50 and older, I’m sorry, but in my personal experience, your advice has been a little out of date.
Just save your money as much as you can, dont suffer but live in the studio until you’re ready to buy a house. The car and the two bedroom and all that shit just keeps you perpetually a decade away from buying a home.
That’s funny because I live in a shared house which has 8 bedrooms but only 1 kitchen. Even if I worked 40 hours a week I couldn’t afford a studio in my city. New Zealand rentals are unaffordable, here I’d need to have a professional job and be married just to rent a 1 bedroom apartment with almost no space.
im in the US but yeah i moved halfway across the country to go to a lower cost of living because I just couldn’t make it work in a HCOL area like you’re describing. I mean, im just way happier now but i understand that NZ is a smallish country where you can’t just find a lower cost of living area further away.
True. I’ve looked for rentals further south of me but it’s the end of the world at the bottom of New Zealand. Every time a “cheaper area” pops up in the news, everybody from Auckland floods the new “cheaper area” and it ends up like everywhere else after 1-2 years (more pressure on house prices).
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Marry someone rich.
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Get lucky
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Don’t have health problems
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Don’t have children (even if you find someone rich)
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Win the lottery (backup for if you can’t marry someone rich)
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Get out of the usa
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Don’t eat anything approved for eating in the usa
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Exercise
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No matter what the situation, you’re not financially behind yet, but if nothing changes in 10 years, you will be.
Save and invest. If you don’t have at least $200k net worth by the time you’re 40, you’re probably never going to retire.
Just do all the crazy shit. You live only once and soon your back will ache every day.
Don’t worry about money, worry about your health. Form the habits now, and stick with them.
Everyone will tell you that, and you’ll just ignore them, we all know it. But, we feel like we should say it anyway.
It’s really fucking important. Far more important than money.
Without money health suffers. It’s a balance.
This is good advice, but do kinda worry about the money. Just don’t obsess about the money. Save what you can without sacrificing too much. Tomorrow is never guaranteed. Talk to a financial advisor that you trust ideally one that answers the question “are you a fiduciary” with a straight up “yes” anything else they aren’t one and fuck em. Work out a plan and find what’s realistic to accomplish, and how to get there. Start that today. Not tomorrow. Investments and savings work on time not just your deposits, and every 5 years you wait you double your contributions to stay at the same level of 5 years before. Be it $50 a week or $500k a year there’s no such thing as too little if that’s what you got. Also max whatever your explorer match is on the 401k. It’s free money basically. There is so much more but the truth is none of us are likely qualified to answer this your your situation or even in general.
But yes have fun. Live for the moment. Take time off. Spend time with your family and friends. No one will remember you for your dedication to the grind, but perhaps they would be filled with resentment.
Don’t. Just don’t. Ever.
Learn to cook & meal-prep. Invest time into your health and fitness. Self-host as many techy services as you can (bonus points for Arr stack - streaming services are expensive). Try to “BIFL” where possible - Terry Pratchett said it best:
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. … A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. … But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
At least contribute to your 401k to get the full match from your employer if offered. More if you can afford it. Time in the market is huge. Make a budget, have emergency savings. There’s little point in investing if an emergency happens and you have to withdraw your retirement at a potential loss, and that’s before penalties and tax. Take care of your body, especially joints. Be even a little bit active regularly. Figure out a decently healthy diet. These will help prevent health issues which can be expensive. Plus you might look better and feel better too.
All of this sound like too much? Pick one or two and try doing them consistently even if it’s half assed. Half assing something consistently for a long time is much, much better than putting in a ton of effort, burning out, and returning to old patterns. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
Sorry I know that kinda veered into fitness but I see a lot of parallels in personal finance and fitness/nutrition. Both involve budgets and benefit from a plan and spreadsheets.
If you can afford a house, try as hard as you can not to buy a house that you can barely afford with a 30yr mortgage. Limit yourself to a house where you can afford it with a 15yr mortgage. I did that in my 30s and now in my 40s I don’t have a mortgage anymore. Obviously with the current housing market this advice won’t help many.
To those people, I’d say: stop using a basic savings account. Get a High Yield Savings Account. They pay 3.5-4% interest at the moment. Zero risk, and you can even havd a card attached to it for spending. They’re liquid. Got 1k sitting in savings? That’s $35/yr free money you’re missing out on. 10k? $350/yr. Best part? When inflation starts going crazy and the fed increases interest rates to control it, your money starts making even more money. Not enough to fix everything, but it does help a little.
If you can, max out your 401k. Put money in a Roth IRA too.
If you want to play with stocks safely use index funds. Something like SPY for the S&P500. 98% of day traders lose money. Every trade someone makes is measured against the market. The trade you made increased 2% in the last week? Well, the market was up 2.8%. It’s like gambling and the market is the house. The market eventually always wins and everyone else loses.
If you can afford a house, try as hard as you can not to buy a house that you can barely afford with a 30yr mortgage. Limit yourself to a house where you can afford it with a 15yr mortgage. I did that in my 30s and now in my 40s I don’t have a mortgage anymore. Obviously with the current housing market this advice won’t help many.
I got a 30 year mortgage at a fixed 2.something % 15 years ago and am very happy with that because I could invest more in stocks with a higher rate of return.
'Course, with the current interest rates that won’t help many either…
Only one problem with the S&P500: a massive chunk of it is AI speculation, like 30%+, and that bubble will pop. Recommend bonds or metals until it does. Then switch back.
Diversified stock without AI exposure is an option. Bonds give less return and also are looking a bit funny these days, while metals give literally zero.
Everything in the market is exposed to varying degrees, unless you have something particular in mind? If you can think of a stock that will go up when AI goes into freefall, name it, please.
Lose fat and build muscle. You will be more financially stable when you’re healthy.
lol don’t ask us. we’re just as fucked as you. :\
Don’t smoke, don’t drink, learn composting, grow a garden and learn foraging.
Fuuuuck, I do both, though I’ve been… Trying… With the smoking. I have been working on my tomatoes though!
I like it that you’re keeping it in the nightshade family, shit add some eggplant and you got the trifecta!
Tomatoes are great, especially if you make passata and use your garden waste for canning/pasteurise fuel.
You can grow your own tobacco. Once you do, never buy someone else’s (big tobaccos) crops.
It’s cheaper, you’ll probably smoke a lot less of it (you have to make each harvest last until the next crop is ready!), and you’ll have more fun with it when you do (pipe or rolling your own smokes, bragging rights, etc).
There are northern strains of tobacco that grow in scandanavia even, for the non aussies.
Best to quit tobacco and just enjoy the weed. If you can not get caught.
As much as i hate smoke, i would respect that
30-50 are most people’s highest sarnings years, so if you aren’t happy with your career, nows the time to fix it and get on a better path. Career changes get more difficult at 40 and 50.
Save even more than you think you can afford.
If you have IRA offered by your employer as a work benefit, try to contribute the amount that maxes out the employers contribution. This amount will vary by plan structure and also IRS limits. But basically you want to max out the amount your employer compensates you and even moreso for savings that compounds over time.
Consolidate and eliminate consumer debts.
If you need a car, buy used and let the first buyer take the depreciation hit.
Buy a house if you can afford to insure and fix everything that goes wrong with it also. Furnaces and AC and roofs are expensive.
If you plan to have a kid, start a 529 for their education now. Even if the contributions are small, time and compound interest is your ally here.
Don’t get on TikTok or Instagram as it becomes an envy/peer pressure/consumption trap. I don’t have the Amazon app on my phone either. I have to manually log in at a PC if I really need something from them. This reduces impulse purchases. Limit the Ubereats and Doordash expenditures also.
Get out of the U.S.
And go where? Do you realize how hard it is to immigrate? Even if you’re successful, find a cowpany who will sponsor a visa, everywhere I look seems to be taking sharp right turns. AfD in Germany, crazy grandchildren of literal Nazi collaborators in France, the grand daughter of Mussolini is prime minister of Italy. UK is doing whatever the hell it is that they do.
I’d still rather be in Canada or the EU.
And I totally realize how hard it is. I’m fucking stuck here. The U.S. has turned into a gigantic prison. It’s just my advice m. If I could expatriate I would. But realistically I’m just going to stay here and vote and then the maga Nazis will probably kill me at some point when they start their own final solution. I’m just sayin’.
I’m not really up to date on Canadian affairs, but I would absolutely not be surprised if they have anti-american sentiment and actively try to discourage or prevent people from immigrating to canada, specifically US citizens.
Don’t assume the future will be better than the past
Nobody under 40 thinks the future will be better
… You know, this is kinda true. I can’t think of a single young person who looks at the future (writ large) with hope rather than dread, or at least YOLO-ish apathy. The difference between people is in degree, and if they think it will eventually get better again.
Even most old people know the outlook is kinda fucked.
