Asklemmy

Being born into a rich western country.

A literal move actually. 20 years ago I moved from America to a country with universal health care. That has saved my family probably close to a quarter million bucks in health care fees alone.

Most of the things mentioned in this thread are mostly dumb luck and not necessarily active financial decisions.

• Not having a car (always living/renting in walking or biking distance of my work)
• Moving in with my partner straight out of college so we could split expenses
• Moving (with partner) to a low-cost-of-living city for the first 5 years after college
• Putting most of my medium-term and long-term savings into low-expense-ratio, passively managed index funds starting in my early 20s
• Buying almost exclusively second-hand clothes, furniture, and cookery
• Borrowing all desired books (and many desired movies and TV shows) from the library
• Only buying games when they are bundled or otherwise on steep discount years after release
• Pirating any other media in which I'm interested if its distributors make it even remotely difficult for me to buy it at a reasonable price
• Planning all dinners in advance every week before grocery shopping (leads to almost never eating at restaurants or ordering takeout, and almost no food waste because grocery list is based on actual meals)

Now, if I had to choose the best financial move out of that list? Probably the index funds. Though not having to pay for a car (or car insurance, or car registration, or car repair and maintenance, or parking, or fuel) is a close second.

In 2017 my landlord raised my rent from $1k to $1100 a month for the place I rented with my daughter because I finally broke down and got her a dog. I was annoyed because this wasn't in the lease but I was month to month by this time and figured I could probably get a house around me for the same cost and at least I'd be building equity. I closed in 2018 on a $120k fixer upper on 12 acres. I got a $30k rehab loan and my mortgage/insurance/property tax payment ended up being just over $1100. I spent 7 months in major renovations.

Fast forward to today, I have a 2.875% mortgage rate with just over $1000 a month all in payment (early COVID refi saved me about $100/month), my house was just appraised for $415k, and I was able to sell 5 acres of the land for a total of about $160k.

A free shelter dog ended up turning $150k into $575k. 10/10 would recommend.

Leaving Sydney for a cheaper quieter life in Central West NSW!

Nice 4 bedroom home with views, 1200m² block with trees, quiet area, school almost across the road, close to everything else and best of all, a tiny manageable mortgage!

Deciding not to get a car; it saves ~400.000 euros in my lifetime which at 40k net a year income means 8-10 year earlier pension

As 2023 was beginning I set a goal that I would have $5k in the bank no matter what.

Up to this year I’ve been living paycheck to paycheck. But resolving to save up $5k pushed me out of that for the first time ever.

I never did hit $5k. But I stopped living paycheck to paycheck. I haven’t checked my balance before paying rent since february of last year. I always have enough, and I just pay the bill.

Mined a Bitcoin in college.

Working with my SO to start budgeting each month. We now have a system in place that works for us and a habit of getting out in front of expenses.

Budgeting helped us see that increasing your income is far more powerful than reducing spending, so we’re focused on spending to gain skills and increase our top line right now.

Vasectomy like 10 years ago. Kids are expensive.

Accidentally buying a modest house in what at the time was a "distressed" neighborhood because it was all we could afford. 15 years later the neighborhood has been gentrified and is highly desirable. The property has tripled in value and the land is now worth more than the house itself.

Anyhow, it was dumb luck on my part and again, mostly had to do with the place being affordable and relatively close to my wife's parents.

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.

It was accidental.

So I started working at a startup right after I graduated college. They couldn't pay a competitive wage, so they gave me a ton of stock. A year into working there, about half the company was laid off. I survived. They begged us not to leave the company by giving us more stock. I started interviewing elsewhere, because I have bills to pay, but I never got any other jobs. Then one day they handed me an envelope. It contained paperwork for even more stock. I thought it wasn't going to be worth the paper it was printed on, so I kept looking for other jobs. Never found one.

Well, a few years go by and the company starts doing very well. Then we got bought out. Suddenly all the worthless stock they gave me was worth a fuck ton of money. The buying company bought ALL of it. Even unvested shares. One day they wrote me a really, really big check, then I went and bought a house.

It was absolutely life changing, and I tried to throw it away at every chance I got. I got so lucky.

Starting investing into index fund ETFs

I only started about 3 years ago but even if I stopped putting in more money right now it would still keep paying me interests around 2000 to 3000€ each year for the rest of my life and it's 100% passive income. In my case it's all invested back into the funds though.

The second best move was starting to track my finances. It's almost impossible to not change your spending habits once you actually see where all the money is going. Almost anyone can cut atleast 100€ a month from their grocery bills by just being a little more mindfull about what you buy. That's 1200€/year or 12k€/10 years.

Securing a long-term fixed rate mortgage just before the war in Russia. Other than that it’s basically been any time I saved money rather than spending it.

I'm in the States so dunno how this translates... But my parents made get a 500usd limit credit card when I was like 14. It had been the best decision that I've made. My credit is so dn good now that I can get what ever I want easily approved. That and they insisted I make a home purchase at like 23- right be fore the mortgages went nuts. My mortgage is like a quarter of what others pay for a rental...

Thanks ma and pa 🤜🤛

Buying a house during covid when I saw rent was increasing drastically for no apparent reason. I could barely afford it at the time but thanks to inflation and a couple raises, I'm comfortably sitting on a house that's now worth 50% more than I bought it for, and paying way less than current rental prices. Rent is insane right now.

Move abroad, halve my taxes, triple my income, reduce my cost of living by nearly 80%, effectively increased my savings rate by ~1100%, from 500 EUR/month to now >5k EUR/month. That's 5k in fixed savings (investment plan), plus whatever else I don't spend accumulates in my savings account.

Vasectomy BEFORE kids

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!

I bought gas before it went up $0.30/gal

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.

Changing jobs instead of showing loyalty to employers who couldn’t give two shits when it was time to let me go.

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.

1. No kids
   2 Studying

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)

Buying used shit

Bitcoin.

Studying hard on my first year university. My GPA started high so I had a bunch of scholarships and grants. It's easy to maintain a high GPA than to bring a low GPA to a high level. I religiously apply to scholarships and grants also. I paid maybe 1/4 of my tuition fees.

Things to note:

• My 4 year bachelor degree in healthcare only cost $25,000-30,000 including books.
• The gov't even gives 60% back of tuition paid as tax refund every year until the gov't party changed a few years after I finished.
• Also gov't gives out cheap educational loans especially for low income families back then.
• Not in US.

In life it's been mostly pure luck, but one of the few things I really recommend is to keep in the loop about rebates, programs and services offered by my federal and provincial government. Stuff like rebates on first time home buying, electric bikes, and energy efficient equipment is nice cause I bet I saved at least 3000$ total.

In recent time tho the biggest one has been getting a bicycle. I got an e-bike but even a regular bike helped me stop paying through the nose for gas when I was just burning it mostly sitting in traffic.