Reply to In our 50s, have never been able to create wealth

Forum Index » Money and Finances

Reply to "In our 50s, have never been able to create wealth"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My husband, who was a war refugee as a child, lived poorly all through his 20s and early 30s because he invested in the stock market instead of moving out of a poor neighborhood, buying better food, or a car, or nice clothes, or buy stuff.

Now, thanks to him, we have more than 10M. At no point did he invest large sums, because he never had large sums: his salary at the time did not exceed 30K a year, if that. Now our HHI is 120-150K a year. We have two children, born in a one-bedroom apartment. When they were little, we would only buy food on sale. We bought our first basic compact car to drive DC1 home from the hospital. We still have that car 20 years later. We do splurge on certain things that are important to us, like education, but that's after decades of belt-tightening, living with extreme frugality and realizing we can simply sell stock to pay for private university.

I have posted multiple times over the years on DCUM, trying to explain to people that investing in the stock market or in real estate is possible at most income levels, even very low ones, but that it takes thought and very real sacrifice. Frankly, most Americans are not prepared to make those sacrifices. You cannot live a middle class lifestyle if you seriously want to invest and your salary is low. You cannot invest in real estate in expensive areas. You need to pick a neighborhood you hope will gentrify, and renovate it yourself, like my friend did. It's less work, if you're really poor, to buy stocks like my husband did. All these methods usually only bear fruit over multiple decades, which is why it's very important to start young.

The point is that you should not expect your salary to make you rich.

OP, you can still give it a try if you want. You have several decades left. [/quote]

No American can handle that kind of hardship [/quote]

LOL. Lots of us live this kind of life. We just aren't usually posting on DCUM Financial Forum.

OP probably also is living a fairly frugal lifestyle; just likely didn't manage to save much in investments. At age 50, it isn't too late. But it would help if both spouses were working and in jobs with pensions or a 401k plan with a match. Sure, best to start saving in your 20s, but even in your 50s, it isn't too late to save more for a secure retirement so you aren't a burden on your children. 
[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics