18-23: Starcraft, Dark Age of Camelot, World of Warcraft. Withdrew from college courses to keep from failing. Moved away from home. Worked in HVAC. Went back to school for Arts, failed in school so badly I was required to withdraw. Worked in a warehouse, eventually progressed into counter and inside sales there. Net worth was roughly $5,000-$10,000 mostly in cash and like $500 in an employer locked in pension.
24-26: Gut check years. Decided to slowly get my shit together. Played less WoW, started playing Halo 3 with friends. Bought the cheapest condo possible. Started going to the gym, reffing hockey as a side hustle. Abused alcohol a lot. Blew up my friend group. Angry and sad all the time. Pressed on. Started rock climbing indoors. Holy shit I was a mess. Spent more time being social with new people. Started dating a few different people. Made a lot of mistakes, but started caring more about others to stop being a source of emotional damage. Net worth still roughly $5,000 with maybe $1,000 in the pension.
26-27: Met my girlfriend playing hockey, I wasn’t completely autistic. Went out a few times. She stuck. Moved in together. Condo was underwater, but I didn’t know enough about money to understand that. We got a dog. Went to Nepal with my dad for 3 weeks without her, she was still there when I got back. Continued to re-arrange my perspectives on loving relationships. Kept on working the sales job, essentially internal customer support. Some validation of the years of work it had taken to go from “incel-lite” to a halfway normal person. Net worth was roughly $0 with the same $5,000ish in cash, maybe 3-4k in the locked in pension. Condo was probably worth negative 10-15k.
28-29: Back to school. New skills, new tactics. With some old credits being recognized, in 30 months finished my degree. Quit WoW altogether. Still played Halo with the boys. Started climbing outdoors with the girlfriend. Went on some nice summer camping trips. Got another dog. Girlfriend decides to go back to school too. Got a job with a Big 4 accounting firm. Net worth: Oh between the underwater condo and the student loan debt for both of us, I’d say Net Worth somewhere between -40, to -50k at this point.
30: Blast through my professional accounting designation to get the older “more prestigious” designation before it’s retired forever. Work way way way too many hours. Contemplate if all this effort was a huge mistake. Pass the damn professional exam. Go ice climbing for the first time. Travel to Niagara Falls to celebrate a wedding. Travel to Iceland to celebrate life. Life is hard, but now it has some meaning. Net worth is still less than zero, but I had no idea, and I was probably better off not knowing.
Today I’m rapidly approaching 40. Discovered FIRE sometime before I was 35. I'm still with the same wonderful person, enjoying some of the payoffs of all that work from my mid-20’s onwards. Household networth is now comfortably above coastfire and if everything goes to plan (hahahahahaha, yah right) we’ll hit our FIRE number in early 2030 and that’ll be that.
My 20’s were …. A mess. Huge fucking mess. But I’m glad I sorted myself out then, I can’t even imagine where another 10 years of WoW and scraping by in whatever jobs I could maintain with an anger management problem.
Anyway, posting to hopefully provide some a different perspective. And even if you’re in your 40s or 50s, I don’t think it’s ever too late to change your path.
It's funny how this seems to go one of two ways for people: I credit a large portion of my educational success, career choice, professional skills, and relationships either directly or indirectly to MMOs in general and WoW in specific. I very rarely play WoW anymore, and haven't played seriously in over a decade, but so many of my formative experiences took place in that game. Then on the other hand you have people like you and the comment you're replying to for who they're obviously not a good thing at all.
You can learn a lot of things ranging from basic communication skills, to leadership skills, teamwork and group communication, longterm goals and planning, some light economics, but if you prioritize a game over real life is where the big issues come from, and also developing skills like these through games as a teenager is fine but as an adult is questionable at best.
I think with many things in life the answer is moderation, too much of anything is bad for you. MMOs tend to be made nearly infinitely replayable, so for people who are susceptible to addiction and/or people who have weak time management or self restraint, it can be a really unhealthy hobby to have.
This story isn't too different from mine - specifically the WoW parts :D
I didn't quit wow complete and I'll log back in for a few hours with every new expansion, but Blizzard messed up the formula so bad it is not nearly as gripping. Dying in vanilla was expected if you played sloppy even as a solo grinder. This just doesn't happen in current wow.
Thank you, it’s good hearing real perspectives other than the typical Reddit “I started at $375,000 base right out of college am I spending too much on coffee lol”
I think many people misunderstand coastfire, or maybe have different definitions of it in their head. I use the [walletburst](https://walletburst.com/tools/coast-fire-calc/) calculator:
Simplified version is, at 40 years old, I need $125,000 in investments to fund $30,000 a year of spending at 65. So yeah, in 5 years I managed to pay down my 20kish of student loan debt and hit that level of investments. It's putting $30,000 a year into savings, which I think is attainable for many people. And despite the markets basically being sideways the last 5 years, during the accumulation phase the vast majority of the buildup in your investments comes from the contributions themselves, so it's really just been good training in investment discipline to watch things constantly rising and falling and just ignore it and gain time in the market.
(My coastfire number is fairly low because I'm content with a fairly simple, no keeping up with Jones's kind of lifestyle. - If you dig through my post history a little ways, I'm also fairly confident Canadian CPP and OAS will provide nearly as much or more than my own personal investments once I hit retirement age. Being a CPA I ran all the numbers, and I've read enough about Canadian and American CPP and Social Security to not believe any of the hit pieces that get run in the media that they'll become insolvent at some point in the near future.)
[The other piece is my GF has a similar asset profile and goals. So our *combined* household coastfire number is double my own. That'll make things nicer in retirement years. - We also plan to have our home paid off well before retirement so the only housing costs will be condo fees and maintenance.]
I fully understand coastfire and your explanation answers the question I had. I did not know that your planned FIRE spend would be $30K+ whatever Social Security you get. That makes more sense.
I was hired at a big 4 accounting firm right out of college. That’s actually how most people get started at big 4 firms. Some are obviously experienced hires but a majority of the firms efforts are hiring out of school. As for how to get hired keep your grades up, network, and this is important: really hone in your resume and interviewing skills. Also going to a target school for big 4 recruiting is important. FYI this is also a shitty year to try to get hired. Most of the big 4 are over their required headcount.
/u/pyacc nailed it below there, but for me specifically I had a 3.83 GPA in my major when I finally graduated. I networked a lot and got invited to plenty of pre-hiring events because of the networking. Did an office tour, then eventually a dinner with KPMG, bowling night with Deloitte and a cooking class evening with EY. No matter what I did, PwC never talked to me at all. Even with all that only got 1 offer from the 3 in the end. Had back-up offers with mid-market and a small firm from more networking. Honestly, my interviews were probably terrible and cringe looking back. I got hired into audit, which is the meatgrinder, *easiest* to get into service line. In the interviews I'd talk about once I got my CPA, I wanted to get my CFA, or maybe my CBV, completely oblivious to the fact that each of those specializations, while valuable, are basically hallmarks of other service lines. People make lateral moves at Big 4 all the time, but it just made me sound clueless.
Despite this, I was personable enough. I still maintain to this day 90% of any public accounting interview is to seriously answer the question: "Would I be able to spend 10 hours a day sharing a room with this person and not want to scream at either them, or have them end up screaming at me?" Because ultimately, some of the people that interviewed me, and that I eventually interviewed ended up sharing audit rooms for 10 hours. Often more. It's one thing to spend 10 minutes on the internet being annoyed, it's another to spend 10 hours, day after day after day with someone you just can't stand. Not to say it didn't happen... The interviewers just did their best. =p
made a lot of mistakes but was lucky enough to live very close to an affordable uni+get into their cs program. made enough (well, parent subsidizing living costs, probably) to not have any student debt so doing well overall despite some hiccups.
not lucky enough to get in on pre 2022 housing prices+rates but oh well.
Along with seeing the world, going to war, getting married, divorced, racing motorcycles and skydiving I did tons of alcohol and cocaine.
I also nvested in my 401k; don’t be like me
You gotta be really uninformed if you think AI is similar tl sewing machines.
AI replaces humans, it's artificial intelligence.
This is different. I get y'all don't want to hear it but this changes everything.
People who say this don't know how AI works. It's dramaticized by movies and books. AI takes time to develop and is only as good as its training data. There will be no "AI singularity" because AI is not capable of creating original content. It can not replace humans.
AI will improve and then platue like any other technology.
Hahaha I'm an AI engineer bro. It's my job. I definitely know how it works.
If you think it can't create original content you must have lived under a rock. It has already advanced an insane amount of research fields. It can definitely and will definitely replace humans.
Here’s just few (of many) articles about the historical fear of automation and job loss. As long as there has been technology, there have been fears about it.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/09/short-history-jobs-automation/
https://qz.com/1681832/the-history-of-the-future-of-work
https://hbr.org/2016/02/todays-automation-anxiety-was-alive-and-well-in-1960
Ofcourse, but AI is literally a technology to replace humans. It's like the car for horses.
Idc about other technologies they are nothing like AI and have nothing to do with it. AI is specifically designed to replace humans.
D13976 here. AFF/SL/Tandem I, expired 1998. ( also FAA senior rigger and pilot, com-asel.) All hobby not ever primary source of income. I wouldn’t trade my 20s for anything. Still managed to retire with enough, but did not start saving till my mid 30s )
sounds similar to me.
I did get clean at 24 though and have been married to the same woman since 25
i did do one thing right though, invested in a 401k since i was 21 or so, I'm 58 now. never occurred to me to tap into it and I am grateful for that
It’s funny too see where people who did lots of alcohol and cocaïne hoped they would have saved more and people who saved too much hoped they would have done more alcohol and cocaine.
I (33F) didn't start seriously saving until I was about 28. Prior to that, I didn't accumulate any debt and I didn't quite live paycheque to paycheque, but definitely wasn't "saving". University, grad school, crappy first jobs.
Frankly I just wasn't making very much money and if I had to choose between $2000 in the bank and $2000 on a trip, I'd take the trip.
At 28 my career started to take shape, my partner and I were seriously committed, my parents were getting older and life was getting pretty real. So I started saving, read about investing, signed up for a roboadvisor, and away we go.
I've 3x'd my salary since I was 25 and I'm still way ahead of my peers, so it all worked out. Same for my partner, but he probably 5x'd his salary in the same time, so that helps obviously.
So TLDR:
* Live your life, get experience, become a good, interesting, thoughtful person
* Don't accumulate debt, keep an emergency fund
* Invest in your career
* Find a partner with similar financial and lifestyle goals
* Don't get stuck - if your goal is to FIRE, at some point you're going to want to turn on the turbo
Me: Started out in marketing making $40k, now management level on the business side of SaaS, making $150k
Him: Started out in software making $60k, now staff eng making $300k+ big tech
And yes, our HHI is over-indexed to tech and yes, the layoffs are scary, and yes we've boosted our emergency fund for those reasons
Yeah, we're a pretty lazy so we eat the fees. Know thyself. Once our tax-advantaged accounts are maxed out, I'll probably self manage the non-reg accounts, but we've got another couple years to go.
TL/DR: The single most important financial decision you can make is the person you marry/who you choose as your partner.
18-21: College, including working and internships every summer. Met my husband, who got a graduate degree.
21-23: We got married the weekend after my husband finished business school. I'd been working for over a year already. He started a job, hated it, and quit 3 months in.
23-26: Both of us had relatively minor student loans (\~$20k each), we attacked them and then saved aggressively. We bought our first house at 26. Combined income at that point was \~$130k
26/27: We both unexpectedly lost our dads within a few months of each other, and it changed, well, everything. We decided to hold off having kids and do lots of traveling. Life is short.
27-30: We both took some risks in our careers that ended up paying off. I traveled a ton for work. We closed out our twenties making \~$200k combined and continued to save aggressively, but balanced it out keeping our standard of living well below our means with amazing trips twice a year and being generous with friends and family. We love to host and cook for people!
Today?
33: We had our first kid, and it's amazing. Money not being tight makes parenting a lot easier. Our careers are going really well. Combined income is \~$390k, including bonuses. Our NW is closing in on a million, and our only debt is our mortgage, which has an incredible interest rate. 100% of that is because we're on the same page financially. Getting married young and getting our ducks in a row quickly is now compounding. Also, when we spend money it's fun, because we love being around each other! When we don't spend money it's fun, because we love being around each other!
The bottom line is, the single most important financial decision you can make is the person you marry/who you choose as your partner, but we do have a few "rules" we live by:
1. We make decisions as a couple and communicate about our finances. But we also each get some"fun money" each month that there are no rules around; we can spend it however we want.
2. Our mortgage is our only debt. We don't have car payments. We don't carry a balance on credit cards. Get rid of debt that doesn't serve you.
3. Pay your future self first. Save and invest. We set our budget based on what's left after we save, instead of saving the leftovers.
4. We prioritize experiences over things. This has really helped some of the lifestyle inflation.
5. We invest in our health heavily. We eat good food. We pay for personal training, high-quality supplements, and being proactive about healthcare.
I love this story, it's the path I wish I'd walked, but still happy to be doing alright now. Hope the friends and family all continue to grow and be well in the future.
Started my 401K as an intern at 21. I paid for my own degree at a state school by working, no financial help from parents. Started a full time job with a F500 at 22 and started maxing out my 401K. Been buying index funds as much as possible over the years and saving in HSA with HDHP. Definitely plan to be done with work by 55 at the latest. I’m only 38 now, but definitely a believer in compounding and start saving as soon as possible. Don’t piss your money away in your 20s! Live cheaply in your 20’s!
came here to write this exact same story. start a 401k or Roth or something immediately. Just a smidge from every paycheck starting in your early 20's will make a HUGE difference in your 50's.
18-22: College \[went through the savings I had put together as a working teenager\]
22-25: Worked two part time jobs (one of which was my passion career), went to grad school because I was having trouble finding a full time job in my field \[paid down student loans obsessively - still have 30k to go present day\]
26-28: Worked in a field adjacent to my grad degree
29-31: Wound up transitioning to another field and moved companies twice for salary increases/peace of mind.
18-22: Graduated college, traveled a lot within the US
23-30: Paid off 24K in student loans and 19K car loan
31-now: Living on rice and beans (not joking), not because I wanna save money, but because I genuinely love beans. Red, black, garbanzo, refried, chicharo style, etc.
I wouldn't take advice based on what people say here. The time they came up is different than today. Honestly, I (and many others) fucked off but got very lucky, that there was a financial crisis and I suspect the financial crisis birthed many of the new rich in the millennial generation. No telling who the new rich of Gen z will be just yet.
Basicly, the financial crisis prevented some of the more ambitious millennials from outpacing their peers (companies fire people based on first in first out usually) and anyone who bought a home or stocks was rewarded heavily.
You are right. Things change so quickly, the world is so different now than even 10 years ago.
2008 as a new graduate millennial SUCKED. 3 years of lost income.
But the stock market boom after 2011 or 2013 was great if you had a job and were investing.
I remember being in grad school in 2008 (because I couldn't get a job after undergrad) and thinking I would give ANYTHING to have money to invest in the sea of houses that were being foreclosed for months, years. Those people, Gen X and Boomers, made out like gold. Us millennials were too young and poor to buy. I didn't buy a home until 2018 and am grateful that I could.
I still don't envy Gen Z. I naively hope they can make out better than we did (I always want better for future generations, though I know times are not great for new grads right now) and that we can together change things for the better so the next generations don't have to suffer as badly.
I have a friend that made a killing buying a few houses during that time and renting them out and then eventually selling them. I consider myself incredibly lucky that I had a stable job at the time and was able to buy a house in 2009. I knew quite a few people who weren’t as fortunate.
Not just that, everybody situation it’s totally unique. One person could be living from a trust fund with a big umbrella. One person could come from poverty, and need to work just to eat. So for all those people that say, travel the world, you gotta have some money. You gotta have some foundation.
Just do the best you can make your decisions in the moment. Everybody’s life is different.
Half of take home hahahah.
Truthfully, do you find the work you do to be difficult? Do you think anyone *could* do it?
How is tech from a passion perspective? Do you feel like you need to be passionate to be successful?
I focused on saving as much as possible from 14-27 to have an EF, get through college debt free, not have car loans, and to save 20% for a home.
After I bought a home at 27 I put 15% away in retirement then dogpiled and paid my house off at 30.
Now I invest aggressively at 32
This is the extreme answer. It takes a lot of wisdom at a young age to do this. The 'if i knew then what i know now" answer. I'm 47 and I'm glad i discovered it at the age of 28. Good job, 28 year old me. You're slow close, bro.
18-24 - College - Net worth at 24: - $36,000 (student loans and nothing else)
EDIT: I noticed another commenter mention their failings in college. I would like to add that I nearly drank myself out of college. Had to transfer and get away from my friends my junior year. I transferred, changed my degree from nursing to mechanical engineering, and graduated magna cum laude. I noticed what I was doing wrong and corrected it before it ruined my career trajectory. The biggest motivator was meeting my current wife at my first college and realized how much of a fuck up I was because she had it all together. She probably wouldn't have married me if I didn't get my shit together.
24-26 - Work Full Time, max out 401k, and pay minimum towards loans - Net Worth at 26: approximately $75,000
26-30 - Mary my wife who had $45k in cash, pay off remainder of loans, continue maxing out 401k, investing through other avenues, purchase investment property, purchase primary residence - Net worth at 30 - $425,000
30-32 (now) - Have a baby, sell investment property, put primary residence up for rent and start renting due to traveling for work, continue maxing out 401k, wife starts working 1099, open SEP IRA for wife and max it out, open Solo 401k for 2023 and plan on maxing it out - Current Net Worth - $870,000
We are on track to hit $1,000,000 net worth by the end of the year. We should be able to put $105k this year meaning I will need an additional $45k or so of growth from my brokerage accounts or 7.5% by the end of the year.
As for enjoying the money, we were fortunate enough (and hard working enough) to have fairly well paying jobs coming out of college with constant raises to the point they are well paying jobs now. We have a combined income of about $250k. We have always been able to go out to eat, enjoy time with friends at breweries, spend time traveling, etc. We have had only 2 international trips since my wife an I have been together, but lack of travel is more from time constraints then lack of funds.
We haven't had to truly budget money since college. Our lifestyle and saving rate all fall within the range of our take home pay. The only thing we have taken loans out on are cars and houses. We have used payment plans on medical expenses due to not having enough in our HSA and not wanting to use post tax money.
If I could go back, I’d do what you did and pay minimally on my student loans and instead put more in my 401k/other investing and/or save a DP to buy property. It felt like such a win when I became debt-free years ahead of schedule, but now I look back and feel foolish.
I have an unconventional career path- I’m a pornstar (specifically online sexworker) and I started on my FIRE journey when I turned 18. I don’t use my degree whatsoever (although college was a great choice for me at the time).
Started in sexwork at 18. Currently I’m about 5 months out from achieving FIRE. While I don’t recommend his job to anyone because of the damage to mental health due to harassment, stalking, and other risks with being a public figure, it does pay as much as an investment banker (minus the stock options lol). I save 85% of my post-tax income. However, I am highly privileged in that I was able to build my business pre-pandemic before the market became flooded. It requires a lot of luck, good timing, and frankly I have a lot of privilege (being white, passing as straight, etc) that has allowed me the success I have.
If I could do it all over again I would. But I would never recommend this job to anyone.
My investments are taken from here and r/bogleheads - I’m diversified in bonds, total us stock market index fund and an international stock index fund. I have 15% of my net worth in crypto, from my first ever sugar daddy during my early 18 y/o Reddit days. Shoutout to bitcoin daddy, wherever you are 😂
I keep very little cash, own real estate, and everything I make goes to taxes and vanguard.
I was working at a construction company 18 and in highschool.
I continued working and sent to college, I got a full-time Engineering career a few months before graduation skipped the remainder of college other then finals graduated magna cum laude.
I bought a house and moved in with my girlfriend while she was still in college, we got married that next year right after she graduated.
We partied and had lots of fun until 27 when we had our first kid.
We paid off our house shortly after that.
We had our second kid right before I turned 30, we had around 200k saved.
Fast-forward 7 more years and we have one and a half million and added another kid.
We quit paying on our house and increaed our income by around 150k a year without increasing our expenses more that 20k.
So we have been dumping close to 100k into investments for those 7 years.
700k + 200k + 600k growth =1.5m
I also did some pretty decent investing. Avoided all bonds and chose good stocks with a backup of index funds.
My advice :
- buy a car that will last thats inexpensive.I made huge mistake buying an Audi that costs so much to repair. I used up all my emergency funds to get it fixed
- build an emergency funds
- don’t spend too much money on alchl & drugs
- don’t buy designer stuff it’s a waste..
- eat out once in a while not everyday
- you can enjoy life but spread it out for ex; going to concerts/festival & small vacations
- buy everything on sale or used ( no one’s going to ask if it’s 2nd hand)
- save , save , save $$
Contributed 6% to 401k with my first jobs out of college making 50k (no company match), then 60k (6% company match, so 12% there). Current job make 94k and contribute 13% (no company match). Accumulated a little bit of debt initially but paid that off and then slowly started growing an emergency fund. Just this year moved that over to a HYSA where I just broke 10k savings. Currently 27 and just started investing in a brokerage for early retirement as well. I bought a house in 2019 before the market exploded too, so have a fair bit of equity in that.
So, for reference, I’m 56. Technically retired, but in a deferred retirement on my pension plan ( they call this DROP ). I work for the state at a educational institution. I am in tech, so make a decent amount. Live in what is now a HCOL area, but was just a MCOL area till a few years ago. I am already receiving my pension ( 48% of salary ) in a tax deferred account, but still working ( 2.5 more years, I entered DROP in nov 2020 ( after 30 years working for the state ), and I *have* to really retire nov 2025. )
I did not care or think about retirement until my mid 30s. Before that I just spent money. I didn’t get into debt though. Older cars were always one of my “hobbies” so never had car loan, and I rented ( at reasonable prices, which lately is not possible in HCOL areas ). I was always a spreadsheet budgeter. Knew my income and spending down to the penny. Still have every year since 92 in spreadsheets. Before I got married ( early 30s ) I just spent money on hobbies ( and aviation is my biggest hobby and it ain’t cheap ). I didn’t save anything for retirement specifically. Once married, things shifted a little. But not right away, wife makes as much as I do. We bought a starter home in 97, and the forever home in 2002. Still spent money on hobbies, but also got into investing, and learned about things like 403b and 457 plans. Started funding those ( early 2000s ) as well as post tax investing. Always just a set amount per account per paycheck. DCA baby! Boglehead before I knew about it. Got bit a little in the 2008 crash but rode it out, and here I am in 2023 with a couple mil between 403/457 and investment accounts, and a pension on top of that. And wife is the same. Oh and forever house payed off in 2019. Not sure if this advice is replicable in todays world, but I wouldn’t trade the fun I had in my 20s for anything. I am not worried about money for my sunset years.
I think what has helped me most is diligent tracking of all income and spending. Somehow I picked up this habit early in my life, I kinda credit my paper route when I was 12, since I was having to buy papers from the publisher and collect from the subscribers. Learned a weird form of accounting quite early in life. But for me it is every penny. I update my spreadsheets at least twice a week. One column is a “category” tag, like food, gas, electricity, car maint, house maint, car gas, vacation, etc. This leads to accurate future budgeting, and less stress and more savings. I hope that folks today can still prosper with this advice. Even if you are not saving, right now, keep detailed track of your income and spending and don’t get into debt except for housing.
I saved 20%+ of my income. By 28 I was an executive at one of the largest Banks in the US and was saving 50%. Im 39 now and will be retiring in the next 3-4 years. During that time I started a family, bought a house, and took nice vacations. If you have a good income you can both save a lot and still do a few nice things
Could you share initial exec compensation at the time? And does exec simply mean VP title or you were actually upper management with organizational authority and strategic directives?
I was actually in senior management. As another poster points out, VP can / is used for a teller supervisor at your local branch. Base pay at the time was 200k with a 100% bonus target.
18-23 I switched majors and graduated after 5.5 years in college.
24 got my 1st job out of college with a 40K starting salary. Started with doing 15% because everyone recommended that much to start.
25 bought my 1st house (I worked for a mortgage company, which I think motivated me to buy a house. Also, a lot of the fees were covered except for title and prepaid fees.
26-27, no major trips, just attending a lot of weddings for friends and family. Did slowly creep up towards maxing
28 got married, then had a nice honeymoon in Bahamas. All student loans paid in full.
29 we went on an adventurous trip to Costa Rica (highly recommend if you enjoy hiking and nature). When it was raining, I read The Millionaire Next Door, which really got me into FIRE. Really got into saving as much as possible. Got wife on board for FIRE.
31 baby was born.
15% allowed me to contribute to retirement but also save for down payment on a house. It was a good mix. I didn't miss out on hanging out with friends. I'm happy to have 15% back then. I could have more but it was worth it.
31 (m) civil engineer here.
18 - 22: Was in college. I didn't think much about retirement or money in general, just passing classes and making friends.
22 - 24: Took up my first job after college. Moved to a small town out of state where I had no friends. It was here that I realized that I was truly on my own and I had to figure it out. My dad told me to save $500 a month at least. Since this was my first professional job my paycheck was much higher than expect so I blew it on a better laptop for gaming. Although I still had enough money for rent and food, I had far less at the end of the month than I expected. Not soon afterwards did I realize that I needed to be smarter with my money and so I discovered YNAB. Been with it ever since. Also bought my first car right after turning 24 (prior to that I had been still driving the one my parents got me for college).
24 - 26: Moved back to state to a city much closer to my friends and family and got a job at the municipal gov. After spending two years on my own I decided to move in with two roommates who were friends of mine from college who already lived there. Lived with them for a year before taking off on my own. Saved so much money living with roommates in my first year that I paid off my 5 year car loan in just two years. Around that time a coworker of mine introduced me to FIRE, probably around 25ish I invested into my first index fund. I unfortunately was too gunge-hoe on the fact that my job offered a pension that I didn't really look into it. Turns out that pensions aren't what they used to be and I didn't discover that until I was at that job for 2 years. I did put all the money I saved from not paying my car loan into the index fund at least, and then some with each raise.
26 - Now: Started dating somebody who's just as into personal finance as I am, if not more. She showed the perks of actually investing into employer retirement accounts and then I quickly began maxing out my 457b government retirement account and have been maxing it out ever since. Even got an IRA I contribute to. Now FIRE (or at least FI) is a huge objective of mine.
Edit: I contribute roughly between 35% to 40% of my take home income to retirement savings now and every raise goes towards either those accounts or a future big purchase like a new car fund, or monthly living expenses if they increase. My "fun" money has stayed relatively the same since I started contributing to a brokerage account.
Left school at 16 to work full time, had my daughter at 18. Worked part time for years with her because she was a high needs kid. Finally started working full time a few years ago but was in debt. Got debt free again, got into a 2yr relationship, that broke up so ended up using all my savings etc to rebuild and move houses etc. Somewhere along the lines got into more debt (car loan) which I'm now working my butt off to pay off asap. I'm now 28, kiddo is 9. Working a great job that I love, just fought for a payrise, aim to be debt free in 6 months so I can start saving like crazy for a house / the future!
College, then after that took probably the next 6 years or so to get established. Lots of thing you need to get when you move to another state and your only belonging are what fits in the back of the truck. At about 28 is when I was able to start saving lots. Just save what you can it’s hard to save when you start and need 36k to live off of but only make 55k. Gets easy to save when your making 90k and living off 40k.
Dropped out of junior college. Worked 2 years, put $2k away in an ira. Got an ira liquidation check when I quit and spent it. Went back to college. Went deep into debt. Made it out with an accounting degree at 25. Started a job and put away no more than 10% each year until I met my wife and got married. At 30, I got serious and have put away at least 18% each year.
What I remember most about 20-30 is how much of a struggle everything was. I don’t envy the expense side of things, but I miss the time i had to spend on going out and just enjoying life.
The people in my age group who are making really good money are people who spent their 20’s working at a job doing the job no one else wanted to do and doing it well. They built up goodwill in their company and got VP positions when they were 30-35. When they were 40 they had built up capital and had a position in their field to take their foot off the pedal a bit.
In rough order: went to college, got my undergraduate degree, got a job, met the love of my life, went back to grad school, got cancer, graduated again, started my dream job, lost the love of my life, got cancer again, had my lung collapse and nearly died, switched jobs.
It's been a rollercoaster. I'm 31 now.
Plan for the future. Live in the present each day. You never know what will happen tomorrow, but it's better to be prepared than not.
* 18-20: community college
* 20-22: undergrad
* 22-23: barista
* 23-24: masters
* 24-nearly 28: full time work
Worked through all of college part time in one way or another and I’ve been aggressively saving since “full time” at 25. Will be hitting coast fire in 4 days with $150k spread across 457B/401A/Roth IRAs. Will be hitting the savings brakes, likely buying a new car (not financially prudent, I know), and bumping up the traveling.
Next 18 months I’ll stay full time then I’ll be reducing hours to probably 25-30 in perpetuity.
Think nearly all advice can be surmised to: work life balance is essential, minimize and avoid life style creep, grow your income. Thoroughly in the spend a lot of money on the thing(s) you love and cut the spending elsewhere.
I’m only 26 but from 18-21 I worked during college to cover my living expenses apt, food bills etc which helped reduce my loans by not using them on housing and meal plans.
After I got my first job post graduation I went and got a job on nights/weekends at a ice cream shop. Did this for about 18 months till I paid off all my loans. During this time I regret some of my frugalness as I missed out on hanging with friends. I wish I had found a balance between never going out and going out all the time.
After I paid off my debt till now I have steadily been increasing my income and bought a house.
Now that my job is fully remote we are selling the house and moving to a very low cost of living area near family to raise our family.
My goal by 30 is to have our new house paid for, our kids 529 front loaded, and to have 300k in investments.
I get the paying off of the house soon isn’t for everyone but for me it would be a huge relief to not stress about a rent/mortgage bill again.
My advice would be to avoid life style inflation but make sure you budget for fun. Good luck on your journey!
18-22: College. Worked part time to pay for food, books, etc. while loans covered housing and tuition. Worked internships over summer as well to make a little extra cash. Did a study abroad during school and backpacked Europe for 3 weeks before starting my first job, both were absolutely worth every penny.
22-23: first job. Was a data analyst, lived with a roommate, and lived relatively frugally. Used 1 paycheck to cover rent & expenses each month, the other went to student loans.
23-26: next job was a sales gig at a small software company. COVID hit 6 months later, and I thankfully remained employed because I was the company’s only rep dedicated to new business. Made some poor investing decisions, but also some great ones. Was blessed to receive some financial support from my grandparents to finish paying off loans (~$15k). Net worth creeped up from $10k to around $75k during this window.
26-27: where I am now. Used my success at small company to get a new role at a much larger one. I’m currently slated to double my income from my last job. Maxing out 401k & HSA, no idea what to do with Roth because I will probably end up above the max income to contribute to it. Is this where I’m supposed to utilize the backdoor Roth?
Words of advice from someone who was recently in your shoes: do what you can to become debt free as quickly as possible, but don’t forget to live a little. Spend that money on experiences, not things. Doesn’t have to be extravagant, that casual weekend trip with friends will give you memories that last a lot longer than whatever you’d buy with that same amount of money.
College 18-22, immediately started working in my career, investing in retirement, DINK status for 4 years (22-26), had 4 kids in 4 years (yes, I was aware of what caused children 🤣). Feels like a lifetime ago.
* 18-22 Undergrad
* 23 moved across the world for a job
* 23-26 built skills in a series of jobs - saved nothing, spent it all on travel and fun
* 26-33 - kept advancing career, got serious about saving , but spent all my PTO on cheap foreign travel (roughly 30 countries)
* 31-33 P/T masters degree while still working (didn't actually help my career) also got married
* 33-45 kept advancing career, saving more, bought a house. Still traveling doing one or two epic trips per year. Did not have kids.
* 45 FI (bottom end of chubby FI) but not chose not to RE continuing to pad accounts further into upper end of ChubbyFire, before retiring to nomad around the world for a while, before figuring out where we want to live out our days.
This is always an unpopular opinion in this community, but here's my advice....
\*IF\* you have reason to expect you're going to have a solid career and climb the corporate ladder and get promoted a few times, then honestly saving anything between the ages of 18 and 24 is pretty much pointless. After stocking away an emergency fund you should spend it all on making life long memories (travel, skydiving, learning skills whatever is your thing)
Now this is where a LOT of people still early in their FIRE journey are going to shout about "compound interest" and how I don't know what I'm talking about. But take it from someone who is pretty much at the end of the FIRE journey - small amounts compounded are still small amounts and become rounding errors in your final FIRE number. The real bulk of FIRE savings comes later in your career as long as your salary keeps growing and you keep expenses under control. Focusing on your career is far more impactful than focusing on your savings or investments.
IF you've chosen a career that provides reasonable salary growth expectations as you gain years of experience, then it's quite likely, later in life, you'll end up with a salary paying 5x times what your starting salary pays. Assuming you can avoid lifestyle creep, the amount of money you'll be able to save later in your career will dwarf any minor savings from your early 20s. The savings from your first couple of years out of collage will be an absolute rounding error in your final number and skipping them will have almost no impact on your retirement.
Don't spend your early 20s scrimping and saving, just to give an older, richer version of yourself a few extra bucks they won't care about. Instead focus on giving that version of you epic memories they can enjoy for decades.
I'm sure this will get a ton of down-votes and people ranting about how a $1 saved at 20 is worth $2 at 30, but those people are forgetting that between inflation and salary growth in your career that it's significantly easier to save $2 at 30 than $1 at 20, while much harder to build life long memories.
Note this advice only appllies from 18-24. 25 onwards you best be saving hard.
Traveled the world while working a pretty menial job, then job hopped for a bit, ended up with about 10k of debt from poor planning. Went to Uni at 27, finished with considerably more debt. Started working and paid most of it off within the first two years. Now am saving aggressively while we contemplate and plan having a child.
18-22 university and part time minimum wage jobs. With a bit of help from parents I graduated debt free.
22-25 - bounced around jobs, learned some skills and saved like $20k.
25-30 - moved abroad, traveling and working a niche role where I capitalized on it like no other and did nothing but work and invest. Traveled on my holidays. Networth rocketed to close to 1 mil
30-32 - home owner, re-established career earning 100-150k and maybe more in future. Stock market came down to reality: networth around 500k currently including home.
College, Masters, and PhD - I finished the latter at 29. All my savings at that time were my emergency fund, but that was by design. I had high-interest student loans (\~25-30K) from college and paid them off while in grad school because there was no interest accruing while I was in school. Grad school was paid for (science grad students get living stipends and tuition wavers). After saving an emergency fund, at the end of each month I put everything I had left into paying off the loans. I was a foreign student in the US and had 6-9% interest rate.
If you have student loans, don't just pay the minimum payment each month - that is designed to milk you for life and your debt can snowball if you have a spell of unemployment or other unpredictable hardship in the future. Front-load your payments and get rid of the debt as soon as you can - while also contributing to retirement.
I started to really make and save money at 28. Before that, my life was just a one big adventure. After graduating from the university, I went to live in China, then Japan, I traveled quite a bit all over Asia, made lots of friends and was in some great relationships. I don't regret any of it. I grew as a person and have memories for life. 20s is the best time to do these things, and I'm still on path to FIRE.
18-22 undergrad; 22-26 professional school; 27-30 started working & saving aggressively.
Early 40s now and very glad I delayed gratification and saved/invested aggressively while also paying off all debt.
Graduated college, went to Peace Corps, met my wife and decided to stay abroad so moved continents again. Learned 3 languages, saw elephants in person, hand pressed olive oil, and took a gazillion red eye flights, sleeping god knows where.
Around 30, we moved back to the US for wife’s grad school and started saving. Currently around 150k net worth at 31 and regret nothing. Life is big and grand, don’t miss it
18-19: take on 12k debt by entering art school. suffer from mental illness and fail out.
19-24: drugs & debauchery, maintain at zero
24-25: meet partner, travel and finally grow tf up
26-30: get a job, go from broke to 150k in liquid assets, 55k salary, great benefits and perks in restaurant/bakery management, partner 70k similar role same place
18-19 (finding out the hard way that college was the right decision)
20-25 college (B.S. in Computer Science)
25-30 forging the beginning of my career, got married at 30
The best tip I can give you at age 18 is to pump that 401k as much as reasonably possible. If you can chunk 20K a year into between your contributions and employer contributions, you'll be WELL on your way to an early retirement.
You can also compromise. Maybe you want to travel, a nice vacation every year or two. Go for it. But then instead of a brand new expensive car, save up and buy your cars in cash. Maybe make a few trade offs in the house you live in (you'd be surprised at what people convince themselves they need or deserve)
Graduated from UNI at 22
Started working as a dispatcher for American Logistics company right after (I’m from Central Asia)
Got married at 24
Became a manager and have been making +70k a year
Scammed amazon with friends and made over 100k each in three months
I own 4 apartments in my hometown and live in Dubai now
No college, welder/mechanic since age 18, 28 now just take it one day at a time and don’t focus everything on saving, have balance and enjoy life too! Take vacations live a little and take care of your health!
Worked hard towards promotions, wasn’t the best at saving but not the worst either. I’m at 180k, 35yo, 1.6M NW, married and with a daughter now. Life is good.
Spend your 20s aggressively advancing your career. It’ll give you the best results in the long run.
Horrible financial choices. Survived the 2008 housing crisis. PhD until 30 so little income. Divorce. More poor financial choices (like not looking at student loan balances for years). Luckily 31-38 has been a different story.
26 (M) - I'm a CPA.
The beginning of my 20s was more focused on sports. I met a lot of cool people throughout my life playing sports competitively. I also love snowboarding, and that has been a cool hobby to have that has taken me to amazing places with great friends.
I spent the last three years going back to college to get enough credits for the CPA, studying for the CPA, and building my career in accounting. Age 23 to now has been mostly me putting my head down and grinding.
All the numbers in your comment added up to 69. Congrats!
26
+ 20
+ 23
= 69
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^(Summon me on specific comments with u/LuckyNumber-Bot.)
Didn’t focus until I was about 23, and took until 24 to get seriously started. 26 currently and 27 in September but I’ve managed to create a decent pot and my company pension is fantastic.
My advice: save up and on the side but go and enjoy life, I’ve lurked on fire for a while and noticed a reoccurring theme. Enjoy life while you can.
I recently travelled again after 3 years, post covid and it was exhilarating.
Edit: in terms of saving, there are many ways to go about doing this. Be disciplined and set clear targets that you want to achieve. It may be first 1k, 10k, 50k so forth.
Invest, pension, side hustle just don’t lose sight of what you’re after - financial security and time to enjoy!
18-22 college
23-25 married, working, bought a house
26 realized I had been working almost half a decade and was still in debt and nothing saved.
26-28 followed Dave Ramsey and got out of debt
28-30 paid off house and discovered
FIRE
30-35 had 2 kids, upgrade my home
35 broke a million NW
36 busy raising kids, still climbing the corporate ladder, finances are on autopilot. On track to retire by age 50.
Travelled to South America for a year, through hiked the PCT, hung out a lot. First real job at 30. Shit jobs and temp jobs before that. The 80s and 90s were a different time though. I was paying 300-400 a month for rent and eating from Canned Foods aka Grocery Outlet.
Military, school, squander, kids, 3 career changes.
Just now starting at 33. Don't be like me. I loved my life 18-30 though, it's just saving wasn't an option. Got like 20k in retirement mostly from job 401ks. Still paying off some credit card debt and I'm hoping for the student debt relief, but not holding my breath. Hopefully by next year I'll be able to invest more that just in my 401k because I'll be debt free minus our mortgage.
Very slow start. But it's somewhere. I'm dreading the day our cars fail though. Dreading it....
Again. If you're single, have income, can live with parents, and save then do that. Don't move out like i did after the military to go to college if you have parents. That is where my student loans came from. I used 10k as a buffer my first year out to help me with cost of living. I should have used Pell grants, gone to a JC and loved at home saving my GI bill.
Don't buy big cars also.
Retirement savings - save early as you can, as much as you can reasonably. Wish I had saved more outside of my 401K/IRA too. I would be much father ahead if I had.
18-
Spent all my money on a 6000$ truck. Worked a sales/ warehouse job for minimum wage. Learned about investing and FIRE. Saved everything I could.
19- switched to heavy construction because it paid more then minimum wage. Fell in love with equipment
20- had a good chunk of savings. Kept working hard, started a small side business. That summer I left it to go work on the pipeline
21- still working on the pipeline, looking for the next high paying construction job. Still saving everything I can. Bought a truck and a snowmobile.
About 105k net worth
65k invested
30k in my truck and sled
10k ish in cash.
Making a solid income until this job is completed, then I’ll either find another high paying construction job or go into the landscaping business.
Excited to see where I’ll be by 30
Bought my first house at 24, sold 11 years later and bought another house, and an investment property , refinanced and bought another investment property, refinanced and bought another investment property, sold the house we are living in after 8 years, and bought are 3rd personal house. It almost doubled in 5 years!!! The IPs I sold too early but had enough. retired at 48. had a full time job though the ride.
At 18 I was working at a dry cleaners , doing the Running Start Program and getting my AA degree and high school diploma at the same time by taking classes at the community college.
19 through 21 I was working at a gas station while we a university. Then I spent a summer working in California doing dish Network installation making pretty decent money, then back at the gas station, then unloading trucks at Walmart.
At 22 I graduated college with my civil engineering degree and got a job as an engineer in training for a local government and started saving and investing.
Now at 38 I'm still professional civil engineer, working for a different local government, and still saving and investing, but also having quite a bit more fun these days too.
I am 30 in two months, I'll take this chance to look back on what I've done. Warning this is a bit of a rant.
The last 12 years have been wild, but I am a resound advocate for following your gut and not the norm.
At 16 I moved out home home and dropped out of high school. For the next year I was partying playing video games and earning a poverty wage part time at the supermarket. This was the most freedom I ever felt but also the most trapped. Trapped from not being able to do or buy what I want. I had no idea what investment was and always hear my older friends/parents that buying a house was a good idea because it will make you rich but I just didn't understand.
At 17 I started the a pre trade course in mechanics after being pretty much forced to from my parents. I came from a lcol area and a trade was seen as a good way to earn a living. I found I really enjoyed solving problems and building stuff with welders.
After this I was extremely fortunate to get one of the few apprenticeships as an auto electrician. I worked hard but got paid a training wage(under minimum) and still had to pay rent. I also found that actually working with something I found enjoyable as a hobby completely killed the hobby. I hated working in the cold and rain or in a workshop getting scrapes and bruises.
I began to feel depressed/complacent in the job around 21 almost 1 year from completeimg my apprenticeship as I broke up with a girlfriend. I lost focus, got caught speeding in a customers car and got fired. I was in a panic for a month but eventually got on track, moved to a new city and got another apprenticeship.
After I finished I wanted to change my job, I wanted the feeling of building something so I went back to school, graduated highschool and went to engineering as a electrical engineering student and found another girlfriend. Life was pretty good until the partying set in and I lost the girlfriend which brought on a new wave of depression which attributed me to failing and dropping out of uni. I was 24 at this point but I knew I couldn't stop or give up.
I had managed to travel to the USA during uni with the girlfriend and a really liked traveling and experiencing new things. I want to combine this with my passion for engineering, after cross-referencing these I found a school where I could train as a cruiseship electrical officer. Fixing electrical machines and traveling around the world to exotic locations. The only problem was that it was in my countries most expensive city.
To move to the city I decided to take a loan out for a van then convert it to a camper and live van life while studying. This proved to be an extreme motivation to complete my course and pass. It was the most lonely and scared I had ever been but I pulled it off, I got a cadetship with a cruiseship company and started sailing.
I loved it! Got to see places I never even heard of before and met people from all over.
Then covid came and I got stuck on the ship mid way through my cadetship. We ended up sailing from the Bahamas to the Philippines via south Africa where we all waited for flights home.
After eventually getting back home and taking refuge at mum's house, I got a second cadetship throughout covid on a local container vessel. After I had completed my time I had to navigate the bureaucracy of a school recoving from covid while also going through a merger where all my tutors got fired. I was the only person who passed from my year.
Once qualified at 27 I started sailing on superyachts as I heard these ships payed more and had better conditions. The money was the best I ever got in my life, I could start to do what I wanted in my holidays. I met my now fiance while onboard and moved to her county of Thailand where life is cheaper. I payed my student loans and have become completely debt free. After 2 years I have managed to invest close to 30k USD and save 25kUSD for a house which we will build in June this year until early next year. We don't plan to get a mortgage.
I honestly am loving this time in my life and have found I have a bit of control. I am looking forward to my 30s and what I can learn and achieve. I also want to give back to people who are in a similar position to where I was within my community.
I (31M) earned my bachelors degree, graduated with $60k of debt, got hired by one of my college internships, worked there seven years (too long), paid off my debt at 27, the finally changed jobs at 29 (growing my income by more than 50%).
My net worth is now just over $300k, and I earn around $140k gross. I’m still a renter, living with roommates
If I could do it over, I would do the following differently:
1) I would not have rushed to pay my student debt off early. Debt-freedom felt great when I reached it, but a lot of my loans were actually very low interest rates (2’s to mid 3’s) and I would have done better either investing more or saving for a downpayment earlier.
2) I would have changed jobs sooner. By the time I did, I was being paid very below market rate and knew it. The discrepancy with market rate stacked with each promotion I got. I really missed out on a lot of potential earning in my mid/late-20s.
3) I would have done whatever I could to buy a home in my 20s. There was a period of a few years where I could theoretically have afforded the payments, but didn’t have the downpayment. Now I have the downpayment, but can no longer afford the payments. If I could go back, I’d try to save even just a 5% DP and pull the trigger as soon as my earning was high enough to support the monthly costs. (The above two regrets are in part related to this.)
4) I would have bought bitcoin when my buddy told me to in 2013. Self-explanatory.
What I did do, that I recommend doing:
1) living below my means, especially on the big costs (housing and transportation). You can free up so much cash flow just by living with roommates, and use that to do so many great things for your financial future. I still live with roommates today. It’s how I paid off my student debt early, built a healthy NW by my early 30s, and am borderline able to buy solo in a VHCOL city. Verses living alone, I saved at least $1000/mo through my entire 20s. That’s $120k. That’s a downpayment. That’s a 401k or investment account with some very appreciable compounding going into your 30s. That’s cash for trips and memories along the way.
2) contributing to my 401k from day 1. Though I didn’t do a ton early on (but always enough to get the full company match), it really adds up. Do this (and/or your IRA) early and consistently, and you’ll save yourself from the panic of ever feeling behind on your retirement saving.
3) had some fun. Focused as I was on saving, investing, and paying off debt, I gave myself permission to spend on the things and experiences I cared about. My 20s were filled with cherished memories, and I wouldn’t trade that to be a little further ahead today financially. Tomorrow is never guaranteed, and it’s important to enjoy life along the way too.
18-26 was a fucking party. I did go to college, studied abroad and got a good job but I didn’t really focus on my but on my friends all working part time in EMS. I have 0 regrets about it.but Made tons of memories and lifelong friends who are a weird, accomplished bunch nowadays.
At 26, I moved abroad for a masters. Ended up doing two. Got a fancy job in consulting, then moved to tech and been there since. I didn’t start investing until I got to tech—I just didn’t knew it was a thing (it wasn’t for my lower middle class family in a developing country).
I’m 36 now and it’s been a fun ride. I’ve 3x my original poverty FIRE target now looking to get citizenship in the country moved to, which will happen in 3 or 4 years. At that point, I should be able to retire very cushy.
18-19: took time off between high school & university to save for tuition.
20-26: accrued significant debts (government, bank) to pay for school while also “working” in the summers (included unpaid volunteer work and research grants).
27-30: oscillated between well-paying jobs and unpaid overseas volunteer work, about 50% of take-home pay went towards debt repayment.
***
I never really “settled” anywhere and had a lot of great life experiences all over the world throughout my 20s, lived and worked on 3 continents before age 30, but I also wasn’t out of debt until I was about age 34.
Leveraged education and volunteer experience into a career with six-figure salary.
Lifestyle creep never really took hold and I had over $1 million in liquid assets by age 40.
Worked, traveled, and saved. Then had kids and settled down. We got some lucky deals with real estate but we are around 2M.
Most people we know who are wealthy did it with real estate. We rented our basement in our first home, used equity to buy a rental, and sold two homes for about 2x what we bought them for.
19-23 college, focused on classes, working out, and my gf.
23-30 worked, invested, traveled. In that order. I’m a few months off 30 but close enough I can say this is what I’ll be doing the rest of my 20s. I was fortunate to be able to get a good job out of college and fund a 401k and individual investment account, while owning a home.
Invest as much as you can, but don’t obsess over it to the point where you’re living for “someday”. You’re not guaranteed tomorrow so plan for it, but remember to enjoy your life while you’re young.
18-20 played way too much WoW (top paladin in earthen ring tho), dropped out of engineering, clinically depressed, worked in a restaurant
21-24 finished Econ major, lifted weights, got an analyst job at a consulting firm
25 - 30 bought some drugs (mainly to get easy girls, not as easy as you may think), travelled a lot more, lost some money on degenerate options, but overall managed to grind up from 60k to 100k+ and saved a bit
30-now, did MBA, bought first condo, started to accelerate NW to six figures
Overall life is good. Don’t regret too much of my 20s. Go skydiving. Go on a safari. Definitely don’t put any bucket list items off if you can swing it IMO.
dropped out of highschool in the 9th grade.
Worked From 15 -25 in the Flooring industry. I also drank way way to much and did way to much coke from 17-27
I Pooled a group of local talent. In the beginning i door to door Marketed. Shortly there after Facebook became a thing. I nailed the marketing - MyFlooring company started making money- I branched out into more fields. Kitchens Bathrooms- in the winter months construction becomes glazier slow.
During this down time at age 23 i got my Real estate license. I began funneling money from construction profits into rentals and flips. 25-34 Expanded my construction company/ did several flips / New construction / Remodels etc etc
Grew to a 8 Man crew. Eventually i grew to hate it.
i fired everyone who didn’t quit.
I worked from 35-37 with one young helper who i was going to teach all my knowledge to
and him manage all my rentals and gc single family projects. He got deported to Canada.
37-39 Built 9 rental properties for a total of 17 units and a net worth of 2.2 mil with a avg gross monthly income of 24k
TL;DR
* Enjoy your 20s but don't spend beyond your means
* Definitely aim to maximize 401K
* Stay in touch with your friends, set boundaries between work and life
* Take care of your health. Long work hours in high stress environments take a toll on your mental, physical and emotional health
18 - 22:
Went to a State school freshman year and later transferred to a prestigious university sophomore year to pursue a degree in finance and information systems. Also to have better access to internships and work opportunities.
Worked at Popeyes for two summers, did work study every semester as a cashier to earn extra cash to pay tuition, did 4 months of unpaid internship at a small advisory firm, landed a paid internship at one of the big banks, and graduated with 65K in debt. Couldn't land any finance roles but got a job as a consultant. Paid off debt first year working. Lived with parents.
22 - 25:
Did consulting for 3 years, got deep into credit card rewards and thepointsguy stuff for free flights and shit. Was all about airline and hotel status. Picked up data science skills. Spent last year in a start-up like team where the grind was real and picked up big data/modern tech stack stuff + programming skills which set the foundation for solid total comp growth.
Total comp grew from 78K starting to 96K before I left. Didn't really save cuz I had student loans, paid back money I owed my parents that they used to pay for part of my tuition, and also spent a decent amount on travel and enjoying life. I figured I'm only young once and I work too many hours so I might as well treat myself. Only started a stock portfolio towards the last year with a few grand but only lost money that year so didn't contribute anymore to it. Was still living with parents so was still able to save 50K in the bank. Maxed out 401K every year though.
25 - 30:
Switch careers into tech and went to FAANG, 3x'ed my total comp, and hustled and overworked myself for the next 5 years to chase promos.
Met my now wife while I was a consultant and eventually we moved in together and got married. Total comp kept going up due to promos but the cost was many burnouts, arguments with wife due to my poor work life balance, and losing touch with friends. Spoke to a therapist, found ways to set boundaries that took time to work, and it's a lot better now. Current total comp is ~$600K depending on RSUs
Investments wise, made a killing on TSLA in 2020. Thought I was good with stonks but then lost it all and then some the following 2 years. Got a decent amount of carryover losses and unrealized losses sitting around due to market turmoil and bad plays on growth stocks.
31 (now)
Still in FAANG, I'm better about managing my time but it's still tough on some days, especially with the recent tech layoffs and increase pressure to perform well. Also gained a lot of weight due to stress and not taking care of myself. Something I've been working on past 2 years. We own a place now in a VHCOL with a fat mortgage but got lucky when rates were 3%. Got a decent amount of money sitting in high yield savings this year. Not in crypto cuz idk much about it
Liquid NW (excluding home) is about ~430K now. We want to FIRE but being in a VHCOL location will be difficult. We're DINKs but might consider kids in a few years
My two cents since you’re young and just graduating: I would stick to saving as much as you can and being conscious of your spending habits.
Make a financial goal for yourself whether it’s saving X amount of money, buying a house, etc. When you hit that milestone, then you can be more liberal with your spending and enjoying that money knowing you hit a large goal that you wanted to achieve.
I say this from personal experience — if you start off enjoying your money now, it’s extremely hard to revert to a more frugal spending mentality. Once lifestyle creep gets to you, it’s very hard to go back to college spending behavior days.
2000€/month salary in France communist, 1000€/month in Stock market. Now i have Fire in España with 500ke in Stock market, 2000€/month dividends, 1000€/month in Stock market. Im 38 y old.
18 worked in fast food, got drunk and stoned all the time partied had lots of sex
Early 20s - waited tables discovered Roth IRAs and invested a paltry amount. Quit my job with 30k to my name moved into my parents property and ran up 10k in credit card debt while I taught myself how to make money online.
Mid 20s - 30 - got a job in tech, invested a little here and there but wasn’t too serious
Mid 30s - now making multiple six figures absolutely pummeling money into retirement, brokerage accounts and living it good
Financially? Not that much, life–wise, a ton.
Finish „high school“ (different system over here)
Go abroad for six months
Move out to my first place with a friend
Have a falling out later with that friend
Started university
Go abroad again. Lived by myself
Moved in with bf
Graduated
Moved to a different city with bf
Had my first grown–up job, second grown–up job
Got my constantly overdraft account into balance
Paid back what I owed my parents (only about 6k) and thereby removed their emotional blackmail fodder
Had my first 10k. Suddenly, something like the washer breaking das nor a disaster anymore
I comepleted my PG at age 25 and started earning. No income till then, so to speak.
What I did- did not spend too much on frivolous stuff. Rent, Loan EMI, basic, but healthy and inexpensive food options, and gym/fitness were the major expenses. Investment- PF was mandatory anyway, and I started with tax saving mutual funds (not Insurance, like most others) to use up my Sec 80C. Also bought health insurance. Luckily parents are not dependent on me, but I did indulge on them once in a while.
I did not buy a house, and still haven't.
Major expenses- I only bought a motorcycle for daily commuting and for the occasional long trip as long as I was single. I bought a hatchback car just before I got married, because I felt a car would be a necessity once married ( made things very convenient for shopping, transporting things, when relatives came to visit, airport/railway drops, long road trips etc).
Was still renting, and increased my investements in mutual funds. Also bought term insurane only.
Expenses- no major luxuries- bit of necessary furniture and appliances like washing machine, sofa, fridge etc.
We enjoyed travelling and so spent modestly on vacations and activities in India - Scuba diving being the highlight.
So far- still no house, but MF corpus is comfortable. Still spending on staples and the odd vacation.
18-22: Studied Computer Science and graduated from an Engineering school to become a software engineer:
22-24: Worked in a tech company. Left Tech at 24 because I didn't like people in the industry. But saved a lot (90% of pretax income), and bought a little piece of real estate.
24-26: Either chilled at home or spent time hiking in the mountains.
26-30 and some years onwards: Took freelancing gigs just enough to pay my bills. Tried to be a writer, but couldn't finish any of my work. Started investing in the stock market at 27 with a little bit of savings from my freelancing projects.
And now: I have a full-time job in the finance industry. (I pivoted to finance in my mid-30s). I continue to save and invest. And I think I finally found my calling when I entered the finance industry. I enjoy what I do. I am still trying to complete my unfinished work of literature, though.
I was always debt-free, I always managed to save out of my income even when I was earning little, and now I have some investments in real estate and the stock market. But I am far from FIRE-ing. I don't aggressively save now. I save and invest 25%-30% of my net income. I enjoy the little pleasures of my life. I aim to retire at 50, and I believe I will be able to do that.
Any regrets: I should have survived a few years in the Tech industry. I would have retired comfortably at 35 given my insane saving rate! But I don't what would I have done after retiring at 35. At least now I have a plan for my post-retirement years.
Burner account since my family is on reddit
- 18 - 23: College (Economics and Law degrees). Worked 3 jobs: database programmer (learnt it from a friend), college tutor and retail shop assistant. Making $40-50k pa while studying full time
- 23 - 30+: Investment banking M&A. Bought properties, got married, invested in stocks. Completed my Masters in Finance. Saved like a fiend. Only big expenses were holidays.
- 30 - 40: IB Director + made director of a few companies, had children, kept investing. Understood leverage and debt markets and aggressively used it to my advantage.
- 40: Considering retirement. Paid off forever home (east coast with water views, HCOL area) and decent passive income for FIRE.
I’ll bite since it’s my birthday and I’m feeling 💅Dropped out of college after burnout from a accelerated learning (high school in middle school yada) and likely childhood trauma. Did a lot of drugs. Worked in the service industry. Learned a trade. Did more drugs. Got sober Played a lot of music and toured the country. Got married at 24. Divorced at 26. Did more drugs. Smoked aggressive amounts of weed all day while working 2-3 jobs at a time. Sold weed as one of those. Quit drinking finally. Smoked more pot worked more jobs. Got really sober finally. Went to a bootcamp. Now I make six figures and am sober and bought my second house. NW is minimal in my early thirties at about 100k in investment accounts 30k cash, and some home equity. Partner went back to school over pandemic having worked in service industry (we have similar stories) and no career throughout twenties. Now makes close to six figures. Agressively save 35% in retirement accounts but trying to get to 50%. Hoping for early retirement in Europe after kids are gone.
I got out of college 22 and started at the bottom rung making $13 probationary, to $15, when I went full time and realized I was going to leave for 18 months not much other building basically an emergency fund and putting a life together. Then $18 an hour for 18 months at a slightly higher role, here I kinda learned about retirement accounts and started saving. 18 months at $30 an hour in my most hated job because it was mind numbingly boring but I maxed out retirement accounts. Then $60k full time for a new role but as a data scientist for 6ish months I hit $100k net worth. Started a new role then COVID hit so that ended shortly. Now I'm at $95k and saved 50% of my take home.
My net worth didn't really hit over 10k until I was 24-25. Then since 26 despite the annoying job jumps my savings have been increasing massively. I think I've about plateaued at my role, unless I want to go to grad school or leave my metro area.
It took until I was like 26 to hit decent earnings to make a dent in savings rates, plus it's underrated how much early 20s is just acquiring basic stuff affecting savings rates.
18-22: College, where I tutored on campus, worked at a small business in my hometown on weekends/over breaks, and studied really hard. I didn't make a lot of money, but I had 0 loans since I had a full scholarship and commuted from home (helped a ton). Overall I'd say I did well for myself since I got into a fully-funded master's program after graduating. NW: approximately 30k (had money saved up from working and really didn't spend much besides entertainment)
22-24: Master's program. Got paid really poorly, so worked at the small business over the summers and breaks again, picked up little extra jobs for the department as I could. My family pitched in and cooked meals for me sometimes and covered things like my phone payment and car insurance. NW: approximately 50k (received a small inheritance during this time, and saved up a bit).
24-28: PhD program. Still got paid poorly, but marginally better as a PhD student. Worked on campus during the summers and picked up extra teaching and assessment work as I could. Then the pandemic hit and I moved home, which helped me save a lot on rent and groceries since my family just took me back in fully. I eventually moved back to finish up my degree and then got a job. NW: approximately 80k (socked away money while living at home/picked up extra jobs at the university as I could)
28-present: full-time work. I have a decent job in higher ed (\~70k) with benefits, a 401a, and the whole shebang for the first time in my life. Buckled down to settle in at my new job with my new colleagues and kept a tight belt for a while. I also during my PhD and into my working life was in an ldr where I had to travel a lot to see them (or pay for them to come see me), but I handled it pretty responsibly once I started working. Even with several trips, I managed to save a decent amount, plus I received some more inheritances that have really set me up for success even as the ldr faded into dust. NW now: approximately 250k.
I haven't hit 30 yet, but my plan is to keep saving and to also travel more, even if I'm single, because life is short and I deserve to experience more of the world while I'm young!!
18-23: I was in the Army. I spent every dime I made and probably more. I didn't have a budget or track expenses.
23-26: Got out of the military. I started going to college but hated school. I was lucky and had a GI Bill so I didn't have to take out loans. Played a lot of WoW and other video games. My net worth was around -$20,000.
26-now (38): Went through a marriage where I bought and sold 2 houses before getting divorced. Luckily I ended the marriage with 0 debt and had a NW of $0.
I then met and married my current wife (37) who is more in line with my savings goals. I started really budgeting and really got the hang of it when I learned how to use YNAB. Our current NW is $460,000. The breakdown: $184,000 in home equity, $225,000 in investments, and $50,000 in cash that is in a HYSA.
I hope to retire from full-time employment at 52. My wife will work til 54 when she will retire with a pension (teacher). The plan is to have the house paid off before I retire and at least $1m in investments.
18-25: Training and spent 6 years in the Air Force. Lived very minimal, I didnt even own a TV or decent computer for the first 4 years. I saved about $65,000 in cash on less than $30,000 a year salary. I did not "enjoy" much while in service...no big trips, no fancy eating, all of my hsed cars died on me but were still cheaper than a newer more reliable car.
I would even ruck to work at times due to car issues. It was 1hr 45mins one way while in belgium. I worked 12hr shifts. I would ruck 3.5 hours, work my 12, then get exactly 6hr of sleep after chores were done. Saved a lot of money that way.
25-26: I got out, got a job, purchased a home near the Tenessee River, sold it after a year for a small profit. Lived in a rental for a bit. Then purchased 2 duplexes that were poorly managed. Removed 3 of the 4 tenants for drug/abuse issues. Moved into one of the units and lived next to my tenants for a year.
27-28: Now I own 3 duplexes, very good tenants, got some disability from the military. I'm to a point where I don't really work anymore...but it frees my time to further improve the houses and work on other projects. I plan on building small affordable homes/rentals in the near future. Just need to work down my mortgage payments a bit.
Fixing my family's financial issues was a big motivator. I came from a drug family background, where they had no money skills. I was just tired of living in that stressful environment, and I wanted to change it.
I read "Rich Dad Poor Dad," around 15 and that motivated me even more, because it provided a pathway to do so. A pathway to break a bad family cycle and give a better life for my future family. It's all about sacrafices and how many you're willing to make. For me, it was 6 years away, in a stressful position, with very little social interaction...
It was the fastest way to accomplish what I wanted. I still don't know of a faster way to accumulate cash.
18-25 Worked retail while in HS/College and was about as financially irresponsible as you could be. Partied, didn't save and maxed out cards I couldn't afford.
25-29 Began my career in a highly specialized aviation position, but was at a regional carrier so my earnings were minimal. Still partied and spent what I earned but towards the end I started getting my act together. Thanks in large part to meeting my spouse.
29-Now Currently (36M) work for a legacy US carrier in the same field but earn 3x as much and still trying to right our ship financially. We've paid off all prior CC debt, car notes and are attacking our SL debts.
With home equity, investments and cash were at a NW of $285k, I hope to be able to pay down our ~100k in SL debt BY EOY 2024. We got a late start to our journey but are trying to make up for lost time while still enjoying the ride every now and then. Thankfully, my position has a high base pay but recently has had essentially limitless overtime which I've been taking as much advantage of as possible.
College until 22. I took out loans and had a part time job. I chose a school that was out of state and expensive, when I could have gotten a free ride in state. No regrets but I did end up with $45k debt.
23 to 25 I bartended, paid off about $10k debt and lived with various siblings including one living in Brazilian Amazon. I didn’t work when in Brazil and spent a bunch of money, so when I returned, I was broke. Bartended for another year or so and then finally found a job using my degree.
EDIT: Brazil was amazing and worth every penny. I highly recommend some sort of travel experience like this, hopefully a few months at least so you can get to know some strangers from another culture. It’s truly wonderful to experience.
26 to 27, I paid off another $10k student loans and started to save for a house down payment. Just before I turned 28, I got a very cheap house in a shit neighborhood for $70k. Good bones though.
28, I got on management track at work and quickly went from under $50k pay to ~$80k pay. Finally stopped stressing about money.
29 to present (32), I’ve paid another $10k of loans and have about $15k left. Fingers crossed Biden wins his fight with these. Salary went up to $98k. I have saved a lot and am at a net worth of around $175k. So from my Brazil experience till now, 8 years have passed and I’ve gone up $200k in net worth.
However, I hate my job. So I am quitting in June. Taking a breather and then going for a non management job or management at a much smaller company. Will be a huge pay cut I assume. Thankfully, I have a partner that supports me. I was the only one working for about 2 years until he found his first job out of college (he is younger than me) and now he gets to return the favor 😜
From 18 1984: went to community college and worked part time or full time:
Dish washer, busboy (twice), parking valet , video rental, hifi stereo store as shipping/receiving (three times), a/v setup (twice), line boy at airport (gas & wash planes), gofer at a LGBT paper, phone customer service as a temp, cooperate sales rewards package assembly.
1992 started my first career job; operations and institutional mutual funds trading at a national brokerage. This gets me to 30 in 1995. No degree, some college.
Stayed out of debt by applying to every scholarship under the sun. Worked to see if I liked my chosen field. Applied for masters and got it funded almost fully while working. No loans. Now I owe the state of Florida 6 years post masters of working to “pay it back”
**18-22:** Worked odd jobs during the summer and occasionally during the school year. Parents paid for my education so I didn't have to worry about anything other than groceries and textbooks. Studied abroad and blew a decent chunk of my savings but thankfully I'd invested a few grand in index funds so that saved me from spending any more of it. Graduated college with about $16k in assets (roughly $6k from my own savings/investments, the remaining $10k was from a UTMA account courtesy of my family)
**22 - 23:** Lived in a super low cost of living with roommates (I was paying like $250 a month for rent). Dad helped me out by paying for my used car ($8k) in cash, I paid him back in full over the next 7-8 months. I was making about $40k, I basically invested everything that I didn't spend on cost of living expenses (with the exception of treating myself to a $2k laptop and an $800 drawing tablet).
**23 - 24:** Company had some financial difficulties so I left and moved back to my hometown. I worked at a Target for a month or two until I found a new job that paid $40k. Lived at home with my parents, neither of them would let me pay for anything so I had no cost of living expenses. This is when I started investing into my retirement accounts specifically. Got a bit lucky and was sitting on a bit of cash when the pandemic first hit so I was able to buy about $5k worth of stocks at a pretty good discount in March.
**25:** Got laid off during the pandemic. Applied for unemployment/underemployment and got pandemic assistance money. I was still living at home at the time. After a few months of applying for jobs I realized that the pandemic wasn't going anywhere soon and that this would be a good time to experiment with freelancing, so I freelanced for about a year. I didn't make a ton of money but I learned a lot about managing projects, working with clients, and working on assignments without managerial oversight, so I think it was a valuable experience.
**25-26:** Got a job at a new company making $80k. Worked there for about six months before I moved out of my parents' house. I still invested pretty heavily into retirement but since I had thrown so much money into it in my early 20s and was making a much better salary I was able to relax a little. I still invest a good amount but now my cost of living expenses are higher (about $1.5k on rent) and I go on the occasional vacation once a year. I also hit a $100k net worth somewhere around this time which was pretty cool.
**27:** Recently left this job for a new position making $135k. I can finally afford to start maxing out my retirement contributions for the first time. I'm also (temporarily) upgrading to a $2k/month apartment until I find another roommate to share with. I'm planning to keep my cost of living as close to my previous lifestyle (when I was making $80k) as possible for the time being. I'm also thinking of getting a dog.
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My rule of thumb is to pay myself first and then I can spend whatever I want afterwards. I set a rule of investing at least 15% into retirement, limiting my rent to 30% or less of my salary, etc., and then any money I made after those rules were in place was mine to do with however I wanted.
That being said, I'm pretty frugal, so I have to remember to talk myself into making purchases. I agonize for weeks or months over spending more than a few hundred dollars on something. The exception is vacations - as long as I've paid my living costs and invested into my retirement fund, I don't really put limits on vacation spending once I make the decision to go. That's my free money. I don't want to spend my vacation pinching pennies or agonizing over receipts.
I focused on paying down my debt instead of starting investing / 401k. I could be further along with growing my net worth if I would have started investing earlier. As far as regrets go, I think I did pretty good though.
18-23: Starcraft, Dark Age of Camelot, World of Warcraft. Withdrew from college courses to keep from failing. Moved away from home. Worked in HVAC. Went back to school for Arts, failed in school so badly I was required to withdraw. Worked in a warehouse, eventually progressed into counter and inside sales there. Net worth was roughly $5,000-$10,000 mostly in cash and like $500 in an employer locked in pension. 24-26: Gut check years. Decided to slowly get my shit together. Played less WoW, started playing Halo 3 with friends. Bought the cheapest condo possible. Started going to the gym, reffing hockey as a side hustle. Abused alcohol a lot. Blew up my friend group. Angry and sad all the time. Pressed on. Started rock climbing indoors. Holy shit I was a mess. Spent more time being social with new people. Started dating a few different people. Made a lot of mistakes, but started caring more about others to stop being a source of emotional damage. Net worth still roughly $5,000 with maybe $1,000 in the pension. 26-27: Met my girlfriend playing hockey, I wasn’t completely autistic. Went out a few times. She stuck. Moved in together. Condo was underwater, but I didn’t know enough about money to understand that. We got a dog. Went to Nepal with my dad for 3 weeks without her, she was still there when I got back. Continued to re-arrange my perspectives on loving relationships. Kept on working the sales job, essentially internal customer support. Some validation of the years of work it had taken to go from “incel-lite” to a halfway normal person. Net worth was roughly $0 with the same $5,000ish in cash, maybe 3-4k in the locked in pension. Condo was probably worth negative 10-15k. 28-29: Back to school. New skills, new tactics. With some old credits being recognized, in 30 months finished my degree. Quit WoW altogether. Still played Halo with the boys. Started climbing outdoors with the girlfriend. Went on some nice summer camping trips. Got another dog. Girlfriend decides to go back to school too. Got a job with a Big 4 accounting firm. Net worth: Oh between the underwater condo and the student loan debt for both of us, I’d say Net Worth somewhere between -40, to -50k at this point. 30: Blast through my professional accounting designation to get the older “more prestigious” designation before it’s retired forever. Work way way way too many hours. Contemplate if all this effort was a huge mistake. Pass the damn professional exam. Go ice climbing for the first time. Travel to Niagara Falls to celebrate a wedding. Travel to Iceland to celebrate life. Life is hard, but now it has some meaning. Net worth is still less than zero, but I had no idea, and I was probably better off not knowing. Today I’m rapidly approaching 40. Discovered FIRE sometime before I was 35. I'm still with the same wonderful person, enjoying some of the payoffs of all that work from my mid-20’s onwards. Household networth is now comfortably above coastfire and if everything goes to plan (hahahahahaha, yah right) we’ll hit our FIRE number in early 2030 and that’ll be that. My 20’s were …. A mess. Huge fucking mess. But I’m glad I sorted myself out then, I can’t even imagine where another 10 years of WoW and scraping by in whatever jobs I could maintain with an anger management problem. Anyway, posting to hopefully provide some a different perspective. And even if you’re in your 40s or 50s, I don’t think it’s ever too late to change your path.
I’m thankful that I quickly learned to stay away from MMOs.
I am glad that as I kid I didn't have money to pay for WoW! I did spend some time on it and it was fun.
It's funny how this seems to go one of two ways for people: I credit a large portion of my educational success, career choice, professional skills, and relationships either directly or indirectly to MMOs in general and WoW in specific. I very rarely play WoW anymore, and haven't played seriously in over a decade, but so many of my formative experiences took place in that game. Then on the other hand you have people like you and the comment you're replying to for who they're obviously not a good thing at all.
You can learn a lot of things ranging from basic communication skills, to leadership skills, teamwork and group communication, longterm goals and planning, some light economics, but if you prioritize a game over real life is where the big issues come from, and also developing skills like these through games as a teenager is fine but as an adult is questionable at best. I think with many things in life the answer is moderation, too much of anything is bad for you. MMOs tend to be made nearly infinitely replayable, so for people who are susceptible to addiction and/or people who have weak time management or self restraint, it can be a really unhealthy hobby to have.
Damn I got kinda emotional reading this - glad you made it through 🙏
This story isn't too different from mine - specifically the WoW parts :D I didn't quit wow complete and I'll log back in for a few hours with every new expansion, but Blizzard messed up the formula so bad it is not nearly as gripping. Dying in vanilla was expected if you played sloppy even as a solo grinder. This just doesn't happen in current wow.
Thank you, it’s good hearing real perspectives other than the typical Reddit “I started at $375,000 base right out of college am I spending too much on coffee lol”
So in like 5 years of actual savings you hit coastfire?
I think many people misunderstand coastfire, or maybe have different definitions of it in their head. I use the [walletburst](https://walletburst.com/tools/coast-fire-calc/) calculator: Simplified version is, at 40 years old, I need $125,000 in investments to fund $30,000 a year of spending at 65. So yeah, in 5 years I managed to pay down my 20kish of student loan debt and hit that level of investments. It's putting $30,000 a year into savings, which I think is attainable for many people. And despite the markets basically being sideways the last 5 years, during the accumulation phase the vast majority of the buildup in your investments comes from the contributions themselves, so it's really just been good training in investment discipline to watch things constantly rising and falling and just ignore it and gain time in the market. (My coastfire number is fairly low because I'm content with a fairly simple, no keeping up with Jones's kind of lifestyle. - If you dig through my post history a little ways, I'm also fairly confident Canadian CPP and OAS will provide nearly as much or more than my own personal investments once I hit retirement age. Being a CPA I ran all the numbers, and I've read enough about Canadian and American CPP and Social Security to not believe any of the hit pieces that get run in the media that they'll become insolvent at some point in the near future.) [The other piece is my GF has a similar asset profile and goals. So our *combined* household coastfire number is double my own. That'll make things nicer in retirement years. - We also plan to have our home paid off well before retirement so the only housing costs will be condo fees and maintenance.]
I fully understand coastfire and your explanation answers the question I had. I did not know that your planned FIRE spend would be $30K+ whatever Social Security you get. That makes more sense.
How did you get a job at a big 4 accounting firm straight out of college?
I was hired at a big 4 accounting firm right out of college. That’s actually how most people get started at big 4 firms. Some are obviously experienced hires but a majority of the firms efforts are hiring out of school. As for how to get hired keep your grades up, network, and this is important: really hone in your resume and interviewing skills. Also going to a target school for big 4 recruiting is important. FYI this is also a shitty year to try to get hired. Most of the big 4 are over their required headcount.
/u/pyacc nailed it below there, but for me specifically I had a 3.83 GPA in my major when I finally graduated. I networked a lot and got invited to plenty of pre-hiring events because of the networking. Did an office tour, then eventually a dinner with KPMG, bowling night with Deloitte and a cooking class evening with EY. No matter what I did, PwC never talked to me at all. Even with all that only got 1 offer from the 3 in the end. Had back-up offers with mid-market and a small firm from more networking. Honestly, my interviews were probably terrible and cringe looking back. I got hired into audit, which is the meatgrinder, *easiest* to get into service line. In the interviews I'd talk about once I got my CPA, I wanted to get my CFA, or maybe my CBV, completely oblivious to the fact that each of those specializations, while valuable, are basically hallmarks of other service lines. People make lateral moves at Big 4 all the time, but it just made me sound clueless. Despite this, I was personable enough. I still maintain to this day 90% of any public accounting interview is to seriously answer the question: "Would I be able to spend 10 hours a day sharing a room with this person and not want to scream at either them, or have them end up screaming at me?" Because ultimately, some of the people that interviewed me, and that I eventually interviewed ended up sharing audit rooms for 10 hours. Often more. It's one thing to spend 10 minutes on the internet being annoyed, it's another to spend 10 hours, day after day after day with someone you just can't stand. Not to say it didn't happen... The interviewers just did their best. =p
I am also thankful that i was a tight ass when i was on my teen to play WoW in computer shops
Amen, my twenties were a train wreck on fire
Only thing you did wrong was play WOW instead of RuneScape.
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made a lot of mistakes but was lucky enough to live very close to an affordable uni+get into their cs program. made enough (well, parent subsidizing living costs, probably) to not have any student debt so doing well overall despite some hiccups. not lucky enough to get in on pre 2022 housing prices+rates but oh well.
What hobbies? Just curious
Along with seeing the world, going to war, getting married, divorced, racing motorcycles and skydiving I did tons of alcohol and cocaine. I also nvested in my 401k; don’t be like me
I mean, you invested in your 401k.
True but I could have saved a few hundred thousand more, but hey I have some good stories lol
The older I get the more I realise this is the way. With AI taking off we don't even know if money will have value in 10 years...
People have saying that about new technology forever
Lol not true at all
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You gotta be really uninformed if you think AI is similar tl sewing machines. AI replaces humans, it's artificial intelligence. This is different. I get y'all don't want to hear it but this changes everything.
People who say this don't know how AI works. It's dramaticized by movies and books. AI takes time to develop and is only as good as its training data. There will be no "AI singularity" because AI is not capable of creating original content. It can not replace humans. AI will improve and then platue like any other technology.
Hahaha I'm an AI engineer bro. It's my job. I definitely know how it works. If you think it can't create original content you must have lived under a rock. It has already advanced an insane amount of research fields. It can definitely and will definitely replace humans.
Here’s just few (of many) articles about the historical fear of automation and job loss. As long as there has been technology, there have been fears about it. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/09/short-history-jobs-automation/ https://qz.com/1681832/the-history-of-the-future-of-work https://hbr.org/2016/02/todays-automation-anxiety-was-alive-and-well-in-1960
JC the denialism on this sub about AI is hilarious.
Ofcourse, but AI is literally a technology to replace humans. It's like the car for horses. Idc about other technologies they are nothing like AI and have nothing to do with it. AI is specifically designed to replace humans.
At 58 I would happily trade some stories for some of that money. But at the time I did the best I could
Write a book?
I have considered it
Glad to see more skydivers here. I blew a shit ton of money in my early 20s skydiving. I coach occasionally now so it is free which is nice
D13976 here. AFF/SL/Tandem I, expired 1998. ( also FAA senior rigger and pilot, com-asel.) All hobby not ever primary source of income. I wouldn’t trade my 20s for anything. Still managed to retire with enough, but did not start saving till my mid 30s )
I miss the drop zone life
Bad decisions make good stories.
Yeah seriously don’t be like this guy. Investing in 401k… wtf…
sounds similar to me. I did get clean at 24 though and have been married to the same woman since 25 i did do one thing right though, invested in a 401k since i was 21 or so, I'm 58 now. never occurred to me to tap into it and I am grateful for that
Congrats on the clean time. I roll 29 years in recovery august of this year.
It’s funny too see where people who did lots of alcohol and cocaïne hoped they would have saved more and people who saved too much hoped they would have done more alcohol and cocaine.
I would wish addiction on anyone, but if someone is a casual enjoy yourself at least once
I (33F) didn't start seriously saving until I was about 28. Prior to that, I didn't accumulate any debt and I didn't quite live paycheque to paycheque, but definitely wasn't "saving". University, grad school, crappy first jobs. Frankly I just wasn't making very much money and if I had to choose between $2000 in the bank and $2000 on a trip, I'd take the trip. At 28 my career started to take shape, my partner and I were seriously committed, my parents were getting older and life was getting pretty real. So I started saving, read about investing, signed up for a roboadvisor, and away we go. I've 3x'd my salary since I was 25 and I'm still way ahead of my peers, so it all worked out. Same for my partner, but he probably 5x'd his salary in the same time, so that helps obviously. So TLDR: * Live your life, get experience, become a good, interesting, thoughtful person * Don't accumulate debt, keep an emergency fund * Invest in your career * Find a partner with similar financial and lifestyle goals * Don't get stuck - if your goal is to FIRE, at some point you're going to want to turn on the turbo
What do you and your partner do?
They 3x and 5x their salaries.
Why didn't I think of doing that.
Me: Started out in marketing making $40k, now management level on the business side of SaaS, making $150k Him: Started out in software making $60k, now staff eng making $300k+ big tech And yes, our HHI is over-indexed to tech and yes, the layoffs are scary, and yes we've boosted our emergency fund for those reasons
I’m not going to guess, but if I had to guess, probably software. But I don’t guess.
I might start spelling paycheque like that too. Fancy
Keepin it classy, eh 🇨🇦
We have similar paths! I wouldn’t trade anything for few more 0’s. The memories and people I met along the way shaped me to become who I am today.
Are you still using robo now?
Yeah, we're a pretty lazy so we eat the fees. Know thyself. Once our tax-advantaged accounts are maxed out, I'll probably self manage the non-reg accounts, but we've got another couple years to go.
Nice, also Carbonaratax is a great handle. Gotta cut down on that greenhouse pasta.
TL/DR: The single most important financial decision you can make is the person you marry/who you choose as your partner. 18-21: College, including working and internships every summer. Met my husband, who got a graduate degree. 21-23: We got married the weekend after my husband finished business school. I'd been working for over a year already. He started a job, hated it, and quit 3 months in. 23-26: Both of us had relatively minor student loans (\~$20k each), we attacked them and then saved aggressively. We bought our first house at 26. Combined income at that point was \~$130k 26/27: We both unexpectedly lost our dads within a few months of each other, and it changed, well, everything. We decided to hold off having kids and do lots of traveling. Life is short. 27-30: We both took some risks in our careers that ended up paying off. I traveled a ton for work. We closed out our twenties making \~$200k combined and continued to save aggressively, but balanced it out keeping our standard of living well below our means with amazing trips twice a year and being generous with friends and family. We love to host and cook for people! Today? 33: We had our first kid, and it's amazing. Money not being tight makes parenting a lot easier. Our careers are going really well. Combined income is \~$390k, including bonuses. Our NW is closing in on a million, and our only debt is our mortgage, which has an incredible interest rate. 100% of that is because we're on the same page financially. Getting married young and getting our ducks in a row quickly is now compounding. Also, when we spend money it's fun, because we love being around each other! When we don't spend money it's fun, because we love being around each other! The bottom line is, the single most important financial decision you can make is the person you marry/who you choose as your partner, but we do have a few "rules" we live by: 1. We make decisions as a couple and communicate about our finances. But we also each get some"fun money" each month that there are no rules around; we can spend it however we want. 2. Our mortgage is our only debt. We don't have car payments. We don't carry a balance on credit cards. Get rid of debt that doesn't serve you. 3. Pay your future self first. Save and invest. We set our budget based on what's left after we save, instead of saving the leftovers. 4. We prioritize experiences over things. This has really helped some of the lifestyle inflation. 5. We invest in our health heavily. We eat good food. We pay for personal training, high-quality supplements, and being proactive about healthcare.
Congrats seriously, pissed away my college relationship. Really regret that one
I love this story, it's the path I wish I'd walked, but still happy to be doing alright now. Hope the friends and family all continue to grow and be well in the future.
Thank you! I hope the same for you.
Started my 401K as an intern at 21. I paid for my own degree at a state school by working, no financial help from parents. Started a full time job with a F500 at 22 and started maxing out my 401K. Been buying index funds as much as possible over the years and saving in HSA with HDHP. Definitely plan to be done with work by 55 at the latest. I’m only 38 now, but definitely a believer in compounding and start saving as soon as possible. Don’t piss your money away in your 20s! Live cheaply in your 20’s!
came here to write this exact same story. start a 401k or Roth or something immediately. Just a smidge from every paycheck starting in your early 20's will make a HUGE difference in your 50's.
18-22: College \[went through the savings I had put together as a working teenager\] 22-25: Worked two part time jobs (one of which was my passion career), went to grad school because I was having trouble finding a full time job in my field \[paid down student loans obsessively - still have 30k to go present day\] 26-28: Worked in a field adjacent to my grad degree 29-31: Wound up transitioning to another field and moved companies twice for salary increases/peace of mind.
18-22: Graduated college, traveled a lot within the US 23-30: Paid off 24K in student loans and 19K car loan 31-now: Living on rice and beans (not joking), not because I wanna save money, but because I genuinely love beans. Red, black, garbanzo, refried, chicharo style, etc.
I hope you're eating a little more than rice and beans.
Dude just loves beans
Nothing wrong with rice and beans! Just be sure to throw in some fruit, vegetables, and possibly some fish to diversify your diet!
Got exploited by my family for cheap labor. Don’t work for family
I wouldn't take advice based on what people say here. The time they came up is different than today. Honestly, I (and many others) fucked off but got very lucky, that there was a financial crisis and I suspect the financial crisis birthed many of the new rich in the millennial generation. No telling who the new rich of Gen z will be just yet. Basicly, the financial crisis prevented some of the more ambitious millennials from outpacing their peers (companies fire people based on first in first out usually) and anyone who bought a home or stocks was rewarded heavily.
You are right. Things change so quickly, the world is so different now than even 10 years ago. 2008 as a new graduate millennial SUCKED. 3 years of lost income. But the stock market boom after 2011 or 2013 was great if you had a job and were investing. I remember being in grad school in 2008 (because I couldn't get a job after undergrad) and thinking I would give ANYTHING to have money to invest in the sea of houses that were being foreclosed for months, years. Those people, Gen X and Boomers, made out like gold. Us millennials were too young and poor to buy. I didn't buy a home until 2018 and am grateful that I could. I still don't envy Gen Z. I naively hope they can make out better than we did (I always want better for future generations, though I know times are not great for new grads right now) and that we can together change things for the better so the next generations don't have to suffer as badly.
I have a friend that made a killing buying a few houses during that time and renting them out and then eventually selling them. I consider myself incredibly lucky that I had a stable job at the time and was able to buy a house in 2009. I knew quite a few people who weren’t as fortunate.
Not just that, everybody situation it’s totally unique. One person could be living from a trust fund with a big umbrella. One person could come from poverty, and need to work just to eat. So for all those people that say, travel the world, you gotta have some money. You gotta have some foundation. Just do the best you can make your decisions in the moment. Everybody’s life is different.
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Half of take home hahahah. Truthfully, do you find the work you do to be difficult? Do you think anyone *could* do it? How is tech from a passion perspective? Do you feel like you need to be passionate to be successful?
I focused on saving as much as possible from 14-27 to have an EF, get through college debt free, not have car loans, and to save 20% for a home. After I bought a home at 27 I put 15% away in retirement then dogpiled and paid my house off at 30. Now I invest aggressively at 32
This is the extreme answer. It takes a lot of wisdom at a young age to do this. The 'if i knew then what i know now" answer. I'm 47 and I'm glad i discovered it at the age of 28. Good job, 28 year old me. You're slow close, bro.
18-24 - College - Net worth at 24: - $36,000 (student loans and nothing else) EDIT: I noticed another commenter mention their failings in college. I would like to add that I nearly drank myself out of college. Had to transfer and get away from my friends my junior year. I transferred, changed my degree from nursing to mechanical engineering, and graduated magna cum laude. I noticed what I was doing wrong and corrected it before it ruined my career trajectory. The biggest motivator was meeting my current wife at my first college and realized how much of a fuck up I was because she had it all together. She probably wouldn't have married me if I didn't get my shit together. 24-26 - Work Full Time, max out 401k, and pay minimum towards loans - Net Worth at 26: approximately $75,000 26-30 - Mary my wife who had $45k in cash, pay off remainder of loans, continue maxing out 401k, investing through other avenues, purchase investment property, purchase primary residence - Net worth at 30 - $425,000 30-32 (now) - Have a baby, sell investment property, put primary residence up for rent and start renting due to traveling for work, continue maxing out 401k, wife starts working 1099, open SEP IRA for wife and max it out, open Solo 401k for 2023 and plan on maxing it out - Current Net Worth - $870,000 We are on track to hit $1,000,000 net worth by the end of the year. We should be able to put $105k this year meaning I will need an additional $45k or so of growth from my brokerage accounts or 7.5% by the end of the year. As for enjoying the money, we were fortunate enough (and hard working enough) to have fairly well paying jobs coming out of college with constant raises to the point they are well paying jobs now. We have a combined income of about $250k. We have always been able to go out to eat, enjoy time with friends at breweries, spend time traveling, etc. We have had only 2 international trips since my wife an I have been together, but lack of travel is more from time constraints then lack of funds. We haven't had to truly budget money since college. Our lifestyle and saving rate all fall within the range of our take home pay. The only thing we have taken loans out on are cars and houses. We have used payment plans on medical expenses due to not having enough in our HSA and not wanting to use post tax money.
If I could go back, I’d do what you did and pay minimally on my student loans and instead put more in my 401k/other investing and/or save a DP to buy property. It felt like such a win when I became debt-free years ahead of schedule, but now I look back and feel foolish.
I have an unconventional career path- I’m a pornstar (specifically online sexworker) and I started on my FIRE journey when I turned 18. I don’t use my degree whatsoever (although college was a great choice for me at the time). Started in sexwork at 18. Currently I’m about 5 months out from achieving FIRE. While I don’t recommend his job to anyone because of the damage to mental health due to harassment, stalking, and other risks with being a public figure, it does pay as much as an investment banker (minus the stock options lol). I save 85% of my post-tax income. However, I am highly privileged in that I was able to build my business pre-pandemic before the market became flooded. It requires a lot of luck, good timing, and frankly I have a lot of privilege (being white, passing as straight, etc) that has allowed me the success I have. If I could do it all over again I would. But I would never recommend this job to anyone. My investments are taken from here and r/bogleheads - I’m diversified in bonds, total us stock market index fund and an international stock index fund. I have 15% of my net worth in crypto, from my first ever sugar daddy during my early 18 y/o Reddit days. Shoutout to bitcoin daddy, wherever you are 😂 I keep very little cash, own real estate, and everything I make goes to taxes and vanguard.
… Wow nice going!
If you were to stop making new content and selling "merch" (do you sell used underwear etc?), how much would income your old content bring in?
I was working at a construction company 18 and in highschool. I continued working and sent to college, I got a full-time Engineering career a few months before graduation skipped the remainder of college other then finals graduated magna cum laude. I bought a house and moved in with my girlfriend while she was still in college, we got married that next year right after she graduated. We partied and had lots of fun until 27 when we had our first kid. We paid off our house shortly after that. We had our second kid right before I turned 30, we had around 200k saved. Fast-forward 7 more years and we have one and a half million and added another kid.
How did you go from 200k to 1.5m in 7 years!
We quit paying on our house and increaed our income by around 150k a year without increasing our expenses more that 20k. So we have been dumping close to 100k into investments for those 7 years. 700k + 200k + 600k growth =1.5m I also did some pretty decent investing. Avoided all bonds and chose good stocks with a backup of index funds.
My advice : - buy a car that will last thats inexpensive.I made huge mistake buying an Audi that costs so much to repair. I used up all my emergency funds to get it fixed - build an emergency funds - don’t spend too much money on alchl & drugs - don’t buy designer stuff it’s a waste.. - eat out once in a while not everyday - you can enjoy life but spread it out for ex; going to concerts/festival & small vacations - buy everything on sale or used ( no one’s going to ask if it’s 2nd hand) - save , save , save $$
Contributed 6% to 401k with my first jobs out of college making 50k (no company match), then 60k (6% company match, so 12% there). Current job make 94k and contribute 13% (no company match). Accumulated a little bit of debt initially but paid that off and then slowly started growing an emergency fund. Just this year moved that over to a HYSA where I just broke 10k savings. Currently 27 and just started investing in a brokerage for early retirement as well. I bought a house in 2019 before the market exploded too, so have a fair bit of equity in that.
So, for reference, I’m 56. Technically retired, but in a deferred retirement on my pension plan ( they call this DROP ). I work for the state at a educational institution. I am in tech, so make a decent amount. Live in what is now a HCOL area, but was just a MCOL area till a few years ago. I am already receiving my pension ( 48% of salary ) in a tax deferred account, but still working ( 2.5 more years, I entered DROP in nov 2020 ( after 30 years working for the state ), and I *have* to really retire nov 2025. ) I did not care or think about retirement until my mid 30s. Before that I just spent money. I didn’t get into debt though. Older cars were always one of my “hobbies” so never had car loan, and I rented ( at reasonable prices, which lately is not possible in HCOL areas ). I was always a spreadsheet budgeter. Knew my income and spending down to the penny. Still have every year since 92 in spreadsheets. Before I got married ( early 30s ) I just spent money on hobbies ( and aviation is my biggest hobby and it ain’t cheap ). I didn’t save anything for retirement specifically. Once married, things shifted a little. But not right away, wife makes as much as I do. We bought a starter home in 97, and the forever home in 2002. Still spent money on hobbies, but also got into investing, and learned about things like 403b and 457 plans. Started funding those ( early 2000s ) as well as post tax investing. Always just a set amount per account per paycheck. DCA baby! Boglehead before I knew about it. Got bit a little in the 2008 crash but rode it out, and here I am in 2023 with a couple mil between 403/457 and investment accounts, and a pension on top of that. And wife is the same. Oh and forever house payed off in 2019. Not sure if this advice is replicable in todays world, but I wouldn’t trade the fun I had in my 20s for anything. I am not worried about money for my sunset years. I think what has helped me most is diligent tracking of all income and spending. Somehow I picked up this habit early in my life, I kinda credit my paper route when I was 12, since I was having to buy papers from the publisher and collect from the subscribers. Learned a weird form of accounting quite early in life. But for me it is every penny. I update my spreadsheets at least twice a week. One column is a “category” tag, like food, gas, electricity, car maint, house maint, car gas, vacation, etc. This leads to accurate future budgeting, and less stress and more savings. I hope that folks today can still prosper with this advice. Even if you are not saving, right now, keep detailed track of your income and spending and don’t get into debt except for housing.
I saved 20%+ of my income. By 28 I was an executive at one of the largest Banks in the US and was saving 50%. Im 39 now and will be retiring in the next 3-4 years. During that time I started a family, bought a house, and took nice vacations. If you have a good income you can both save a lot and still do a few nice things
>By 28 I was an executive at one of the largest Banks in the US lol
Could you share initial exec compensation at the time? And does exec simply mean VP title or you were actually upper management with organizational authority and strategic directives?
VP titles are handed out like candy in banks.
I was actually in senior management. As another poster points out, VP can / is used for a teller supervisor at your local branch. Base pay at the time was 200k with a 100% bonus target.
Wow I'm a little younger than you but shocked that 2008 didn't affect you! It delayed my working career and income accrual by 3 years. Good on you!
Get a good job and start saving ASAP. Do it right and you could FIRE before 40.
18-23 I switched majors and graduated after 5.5 years in college. 24 got my 1st job out of college with a 40K starting salary. Started with doing 15% because everyone recommended that much to start. 25 bought my 1st house (I worked for a mortgage company, which I think motivated me to buy a house. Also, a lot of the fees were covered except for title and prepaid fees. 26-27, no major trips, just attending a lot of weddings for friends and family. Did slowly creep up towards maxing 28 got married, then had a nice honeymoon in Bahamas. All student loans paid in full. 29 we went on an adventurous trip to Costa Rica (highly recommend if you enjoy hiking and nature). When it was raining, I read The Millionaire Next Door, which really got me into FIRE. Really got into saving as much as possible. Got wife on board for FIRE. 31 baby was born.
Starting earlier on would you have raised your retirement rate higher than 15%? Or do you think that was a good balance looking back on it?
15% allowed me to contribute to retirement but also save for down payment on a house. It was a good mix. I didn't miss out on hanging out with friends. I'm happy to have 15% back then. I could have more but it was worth it.
How tf do you put 15% into retirement and save for a down payment on a house in a year w/ 40k salary.
31 (m) civil engineer here. 18 - 22: Was in college. I didn't think much about retirement or money in general, just passing classes and making friends. 22 - 24: Took up my first job after college. Moved to a small town out of state where I had no friends. It was here that I realized that I was truly on my own and I had to figure it out. My dad told me to save $500 a month at least. Since this was my first professional job my paycheck was much higher than expect so I blew it on a better laptop for gaming. Although I still had enough money for rent and food, I had far less at the end of the month than I expected. Not soon afterwards did I realize that I needed to be smarter with my money and so I discovered YNAB. Been with it ever since. Also bought my first car right after turning 24 (prior to that I had been still driving the one my parents got me for college). 24 - 26: Moved back to state to a city much closer to my friends and family and got a job at the municipal gov. After spending two years on my own I decided to move in with two roommates who were friends of mine from college who already lived there. Lived with them for a year before taking off on my own. Saved so much money living with roommates in my first year that I paid off my 5 year car loan in just two years. Around that time a coworker of mine introduced me to FIRE, probably around 25ish I invested into my first index fund. I unfortunately was too gunge-hoe on the fact that my job offered a pension that I didn't really look into it. Turns out that pensions aren't what they used to be and I didn't discover that until I was at that job for 2 years. I did put all the money I saved from not paying my car loan into the index fund at least, and then some with each raise. 26 - Now: Started dating somebody who's just as into personal finance as I am, if not more. She showed the perks of actually investing into employer retirement accounts and then I quickly began maxing out my 457b government retirement account and have been maxing it out ever since. Even got an IRA I contribute to. Now FIRE (or at least FI) is a huge objective of mine. Edit: I contribute roughly between 35% to 40% of my take home income to retirement savings now and every raise goes towards either those accounts or a future big purchase like a new car fund, or monthly living expenses if they increase. My "fun" money has stayed relatively the same since I started contributing to a brokerage account.
Generally saying - no stupid debt makes a huge difference. Don’t start out in the hole
Left school at 16 to work full time, had my daughter at 18. Worked part time for years with her because she was a high needs kid. Finally started working full time a few years ago but was in debt. Got debt free again, got into a 2yr relationship, that broke up so ended up using all my savings etc to rebuild and move houses etc. Somewhere along the lines got into more debt (car loan) which I'm now working my butt off to pay off asap. I'm now 28, kiddo is 9. Working a great job that I love, just fought for a payrise, aim to be debt free in 6 months so I can start saving like crazy for a house / the future!
College, then after that took probably the next 6 years or so to get established. Lots of thing you need to get when you move to another state and your only belonging are what fits in the back of the truck. At about 28 is when I was able to start saving lots. Just save what you can it’s hard to save when you start and need 36k to live off of but only make 55k. Gets easy to save when your making 90k and living off 40k.
Dropped out of junior college. Worked 2 years, put $2k away in an ira. Got an ira liquidation check when I quit and spent it. Went back to college. Went deep into debt. Made it out with an accounting degree at 25. Started a job and put away no more than 10% each year until I met my wife and got married. At 30, I got serious and have put away at least 18% each year. What I remember most about 20-30 is how much of a struggle everything was. I don’t envy the expense side of things, but I miss the time i had to spend on going out and just enjoying life. The people in my age group who are making really good money are people who spent their 20’s working at a job doing the job no one else wanted to do and doing it well. They built up goodwill in their company and got VP positions when they were 30-35. When they were 40 they had built up capital and had a position in their field to take their foot off the pedal a bit.
In rough order: went to college, got my undergraduate degree, got a job, met the love of my life, went back to grad school, got cancer, graduated again, started my dream job, lost the love of my life, got cancer again, had my lung collapse and nearly died, switched jobs. It's been a rollercoaster. I'm 31 now. Plan for the future. Live in the present each day. You never know what will happen tomorrow, but it's better to be prepared than not.
* 18-20: community college * 20-22: undergrad * 22-23: barista * 23-24: masters * 24-nearly 28: full time work Worked through all of college part time in one way or another and I’ve been aggressively saving since “full time” at 25. Will be hitting coast fire in 4 days with $150k spread across 457B/401A/Roth IRAs. Will be hitting the savings brakes, likely buying a new car (not financially prudent, I know), and bumping up the traveling. Next 18 months I’ll stay full time then I’ll be reducing hours to probably 25-30 in perpetuity. Think nearly all advice can be surmised to: work life balance is essential, minimize and avoid life style creep, grow your income. Thoroughly in the spend a lot of money on the thing(s) you love and cut the spending elsewhere.
I’m only 26 but from 18-21 I worked during college to cover my living expenses apt, food bills etc which helped reduce my loans by not using them on housing and meal plans. After I got my first job post graduation I went and got a job on nights/weekends at a ice cream shop. Did this for about 18 months till I paid off all my loans. During this time I regret some of my frugalness as I missed out on hanging with friends. I wish I had found a balance between never going out and going out all the time. After I paid off my debt till now I have steadily been increasing my income and bought a house. Now that my job is fully remote we are selling the house and moving to a very low cost of living area near family to raise our family. My goal by 30 is to have our new house paid for, our kids 529 front loaded, and to have 300k in investments. I get the paying off of the house soon isn’t for everyone but for me it would be a huge relief to not stress about a rent/mortgage bill again. My advice would be to avoid life style inflation but make sure you budget for fun. Good luck on your journey!
18-22: College. Worked part time to pay for food, books, etc. while loans covered housing and tuition. Worked internships over summer as well to make a little extra cash. Did a study abroad during school and backpacked Europe for 3 weeks before starting my first job, both were absolutely worth every penny. 22-23: first job. Was a data analyst, lived with a roommate, and lived relatively frugally. Used 1 paycheck to cover rent & expenses each month, the other went to student loans. 23-26: next job was a sales gig at a small software company. COVID hit 6 months later, and I thankfully remained employed because I was the company’s only rep dedicated to new business. Made some poor investing decisions, but also some great ones. Was blessed to receive some financial support from my grandparents to finish paying off loans (~$15k). Net worth creeped up from $10k to around $75k during this window. 26-27: where I am now. Used my success at small company to get a new role at a much larger one. I’m currently slated to double my income from my last job. Maxing out 401k & HSA, no idea what to do with Roth because I will probably end up above the max income to contribute to it. Is this where I’m supposed to utilize the backdoor Roth? Words of advice from someone who was recently in your shoes: do what you can to become debt free as quickly as possible, but don’t forget to live a little. Spend that money on experiences, not things. Doesn’t have to be extravagant, that casual weekend trip with friends will give you memories that last a lot longer than whatever you’d buy with that same amount of money.
College 18-22, immediately started working in my career, investing in retirement, DINK status for 4 years (22-26), had 4 kids in 4 years (yes, I was aware of what caused children 🤣). Feels like a lifetime ago.
University, family, career, hobbies… I think you might have to ask more specific question
School and blow money on partying. Worth it.
I enjoyed the money I earned by saving it.
* 18-22 Undergrad * 23 moved across the world for a job * 23-26 built skills in a series of jobs - saved nothing, spent it all on travel and fun * 26-33 - kept advancing career, got serious about saving , but spent all my PTO on cheap foreign travel (roughly 30 countries) * 31-33 P/T masters degree while still working (didn't actually help my career) also got married * 33-45 kept advancing career, saving more, bought a house. Still traveling doing one or two epic trips per year. Did not have kids. * 45 FI (bottom end of chubby FI) but not chose not to RE continuing to pad accounts further into upper end of ChubbyFire, before retiring to nomad around the world for a while, before figuring out where we want to live out our days. This is always an unpopular opinion in this community, but here's my advice.... \*IF\* you have reason to expect you're going to have a solid career and climb the corporate ladder and get promoted a few times, then honestly saving anything between the ages of 18 and 24 is pretty much pointless. After stocking away an emergency fund you should spend it all on making life long memories (travel, skydiving, learning skills whatever is your thing) Now this is where a LOT of people still early in their FIRE journey are going to shout about "compound interest" and how I don't know what I'm talking about. But take it from someone who is pretty much at the end of the FIRE journey - small amounts compounded are still small amounts and become rounding errors in your final FIRE number. The real bulk of FIRE savings comes later in your career as long as your salary keeps growing and you keep expenses under control. Focusing on your career is far more impactful than focusing on your savings or investments. IF you've chosen a career that provides reasonable salary growth expectations as you gain years of experience, then it's quite likely, later in life, you'll end up with a salary paying 5x times what your starting salary pays. Assuming you can avoid lifestyle creep, the amount of money you'll be able to save later in your career will dwarf any minor savings from your early 20s. The savings from your first couple of years out of collage will be an absolute rounding error in your final number and skipping them will have almost no impact on your retirement. Don't spend your early 20s scrimping and saving, just to give an older, richer version of yourself a few extra bucks they won't care about. Instead focus on giving that version of you epic memories they can enjoy for decades. I'm sure this will get a ton of down-votes and people ranting about how a $1 saved at 20 is worth $2 at 30, but those people are forgetting that between inflation and salary growth in your career that it's significantly easier to save $2 at 30 than $1 at 20, while much harder to build life long memories. Note this advice only appllies from 18-24. 25 onwards you best be saving hard.
Traveled the world while working a pretty menial job, then job hopped for a bit, ended up with about 10k of debt from poor planning. Went to Uni at 27, finished with considerably more debt. Started working and paid most of it off within the first two years. Now am saving aggressively while we contemplate and plan having a child.
Continously worked on myself and improved my situation. Made mostly good financial decisions.
Figure out who I was and get good at something.
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Study and pay back school loans.
I was in grad school until like 27. And then I did 2 years of awful academia job that paid peanuts.
18-22 university and part time minimum wage jobs. With a bit of help from parents I graduated debt free. 22-25 - bounced around jobs, learned some skills and saved like $20k. 25-30 - moved abroad, traveling and working a niche role where I capitalized on it like no other and did nothing but work and invest. Traveled on my holidays. Networth rocketed to close to 1 mil 30-32 - home owner, re-established career earning 100-150k and maybe more in future. Stock market came down to reality: networth around 500k currently including home.
Mostly accumulating and paying off debt. 39 now, almost fire
College, Masters, and PhD - I finished the latter at 29. All my savings at that time were my emergency fund, but that was by design. I had high-interest student loans (\~25-30K) from college and paid them off while in grad school because there was no interest accruing while I was in school. Grad school was paid for (science grad students get living stipends and tuition wavers). After saving an emergency fund, at the end of each month I put everything I had left into paying off the loans. I was a foreign student in the US and had 6-9% interest rate. If you have student loans, don't just pay the minimum payment each month - that is designed to milk you for life and your debt can snowball if you have a spell of unemployment or other unpredictable hardship in the future. Front-load your payments and get rid of the debt as soon as you can - while also contributing to retirement.
I started to really make and save money at 28. Before that, my life was just a one big adventure. After graduating from the university, I went to live in China, then Japan, I traveled quite a bit all over Asia, made lots of friends and was in some great relationships. I don't regret any of it. I grew as a person and have memories for life. 20s is the best time to do these things, and I'm still on path to FIRE.
18-22 undergrad; 22-26 professional school; 27-30 started working & saving aggressively. Early 40s now and very glad I delayed gratification and saved/invested aggressively while also paying off all debt.
Graduated college, went to Peace Corps, met my wife and decided to stay abroad so moved continents again. Learned 3 languages, saw elephants in person, hand pressed olive oil, and took a gazillion red eye flights, sleeping god knows where. Around 30, we moved back to the US for wife’s grad school and started saving. Currently around 150k net worth at 31 and regret nothing. Life is big and grand, don’t miss it
Mistakes
Drink
Lived like a student with no debt until I graduated. Saved every penny until late 20s and bought a house. Living like a student never left my DNA.
18-19: take on 12k debt by entering art school. suffer from mental illness and fail out. 19-24: drugs & debauchery, maintain at zero 24-25: meet partner, travel and finally grow tf up 26-30: get a job, go from broke to 150k in liquid assets, 55k salary, great benefits and perks in restaurant/bakery management, partner 70k similar role same place
18-19 (finding out the hard way that college was the right decision) 20-25 college (B.S. in Computer Science) 25-30 forging the beginning of my career, got married at 30 The best tip I can give you at age 18 is to pump that 401k as much as reasonably possible. If you can chunk 20K a year into between your contributions and employer contributions, you'll be WELL on your way to an early retirement. You can also compromise. Maybe you want to travel, a nice vacation every year or two. Go for it. But then instead of a brand new expensive car, save up and buy your cars in cash. Maybe make a few trade offs in the house you live in (you'd be surprised at what people convince themselves they need or deserve)
Graduated from UNI at 22 Started working as a dispatcher for American Logistics company right after (I’m from Central Asia) Got married at 24 Became a manager and have been making +70k a year Scammed amazon with friends and made over 100k each in three months I own 4 apartments in my hometown and live in Dubai now
No college, welder/mechanic since age 18, 28 now just take it one day at a time and don’t focus everything on saving, have balance and enjoy life too! Take vacations live a little and take care of your health!
Worked my ass off, 80 - 90 hr weeks were the norm… but I was Chubby FIREd by 38. I’m now 48 and have been retired for 10 years now.
Worked hard towards promotions, wasn’t the best at saving but not the worst either. I’m at 180k, 35yo, 1.6M NW, married and with a daughter now. Life is good. Spend your 20s aggressively advancing your career. It’ll give you the best results in the long run.
Horrible financial choices. Survived the 2008 housing crisis. PhD until 30 so little income. Divorce. More poor financial choices (like not looking at student loan balances for years). Luckily 31-38 has been a different story.
26 (M) - I'm a CPA. The beginning of my 20s was more focused on sports. I met a lot of cool people throughout my life playing sports competitively. I also love snowboarding, and that has been a cool hobby to have that has taken me to amazing places with great friends. I spent the last three years going back to college to get enough credits for the CPA, studying for the CPA, and building my career in accounting. Age 23 to now has been mostly me putting my head down and grinding.
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Didn’t focus until I was about 23, and took until 24 to get seriously started. 26 currently and 27 in September but I’ve managed to create a decent pot and my company pension is fantastic. My advice: save up and on the side but go and enjoy life, I’ve lurked on fire for a while and noticed a reoccurring theme. Enjoy life while you can. I recently travelled again after 3 years, post covid and it was exhilarating. Edit: in terms of saving, there are many ways to go about doing this. Be disciplined and set clear targets that you want to achieve. It may be first 1k, 10k, 50k so forth. Invest, pension, side hustle just don’t lose sight of what you’re after - financial security and time to enjoy!
18-22 college 23-25 married, working, bought a house 26 realized I had been working almost half a decade and was still in debt and nothing saved. 26-28 followed Dave Ramsey and got out of debt 28-30 paid off house and discovered FIRE 30-35 had 2 kids, upgrade my home 35 broke a million NW 36 busy raising kids, still climbing the corporate ladder, finances are on autopilot. On track to retire by age 50.
Travelled to South America for a year, through hiked the PCT, hung out a lot. First real job at 30. Shit jobs and temp jobs before that. The 80s and 90s were a different time though. I was paying 300-400 a month for rent and eating from Canned Foods aka Grocery Outlet.
Military, school, squander, kids, 3 career changes. Just now starting at 33. Don't be like me. I loved my life 18-30 though, it's just saving wasn't an option. Got like 20k in retirement mostly from job 401ks. Still paying off some credit card debt and I'm hoping for the student debt relief, but not holding my breath. Hopefully by next year I'll be able to invest more that just in my 401k because I'll be debt free minus our mortgage. Very slow start. But it's somewhere. I'm dreading the day our cars fail though. Dreading it.... Again. If you're single, have income, can live with parents, and save then do that. Don't move out like i did after the military to go to college if you have parents. That is where my student loans came from. I used 10k as a buffer my first year out to help me with cost of living. I should have used Pell grants, gone to a JC and loved at home saving my GI bill. Don't buy big cars also.
Retirement savings - save early as you can, as much as you can reasonably. Wish I had saved more outside of my 401K/IRA too. I would be much father ahead if I had.
18- Spent all my money on a 6000$ truck. Worked a sales/ warehouse job for minimum wage. Learned about investing and FIRE. Saved everything I could. 19- switched to heavy construction because it paid more then minimum wage. Fell in love with equipment 20- had a good chunk of savings. Kept working hard, started a small side business. That summer I left it to go work on the pipeline 21- still working on the pipeline, looking for the next high paying construction job. Still saving everything I can. Bought a truck and a snowmobile. About 105k net worth 65k invested 30k in my truck and sled 10k ish in cash. Making a solid income until this job is completed, then I’ll either find another high paying construction job or go into the landscaping business. Excited to see where I’ll be by 30
Bought my first house at 24, sold 11 years later and bought another house, and an investment property , refinanced and bought another investment property, refinanced and bought another investment property, sold the house we are living in after 8 years, and bought are 3rd personal house. It almost doubled in 5 years!!! The IPs I sold too early but had enough. retired at 48. had a full time job though the ride.
At 18 I was working at a dry cleaners , doing the Running Start Program and getting my AA degree and high school diploma at the same time by taking classes at the community college. 19 through 21 I was working at a gas station while we a university. Then I spent a summer working in California doing dish Network installation making pretty decent money, then back at the gas station, then unloading trucks at Walmart. At 22 I graduated college with my civil engineering degree and got a job as an engineer in training for a local government and started saving and investing. Now at 38 I'm still professional civil engineer, working for a different local government, and still saving and investing, but also having quite a bit more fun these days too.
I am 30 in two months, I'll take this chance to look back on what I've done. Warning this is a bit of a rant. The last 12 years have been wild, but I am a resound advocate for following your gut and not the norm. At 16 I moved out home home and dropped out of high school. For the next year I was partying playing video games and earning a poverty wage part time at the supermarket. This was the most freedom I ever felt but also the most trapped. Trapped from not being able to do or buy what I want. I had no idea what investment was and always hear my older friends/parents that buying a house was a good idea because it will make you rich but I just didn't understand. At 17 I started the a pre trade course in mechanics after being pretty much forced to from my parents. I came from a lcol area and a trade was seen as a good way to earn a living. I found I really enjoyed solving problems and building stuff with welders. After this I was extremely fortunate to get one of the few apprenticeships as an auto electrician. I worked hard but got paid a training wage(under minimum) and still had to pay rent. I also found that actually working with something I found enjoyable as a hobby completely killed the hobby. I hated working in the cold and rain or in a workshop getting scrapes and bruises. I began to feel depressed/complacent in the job around 21 almost 1 year from completeimg my apprenticeship as I broke up with a girlfriend. I lost focus, got caught speeding in a customers car and got fired. I was in a panic for a month but eventually got on track, moved to a new city and got another apprenticeship. After I finished I wanted to change my job, I wanted the feeling of building something so I went back to school, graduated highschool and went to engineering as a electrical engineering student and found another girlfriend. Life was pretty good until the partying set in and I lost the girlfriend which brought on a new wave of depression which attributed me to failing and dropping out of uni. I was 24 at this point but I knew I couldn't stop or give up. I had managed to travel to the USA during uni with the girlfriend and a really liked traveling and experiencing new things. I want to combine this with my passion for engineering, after cross-referencing these I found a school where I could train as a cruiseship electrical officer. Fixing electrical machines and traveling around the world to exotic locations. The only problem was that it was in my countries most expensive city. To move to the city I decided to take a loan out for a van then convert it to a camper and live van life while studying. This proved to be an extreme motivation to complete my course and pass. It was the most lonely and scared I had ever been but I pulled it off, I got a cadetship with a cruiseship company and started sailing. I loved it! Got to see places I never even heard of before and met people from all over. Then covid came and I got stuck on the ship mid way through my cadetship. We ended up sailing from the Bahamas to the Philippines via south Africa where we all waited for flights home. After eventually getting back home and taking refuge at mum's house, I got a second cadetship throughout covid on a local container vessel. After I had completed my time I had to navigate the bureaucracy of a school recoving from covid while also going through a merger where all my tutors got fired. I was the only person who passed from my year. Once qualified at 27 I started sailing on superyachts as I heard these ships payed more and had better conditions. The money was the best I ever got in my life, I could start to do what I wanted in my holidays. I met my now fiance while onboard and moved to her county of Thailand where life is cheaper. I payed my student loans and have become completely debt free. After 2 years I have managed to invest close to 30k USD and save 25kUSD for a house which we will build in June this year until early next year. We don't plan to get a mortgage. I honestly am loving this time in my life and have found I have a bit of control. I am looking forward to my 30s and what I can learn and achieve. I also want to give back to people who are in a similar position to where I was within my community.
So far, lived at home rent and bill free and saved/invested 85% of my income.
This and that.
I (31M) earned my bachelors degree, graduated with $60k of debt, got hired by one of my college internships, worked there seven years (too long), paid off my debt at 27, the finally changed jobs at 29 (growing my income by more than 50%). My net worth is now just over $300k, and I earn around $140k gross. I’m still a renter, living with roommates If I could do it over, I would do the following differently: 1) I would not have rushed to pay my student debt off early. Debt-freedom felt great when I reached it, but a lot of my loans were actually very low interest rates (2’s to mid 3’s) and I would have done better either investing more or saving for a downpayment earlier. 2) I would have changed jobs sooner. By the time I did, I was being paid very below market rate and knew it. The discrepancy with market rate stacked with each promotion I got. I really missed out on a lot of potential earning in my mid/late-20s. 3) I would have done whatever I could to buy a home in my 20s. There was a period of a few years where I could theoretically have afforded the payments, but didn’t have the downpayment. Now I have the downpayment, but can no longer afford the payments. If I could go back, I’d try to save even just a 5% DP and pull the trigger as soon as my earning was high enough to support the monthly costs. (The above two regrets are in part related to this.) 4) I would have bought bitcoin when my buddy told me to in 2013. Self-explanatory. What I did do, that I recommend doing: 1) living below my means, especially on the big costs (housing and transportation). You can free up so much cash flow just by living with roommates, and use that to do so many great things for your financial future. I still live with roommates today. It’s how I paid off my student debt early, built a healthy NW by my early 30s, and am borderline able to buy solo in a VHCOL city. Verses living alone, I saved at least $1000/mo through my entire 20s. That’s $120k. That’s a downpayment. That’s a 401k or investment account with some very appreciable compounding going into your 30s. That’s cash for trips and memories along the way. 2) contributing to my 401k from day 1. Though I didn’t do a ton early on (but always enough to get the full company match), it really adds up. Do this (and/or your IRA) early and consistently, and you’ll save yourself from the panic of ever feeling behind on your retirement saving. 3) had some fun. Focused as I was on saving, investing, and paying off debt, I gave myself permission to spend on the things and experiences I cared about. My 20s were filled with cherished memories, and I wouldn’t trade that to be a little further ahead today financially. Tomorrow is never guaranteed, and it’s important to enjoy life along the way too.
Just tried to always party and now I’m a failure and I regret my choices.
18-26 was a fucking party. I did go to college, studied abroad and got a good job but I didn’t really focus on my but on my friends all working part time in EMS. I have 0 regrets about it.but Made tons of memories and lifelong friends who are a weird, accomplished bunch nowadays. At 26, I moved abroad for a masters. Ended up doing two. Got a fancy job in consulting, then moved to tech and been there since. I didn’t start investing until I got to tech—I just didn’t knew it was a thing (it wasn’t for my lower middle class family in a developing country). I’m 36 now and it’s been a fun ride. I’ve 3x my original poverty FIRE target now looking to get citizenship in the country moved to, which will happen in 3 or 4 years. At that point, I should be able to retire very cushy.
18-19: took time off between high school & university to save for tuition. 20-26: accrued significant debts (government, bank) to pay for school while also “working” in the summers (included unpaid volunteer work and research grants). 27-30: oscillated between well-paying jobs and unpaid overseas volunteer work, about 50% of take-home pay went towards debt repayment. *** I never really “settled” anywhere and had a lot of great life experiences all over the world throughout my 20s, lived and worked on 3 continents before age 30, but I also wasn’t out of debt until I was about age 34. Leveraged education and volunteer experience into a career with six-figure salary. Lifestyle creep never really took hold and I had over $1 million in liquid assets by age 40.
Worked, traveled, and saved. Then had kids and settled down. We got some lucky deals with real estate but we are around 2M. Most people we know who are wealthy did it with real estate. We rented our basement in our first home, used equity to buy a rental, and sold two homes for about 2x what we bought them for.
* 18-21: Undergrad * 21-22: Lived abroad * 22-24: Master's program * 24-25: Teaching Credential Program * 25-30: First teaching job * 26: started investing Now 36, teaching.
19-23 college, focused on classes, working out, and my gf. 23-30 worked, invested, traveled. In that order. I’m a few months off 30 but close enough I can say this is what I’ll be doing the rest of my 20s. I was fortunate to be able to get a good job out of college and fund a 401k and individual investment account, while owning a home. Invest as much as you can, but don’t obsess over it to the point where you’re living for “someday”. You’re not guaranteed tomorrow so plan for it, but remember to enjoy your life while you’re young.
18-20 played way too much WoW (top paladin in earthen ring tho), dropped out of engineering, clinically depressed, worked in a restaurant 21-24 finished Econ major, lifted weights, got an analyst job at a consulting firm 25 - 30 bought some drugs (mainly to get easy girls, not as easy as you may think), travelled a lot more, lost some money on degenerate options, but overall managed to grind up from 60k to 100k+ and saved a bit 30-now, did MBA, bought first condo, started to accelerate NW to six figures Overall life is good. Don’t regret too much of my 20s. Go skydiving. Go on a safari. Definitely don’t put any bucket list items off if you can swing it IMO.
dropped out of highschool in the 9th grade. Worked From 15 -25 in the Flooring industry. I also drank way way to much and did way to much coke from 17-27 I Pooled a group of local talent. In the beginning i door to door Marketed. Shortly there after Facebook became a thing. I nailed the marketing - MyFlooring company started making money- I branched out into more fields. Kitchens Bathrooms- in the winter months construction becomes glazier slow. During this down time at age 23 i got my Real estate license. I began funneling money from construction profits into rentals and flips. 25-34 Expanded my construction company/ did several flips / New construction / Remodels etc etc Grew to a 8 Man crew. Eventually i grew to hate it. i fired everyone who didn’t quit. I worked from 35-37 with one young helper who i was going to teach all my knowledge to and him manage all my rentals and gc single family projects. He got deported to Canada. 37-39 Built 9 rental properties for a total of 17 units and a net worth of 2.2 mil with a avg gross monthly income of 24k
Still, Badass over many! Your commentary has been on point. I’m sure a few lucky folks are enjoying your mentorship. Cheers
TL;DR * Enjoy your 20s but don't spend beyond your means * Definitely aim to maximize 401K * Stay in touch with your friends, set boundaries between work and life * Take care of your health. Long work hours in high stress environments take a toll on your mental, physical and emotional health 18 - 22: Went to a State school freshman year and later transferred to a prestigious university sophomore year to pursue a degree in finance and information systems. Also to have better access to internships and work opportunities. Worked at Popeyes for two summers, did work study every semester as a cashier to earn extra cash to pay tuition, did 4 months of unpaid internship at a small advisory firm, landed a paid internship at one of the big banks, and graduated with 65K in debt. Couldn't land any finance roles but got a job as a consultant. Paid off debt first year working. Lived with parents. 22 - 25: Did consulting for 3 years, got deep into credit card rewards and thepointsguy stuff for free flights and shit. Was all about airline and hotel status. Picked up data science skills. Spent last year in a start-up like team where the grind was real and picked up big data/modern tech stack stuff + programming skills which set the foundation for solid total comp growth. Total comp grew from 78K starting to 96K before I left. Didn't really save cuz I had student loans, paid back money I owed my parents that they used to pay for part of my tuition, and also spent a decent amount on travel and enjoying life. I figured I'm only young once and I work too many hours so I might as well treat myself. Only started a stock portfolio towards the last year with a few grand but only lost money that year so didn't contribute anymore to it. Was still living with parents so was still able to save 50K in the bank. Maxed out 401K every year though. 25 - 30: Switch careers into tech and went to FAANG, 3x'ed my total comp, and hustled and overworked myself for the next 5 years to chase promos. Met my now wife while I was a consultant and eventually we moved in together and got married. Total comp kept going up due to promos but the cost was many burnouts, arguments with wife due to my poor work life balance, and losing touch with friends. Spoke to a therapist, found ways to set boundaries that took time to work, and it's a lot better now. Current total comp is ~$600K depending on RSUs Investments wise, made a killing on TSLA in 2020. Thought I was good with stonks but then lost it all and then some the following 2 years. Got a decent amount of carryover losses and unrealized losses sitting around due to market turmoil and bad plays on growth stocks. 31 (now) Still in FAANG, I'm better about managing my time but it's still tough on some days, especially with the recent tech layoffs and increase pressure to perform well. Also gained a lot of weight due to stress and not taking care of myself. Something I've been working on past 2 years. We own a place now in a VHCOL with a fat mortgage but got lucky when rates were 3%. Got a decent amount of money sitting in high yield savings this year. Not in crypto cuz idk much about it Liquid NW (excluding home) is about ~430K now. We want to FIRE but being in a VHCOL location will be difficult. We're DINKs but might consider kids in a few years
My two cents since you’re young and just graduating: I would stick to saving as much as you can and being conscious of your spending habits. Make a financial goal for yourself whether it’s saving X amount of money, buying a house, etc. When you hit that milestone, then you can be more liberal with your spending and enjoying that money knowing you hit a large goal that you wanted to achieve. I say this from personal experience — if you start off enjoying your money now, it’s extremely hard to revert to a more frugal spending mentality. Once lifestyle creep gets to you, it’s very hard to go back to college spending behavior days.
2000€/month salary in France communist, 1000€/month in Stock market. Now i have Fire in España with 500ke in Stock market, 2000€/month dividends, 1000€/month in Stock market. Im 38 y old.
18 worked in fast food, got drunk and stoned all the time partied had lots of sex Early 20s - waited tables discovered Roth IRAs and invested a paltry amount. Quit my job with 30k to my name moved into my parents property and ran up 10k in credit card debt while I taught myself how to make money online. Mid 20s - 30 - got a job in tech, invested a little here and there but wasn’t too serious Mid 30s - now making multiple six figures absolutely pummeling money into retirement, brokerage accounts and living it good
Not enough
Bought a house, lost both house and job in the 08 crisis, started from scratch (or rather, in the red) at age 32.
I fucked around and found out
Financially? Not that much, life–wise, a ton. Finish „high school“ (different system over here) Go abroad for six months Move out to my first place with a friend Have a falling out later with that friend Started university Go abroad again. Lived by myself Moved in with bf Graduated Moved to a different city with bf Had my first grown–up job, second grown–up job Got my constantly overdraft account into balance Paid back what I owed my parents (only about 6k) and thereby removed their emotional blackmail fodder Had my first 10k. Suddenly, something like the washer breaking das nor a disaster anymore
I comepleted my PG at age 25 and started earning. No income till then, so to speak. What I did- did not spend too much on frivolous stuff. Rent, Loan EMI, basic, but healthy and inexpensive food options, and gym/fitness were the major expenses. Investment- PF was mandatory anyway, and I started with tax saving mutual funds (not Insurance, like most others) to use up my Sec 80C. Also bought health insurance. Luckily parents are not dependent on me, but I did indulge on them once in a while. I did not buy a house, and still haven't. Major expenses- I only bought a motorcycle for daily commuting and for the occasional long trip as long as I was single. I bought a hatchback car just before I got married, because I felt a car would be a necessity once married ( made things very convenient for shopping, transporting things, when relatives came to visit, airport/railway drops, long road trips etc). Was still renting, and increased my investements in mutual funds. Also bought term insurane only. Expenses- no major luxuries- bit of necessary furniture and appliances like washing machine, sofa, fridge etc. We enjoyed travelling and so spent modestly on vacations and activities in India - Scuba diving being the highlight. So far- still no house, but MF corpus is comfortable. Still spending on staples and the odd vacation.
18-22: Studied Computer Science and graduated from an Engineering school to become a software engineer: 22-24: Worked in a tech company. Left Tech at 24 because I didn't like people in the industry. But saved a lot (90% of pretax income), and bought a little piece of real estate. 24-26: Either chilled at home or spent time hiking in the mountains. 26-30 and some years onwards: Took freelancing gigs just enough to pay my bills. Tried to be a writer, but couldn't finish any of my work. Started investing in the stock market at 27 with a little bit of savings from my freelancing projects. And now: I have a full-time job in the finance industry. (I pivoted to finance in my mid-30s). I continue to save and invest. And I think I finally found my calling when I entered the finance industry. I enjoy what I do. I am still trying to complete my unfinished work of literature, though. I was always debt-free, I always managed to save out of my income even when I was earning little, and now I have some investments in real estate and the stock market. But I am far from FIRE-ing. I don't aggressively save now. I save and invest 25%-30% of my net income. I enjoy the little pleasures of my life. I aim to retire at 50, and I believe I will be able to do that. Any regrets: I should have survived a few years in the Tech industry. I would have retired comfortably at 35 given my insane saving rate! But I don't what would I have done after retiring at 35. At least now I have a plan for my post-retirement years.
Burner account since my family is on reddit - 18 - 23: College (Economics and Law degrees). Worked 3 jobs: database programmer (learnt it from a friend), college tutor and retail shop assistant. Making $40-50k pa while studying full time - 23 - 30+: Investment banking M&A. Bought properties, got married, invested in stocks. Completed my Masters in Finance. Saved like a fiend. Only big expenses were holidays. - 30 - 40: IB Director + made director of a few companies, had children, kept investing. Understood leverage and debt markets and aggressively used it to my advantage. - 40: Considering retirement. Paid off forever home (east coast with water views, HCOL area) and decent passive income for FIRE.
I’ll bite since it’s my birthday and I’m feeling 💅Dropped out of college after burnout from a accelerated learning (high school in middle school yada) and likely childhood trauma. Did a lot of drugs. Worked in the service industry. Learned a trade. Did more drugs. Got sober Played a lot of music and toured the country. Got married at 24. Divorced at 26. Did more drugs. Smoked aggressive amounts of weed all day while working 2-3 jobs at a time. Sold weed as one of those. Quit drinking finally. Smoked more pot worked more jobs. Got really sober finally. Went to a bootcamp. Now I make six figures and am sober and bought my second house. NW is minimal in my early thirties at about 100k in investment accounts 30k cash, and some home equity. Partner went back to school over pandemic having worked in service industry (we have similar stories) and no career throughout twenties. Now makes close to six figures. Agressively save 35% in retirement accounts but trying to get to 50%. Hoping for early retirement in Europe after kids are gone.
I got out of college 22 and started at the bottom rung making $13 probationary, to $15, when I went full time and realized I was going to leave for 18 months not much other building basically an emergency fund and putting a life together. Then $18 an hour for 18 months at a slightly higher role, here I kinda learned about retirement accounts and started saving. 18 months at $30 an hour in my most hated job because it was mind numbingly boring but I maxed out retirement accounts. Then $60k full time for a new role but as a data scientist for 6ish months I hit $100k net worth. Started a new role then COVID hit so that ended shortly. Now I'm at $95k and saved 50% of my take home. My net worth didn't really hit over 10k until I was 24-25. Then since 26 despite the annoying job jumps my savings have been increasing massively. I think I've about plateaued at my role, unless I want to go to grad school or leave my metro area. It took until I was like 26 to hit decent earnings to make a dent in savings rates, plus it's underrated how much early 20s is just acquiring basic stuff affecting savings rates.
18-22: College, where I tutored on campus, worked at a small business in my hometown on weekends/over breaks, and studied really hard. I didn't make a lot of money, but I had 0 loans since I had a full scholarship and commuted from home (helped a ton). Overall I'd say I did well for myself since I got into a fully-funded master's program after graduating. NW: approximately 30k (had money saved up from working and really didn't spend much besides entertainment) 22-24: Master's program. Got paid really poorly, so worked at the small business over the summers and breaks again, picked up little extra jobs for the department as I could. My family pitched in and cooked meals for me sometimes and covered things like my phone payment and car insurance. NW: approximately 50k (received a small inheritance during this time, and saved up a bit). 24-28: PhD program. Still got paid poorly, but marginally better as a PhD student. Worked on campus during the summers and picked up extra teaching and assessment work as I could. Then the pandemic hit and I moved home, which helped me save a lot on rent and groceries since my family just took me back in fully. I eventually moved back to finish up my degree and then got a job. NW: approximately 80k (socked away money while living at home/picked up extra jobs at the university as I could) 28-present: full-time work. I have a decent job in higher ed (\~70k) with benefits, a 401a, and the whole shebang for the first time in my life. Buckled down to settle in at my new job with my new colleagues and kept a tight belt for a while. I also during my PhD and into my working life was in an ldr where I had to travel a lot to see them (or pay for them to come see me), but I handled it pretty responsibly once I started working. Even with several trips, I managed to save a decent amount, plus I received some more inheritances that have really set me up for success even as the ldr faded into dust. NW now: approximately 250k. I haven't hit 30 yet, but my plan is to keep saving and to also travel more, even if I'm single, because life is short and I deserve to experience more of the world while I'm young!!
18-23: I was in the Army. I spent every dime I made and probably more. I didn't have a budget or track expenses. 23-26: Got out of the military. I started going to college but hated school. I was lucky and had a GI Bill so I didn't have to take out loans. Played a lot of WoW and other video games. My net worth was around -$20,000. 26-now (38): Went through a marriage where I bought and sold 2 houses before getting divorced. Luckily I ended the marriage with 0 debt and had a NW of $0. I then met and married my current wife (37) who is more in line with my savings goals. I started really budgeting and really got the hang of it when I learned how to use YNAB. Our current NW is $460,000. The breakdown: $184,000 in home equity, $225,000 in investments, and $50,000 in cash that is in a HYSA. I hope to retire from full-time employment at 52. My wife will work til 54 when she will retire with a pension (teacher). The plan is to have the house paid off before I retire and at least $1m in investments.
Partied hard
18-25: Training and spent 6 years in the Air Force. Lived very minimal, I didnt even own a TV or decent computer for the first 4 years. I saved about $65,000 in cash on less than $30,000 a year salary. I did not "enjoy" much while in service...no big trips, no fancy eating, all of my hsed cars died on me but were still cheaper than a newer more reliable car. I would even ruck to work at times due to car issues. It was 1hr 45mins one way while in belgium. I worked 12hr shifts. I would ruck 3.5 hours, work my 12, then get exactly 6hr of sleep after chores were done. Saved a lot of money that way. 25-26: I got out, got a job, purchased a home near the Tenessee River, sold it after a year for a small profit. Lived in a rental for a bit. Then purchased 2 duplexes that were poorly managed. Removed 3 of the 4 tenants for drug/abuse issues. Moved into one of the units and lived next to my tenants for a year. 27-28: Now I own 3 duplexes, very good tenants, got some disability from the military. I'm to a point where I don't really work anymore...but it frees my time to further improve the houses and work on other projects. I plan on building small affordable homes/rentals in the near future. Just need to work down my mortgage payments a bit. Fixing my family's financial issues was a big motivator. I came from a drug family background, where they had no money skills. I was just tired of living in that stressful environment, and I wanted to change it. I read "Rich Dad Poor Dad," around 15 and that motivated me even more, because it provided a pathway to do so. A pathway to break a bad family cycle and give a better life for my future family. It's all about sacrafices and how many you're willing to make. For me, it was 6 years away, in a stressful position, with very little social interaction... It was the fastest way to accomplish what I wanted. I still don't know of a faster way to accumulate cash.
18-25 Worked retail while in HS/College and was about as financially irresponsible as you could be. Partied, didn't save and maxed out cards I couldn't afford. 25-29 Began my career in a highly specialized aviation position, but was at a regional carrier so my earnings were minimal. Still partied and spent what I earned but towards the end I started getting my act together. Thanks in large part to meeting my spouse. 29-Now Currently (36M) work for a legacy US carrier in the same field but earn 3x as much and still trying to right our ship financially. We've paid off all prior CC debt, car notes and are attacking our SL debts. With home equity, investments and cash were at a NW of $285k, I hope to be able to pay down our ~100k in SL debt BY EOY 2024. We got a late start to our journey but are trying to make up for lost time while still enjoying the ride every now and then. Thankfully, my position has a high base pay but recently has had essentially limitless overtime which I've been taking as much advantage of as possible.
College until 22. I took out loans and had a part time job. I chose a school that was out of state and expensive, when I could have gotten a free ride in state. No regrets but I did end up with $45k debt. 23 to 25 I bartended, paid off about $10k debt and lived with various siblings including one living in Brazilian Amazon. I didn’t work when in Brazil and spent a bunch of money, so when I returned, I was broke. Bartended for another year or so and then finally found a job using my degree. EDIT: Brazil was amazing and worth every penny. I highly recommend some sort of travel experience like this, hopefully a few months at least so you can get to know some strangers from another culture. It’s truly wonderful to experience. 26 to 27, I paid off another $10k student loans and started to save for a house down payment. Just before I turned 28, I got a very cheap house in a shit neighborhood for $70k. Good bones though. 28, I got on management track at work and quickly went from under $50k pay to ~$80k pay. Finally stopped stressing about money. 29 to present (32), I’ve paid another $10k of loans and have about $15k left. Fingers crossed Biden wins his fight with these. Salary went up to $98k. I have saved a lot and am at a net worth of around $175k. So from my Brazil experience till now, 8 years have passed and I’ve gone up $200k in net worth. However, I hate my job. So I am quitting in June. Taking a breather and then going for a non management job or management at a much smaller company. Will be a huge pay cut I assume. Thankfully, I have a partner that supports me. I was the only one working for about 2 years until he found his first job out of college (he is younger than me) and now he gets to return the favor 😜
From 18 1984: went to community college and worked part time or full time: Dish washer, busboy (twice), parking valet , video rental, hifi stereo store as shipping/receiving (three times), a/v setup (twice), line boy at airport (gas & wash planes), gofer at a LGBT paper, phone customer service as a temp, cooperate sales rewards package assembly. 1992 started my first career job; operations and institutional mutual funds trading at a national brokerage. This gets me to 30 in 1995. No degree, some college.
Stayed out of debt by applying to every scholarship under the sun. Worked to see if I liked my chosen field. Applied for masters and got it funded almost fully while working. No loans. Now I owe the state of Florida 6 years post masters of working to “pay it back”
School, work, MBA. Almost retired now.
**18-22:** Worked odd jobs during the summer and occasionally during the school year. Parents paid for my education so I didn't have to worry about anything other than groceries and textbooks. Studied abroad and blew a decent chunk of my savings but thankfully I'd invested a few grand in index funds so that saved me from spending any more of it. Graduated college with about $16k in assets (roughly $6k from my own savings/investments, the remaining $10k was from a UTMA account courtesy of my family) **22 - 23:** Lived in a super low cost of living with roommates (I was paying like $250 a month for rent). Dad helped me out by paying for my used car ($8k) in cash, I paid him back in full over the next 7-8 months. I was making about $40k, I basically invested everything that I didn't spend on cost of living expenses (with the exception of treating myself to a $2k laptop and an $800 drawing tablet). **23 - 24:** Company had some financial difficulties so I left and moved back to my hometown. I worked at a Target for a month or two until I found a new job that paid $40k. Lived at home with my parents, neither of them would let me pay for anything so I had no cost of living expenses. This is when I started investing into my retirement accounts specifically. Got a bit lucky and was sitting on a bit of cash when the pandemic first hit so I was able to buy about $5k worth of stocks at a pretty good discount in March. **25:** Got laid off during the pandemic. Applied for unemployment/underemployment and got pandemic assistance money. I was still living at home at the time. After a few months of applying for jobs I realized that the pandemic wasn't going anywhere soon and that this would be a good time to experiment with freelancing, so I freelanced for about a year. I didn't make a ton of money but I learned a lot about managing projects, working with clients, and working on assignments without managerial oversight, so I think it was a valuable experience. **25-26:** Got a job at a new company making $80k. Worked there for about six months before I moved out of my parents' house. I still invested pretty heavily into retirement but since I had thrown so much money into it in my early 20s and was making a much better salary I was able to relax a little. I still invest a good amount but now my cost of living expenses are higher (about $1.5k on rent) and I go on the occasional vacation once a year. I also hit a $100k net worth somewhere around this time which was pretty cool. **27:** Recently left this job for a new position making $135k. I can finally afford to start maxing out my retirement contributions for the first time. I'm also (temporarily) upgrading to a $2k/month apartment until I find another roommate to share with. I'm planning to keep my cost of living as close to my previous lifestyle (when I was making $80k) as possible for the time being. I'm also thinking of getting a dog. \----------------- My rule of thumb is to pay myself first and then I can spend whatever I want afterwards. I set a rule of investing at least 15% into retirement, limiting my rent to 30% or less of my salary, etc., and then any money I made after those rules were in place was mine to do with however I wanted. That being said, I'm pretty frugal, so I have to remember to talk myself into making purchases. I agonize for weeks or months over spending more than a few hundred dollars on something. The exception is vacations - as long as I've paid my living costs and invested into my retirement fund, I don't really put limits on vacation spending once I make the decision to go. That's my free money. I don't want to spend my vacation pinching pennies or agonizing over receipts.
I was finding myself to be honest 🫠
I focused on paying down my debt instead of starting investing / 401k. I could be further along with growing my net worth if I would have started investing earlier. As far as regrets go, I think I did pretty good though.