything I've seen in a store in the past 30 years in america out of the fucking water. It's enraging to know some oogabooga with 20$ can get something better quality than any 500$ piece of clothing in the US.
Furry
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I keep all my spare money invested. I could liquidate 300k tomorrow if I wanted. But I have never once had an emergency that required me to pull anything. Closest was when my dog decided to eat a towel whole for no reason and then die after 13k. Just worked some OT and blasted the balance before it hit.
It's hard to imagine an emergency I couldn't just absorb easily by working extra and cutting back on other things.
BrutulTM
Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun.
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Land value varies hugely depending on where it is. The richest person in the world couldn't buy 40 acres in Manhattan but if you are out in a real rural area almost anyone could get that much land. 40 acres is only a lot if it happens to be in a high demand area. Around here 40 acres with no improvements might sell for as little as $30,000. Of course if you're a homesteader you will probably convince yourself immediately that you *need* a $50k Kubota to take care of it.
This. Just like how people think everyone is looking at them at a party when everyone else is thinking about themselves just like you are, luxury cars are to make you feel like everyone is impressed. Aside from teenagers and a few extremely shallow people, most people don't actually give a shit about what you drive. It's all about your feelings, not other people's.
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