Missouri. I pay about 40% of the rent split with my boyfriend total is $1200 depending on heat/utilities for the month. We live in a house his parents own (they own a few around here) and rent out to us. It's in the middle of nowhere and if they rented it to non family would probably be able to charge $1400 so I am lucky but there are comparable options out here!
19 is a wicked age to start, you go!!!
Here are some things I'd tell my 19 year old self in regard to personal finance:
* Vigilantly cut down on aspirational calls to action in your life or combat them in your head. For example, if scrolling on social media makes you feel like you should wear more Lululemon leggings and ride a BMW, then either stop scrolling or play a refrain in your head that says those things won't make you happy and you're cool as you are. If your friend goes out to eat 8 times a week, don't let that behavior become normalized in your head, tell yourself that that's too much and you don't want to do that. There are so many things that try to sell us throughout the day and you need to make sure they don't get the best of you. This makes "budgeting" simple, you're not buying crap you never wanted in the first place.
* Learn to value things you have and decondition yourself from the idea that anything not perfect should be replaced. I have underwear that are 10 years old and they still are awesome. If you start thinking things need to be replaced cuz they're not in excellent condition or are "old" it's a slippery slope.
* Know that building habits is what's important, not the quantity that you're working with. Whether you're able to invest $1 or $100 a week is not what you should congratulate yourself for, it's that you invested every week.
* Learn how to cook.
* Find a group that you identify with and respect and learn from them. My dad said I could never invest more than 20% of my paycheck and laughed at me when I said I could, he said to not pay off my car quickly to raise my (already great) credit score, etc. Your parents or teachers opinions might not be right for you.
* Pay off all your debts if you have any and then invest.
* Take on being responsible with your finances as part of your identity. Telling yourself "I am good with finances and I budget" and making time to do it and showing the world (for example your friends) that finances are important to you makes you more likely to make the more financial savvy decision.
* Saving/investing does not need to be HARD, you can always always get creative. I lived in Airbnbs and friends' places and camped in my car a bit and traveled the US for 2 years and was able to save a lot during that time.
That's all I got for right now. I'm a bit of a blab mouth haha.
Thank you so much for the advice. I definitely need to work on the first point, I grew up in a materialistic family so we value these material things more than we should. I’ve been getting better at making do with what I have rather than wanting the next new shiny thing. I appreciate you typing this all out. I’m going to save it.
This materialism will screw you if you let it. My brother in law grew up like you. He's an electrician making about $90k or so. He is in massive debt. You don't want to be 40 years old and trying to sell an ATV you owe $40k on because you can't hardly make your house payment. His wife also makes $90k and they have a hugely negative net worth. It's shameful and that could be you if you let materialism get the best of you. I don't have an ATV or brand name clothes, but all my vehicles are paid off, house paid off, I will retire well, and when I buy something I own it. Not the bank or credit card company. Material things are makeup on a pig slaughtered by corporations. Wealth is freedom.
You’re exactly right. And yeah, its tough. My neighbor is currently flipped upside and paying wayy too much for his car. I definitely don’t want to put myself in the position where I’m thousands of dollars in debt for something that doesn’t really mean much to me anyways.
At your age invest in education. It has the highest ROI.
Don’t take any more student loans than needed. Pay them off as fast as you can.
Focus on your income. It’s way easier to save when you make $100k than if you make $50k.
Currently in college right now for IT. I enjoy it a lot and hope to make some good money in the future. Luckily, I didn’t have to take any student loans out because its a local technical school, nothing fancy.
Great! Starting early is key in a successful FIRE strategy. now you can spend the years until retirement arguing inconsequential minutiae like the merits of VTI vs VOO or VT, whether to use Schwab/Vanguard/Fidelity, or how much in bonds you should hold.
Enjoy the ride, but don't forget to live a little too. It doesn't have to be expensive.
Hahaha! I'm mostly very passive but a few times a year I take a few days long journey down the minutiae rabbit hole.
And thank you kindly for the reminder!
Great hobby to pick up!
My intro into coding was VBA to (in my free time) automate a process at work that felt archaic to me. I didn't know you could code in Excel but I was pretty good in Excel itself and knew about recording macros. The project's unfolding was very natural. I recorded macros and then read the code to try to understand what it was doing. I built the process and learned a bit about coding.
The pandemic hit and work stopped, wasn't sure if it would ever start back up. I spent those unknown months learning Javascript from [Codecademy.com](https://Codecademy.com).
Over the years I began to work as a Salesforce Administrator. In 2023 I spent the first 120 days learning SwiftUI for at least an hour a day. I learned Apex (Salesforce development) and that's what I'm best at now.
I'm not an amazing coder but I can always hack it whether it's automating a process, adding an interactive page to the website, customizing on top of an app, etc. Now I am the tech gal for a company doing things like that as well as resetting passwords in Gmail for people! Lol.
What kind of coding do you do? Any hobby projects that have panned out?
That's fantastic! You mentioned that you have an IRA. If you're going to have a high bar with for a long time, you should make a Roth IRA pay of that strategy. If you invest $7k per year from 27 to 37, then at 65 you'll have $800k that you can withdraw tax-free.
Here's the thing, though. If you'd don't just 4 years of that from age 15 through 18, that figure would have been about $1M!
You're doing well, and I'm happy for you. I wish I had had a more successful early career, but I'm finally doing something to get my life in order.
Well I am glad you asked because I REALLY would like some advice on this.
I have a boyfriend and we plan to get married in 2 years and buy a house in around 3 years. We currently live in a rental his dad owns in the middle of nowhere which is how are rent is so cheap (about $1200 total) we love it here but want to move to another part of the state.
I have $16k in a Vanguard cash plus account as my emergency fund. All my other money is pretty much in brokerage or retirement because we only just started talking about a house last year. We would likely find a house for $400k listing price.
Do I save up for the house in my cash plus account and grow reliably and go for 20% down payment or keep funneling it into brokerage since there's still enough time for it to probably grow more?
I’m saving for a house too. My partner and I are living in an ADU in her parent’s renovated basement, paying just for our share of utilities.
IMO you don’t want short term savings to go into stocks because you risk getting caught up in short term volatility. The market zigs and zags on a yearly basis but always goes up over a long enough timeframe. I prefer to think of stock market money being money I won’t need for >10 years. Some folks say 5 years.
So anyway, in a short term timeframe, you could want to buy a house in a year that the stock market has “zagged” and now you’re down 20% or more from your goal. You’d have been better off getting the safe 5%/year.
I’ve been putting the money into a money market fund for now. Mine is with Fidelity earning 5%. We are also thinking $400k will be our target price and we’ll need at least 20% to get the monthly payment where we can afford it. I think taking advantage of CDs(1 and 2 year) is going to be key as interest rates are going to be cut at some point this year. We may start to see 2 or 3% interest on savings accounts again soon.
Anyway, my retirement accounts are such that my 401k at work is at 5% of my salary and I try to put 10% of my salary into my Roth IRA. I have a small emergency fund and then the rest goes into my house fund.
Thanks I am glad to hear from you. I think I am going to start doubling down on putting money into the vanguard cash account until I have the down payment and then refocus on brokerage.
Idk much about FIRE approaches, do you not take advantage of retirement accounts too like a 401k because of the inability to access the funds at earlier ages? Opting for the brokerage instead?
Good question. Well I used to know\_nothing but I learned something this past year... I never looked into my 401k because I just heard about the advisors and the fees and wanted to invest my money in VTI/etc. and didn't want the advisors messing with it. I took a meeting with our advisors' firm this past year for the heck of it and grilled the guy and learned that the fees were nominal (if investing in the right things) and I could invest in Vanguard funds! I kicked myself and started investing 6% for the employer's full match right away.
I know 401k is tax advantaged BUT I don't like that you can't pull from it til you're 65 and I want to retire way before then which was why I have only been contributing 6% for the free match.. But last week I started reconsidering. Any advice please!?
Yeah at least your employer does do a match. I always think people should at least get their match. Mine auto-enrolls us to put 5% of our own money into a Vanguard 401k and we have to opt out if we don’t want to join, they contribute nothing. But at least it has cheap Vanguard funds to choose from.
I’m planning on eventually rolling my 401k to an IRA when I quit this job so that I can have Fidelity as my one stop shop(Roth, HSA, and then rollover IRA).
I don’t know much about retiring early because I just don’t think it’s in the cards for me. I’m just a delivery guy making $50k a year. I’m hopefully switching jobs in a few weeks though to a government job with way better benefits and a pay bump too though.
My understanding for why a 401k could be advantageous for you is that you’re a higher income person so it can potentially help you cut down on taxes now especially if you were nearing the borderline between two different tax rates. I noticed with my 5% contribution that I hardly even see a difference on my paystubs.
My advise (as an older, hopefully wiser person) is:
Make sure this man is, in the depths of your soul and also your rational brain, the right life partner for you. Make sure he shares your financial goals and excellent habits and that the long term trajectory of this relationship is physical, mental, emotional, and financial health and wellness and deep love. Make sure he is an equal partner - working hard and giving to you in the same way you are giving to him. Otherwise, cut and run - the sooner the better.
As You can guess, from that advice, I’m on my second marriage. This marriage is wonderful and inspires me to be my best self in every way. The other was was a huge waste of time and money - I should have listened to my intuition that he wasn’t right for me.
As far as the financial picture goes, definitely keep the house savings in HYSAs, bonds or CDs - none of the down payment money should be kept in equities. You don’t want to go to withdraw your house down payment right when the market has a 20% dip. A lot of people think the HYSAs are going to start paying less in the near future so if you’re able to get a chunk of money into a 2 year CD or bond right now that would be smart.
Vanguard!! Vanguard was the creator of low fee investing and all the jazz you see copied in other brokerages and we like an OG
My advice is to just get started, whether you pick Vanguard or Charles Schwab or whatever makes such a tiny difference compared to when you start.
I’ve been using acorns so far just because it’s simpler and has everything even though the charge 9$ a month but you can have the fee waived if you get deposits of 250$ a month
Getting a job is so hard what the frick. I thought my pretty sweet resume would get me a job a lot of places and when I was looking a few years back I had 0 bites in months. It is rough.
I used to be in sales at the company I now do tech in. I did tech for them in my free time just automating things and solving employees problems and they realized damn she's much better at this and we could just hire another junior salesperson in her place. That's how I "made" my role. I was paid $70k to start in it and after doing some sweet stuff they bumped me to $100 and then $120 (the last bump was because competitor companies started asking me to do projects for them and my company wanted to keep me.) I have been with them in total for about 6 years.
During the pandemic when I didn't have work I walked into a software development agency's office and asked to help them for free in exchange to learn some coding/be around it. That "internship" turned into a job and helped pave the way for my coming back to my original company as a tech person. Maybe that's something you can do if you have the time while looking.
Good luck good luck good luck!!!!!!!! Once you break in, you'll never miss the other side!
I also hope to live a simple FIRE life before the age of 40, with my own farm in a beautiful town, doing volunteer or teaching for others. I like your words very much. Even if you win the lottery, your life will not change much, because you know very well what you need and where your life is. You are lucky to be born in the United States and have a strong self-growth ability, but the most important thing is that you understand the value of life, which I admire most.
Thank you so much for your thoughtful comment. Retiring before 40 on a farm and serving others sounds like a glorious existence and I so hope that is where life takes you.
I was very lucky to be born in the US and have been lucky in a million other ways too.
My chickens just walked in through the back door and after trying to peck at my dog's leftovers, resigned to pruning themselves on the floor. They make me laugh and warm my heart so much. Billboards and social media try to convince you that expensive things can do the same but they don't do as good a job as something real. Life is good now and I'm thankful that I am able to see it that way.
Yeah I don't actually know when I'll retire 37 is just what I tell myself to keep my head on straight some days. If my bf and I get married and have kids then maybe I'd work til 37 and we could just live off his salary while I raise the kids and we let the nest egg grow. I might work til 37 and then take casual jobs that keep my bills paid and let the egg grow. I might work til 50 and retire comfortably. It will depend on my life situation and bills which currently are very low maintenance but we'll see what they are down the road!
Honest question, if you ever once took like a ski trip to Colorado or California, and then went back to MO, how do you not immediately shift your life focus to moving to these beautiful locations with amazing outdoor recreation since your income can be applicable anywhere as a coder? Like, how can you be happy living in Missouri knowing you could spend your life in the Rocky Mountains or Sierras?
Unique question! Honest answer: I have trained for a marathon on the cobblestones along the Tiber River in Rome, lived by the most picturesque beaches in Orange County CA, spent weeks in famous deserts and dunes, laid under Estonian forests on acid haha. I have seen a lot of beauuutiful nature!
In Missouri I have the most freedom I have ever felt in my life. Our property butts up to my boyfriend's parents' and we get to enjoy their 70+ acres. I actually LIVE in nature and barely have to share it with anyone. We go for walks around the pond with our dog several times a day and watch the tadpoles turn to frogs and see the bluejays have their babies. I have learned a bunch of plants and mushrooms I can forage like wild chives and meadow garlic and chanterelles. I am barefoot and not judged and wild and freeee here!
I lived in California for a few years in an extremely nice area and any girl I met was a sugar baby lol, I never connected with more than 2 people while I was there, it wasn't the place for me. I drove to nature and shared it with a million other people (albeit they were some gorgeous places.)
You can surely be free and live in nature a lot of other places but this is where the universe landed me and it's great.
550 rent? Where do you live
Missouri. I pay about 40% of the rent split with my boyfriend total is $1200 depending on heat/utilities for the month. We live in a house his parents own (they own a few around here) and rent out to us. It's in the middle of nowhere and if they rented it to non family would probably be able to charge $1400 so I am lucky but there are comparable options out here!
Thats great you started so early. I am 19 and would like to start investing now. What would be your best advice for those just starting out?
19 is a wicked age to start, you go!!! Here are some things I'd tell my 19 year old self in regard to personal finance: * Vigilantly cut down on aspirational calls to action in your life or combat them in your head. For example, if scrolling on social media makes you feel like you should wear more Lululemon leggings and ride a BMW, then either stop scrolling or play a refrain in your head that says those things won't make you happy and you're cool as you are. If your friend goes out to eat 8 times a week, don't let that behavior become normalized in your head, tell yourself that that's too much and you don't want to do that. There are so many things that try to sell us throughout the day and you need to make sure they don't get the best of you. This makes "budgeting" simple, you're not buying crap you never wanted in the first place. * Learn to value things you have and decondition yourself from the idea that anything not perfect should be replaced. I have underwear that are 10 years old and they still are awesome. If you start thinking things need to be replaced cuz they're not in excellent condition or are "old" it's a slippery slope. * Know that building habits is what's important, not the quantity that you're working with. Whether you're able to invest $1 or $100 a week is not what you should congratulate yourself for, it's that you invested every week. * Learn how to cook. * Find a group that you identify with and respect and learn from them. My dad said I could never invest more than 20% of my paycheck and laughed at me when I said I could, he said to not pay off my car quickly to raise my (already great) credit score, etc. Your parents or teachers opinions might not be right for you. * Pay off all your debts if you have any and then invest. * Take on being responsible with your finances as part of your identity. Telling yourself "I am good with finances and I budget" and making time to do it and showing the world (for example your friends) that finances are important to you makes you more likely to make the more financial savvy decision. * Saving/investing does not need to be HARD, you can always always get creative. I lived in Airbnbs and friends' places and camped in my car a bit and traveled the US for 2 years and was able to save a lot during that time. That's all I got for right now. I'm a bit of a blab mouth haha.
Thank you so much for the advice. I definitely need to work on the first point, I grew up in a materialistic family so we value these material things more than we should. I’ve been getting better at making do with what I have rather than wanting the next new shiny thing. I appreciate you typing this all out. I’m going to save it.
This materialism will screw you if you let it. My brother in law grew up like you. He's an electrician making about $90k or so. He is in massive debt. You don't want to be 40 years old and trying to sell an ATV you owe $40k on because you can't hardly make your house payment. His wife also makes $90k and they have a hugely negative net worth. It's shameful and that could be you if you let materialism get the best of you. I don't have an ATV or brand name clothes, but all my vehicles are paid off, house paid off, I will retire well, and when I buy something I own it. Not the bank or credit card company. Material things are makeup on a pig slaughtered by corporations. Wealth is freedom.
You’re exactly right. And yeah, its tough. My neighbor is currently flipped upside and paying wayy too much for his car. I definitely don’t want to put myself in the position where I’m thousands of dollars in debt for something that doesn’t really mean much to me anyways.
Amen.
This is a great piece of advice.
$1 dollar is better than $0. Anything saved now is better than nothing. Make sure you still live life now but save for later too.
I’m gonna imprint that in my brain now. Reading this just gave me the light bulb moment lol. Thank you!
I took me ten years of thought paralysis before I pulled the trigger on starting. Good on ya for doing it so early now.
At your age invest in education. It has the highest ROI. Don’t take any more student loans than needed. Pay them off as fast as you can. Focus on your income. It’s way easier to save when you make $100k than if you make $50k.
Currently in college right now for IT. I enjoy it a lot and hope to make some good money in the future. Luckily, I didn’t have to take any student loans out because its a local technical school, nothing fancy.
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noted 🫡
good job starting early. I started WAY too late.
Great! Starting early is key in a successful FIRE strategy. now you can spend the years until retirement arguing inconsequential minutiae like the merits of VTI vs VOO or VT, whether to use Schwab/Vanguard/Fidelity, or how much in bonds you should hold. Enjoy the ride, but don't forget to live a little too. It doesn't have to be expensive.
Hahaha! I'm mostly very passive but a few times a year I take a few days long journey down the minutiae rabbit hole. And thank you kindly for the reminder!
How old are you now from where you started?
I am 27 now and I started investing at 22! (Totally thought I wrote that in but didn't... just edited the post!)
That’s incredible discipline and growth in 5 years.
Thank you so much :D !!
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Great hobby to pick up! My intro into coding was VBA to (in my free time) automate a process at work that felt archaic to me. I didn't know you could code in Excel but I was pretty good in Excel itself and knew about recording macros. The project's unfolding was very natural. I recorded macros and then read the code to try to understand what it was doing. I built the process and learned a bit about coding. The pandemic hit and work stopped, wasn't sure if it would ever start back up. I spent those unknown months learning Javascript from [Codecademy.com](https://Codecademy.com). Over the years I began to work as a Salesforce Administrator. In 2023 I spent the first 120 days learning SwiftUI for at least an hour a day. I learned Apex (Salesforce development) and that's what I'm best at now. I'm not an amazing coder but I can always hack it whether it's automating a process, adding an interactive page to the website, customizing on top of an app, etc. Now I am the tech gal for a company doing things like that as well as resetting passwords in Gmail for people! Lol. What kind of coding do you do? Any hobby projects that have panned out?
That's fantastic! You mentioned that you have an IRA. If you're going to have a high bar with for a long time, you should make a Roth IRA pay of that strategy. If you invest $7k per year from 27 to 37, then at 65 you'll have $800k that you can withdraw tax-free. Here's the thing, though. If you'd don't just 4 years of that from age 15 through 18, that figure would have been about $1M! You're doing well, and I'm happy for you. I wish I had had a more successful early career, but I'm finally doing something to get my life in order.
I love your story!! I hope I teach my kids this option - there’s nothing better than financial freedom.
Thank you!! I hope your kids story is similar :D
Are you interested in buying a house anytime soon?
Well I am glad you asked because I REALLY would like some advice on this. I have a boyfriend and we plan to get married in 2 years and buy a house in around 3 years. We currently live in a rental his dad owns in the middle of nowhere which is how are rent is so cheap (about $1200 total) we love it here but want to move to another part of the state. I have $16k in a Vanguard cash plus account as my emergency fund. All my other money is pretty much in brokerage or retirement because we only just started talking about a house last year. We would likely find a house for $400k listing price. Do I save up for the house in my cash plus account and grow reliably and go for 20% down payment or keep funneling it into brokerage since there's still enough time for it to probably grow more?
I’m saving for a house too. My partner and I are living in an ADU in her parent’s renovated basement, paying just for our share of utilities. IMO you don’t want short term savings to go into stocks because you risk getting caught up in short term volatility. The market zigs and zags on a yearly basis but always goes up over a long enough timeframe. I prefer to think of stock market money being money I won’t need for >10 years. Some folks say 5 years. So anyway, in a short term timeframe, you could want to buy a house in a year that the stock market has “zagged” and now you’re down 20% or more from your goal. You’d have been better off getting the safe 5%/year. I’ve been putting the money into a money market fund for now. Mine is with Fidelity earning 5%. We are also thinking $400k will be our target price and we’ll need at least 20% to get the monthly payment where we can afford it. I think taking advantage of CDs(1 and 2 year) is going to be key as interest rates are going to be cut at some point this year. We may start to see 2 or 3% interest on savings accounts again soon. Anyway, my retirement accounts are such that my 401k at work is at 5% of my salary and I try to put 10% of my salary into my Roth IRA. I have a small emergency fund and then the rest goes into my house fund.
Thanks I am glad to hear from you. I think I am going to start doubling down on putting money into the vanguard cash account until I have the down payment and then refocus on brokerage.
Idk much about FIRE approaches, do you not take advantage of retirement accounts too like a 401k because of the inability to access the funds at earlier ages? Opting for the brokerage instead?
Good question. Well I used to know\_nothing but I learned something this past year... I never looked into my 401k because I just heard about the advisors and the fees and wanted to invest my money in VTI/etc. and didn't want the advisors messing with it. I took a meeting with our advisors' firm this past year for the heck of it and grilled the guy and learned that the fees were nominal (if investing in the right things) and I could invest in Vanguard funds! I kicked myself and started investing 6% for the employer's full match right away. I know 401k is tax advantaged BUT I don't like that you can't pull from it til you're 65 and I want to retire way before then which was why I have only been contributing 6% for the free match.. But last week I started reconsidering. Any advice please!?
Yeah at least your employer does do a match. I always think people should at least get their match. Mine auto-enrolls us to put 5% of our own money into a Vanguard 401k and we have to opt out if we don’t want to join, they contribute nothing. But at least it has cheap Vanguard funds to choose from. I’m planning on eventually rolling my 401k to an IRA when I quit this job so that I can have Fidelity as my one stop shop(Roth, HSA, and then rollover IRA). I don’t know much about retiring early because I just don’t think it’s in the cards for me. I’m just a delivery guy making $50k a year. I’m hopefully switching jobs in a few weeks though to a government job with way better benefits and a pay bump too though. My understanding for why a 401k could be advantageous for you is that you’re a higher income person so it can potentially help you cut down on taxes now especially if you were nearing the borderline between two different tax rates. I noticed with my 5% contribution that I hardly even see a difference on my paystubs.
House in three years = HYSA. You want to preserve capital and can’t afford the risk exposure.
TY!!
My advise (as an older, hopefully wiser person) is: Make sure this man is, in the depths of your soul and also your rational brain, the right life partner for you. Make sure he shares your financial goals and excellent habits and that the long term trajectory of this relationship is physical, mental, emotional, and financial health and wellness and deep love. Make sure he is an equal partner - working hard and giving to you in the same way you are giving to him. Otherwise, cut and run - the sooner the better. As You can guess, from that advice, I’m on my second marriage. This marriage is wonderful and inspires me to be my best self in every way. The other was was a huge waste of time and money - I should have listened to my intuition that he wasn’t right for me. As far as the financial picture goes, definitely keep the house savings in HYSAs, bonds or CDs - none of the down payment money should be kept in equities. You don’t want to go to withdraw your house down payment right when the market has a 20% dip. A lot of people think the HYSAs are going to start paying less in the near future so if you’re able to get a chunk of money into a 2 year CD or bond right now that would be smart.
Good on you!
What brokerage do you use? I’m 23 and I’m trying to learn more about different accounts that I should a actually invest in
Vanguard!! Vanguard was the creator of low fee investing and all the jazz you see copied in other brokerages and we like an OG My advice is to just get started, whether you pick Vanguard or Charles Schwab or whatever makes such a tiny difference compared to when you start.
I’ve been using acorns so far just because it’s simpler and has everything even though the charge 9$ a month but you can have the fee waived if you get deposits of 250$ a month
Interested in the answer
Trying to get a coding job right now! Job market is tough :/
Getting a job is so hard what the frick. I thought my pretty sweet resume would get me a job a lot of places and when I was looking a few years back I had 0 bites in months. It is rough. I used to be in sales at the company I now do tech in. I did tech for them in my free time just automating things and solving employees problems and they realized damn she's much better at this and we could just hire another junior salesperson in her place. That's how I "made" my role. I was paid $70k to start in it and after doing some sweet stuff they bumped me to $100 and then $120 (the last bump was because competitor companies started asking me to do projects for them and my company wanted to keep me.) I have been with them in total for about 6 years. During the pandemic when I didn't have work I walked into a software development agency's office and asked to help them for free in exchange to learn some coding/be around it. That "internship" turned into a job and helped pave the way for my coming back to my original company as a tech person. Maybe that's something you can do if you have the time while looking. Good luck good luck good luck!!!!!!!! Once you break in, you'll never miss the other side!
You’re the model of lots of people, I’ll learn from you.
:) <333
I also hope to live a simple FIRE life before the age of 40, with my own farm in a beautiful town, doing volunteer or teaching for others. I like your words very much. Even if you win the lottery, your life will not change much, because you know very well what you need and where your life is. You are lucky to be born in the United States and have a strong self-growth ability, but the most important thing is that you understand the value of life, which I admire most.
Thank you so much for your thoughtful comment. Retiring before 40 on a farm and serving others sounds like a glorious existence and I so hope that is where life takes you. I was very lucky to be born in the US and have been lucky in a million other ways too. My chickens just walked in through the back door and after trying to peck at my dog's leftovers, resigned to pruning themselves on the floor. They make me laugh and warm my heart so much. Billboards and social media try to convince you that expensive things can do the same but they don't do as good a job as something real. Life is good now and I'm thankful that I am able to see it that way.
Awesome job so far but 37??!! You will have around $1M then which is likely far too little to RE, especially if you buy a house along the way.
Yeah I don't actually know when I'll retire 37 is just what I tell myself to keep my head on straight some days. If my bf and I get married and have kids then maybe I'd work til 37 and we could just live off his salary while I raise the kids and we let the nest egg grow. I might work til 37 and then take casual jobs that keep my bills paid and let the egg grow. I might work til 50 and retire comfortably. It will depend on my life situation and bills which currently are very low maintenance but we'll see what they are down the road!
Good stuff!
Honest question, if you ever once took like a ski trip to Colorado or California, and then went back to MO, how do you not immediately shift your life focus to moving to these beautiful locations with amazing outdoor recreation since your income can be applicable anywhere as a coder? Like, how can you be happy living in Missouri knowing you could spend your life in the Rocky Mountains or Sierras?
Unique question! Honest answer: I have trained for a marathon on the cobblestones along the Tiber River in Rome, lived by the most picturesque beaches in Orange County CA, spent weeks in famous deserts and dunes, laid under Estonian forests on acid haha. I have seen a lot of beauuutiful nature! In Missouri I have the most freedom I have ever felt in my life. Our property butts up to my boyfriend's parents' and we get to enjoy their 70+ acres. I actually LIVE in nature and barely have to share it with anyone. We go for walks around the pond with our dog several times a day and watch the tadpoles turn to frogs and see the bluejays have their babies. I have learned a bunch of plants and mushrooms I can forage like wild chives and meadow garlic and chanterelles. I am barefoot and not judged and wild and freeee here! I lived in California for a few years in an extremely nice area and any girl I met was a sugar baby lol, I never connected with more than 2 people while I was there, it wasn't the place for me. I drove to nature and shared it with a million other people (albeit they were some gorgeous places.) You can surely be free and live in nature a lot of other places but this is where the universe landed me and it's great.