Next steps as income grows
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Anonymous
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We saw an income increase from 250 to 350 recently.
We are not changing our monthly spending but are setting aside money about half of the monthly increase for a new car in a few years and some home renovations. The other half goes to investments. |
Anonymous
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This is us a couple of years ago. I don’t want anything to do with a second home but that’s just me. I took the easy route and just poured more money into the brokerage. Our lifestyle hasn’t changed much, same home and the cars are fine, We do travel more and those trips are higher end.
It is great not to worry about an unexpected $6K expense. Obviously , taxes go up so be ready for that. |
Anonymous
| I bought nicer sheets, towels, and knives. |
Anonymous
| More/better travel which would still not be high end by DCUM. On my next minivan I’m getting the top trim w/ventilated seats and heated steering wheel. I wince a little less when I have to make the travel sport payments. Stuff like that. But no major changes. |
Anonymous
They may not be important, but you might as well enjoy life. Just test drive a nicer car. See if you like the better ride, quiet inside, and the safety features. The last one is what really did it for us. |
Anonymous
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Figure it what really, really matters to you, and invest the money in making that change in your life or the world. This is the moment in your life when you have to decide what your values really are.
If the only purpose of your money is to make more money, that's a meaningless closed loop. |
Anonymous
| As someone with that income and investment properties that I acquired before the rates went up, I would not recommend investment properties right now. AirBNB is very soft and the DC area isn't great for making a ROI on long term rentals. |
Anonymous
Are you the weirdo from the other thread trying to push high car payments onto people to make yourself feel better about your poor life choices? |
Anonymous
| Our income jumped from $500k to $1M over the past four years. We started doing systematic after tax investing and joined a country club. Those were our two major shifts. Maybe a few more vacations, too. Kept our house the same, cars the same, kids still in public. |
Anonymous
There is literally no reason to “think outside the box” on investments. Go look up Warren Buffett $1 million bet where he invested in S&P 500 and a hedge fund got to pick whatever investment strategies they wanted. Guess who won after 10 years? Once you have your asset allocation set you really don’t need anything more complicated than a S&P500/total market/world market index fund/etf for equities, and a bond fund with maybe some TIPS or ibonds for inflation protection on the fixed income side. |
Anonymous
| Do you have $700k saved for each kid for college/graduate school? Do you have $10-20M saved for yourself for retirement? I’d just put your money in those buckets first, before doing anything else. |
Anonymous
What is the difference between invest and save? By save do you mean in the bank? That is nuts. If by save you mean invest, what is invest? Saving 66% of post-tax is done by no one. 25% and you are a rock star. |
Anonymous
| We bought a 2nd home. Yes it is expensive to maintain, but it has appreciated more than 100% in the last decade. And we use it for about 1/3 of the year. |
Anonymous
You are not going to get “outside the box” advice from DCUM. This group of people believes in a very classic and traditional approach. They swear by a classic 9 to 5 W2 job, invest in index funds, wait and retire in your mid 60s. This is not the place where you are going to find people who are advocating for things like real estate investing or entrepreneurship. You have to go some place else for outside the box ideas. |