Financial independence

[Anonymous No.2607814]

Can we have a financial independence thread? Who here is pursuing FIRE? Are you a leanFIRE lentils-and-beans-forever autist or a fatFIRE somehow-makes-$400k-at-25 larper

How do you get your savings rate so high?

I'll go first

> work from home in a LCOL area for a silicon valley company
> make about $180k, spend about $35k living a party life downtown (no car)
> am a cryptographer, high demand/low supply even without this cryptocurrency shit putting me in the middle of a hype cycle
> at 25 have a $300k NW, on track to FIRE at this spending rate at 35
> trying to leverage my current position into a new one that'll pay around $400k, but half in crypto, to greatly accellerate that
> generally cook at home, make friends with poor musicians who think I'm also poor, have only inexpensive hobbies (biking, hiking, programming, being a shitty musician)

Been doing the mega backdoor Roth all year, haven't yet taken a paycheck because 100% is going to the after-tax portion of my 401(k).

[Anonymous No.2607858]

Damn bro. I'm just gonna say well done. You're way further ahead than me.

[Anonymous No.2607923]

>>2607814
>spend about $35k living a party life downtown
Do you live in eastern europe or something? In no city in the western world could you afford to live for that amount of money.

[Anonymous No.2607971]

>>2607814
Nice bro, any tips on where to start my FI journey? Currently broke and no savings but have job and patient with the results.

[Anonymous No.2608088]

>>2607923
Austin TX. In a given year I spend

> ~45k federal income tax, overwhelming every other category
> 18k rent
> 4k going to bars, parties, ettc
> 4k misc (minor but ongoing medical, plane tickets and airbnb, big electronics, etc)
> 2k utilities
> 2k charity
> 2k fast food etc
> 1.5k groceries
> 1k household supplies
> 1k on lyft/uber
> 0.5k beer for home

That's $36k plus tax, and you can see that I'm WAY overspending on rent costs and barhopping, plus there's $4k of "misc" stuff that I don't even account for that closely. It's not hard.

>>2607971
First try to categorize and sort through all your expenses. Try to be comfortable at your current income level and move raises into savings (I didn't change my habits much after finishing grad school, and I still have spreadsheets from back then that I compare to, really aside from doubling my rent I changed nothing).

If you're in the US learn the rules for tax-advantaged accounts. There are lots of limits ($5.5k IRA, $18k 401(k), $54k after-tax/self-employed 401(k) etc) that give you natural savings goals to target. Learn how to get your money out early and what the conditions are so that you don't find that your savings are forever inaccessible to you.

In general read up on all the FIRE stuff out there online. There's a ton of material but it ultimately comes down to a couple blog posts ("Simple Math of Early Retirement" and "Mega-Backdoor Roth" come to mind) ... beyond that after reading r/financialindependence for a week you've read every post there ever.

Try to push toward a work-from-home situation. This saves you money on driving and eating and also saves you a ton of commute time that you can use for shopping efficiently and planning. If you can do total WFH then you can move somewhere cheaper and even get rid of your vehicle(s).

Make friends with people who understand the value of money. They don't have to be frugal but they shouldn't be up to their eyeballs in debt and think this is normal.

[Anonymous No.2608192]

>>2608088
>$125/month on groceries
Do you just eat ramen noodles every day? The fact that you spend twice as much on alcohol than you do on food doesn't make any sense at all.

[Anonymous No.2608219]

>>2608192
making your own food only takes like $100 per month for ingredients. you're just a fag that buys prepackaged garbage

[Anonymous No.2608265]

>>2607814
what do you do for work that is putting you into a 400k annual career?

[Anonymous No.2608275]

>>2608219
$100 per month is $3.33 per day, which comes to just over $1 per meal. Even the cheapest possible food source that exists (soylent) is still $2 per meal.

[Anonymous No.2608300]

>>2608192
Eggs, bell peppers, avocados (I'm in the south), milk, cheese, butter, salsa, tortillas, are all very cheap and constitute some 80-90% of my spending.

Then staples like rice, spices, pasta, oil etc I buy so infrequently that they cost me nearly nothing.

I even waste money buying things like pre-chopped onions (6x the cost per weight vs bagged onions) and pico de gallo (3x the cost per weight in tomatos and onions).

I admit my numbers would probably be higher if I spent more time at home, but I travel a lot for work.

In any case it definitely makes sense that drinking at bars ($3-5 per drink, and I buy drinks for friends) would cost me twice as much total than eating at home ($2-4 per meal).

[Anonymous No.2608336]

>>2608088
Thank you good sir I appreciate the feedback. What are some good work from home jobs? The ones I have been looking at nearby look like small time scams.

[Anonymous No.2608924]

>>2607814
property (2014) 1.1m Condo luxury.

$250k down
$850k mortgage, 30 years @ 2%
$3,138.25 monthly mortgage payment (1.4k to bank/ 1.8k principle)
$620 HOA
$2010 property tax

**$3972.5 monthly*** Self managed expenses

Although interests payments slowly decline with some mortgages overtime lets assume its max above. So if you could buy the place outright
you would still have 850k minimum left over, you can turn this into 1.4k< passive flow a billion different ways. High rental yield B+ properties, index funds, even shitty bonds.
Taking on debt and have spare liquidity is the ultimate way to build, look at what all RE developers due, paying that much for cash (or rent is retarded)
Here is RE portfolio

Property, former PR:
#1
1.1m
$250k down
$850k Mortgage

$3972.5 monthly expenses

I rent this out furnished for $4500 a month now, so while the down payment was massive I am actually still cashflowing and the appreciation is just insane, the property is probably worth 1.3m~ now but I am a Hodler

#2
$750k
$250k down

$1846 monthly payment + whatever property tax is (I forgot) hoa like $300

I rent it out, furnished for $2900

#3 (same building as #2)
$750k
$250k down

$1846 monthly payment + whatever property tax is (I forgot) hoa like $300

I rent it out, furnished for $2900

#4


roughly $410k invested all payed off (can't finance in this market but looking for private money)

$3700 net a month

A bunch of oversea shitboxes in a niche market that I can't talk about. But the yields here are after all expenses including property management 11% NET and the appreciation has been great so far. This is my primary source of income while my other units build whealth and pay for themselves

I really like RE because I beleive it hedges against inflation better than stocks/index funds but I am slowly building an index portfolio off my extra $ but I believe we are overdue for a correction so I'm still picking up RE. I usually live in SEA/med Europe etc just traveling

[Anonymous No.2608945]

>>2608924
as a side note I am not an american but I know a lot about RE there. if i was I would have a lot more wealth and flow because of the insane tax right offs and entry level of the RE market in B+ neighborhoods. Any questions feel free to ask, sorry for formatting, I got's the dyslexia.

[Anonymous No.2609440]

>>2608275
How much do you think burritos, stews, sandwiches, vegetables.... making your own meals costs? If you pay over $150 per month and make your own food, you're wasting money.

You won't make it and i'm hiding your ID so your not-making-it-ness doesn't infect me.

[Anonymous No.2610490]

>>2609440
In fairness, it can be worth it to overpay for pre-chopped fruits and vegetables because it saves you prep time and dishes. They're 2-10x as expensive but if they're not the primary component of your meal this only corresponds to maybe a 50% price increase.

As I said in my other post I'd probably be spending around $200/mo on my own food if I ate the way I did without going on business trips with comped meals.

Comparable expense to going out for food which can easily be 5-10x the price plus gas.

[Anonymous No.2610601]

>le financial independence
money = money
If you want to use buzzwords for it at least choose ones with some meme value like "Lamboland".

[Anonymous No.2610707]

>>2610601
Lol, being financially independent is very different from just having money, it means having a high enough net worth to cover your expenses, which involves knowing in detail what your expenses are and having your money invested appropriately.

At some point, maybe around the $10M+ point, you can be financially independent without knowing at all what the fuck you're doing, and then it's "money = money, I have money", but for ordinary people starting from negligible net worth there's a lot more to it than that.

[Anonymous No.2610787]

>>2607814
How does one become a cryptographer?

[Anonymous No.2610864]

>>2610787
I read a lot of papers, started a math PhD and spent most of my time doing shit that was relevant to what my startup friends in fintech were looking at, invent some cryptosystems that solve their problems in a private/authenticated/whatever way, then drop out and join them.

Publish a few papers, break some existing systems, write a bunch of code that others can't break, and set "cryptographer" as your job title. After a year or two of that nobody questions your credentials and the PhD dropout fades away.

I dunno, I sorta stumbled into it. It happened my IRC friends were doing fintech and had problems that could be solved by cryptography, at the same time that I was interested in it for academic reasons.