What’s the e best financial decision you’ve ever made?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't view marrying or how many kids you have as being "financial decisions." Silly and wholly unhelpful answers. OP's question is what decisions did you make with your money?

The best decisions that we made with our money were (1) to fully fund retirement accounts from the start and aggressively and (2) take advantage of the DC area's top public school and state university systems and not throw your money away on private schools.

Well, I was going to say marrying my spouse, but PP is probably right. Our best financial decision was delaying our first home purchase until after the 2008/09 housing market implosion. That and living well within our means, maximizing savings/investments and not letting lifestyle creep get out of control.

But was waiting to buy until after the implosion an actual decision that you took -- in other words, did you see it coming and decide to hold off -- or was your timing just, well, luck?

[Anonymous]

- choosing public university for law school instead of private
- marrying a spouse who takes a huge role in running our household enabling my very demanding career to take off (husband works in public sector)
- leaving government for in-house (pay $)
- taking risks on several "sideways" moves in my career that ultimately panned out and enhanced career path
- taking some risks including buying a larger/more expensive home in a better neighborhood (much greater appreciation)

[Anonymous]

Not conscious decisions, but got lucky with real estate 3 times. Including an investment property that we bought at the perfect moment. But those were all luck. Best conscious decision was living well below our means from the start, including buying homes based on 1 income. Aggressively saving for retirement from first job out of college. Not caring about cars.

[Anonymous]

Continuing to work in law even when the kids were small and life was pretty nuts. Have saved over $1.5 million on my salary alone the last ten years. It may not have been the best for my mental health and well-being overall, but it was a good financial decision.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Having only one child
Moving from Northeast to Dallas area, no state income tax and the weather is way better.

Except you have to live in Texas. Let's hope your child isn't a girl who gets herself in trouble some day.

My DC is 19 so no issue there and she goes to school out west. Honestly, I live in a town that is more diverse than any other I’ve ever lived in, both in the Boston area and in the Tri State area, the weather is fantastic, the politics are purple, technically blue in my town, I live 12 minutes from the airport, the weather is fantastic, drier than FL, the food is awesome, very diverse choices, the people are super nice and friendly, the state is open and has been open for the past year and our covid cases aren’t any worse than say California, people are living their lives, happily. It’s cool that you buy into the vilification of Texas from the news, but I’ll tell you, we all live in a 10 mile radius of our homes and the big politics don’t really impact day to day life. And my radius to pretty f’ing good.

See, this is where you give yourself away. You're one of them.

Also, thanks to my making better financial decisions over the years than to live in Texas, I don't have to let things like state taxes dictate my life. That's sad.

You’re the type of person who will believe what you want to believe so I’ll just let you keep thinking it. If you’re happy be happy. If you’re sad bitter depressed and judgy I can’t help you.

[Anonymous]

I hate the idea of marrying somebody who wound up being a high earner as a good financial decision, because it was a love decision and not a financial one, but if that counts, that was mine. (But no I would not have married him if his financial plan was his band making it big and he went into credit card debt to buy TVs or something).

I think my best financial decision was just getting interested in micro finance when I was really young (I was raised Mormon and my first lesson about being wise financially was when I was younger than 10). I knew very young to avoid credit card interest, that compound interest was magic (if you’re the one getting it), the importance of diversifying your investments, that you don’t count on real estate as a good investment because it’s a matter of timing the market which is dicey (so a house is a place to live and not a money-making machine), and that it’s investing and not saving that’s going to get you your nest egg. And I always knew that if you have money leftover after your savings are taken care of and needs are met, you spend it on experiences and not things. Oh and unless you get an extremely low interest rate, avoid significant car debt.

Sometimes one-time things make a big difference but I think typically it’s all the little things added up that give you sure financial footing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Having only one child
Moving from Northeast to Dallas area, no state income tax and the weather is way better.

Except you have to live in Texas. Let's hope your child isn't a girl who gets herself in trouble some day.

My DC is 19 so no issue there and she goes to school out west. Honestly, I live in a town that is more diverse than any other I’ve ever lived in, both in the Boston area and in the Tri State area, the weather is fantastic, the politics are purple, technically blue in my town, I live 12 minutes from the airport, the weather is fantastic, drier than FL, the food is awesome, very diverse choices, the people are super nice and friendly, the state is open and has been open for the past year and our covid cases aren’t any worse than say California, people are living their lives, happily. It’s cool that you buy into the vilification of Texas from the news, but I’ll tell you, we all live in a 10 mile radius of our homes and the big politics don’t really impact day to day life. And my radius to pretty f’ing good.

See, this is where you give yourself away. You're one of them.

Also, thanks to my making better financial decisions over the years than to live in Texas, I don't have to let things like state taxes dictate my life. That's sad.

You’re the type of person who will believe what you want to believe so I’ll just let you keep thinking it. If you’re happy be happy. If you’re sad bitter depressed and judgy I can’t help you.

I mean, c'mon. If the best financial decision you ever made was to just have one kid and then move to Texas, that just sucks -- and if Texas is so great why did that one kid move away as soon as she could?

[Anonymous]

Buying a house we could afford on the smaller of our two salaries.

[Anonymous]

Getting over myself believing working in an office was "selling out."

Too many of my friends from the service industry who thought that making $200 a night in tips was big money when we were in our early 20s are still doing the same thing, making the same money if they even still have jobs since COVID.

It was fun, a lot of fun staying up till 6am drinking in a closed bar with your buddies, but I can't even imagine still doing that every night even though I'm only in my mid 30s.

[Anonymous]

Not upgrading our home when our incomes went up. We instead invested in rental properties. This ja going to afford us an income stream to retire in our low/mid 50s without needing to touch our stocks.

[Anonymous]

Buying a small home in DC as a single mom - it appreciated in value so much over the 6+ years I lived in it that when I sold it my profits were more than I had ever spent on it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Getting over myself believing working in an office was "selling out."

Too many of my friends from the service industry who thought that making $200 a night in tips was big money when we were in our early 20s are still doing the same thing, making the same money if they even still have jobs since COVID.

It was fun, a lot of fun staying up till 6am drinking in a closed bar with your buddies, but I can't even imagine still doing that every night even though I'm only in my mid 30s.

So you think you're better, smarter, and superior to your friends. Got it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Getting over myself believing working in an office was "selling out."

Too many of my friends from the service industry who thought that making $200 a night in tips was big money when we were in our early 20s are still doing the same thing, making the same money if they even still have jobs since COVID.

It was fun, a lot of fun staying up till 6am drinking in a closed bar with your buddies, but I can't even imagine still doing that every night even though I'm only in my mid 30s.

So you think you're better, smarter, and superior to your friends. Got it.

No idea how you got that from my post.

I think I'm more financially secure than my friends. In fact I know I am. That's not a value judgement, just a fact and a direct answer to the question asked, which was "what was the best financial decision you ever made. The fact that I can't imagine myself staying up that late and drinking that much that regularly at my age is a personal observation and has nothing to do with others. If they're happy doing that, and many are, more power to them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Getting over myself believing working in an office was "selling out."

Too many of my friends from the service industry who thought that making $200 a night in tips was big money when we were in our early 20s are still doing the same thing, making the same money if they even still have jobs since COVID.

It was fun, a lot of fun staying up till 6am drinking in a closed bar with your buddies, but I can't even imagine still doing that every night even though I'm only in my mid 30s.

So you think you're better, smarter, and superior to your friends. Got it.

No idea how you got that from my post.

I think I'm more financially secure than my friends. In fact I know I am. That's not a value judgement, just a fact and a direct answer to the question asked, which was "what was the best financial decision you ever made. The fact that I can't imagine myself staying up that late and drinking that much that regularly at my age is a personal observation and has nothing to do with others. If they're happy doing that, and many are, more power to them.

I got this idea from your post because of how you wrote it. Try running your post word for word past your "friends" and see what they think of them.

[Anonymous]

- going to the undergrad that offered a full ride, even though it wasn't my "top choice" or particularly prestigious
- going to the best law school I got into, even though it was expensive
- buying a house before we really "needed" a house - in the five years since we've moved in it's appreciated 40%. We could technically afford it now, but it would be affording it in the "tell me this is okay DCUM" sense, not the very comfortable PITI we have now
- taking over finances and saving 40% of our income. DH isn't interested in finance, and he's not a wastrel, but if he knew how much we make we would not save as much as we do.