I sunk about 70k into $TSLA in 2020. Sold the brokerage shares to pay off my mortgage and buy a Model X for my family. The stock also grew my kids’ UTMA accounts to pay for about half of college, or perhaps large down payment on their future home.
There were a lot Tesla of haters back in 2020. There are probably more now. But whatever your opinion may be, that company has changed the world for the better. Accelerated the transition to electric transport: just like they said they’d do. I’m excited for the second generation to succeed: Rivian, BYD, and other companies who’re serious about it.
Best financial move I ever made? Latch on to a company that has purpose and a great product, then cash out for the things that matter. I just wish I’d had capital back when Apple launched the iPhone!
(P.S. to all the haters who’re gonna come at me with downvotes: I have more dollars than the number of downvotes you’ll ever be able to dish out! So come at me brah.)
Getting lucky isn’t a viable plan. Tesla has never been a sound investment. Also, if you wanted to gamble, Bitcoin would have been better. Tesla’s like the worst of both worlds.
I know you didn’t mean to (which is honestly great) but you come off as the perfect caricature of a tesla investor. This could almost be one of those copypastas
I’ve thought about that before. 😂
In all honesty, $TSLA made a lot of people rich 3 to 4 years ago. I’m not the only one.
I honestly don’t care which companies do it, but I’ve always been interested in green investing. When so many governments are pouring money into energy transition, there’s bound to be profit to be made.
It wasn’t huge in terms of actual numbers, but it still feels like my biggest win. I bought my first car for like $750. It needed some work, but I fixed it up. Before long, I crashed it. It was totalled. But, it was a 1973 Dodge Charger. I started pulling parts off of it and selling them on this new thing called eBay, and by the time I ran out of parts, I had made more than twice what I bought the car for.
Buying a house during covid when I saw rent was increasing drastically for no apparent reason. I could barely afford it at the time but thanks to inflation and a couple raises, I’m comfortably sitting on a house that’s now worth 50% more than I bought it for, and paying way less than current rental prices. Rent is insane right now.
Buying used shit
This is a great move generally. I’ve never bought a new car in my life and I generally buy other expensive stuff used as well. I’ve only ever bought a couple of new guitars for example and I’ve found it’s not worth the upcharge over used.
Boardgames and video games are nice to have new but most of the time the people I buy them from have been super careful with their stuff so you hardly notice it’s been used.
Same thing with clothes. People buy so much shit that they hardly (if ever) wear it before selling it on. I’ve bought Chucks with the tags still on for half of what they’re sold for in retail. Same thing with jeans.
Also it’s generally better for the environment to buy used.
Yeah, I buy like everything exept hard drives and ssds used.
Moving to Switzerland.
Funny. Mine was moving out of Switzerland 😅
Indeed that is a bit funny, showing how one-size-fits-all really doesn’t exist.
Learning about long term index fund investing in my early 20s.
Are there any resources you’d like to recommend?
Bogleheads is great. There’s also a book called “common sense on mutual funds”
Thanks
Bogleheads Guide to Investing - First Edition PDF
Book Summary on Bogleheads Wiki
This is somewhat of a speed run of the book.
The Bogleheads philosophy is basically to buy everything with a 2 or 3 fund portfolio.
- Total Stock Fund
- Total Bond Fund
- Total International Fund
The linked documents will explain those in more detail, but the concept is to buy everything so you always have bought the biggest winners, not to bet on a handful that will all lose or win, but at bigger expense to you.
They’ll tell you how much to buy of each and what type of account to keep it in to max tax effectiveness.
It’s not complicated once you read the source, and anyone should be able to understand it, it’s not written to be cryptic or to sell you something. You can put your money anywhere you choose and it works the same.
I’ve followed it for about 15 years or so and have been very happy. There’s no checking on stock news or any of that BS, you just develop a plan you’re comfortable with, and then stick to it. The more hands off you are, the better honestly.
Wow, thank you!
Of course! The hardest part is usually just getting started, so there’s no need to overcomplicate.
For those also saying “well look at this rich person with money to invest over here,” you can also read this stuff and be a step or two ahead when you do get to invest, because one of the first things it explains is prioritizing where to put money. Fill up one level before moving on to the next, but by reading ahead, you know what to do when you get there so you are prepared.
Money for us non-uber rich folk works best with time, so the sooner you get in the game, the more success you should have overall. They call this “getting rich slowly” which doesn’t sound exciting, but that’s the point. Most people don’t want to be on an emotional roller coaster with their money, they’d rather be on a lazy river ride that gets then where they want to be.
The nice thing is that, physically it’s the easiest thing in the world. The only complicated part is not trying to game it or convince yourself that you need more than the 2 or 3 fund portfolio.
Just buy a Total market index fund, some sort of bond fund and maybe some total market international stock fund
This is primarily a sailing channel but Clark has a series of finance videos that are excellent.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=9XK5ocXPhTg
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Thank you
getting accidentally hired and finally making enough.
story: every job I’ve ever applied for in tech didn’t work out. I was a dishwasher until right before covid when someone recommended me for a cybersecurity position. Before that I had obsessed about FIRE or living in a car or being careful about too much starbucks or avocado toast… without making enough for a car or health insurance. That job paid ~half of what cybersecurity should pay, but was AMAZING. My next job paid just a hair under average, three years later. night and day, able to afford to exist without help.
financial advice be damned. I couldn’t “find” anywhere with lower rent. I was in the lowest cost of living possible regionally. What needed to change was the PRIMARY job’s income rate, not adding some side hustle. Either make rent cheaper or find a higher wage.
I’m not making enough to consider your next fancy moves like getting a house.
Investing at 21 my entire college fund. I wasn’t going to use it anyway.
Bullshitting my way onto a high salary career track and just learning shit as i go.
I would love to hear your story if you’re willing to share.
Briefly: phd at Super Prestigious Institution. Fuck it, left science because didn’t want to languish making like $50K/year as a postdoc for like 6-8 years, with no guaranteed path forward. Pivoted toward money & people management. At every step up the ladder, I didn’t know shit. So what? I figured it out. Not that hard. Real talk: I benefitted substantially from elitism. I’m mid forties, salary about $220K, should hit $250K/year in the next 2-5 years.
Thanks for sharing.
I think I surprising amount of people are likely just “faking it”. I hope one day we can collectively cut the BS and all admit we don’t know what we’re doing.
I think it’s fair considering companies want 4 plus years for an entry position.
I think the main problem is that requiring and checking if someone can learn a skill you need is a lot harder than just making the skill a requirement for the job right out of the bat.
Determining if someone can actually learn certain things on the job is pretty difficult in an interview setting, it’s way easier to just do a technical interview.
The alternative is probably something like a probationary period where you work with no guarantee of continuing but that’s a massive waste of time for everyone involved and not fair to the candidate.
In my experience, if you go with the candidate that seems the most well rounded, you’ll have the most success. Going with someone that’s a technical genius with no people skills makes it harder to fit them in a spot where they’ll shine - at least in a smaller company
The first paragraph was easy for my previous employer. At the start of the interview, my interviewer pointed out the wallpaper of his brand new grandson. During the interview he noticed that I kept looking at his monitor. When he asked why I was doing that I asked why he had it on the lowest resolution. We switched places and I changed the resolution. The wallpaper disappeared and my heart felt like it had stopped.
Thinking quickly, I said that if the picture was on the hard drive that it would have reloaded and it obviously hadn’t been downloaded so it must have been in an email. He smiled and said that I was right and I spent the rest of the interview in his chair and I got a call that day asking if I could come in that day.
I honestly can’t deal with all the theatrics of securing a job (interview and first months/year included). This was a setback at first since when people asked me stuff I didn’t know I’d just say “I don’t know” or at most “I heard this and that but never worked with it”.
Thankfully I ended up at a place that appreciated that frankness and that gives me room (and incentive) to learn new stuff. Every year so far I end up in a new project with different technologies to use and learn. My ADHD brain is extremely satisfied.
Deciding not to get a car; it saves ~400.000 euros in my lifetime which at 40k net a year income means 8-10 year earlier pension
Ahh, European public transportation. Not an option in the US unless you live in NYC and rarely leave the city.
I just got a new job near DC that I can actually take the train to from MD. It’s like 2 hours each way but I don’t have to fuckin drive (except to the station) so 100% worth
I legit can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic. lol
I can’t imagine being ok with a 4-hr daily commute in a private car with all the amenities, much less one on a public train.
You’re way tougher than I am, if you’re serious, I’ll say that!
Right, i forgot to mention that my current commute is about 3 hours of driving. I am also super suceptible to road rage, so without fail I end up spiking my cortisol begore even getting to work.
I am gladly swapping it out for an extra hour of being able to do shit like watch youtube and doodle (plus it pays a hell of a lot more than my current job)
A public train or bus is a way nicer commute than in a car. In a car you can’t really do anything but drive. On a train you can do just about any seated task. I wfh now but when I didn’t I would login and start work during my commute.
Fair enough. I’ve only had to use a train in one city when I would go to the airport and that shit was terrifying sometimes. Also, I can just listen to an audiobook if I’m trying to be productive in the car
I’m so jealous. My work is only a mile away, which in a perfect world I could walk in 10 mins, but because of many slow crosswalks and busy intersections it’s like 30 mins freezing my balls off. Plus there’s a section of road that’s 40mph (64kmh) with no sidewalk, and a bridge that forces pedestrians onto the high speed road. It’s both slow and basically suicide if I tried to make a habit of walking.
There’s another route but the intersection I would need to cross is excruciatingly slow. I had to sit for 15 minutes before I could cross. Plus it’s another 40mph road and if someone runs a red I basically die.
40mph is 64kmph not 93kmph but yeah that’s still uncomfortable to bike besides if it’s busy. I’d say instead of posting it here, send a letter to your local government.
My bad, I have changed it now. Thankfully my town is already working on it, I’m just waiting for the pedestrian infrastructure to spread beyond the town square.
Damn if I hear this I am so glad to live in the Netherlands. Infrastructure here is designed such that everybody takes a bike or walk if within a few miles, on safe roads
It’s unfortunate that much of the US is stuck in a feedback loop of people saying “walking sucks, I’ll drive”, roads and driving infrastructure are improved at the cost of pedestrian infrastructure, more people say “walking sucks”, and repeat. Eventually you get like 12 lane highways at the cost of many sidewalks, bike lanes and tram/train lines being bulldozed.
Eventually everybody has to drive because pedestrians have been squeezed out of the equation. It saddens me that people don’t realize how nice walking could be, because they have only experienced poor pedestrian infrastructure. Even people like me who would love to walk have to choose driving or a death wish.
That being said it is slowly improving, many towns near me are implementing bike lanes, and more side walks. Unfortunately the bike lanes are the “safety paint” variety but it’s at least something. As mentioned before my little town is renovating town square and it’s a lot more walkable. Unfortunately not that helpful for me because the town square is only like 600 feet in size (200 metres) in size, but again, it’s something.
I would love to visit Amsterdam just to walk my little butt off haha
I keep meaning to look at exactly what my small car costs per year.
Last estimate was £1000 a year on fuel, parts, and maintenance.Which is equivalent to 50+ hours of car club use.
For now, I have too many “shit, I need to get this large/heavy object 5 miles away” moments to make it worth it.
But long term, I kinda like the idea of not having to worry about the car.Insurance and depreciation are the bigger costs I think, but even ignoring those; if you have “heavy objects” less than once a week it would probably still be cheaper to just rent a van when you need it. Convenience might be an argument but yeah that’s what you pay the big bucks for.
That figure actually includes depreciation and insurance! In fact, almost half of it is just the bloody insurance… Though I should possibly make an allowance in the figure for future repair work, as it’s an older car.
I think once my big project (and associated last second trips to the builder’s merchant) is finished, I’ll have a go at living without the car.
My housemates may not be too happy about the private taxi service shutting down though!Average car insurance cost in London is 1200-1600, surely yours isn’t less than half that?
That’s the benefit of not-london and a small car: It’s under £500!
I’m in the States so dunno how this translates… But my parents made get a 500usd limit credit card when I was like 14. It had been the best decision that I’ve made. My credit is so dn good now that I can get what ever I want easily approved. That and they insisted I make a home purchase at like 23- right be fore the mortgages went nuts. My mortgage is like a quarter of what others pay for a rental…
Thanks ma and pa 🤜🤛
By dumb luck I bought a house right before the housing market lost its goddamned mind.
$145K for a 3 bedroom on an acre of land. It’s more than doubled in value since I bought it, and I pay less than $1000/mo at 2.9% interest.
I keep getting letters from my mortgage company offering me $80K in a cash-out refinance at like double to triple my current interest rate and I’m like “how about blow me?” I’m riding that interest rate until the wheels fall off.
Buying a home.
Not buying that over priced concert ticket for $200… oh wait. I did that.
How was the show?
Moving in with my parents, saving, buying real estate and then renting it out.
There are ways of making money without damaging society.
- No kids
2 Studying
- No kids
