Asklemmy

Vasectomy BEFORE kids

1. For the first few years of my career after college which has a pretty generous 401k company matching scheme I put the maximum amount possible into my retirement accounts and lived well within my means to build up a nest egg. Now that I am married I have dialed back my investments so we can afford to live a little bit nicer with the knowledge that we have a really great start in our retirement accounts.

2. My wife and I moved in together two years before getting married. This made living substantially cheaper for both of us and made us positive that we wanted to live together and could tolerate each other prior to tying the knot :).

3. I got a vasectomy mid-last year. My wife and I both agreed long before marriage that we only want to adopt. Adoption is obviously very expensive, but now we have the peace of mind of knowing we have full control over when we start to invest in that process to expand our family. No "accidents" can happen which is very liberating.

I bought gas before it went up $0.30/gal

Selling my home, car, boat and living a simple RV life without kids. Forget the financials, the lack of stress has made it so very worth it!

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Bought a house in 2012. It's now worth almost 3x what I paid for it then. So wildly unfair.

Getting a master's in electroacoustic music. Everyone told me I was going to stay poor forever, I decided to still do what I really wanted and it's going pretty well.

1. Started a small mutual fund and retirement fund when I was just starting out and still in undergrad. I did not have much and was fully self sufficient. But someone came to my job and showed us how retirement plans worked and convinced me to start one. Same with a mutual fund. I never put more than $20-$40 in each because I didn’t have much but boy did that pay off.

2. I purchased a small condo in the city with some of the money I put away in #1. Just sold it recently (20 years after purchasing it; lived in it for 5 years, rented it out for a profit for 15 years). I made a lot of money off that sale. More money than I’ve ever seen at once.

3. My spouse and I have always lived below our means. Now we’re not frugal - we go out for nice dinners, travel, have kids. We also have good jobs. But, when we purchased a house we could have afforded to get one that was $600k and instead opted for a smaller townhome in a nice neighborhood for almost half the price. Living this way has paid off more than I could have ever imagined. Both of us don’t have to work. We travel whenever we want. We could technically both stop working in our 40s/50s and probably be fine. It’s a feeling of freedom. We’ve never over-extended ourselves. When our colleagues and friends were buying expensive homes and expensive cars and extending themselves, we just didn’t do that.

Getting out of renting and locking in a 30 year fixed interest rate of 3.25%.

My monthly housing payment is no longer going up every year.

My old apartment is already $300 a month more than I'm paying on my mortgage. It was only $200 a month less when I bought the house.

Not buying that over priced concert ticket for $200.. oh wait. I did that.

Living like a pauper for a few years and paying the mortgage off early.

Also not joining the rat race, and buying new shiny shit for the sake of it.

1. No kids
   2 Studying

Buying bitcoin during COVID. Nearly tripled my investment.

Using a budget manager (YNAB)

I’m really bad with saving money and even having enough ready for regular bills on my own. I was always on zero before the end of the month and struggled hard when there was something unexpected. Now everything is planned ahead, I have some savings and yearly expenses are just ready to pay when needed.

It needs some time to adjust to it and I had to restructure my categories a few times until it worked for me (still not perfect).

Though I don’t feel like I’m getting my money’s worth anymore from YNAB. It keeps getting more expensive, the updates are slow and it seems very US focused. If I ever find the motivation, I want to build something on my own (I’m a web developer from Europe who’s getting a bit tired of web developing)

Getting an industry job rather than a postdoc after I finished my PhD.

Making a budget and sticking to it every month. I am able to save 17% of what i make and put it into Monero to avoid it getting eaten by inflation.

Buying used shit

It's either my best or my worst: I bought a house with my SO that we got for about half of the value