How are you doing financially?
How are you doing financially?
I read that half of Americans couldn’t cover an unexpected $1,000 expense. This sounds crazy to me. I understand that poverty exists, but the idea that an adult with a job doesn’t even have that amount saved up seems really strange.
What’s your relationship or philosophy with money? What do you credit for your financial success, or alternatively, what do you blame for your failures?
For the extra brave ones: how much savings do you have, and what are you planning to do with them?
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every time I read one of those statistics, I feel the same way.
I'm doing very well relative to that statistic.
I live fairly simply, but I don't consider myself particularly frugal.
I like traveling, learning, eating, watching and reading stuff, and making things, which are all pretty cheap interests.
If I were to credit anything with my financial success, it would be a practiced awareness of financial opportunity and persistently learning about and attempting every viable opportunity I'm interested in to gain a practical knowledge of cost-benefit streams.
I've tried many ways to make money and work less, and some of them worked out.
I'm traveling this year, so I save most of my income, and with the IRS' FEIE I don't pay income tax(up to 120k).
I have a few investments and some ten thousands accruing interest.
i don't have immediate plans, but I want to buy some land at some point, basically so I have more area to build stuff and make stuff, sign up for cryonics and get a new electric bike or the Aptera if it every goes into production.
c'mon aptera.
It’s a difficult subject to discuss without sounding like you’re either bragging or talking down to those less well off.
I recently bought a new-to-me truck. I paid in cash, and if I wanted to, I could’ve bought two more. If I liquidated my investments, I could have bought three more, so six in total. I’m self-employed now, but I built all my wealth while working for a (plumbing) company where I was surrounded by people earning twice as much as I did. Yet, these are the people who need to finance their cars, have massive mortgages, and are always in a bad mood due to stress.
I understand that some people have been really unlucky and struggle to improve their financial position despite their best efforts, but these aren’t the people I’m talking about when I wonder how a working-age person can’t come up with a thousand bucks for an unexpected expense. I hardly even consider that a lot of money.
but I want to buy some land at some point, basically so I have more area to build stuff and make stuff.
I feel you there. What kind of things would you like to build? For me, it’s things like a rainwater harvesting system, solar/wind power, a pond with a pier and sauna, a chicken coop, a heated workshop with a car lift, a root cellar... I basically have an infinite list of projects I'd like to pursue.
"I basically have an infinite list of projects I'd like to pursue."
this is about where I'm at.
All the homesteading stuff, I want to try breeding meat rabbits, I want to try geothermal air conditioning, buy used cars and flip them (I started working on cars a few years ago and ended up enjoying it much more than I thought I would).
a whole separate area for home brewing and jerkying stuff too, canning, all that.
I like the idea of building different types of housing and read books and watch videos all the time, like straw bale or clay or underground, whatever the heck experimental cabins I could build, and I've further toyed with the beginning of an idea of how to turn that into low income housing after I land on the simplest, sturdiest and least resource intensive houses to build.
carpentry. I've built small tables and desks and chairs for classrooms, but I'd like to experiment with larger furniture.
I did a lot of solar power experimentation when I was living in a motorhome that turned out Great, and I expect many of my projects outside would be solar and wind powered.
fish farming, vermicomposting, yeah, just a thousand billion things haha.
I like making things, building things, and new experiences.
I've done smaller projects within most of the fields I've mentioned as the opportunity arose, but even when I'm renting a house somewhere for a couple months I can't easily conduct long-term larger living experiments, so I'll have to get a house and land at some point so I can fiddle at scale.
..."always in a bad mood due to stress."
circumstance and opportunity.
some people don't have the opportunities, many do have the opportunities but don't recognize them or choose not to take them because anything outside of what they already know makes them uncomfortable where is seen as difficult, and they haven't been taught or learned themselves through experience to push past that discomfort or initial effort.
Yeah I love all that. Flipping old cars is something I've thought about as well but something I'd be even more interested in is doing the same with boats. Now that I'm self-employed I've tought about getting a project boat that I could work on when ever business is otherwise slow. I couldn't fit a large one on my yard but some smaller fishing boat would be interesting to start with. When looking at old boats they often look like just even a simple pressure wash would double their price.
absolutely, That's a great call with flipping boats also, I think the exact same thing about cars.
give a "clunker" a wash and change the battery and oil, clean some corrosion, and half the time you're done with the tune-up and can make a few extra bucks.
I got my first motorcycle for my guy who basically did that for a living with bikes, and that was one of the first times practical commodity flipping made sense to me.
I had heard of flipping houses, but I didn't hear about it, but then I saw like five bikes in this guy's backyard and how simple it would be to replace the vital parts, which is fun, and sell them at a fair profit.
I keep trying to figure out how practical a solar /wind powered paddle houseboat would be, that I could just sort of like sustainably ferry out to wherever and paddle around the ocean for a while hahaha.
sounds super fun!