Reply to If you could, what would you want to tell your 25 year old self?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][b]For the love of god don't chase the dream, follow the money[/b]

Buy that house in California; I know $400k seems like a lot of money (I mean your childhood home is worth $40k in 2010), but that is dirt cheap where it is going. [/quote]

X1000 !![/quote]

As a 20-something who stumbled upon this thread (it's under Recent Topics), I'm honestly curious - do most people reading this feel this way?[/quote]

In my opinion, there is a middle ground.  You do not have to be a complete sell out, but you can pursue things that follow your passion.  In my case, I was faced with a choice after I finished my STEM PhD 25 years ago.  I  could have followed the passion of pure research.  If things broke right, I would be making 80-100K today.  But, the job offers I received:  1 was a postdoc paying 25K, one was with a gov't contractor paying twice that with benefits.  I took the latter.  Today, I have an interesting job making 200K.  But, I do not have the intellectual freedom to look at a problem because it intrigues me;  my work has to be somewhat practice -- someone needs to be willing to pay for the idea.

But, where people get really rich is not from salary, it is from investing the money.  I played in my 30's.  The wealthy people I know lived like grad students;  they invested.  Some of them guessed right, and are wealthy.

I took an approach to lock in expenses where possible, so 20 years ago, I bought a house.  And I put money in the 401K to maximize the company match.  The small starter house I bought for 250K in now worth 700K.  My expenses for the 700K are 2000/mo.  In 1997, that was hard.  Today, it is trivial.  In hind sight, I should have bought up every Vienna Rambler I could; back then, they were selling for under 200K.  I could rent them for what it would cost, and sell the houses for 550K....I didn't.  I am not wealthy, but am UMC, and comfortable (net worth about 1.4 million, but not liquid).[/quote]

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