How is it "easy to make money"?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DH and I are 43 and 41. We contributed $57K to our two 401ks last year (including employer match). Sounds pretty okay, right? But that is nothing compared to the compounding growth we achieved. Our overall retirement portfolio increased by $1.7M between January 2023 and December 2023 and only $57,000 of that was contributions – the remaining $1,652,000 was all growth.

We make more money in the stock market in a single week than we earn from our jobs over the course of an entire month.

It’s all about making sacrifices early in life, people. We chose to buy used cars in cash (no loans), clean our own home, mow our own yard, and live well within our means while others were living extravagantly on borrowed dollars. Do this for the first 10-20 years after graduating and the next 50-60 years are as easy as pie. Or…blow it all up front and spend the latter half of your life clipping coupons, shopping at Costco, begging for senior discounts, and driving to Rehoboth Beach for vacations instead of flying first class to Bora Bora or Seychelles. Pathetic.

I hope you don't drop dead by the time.you start enjoying that juiced up retirement. Be careful life is full of surprises. Don't let the money you have accumulated make you feel invincible to the point of mocking the poor souls who won't be fortunate enough to lay bare chested on the beautiful white sand of Bora Bora. You are a mean ass***le

[Anonymous]

" Or…blow it all up front and spend the latter half of your life clipping coupons, shopping at Costco, begging for senior discounts, and driving to Rehoboth Beach for vacations instead of flying first class to Bora Bora or Seychelles. Pathetic."

OP is doing pretty good with $300K in retirement in their early 30's. I'm 45 and am at around $1.2M in retirement. I live a simple life and keep my expenses low. After 20 years of saving, I just bought a $500K condo for cash and moved in to it this weekend. It's 1000 sq ft which is twice the size of my old apartment.

Now for my senior years, I may still end up clipping coupons, going to Costco, enjoying some senior discounts and driving to nearby locales or vacation. That's normal. What isn't normal for most seniors is bragging about your exotic vacations to people on an anonymous message board.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I made a lot of money starting pretty early on. The key was that I was willing to take a risk and start a business. Most people are afraid to take a calculated risk. … And because I can put down $2M, lending me $6M is easy. My expected return on the $2M. It will be about $320k per year cash flow plus principal pay down. 16% cash on cash and over 20% overall rate of return.

You might be right, and you might not. The above says that it’s easy to borrow $6M when you put $2M down, and that you expect to clear $1.6M annually after operating expenses and need $1.3M to cover the loan payment. So if you have higher operating expenses or a major capital expense or one of your tenants goes under and you have an empty location for a year, well, the loss is yours to bear. Having only a $300K annual cushion on an $8M facility isn’t that much. Yes, it’s a “calculated risk” but what this means is there’s a chance you lose big money. Yes you’re rich now. Survivor bias means maybe you’re brilliant, or maybe you just have been lucky.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:" Or…blow it all up front and spend the latter half of your life clipping coupons, shopping at Costco, begging for senior discounts, and driving to Rehoboth Beach for vacations instead of flying first class to Bora Bora or Seychelles. Pathetic."

OP is doing pretty good with $300K in retirement in their early 30's. I'm 45 and am at around $1.2M in retirement. I live a simple life and keep my expenses low. After 20 years of saving, I just bought a $500K condo for cash and moved in to it this weekend. It's 1000 sq ft which is twice the size of my old apartment.

Now for my senior years, I may still end up clipping coupons, going to Costco, enjoying some senior discounts and driving to nearby locales or vacation. That's normal. What isn't normal for most seniors is bragging about your exotic vacations to people on an anonymous message board.

Same here. Who knows what will happen when/if I am old. I am glad I lived when I was young. I good friend of mine died earlier this year after a short battle with cancer. He did not have the option to retire and fly first class to Bora Bora.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DH and I are 43 and 41. We contributed $57K to our two 401ks last year (including employer match). Sounds pretty okay, right? But that is nothing compared to the compounding growth we achieved. Our overall retirement portfolio increased by $1.7M between January 2023 and December 2023 and only $57,000 of that was contributions – the remaining $1,652,000 was all growth.

We make more money in the stock market in a single week than we earn from our jobs over the course of an entire month.

It’s all about making sacrifices early in life, people. We chose to buy used cars in cash (no loans), clean our own home, mow our own yard, and live well within our means while others were living extravagantly on borrowed dollars. Do this for the first 10-20 years after graduating and the next 50-60 years are as easy as pie. Or…blow it all up front and spend the latter half of your life clipping coupons, shopping at Costco, begging for senior discounts, and driving to Rehoboth Beach for vacations instead of flying first class to Bora Bora or Seychelles. Pathetic.

Those last two sentences were mean. All that money and zero empathy. Life is too short to have such a narrow view of what’s important.

Oh wow. I’ve rarely seen SUCH a mean comment on the money board. Take a look at yourself in the mirror and the disdain you just had for normal people who may or may not be a much better person than you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:. Or…blow it all up front and spend the latter half of your life clipping coupons, shopping at Costco.

I’ll always shop at Costco regardless of my NW. That place is great!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:. Or…blow it all up front and spend the latter half of your life clipping coupons, shopping at Costco.

I’ll always shop at Costco regardless of my NW. That place is great!

Costco is the best. I'm one of those lazy dummies who got an engineering degree three decades ago and has never made $100k, so maybe I should switch to Sam's Club.
Good to hear that I'm not the only one who never figured out the easy money thing.

OK, back to work for me. For another 10 years or I drop dead

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What is this other poster talking about? My husband and I have been living barely making a livable wage since graduating college in 2010. We are not homeowners and hardly have 300k saved for retirement.

No one wants to hire us for well paid jobs.

What is this alternative world people speak of?

The other poster was a tonedeaf jerk, OP. Making money is hard, especially if you don’t have family money. I came from nothing and had to work so hard to make it. My health suffered in the process. My only hope is that it was all worth it because my children won’t start with nothing.

[Anonymous]

Generating wealth is easier if you focus on investing in lieu of politics, social media, and even your own job and career. You can make $50,000-$75,000 a year and be a multi millionaire by the time you’re 50 if you judiciously pick stocks, real estate, and don’t pay other people for jobs that you can do yourself.

Case in point on the last point. I know people who are paying their landscapers $65 an hour per person. You’d have to earn $85-$90/hr pre-tax for pay someone to mow your lawn. Unless you’re making $175,000+ you are coming out on the short end by mowing your lawn. Same thing goes for people paying thousands of dollars to get a room painted. Pay yourself and put all that money in the market.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I never made money working, but I was willing to buy individual stocks/crypto with any left over money. Not only has it paid off, but I have learned so much being in the market.
Now I don't understand how others are not in the market as it has never been easier and cheaper to buy stocks.
There are more people shopping on Amazon and owning iPhones than buying up apple and amazon stock. Unreal.
You got to be in it to learn. Even if you lose some, which I doubt, you will learn something.
My kids have investment accounts. They will grow up thinking all have them and work is optional.

You are gambling during the largest bull market in history. Of course it seems easy.

We invested 30% every year and we were flat with the lost decade. So it’s as if we started saving in 2012, despite a decade of effort.

That's incorrect. You bought shares at super low prices from 2000-2010, which have now skyrocketed in value. You made tons of money from 2000-2010, you just didn't realize it at the time.

It has the same result as buying them in 2010, they all went down.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DH and I are 43 and 41. We contributed $57K to our two 401ks last year (including employer match). Sounds pretty okay, right? But that is nothing compared to the compounding growth we achieved. Our overall retirement portfolio increased by $1.7M between January 2023 and December 2023 and only $57,000 of that was contributions – the remaining $1,652,000 was all growth.

We make more money in the stock market in a single week than we earn from our jobs over the course of an entire month.

It’s all about making sacrifices early in life, people. We chose to buy used cars in cash (no loans), clean our own home, mow our own yard, and live well within our means while others were living extravagantly on borrowed dollars. Do this for the first 10-20 years after graduating and the next 50-60 years are as easy as pie. Or…blow it all up front and spend the latter half of your life clipping coupons, shopping at Costco, begging for senior discounts, and driving to Rehoboth Beach for vacations instead of flying first class to Bora Bora or Seychelles. Pathetic.

What the hell, we lived like you and saved and saved and don't have anything like that. What was your incomes?

[Anonymous]

RSUs is one way. Or just a company a great 401K match. Or a company with a good annual bonus.

I took a start up job during COVID as was laid off. To my surprise they gave me 60K RSUs that vest over four years. I quit after two years but the RSUs are up 5x. So I have 150K. Free money.

And the new firm gave me sign-one to walk away from unvested piece more free money.

I also had a job an amzing 401K match. I worked there from Jan 2017 to Jan 2020 and I have $250K in that 401K.

And my first 401K I left in stocks. A job I quit in 1996. Never bothered with 401K rollover. It is worth a ton.

Plus RE way up in price. My primary home is now worth 1.8 million.

The average middle class person now has a million dollar home and million dollar 401K at retirement just because of asset inflation.

[Anonymous]

"Barely making a livable wage" suggests suboptimal career choices. If you were/are qualified only for poorly paying jobs that's the first place to examine - why is your earning power low? Did you choose to major in fields knowing that jobs in those areas are not usually highly compensated? Did you not perform well academically? Have you failed to prepare for and to seek out promotional opportunities, for whatever reasons? Are you not high performers in the roles you do have?

Compensation from employment is usually related to the field you're in and your performance within that field. You may want to change your career paths.

You also have to spend much less than you bring in, in order to have assets to invest for the long-term. Choices about where to live and other expenses within your control will greatly impact your ability to set excess funds aside for investment. If you pretty much spend all you bring in, you'll never accumulate much wealth. As others have noted, compounding eventually can provide significant portfolio growth, but for that to happen the amound being compounded has to be sufficiently substantial and you need patience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:" Or…blow it all up front and spend the latter half of your life clipping coupons, shopping at Costco, begging for senior discounts, and driving to Rehoboth Beach for vacations instead of flying first class to Bora Bora or Seychelles. Pathetic."

OP is doing pretty good with $300K in retirement in their early 30's. I'm 45 and am at around $1.2M in retirement. I live a simple life and keep my expenses low. After 20 years of saving, I just bought a $500K condo for cash and moved in to it this weekend. It's 1000 sq ft which is twice the size of my old apartment.

Now for my senior years, I may still end up clipping coupons, going to Costco, enjoying some senior discounts and driving to nearby locales or vacation. That's normal. What isn't normal for most seniors is bragging about your exotic vacations to people on an anonymous message board.

Same here. Who knows what will happen when/if I am old. I am glad I lived when I was young. I good friend of mine died earlier this year after a short battle with cancer. He did not have the option to retire and fly first class to Bora Bora.

Probably deserved to die of cancer, though, right? Smoker or drinker of diet sodas most likely. Def not a person that would be welcome in Bora Bora anyway.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:. Or…blow it all up front and spend the latter half of your life clipping coupons, shopping at Costco.

I’ll always shop at Costco regardless of my NW. That place is great!

Costco is what keeps the gutter trash around. Love that socioeconomic diversity.