The best financial decision you ever made
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Anonymous
Neither is being born white or UMC. |
Anonymous
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Three best:
1. Started buying stock in my 20s; 2. Maxed out 401k in 20s, 30s, early 40s before I lost my job and went freelance; 3. Buying a house in the best neighborhood we could afford. |
Anonymous
I agree. None of those examples answer the OP's question. |
Anonymous
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Best decisions I ever did:
- bought a whole bunch of Apple share in 2001 and kept them until today, - sold my house in 2005 at the peak of the market. bought the house for 250k in 1990 and sold it for 900k in 2005 - bought another house in the same neighborhood in 2008 for 300k. It is now worth about 800k, - got a whole bunch of bitcoin in 2012 for pennies. |
Anonymous
| Going to a lower ranked law school completely for free (full ride) versus taking out 200k+ in loans to go to a higher ranked school. Still got that big law job but with so much more financial freedom. |
Anonymous
| I bought an apartment in a Brooklyn in 2000. My parents were very scared for my safety - but it was the first stop over the manhattan bridge on the subway. Location, location, location. I sold it 10 years later for more than 3x the price I paid. I used the money to buy a house in a great neighborhood in DC that I otherwise never would have been able to afford on my HHI. |
Anonymous
Ditto, but near H St. NE. Twenty years ago. |
Anonymous
| Deciding to go to college at a university that was offering academic financial aid that allowed me to graduate without debt vs. going to my 1st choice where I would have had to take out significant loans to pay the full tuition. My parents pushed for this, though it was ultimately my choice. I was really grateful I didn't have student debt as the recession hit less than a year after I graduated. This was more luck, but I decided to work before grad school and was able to ride it out in a comfortable government position with lots of room for career growth. I have a lot of friends and colleagues who went straight in to grad school and graduating in 2008/2009 was really rough for them. In some cases, they are still slightly behind in their careers after being forced to take sub-par gigs during those years. |
Anonymous
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Some are choices, others were luck and privilege.
- Going to undergrad on a state scholarship. - Parents paid for grad school and related living expenses (out of state in a high COL city) because undergrad was very cheap. - Getting said graduate degree (Master's in Nursing). - Moving to DC and starting work ASAP when other cities weren't hiring new grads. - Starting to invest in low-cost index fund before the recovery took off. - Living frugally, below my means, buying fewer/better items instead of more junk, and buying secondhand most of the time. - Getting a lottery seat in a good DCPS for PK. I say this having paid over $15K for preschool in the past year. Something I wish I had done in hindsight: - Bought a house in DC 5-7 years ago. Don't know if or when we will buy here. |
Anonymous
| Bought 4 rentals between 2011-13 when prices were still recovering and mortgage rates were extremely low. |
Anonymous
| Refinancing to a 15-year mortgage at 2.625%. Saving tens of thousands in interest. |
Anonymous
| Not having kids |
Anonymous
Yes! Ours is 2.375. We need to move, but I don’t want to give up the mortgage!!! |
Anonymous
that's our rate too, refi in 2013 and rolled 2 of our rental loans (3%) into it too. |
Anonymous
| Not getting a credit card until I had graduated college and was working full-time and could afford to pay off the balance. This was my dad's advice, and I thank my younger self for heeding it. When I was in college I wondered how some of my friends could afford new cars, travel, nice clothes, etc. At the time I figured they must have wealthy parents, but now I know some of them were maxing out their high interest credit cards while funding college with student loans. I have friends with up to 100K in debt just from undergrad/grad school days...and I'm not talking law school or med school. There's no way college was worth it for them financially. |