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Hey Fishes,
Any update on the hike letter ?
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Does EY gift goodies on joining /on birthdays?
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Thoughts on $LUNA?
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Anyone here in the FTO group? How is it?
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Entirely dependent on your desired lifestyle. Want a $1M home and a Range Rover? Will need more money than someone living in a $250k home driving a Honda civic.
Once you find a lifestyle you are comfortable with, stick with it. Any raise from there increases your savings. Avoid perpetual lifestyle creep.
In some ways growing up poor was great for my perspective on money now that I have some. So content with my lifestyle and its low cost of living
Everyone defines rich as “makes more than me” so everyone feels poor or “middle class.” And people try to socialize up and tend to travel to wealthy parts of wealthy countries. Which makes it feel “normal” to spend 100k a year 🥴
if 100k is barely enough to save on, your lifestyle is probably too expensive (unless you’re the sole person supporting multiple dependents or some situation like that)
Lmao @D2 2100 in Denver better get you a luxury 2 bedroom apartment to yourself. 2100 in NYC gets you a roommate, one bathroom, a room the size of a closet and a kitchen the size of a slightly bigger closet. And then you pay 12 dollars for a ham and cheese sandwich and state and city taxes on top of that.
Haha when I graduated and my starting salary was ~$50k (industry) I felt plenty secure. I was in a LCOL area and was used to having like $2k-$3k max in my bank account up until that point. It’s all about lifestyle choices and perspective at a certain point.
I see it as living cheap for my first 20 years of my career by saving the most and living the rest of my life balling
AC1 don’t worry about it it’s nothing major and didn’t say that to make you feel bad. Just saying you got more time than you think and don’t forget about compound interest!
Pro
Why are you comparing your savings to your friend’s bonus? Figure out a reasonable financial plan to meet your goals given what you make and work towards that. Max out 401k, pay down debt, keep lifestyle in check, so on. Focusing on people you know who make more than you is just a red herring.
Depends on your situation. I have 2 kids and have to pay for childcare, which isn’t cheap. I’ve streamlined my expenses, so I’m doing fine at 200k. I don’t feel wealthy, but I’m fine.
$250k household income and $2350/month for ONE kid. Barely scraping by with kid and student loan payments. My brother did the math and to max out 401k and do everything else you’re supposed to do plus afford daycare in a HCOL city, you need $350k, and that’s WITHOUT student loan payments.
Our country is nutso.
Learn to avoid Lifestyle Creep. You don’t need a fancy car, a bigger house or designer threads. My wife and I have the same lifestyle from when we earned $220k jointly. Fast forward 8 years and we earn $450k jointly, our lifestyle hasn’t changed which affords us a huge saving and investing cushion.
>150k is when I started to feel more financial freedom and flexibility. You can max 401k and have pretty good cash flow to put extra money into investments. Like others here, I try and avoid lifestyle creep as much as I can. I pretty much never use delivery services, used rideshare only when I had to (pre-pandemic), keep my subscriptions including phone/internet limited to $200 a month, and only dine at high-end restaurants for special occasions, because I don’t care much for fancy food.
Once my SO and I reach 500k HHI, I’ll maybe splurge on an RS7. But never buying a $1M house. And any kids I might have in the future are going to public school for sure
All a matter of perspective. Having grown up poor, I thought even my starting salary of $60k was amazing. I was able to save around 50% of my take home and felt pretty damned secure even then. Now I earn 3x that and feel like I really couldn’t ask for more without feeling greedy as hell
Comparison is the thief of joy
I grew up in a poor family in the south and went to grad school right after undergrad at an Ivy so graduated with almost 6 figures of student loans. I didn’t feel secure until I had enough to pay off all my loans with a 6 month safety net.
After my next raise. Absolutely going to happen, I can feel it!
Total comp right now is $240k and I'll be lucky if I can retire when I'm 96. Three kids, DC home prices, healthcare, etc.
A bit of hyperbole, I have been saving for years and max out my 401k and ESPP contributions. But life is just so damn expensive it's hard to believe I'll ever truly have "enough"
Edit: I also have an SEP-IRA that I set up when I had a S-Corp some years back and it's been performing well.
Some people on here are sick!
Few years out of college and i’m more than content with my $120+ / yr base. Going for cheap rent and multiple roommates in a HCOL market has saved me some cash - and my lifestyle hasn’t changed much since first joining consulting. Maybe now I don’t second guess getting another drink at the bar or some other small assurances like that.
Has now allowed me to start looking for real estate or small business investments.
Just got a raise over $150k. Even with copious amounts of student loans (had 120k+ coming out of college 3.5 years back), relatively high rent (~1600/month), car payments, etc. I don’t really feel like I have to think about money if I don’t want to, if that makes sense.
Although the pandemic helped. I’m a big buy breakfast/lunch everyday and go out to eat more than most guy, so not being able to do that for a while gave me a nice cushion.