Ask Lemmy

every time I read one of those statistics, I feel the same way.

I'm doing very well relative to that statistic.

I live fairly simply, but I don't consider myself particularly frugal.

I like traveling, learning, eating, watching and reading stuff, and making things, which are all pretty cheap interests.

If I were to credit anything with my financial success, it would be a practiced awareness of financial opportunity and persistently learning about and attempting every viable opportunity I'm interested in to gain a practical knowledge of cost-benefit streams.

I've tried many ways to make money and work less, and some of them worked out.

I'm traveling this year, so I save most of my income, and with the IRS' FEIE I don't pay income tax(up to 120k).

I have a few investments and some ten thousands accruing interest.

i don't have immediate plans, but I want to buy some land at some point, basically so I have more area to build stuff and make stuff, sign up for cryonics and get a new electric bike or the Aptera if it every goes into production.

c'mon aptera.

Went from living paycheck to paycheck to having a full $1k in my account right now after dumping my ex and moving out. I always thought that having two incomes combined would be better than just my own, but never realized how massive a drain my ex was compared to just taking care of myself.

That being said, I'm able to live cheaply because I use public transit, cook all my own meals, and I don't eat that much. I think for most adults in the U.S., especially those who need a car for transit, the honest truth is that their wages just barely cover all their necessary living expenses.

Maybe it helps to understand it when you think of it from the perspective that those $1000 expenses do happen, they're not just hypothetical. But being able to cope with an event like that leaves you less able to handle a second one, and a third one

Couple that with the fact that I'm the US there is very little financial education so what might be an expected event for one person surprises another. Imagine living with a roommate and not realizing that to move into your own place involves coming up with first and last month rent, deposit, hook up fees, renters insurance, furniture, kitchen supplies, toiletries, etc... None of those should be unexpected, but also why would you expect them if you didn't happen to run into them before?

Basically no amount of saving accounts for an expense that takes it all, and it's then followed up by another one right after. And for some people those events are small and happen so quickly you never catch up and now you have late fees and interest and stress.

Barely surviving, but not from everyday expenses. Got two kids in college and this year FAFSA decided not to give any help to anyone so all expenses are on me.

I'm doing well, but the job is sucking my will to live, and I think about quitting and going to work in a bakery or farm every day

Am early in my career. no debts out of college due to lots of scholarships and a bit of hwlp from my grandparents helped a lot. Bought a house, have a wife in grad school so pretty much just living off of one paycheck. Had to cover a 10k roof replacement last year which sucked, but am back up to about 25k saved up should I lose my job or face another major expense.

I am pretty frugal in general but spend money on a hobby every once in a while. Not into drinking or any legal or illegal drugs so that has peobably saved me thousands of dollars too at this point.

I have a job. It's technical, requires a fair amount of skills and abilities, yet I cannot cover a $200 emergency after bills and rent. Rent has jumped from $600 a month to $950 in less than four years, and the internet I need for my job has doubled in two years. Of the rent increases? Most of them were in the past year.

I have enough in my emergency fund that if I lost my job I'd be ok for about a year.

I'm nearly to my goal, after that I'm going to change my focus to expanding my portfolio.

Still no way I can buy a house though. Need to make about 3x more money for that to happen.

I credit it to having a property owner that's kept rent cheap and having low overhead, and being frugal borderline cheap.

I’m doing well at the moment. The problem is that no matter how well I do, eventually something destroys my savings and eventually there’s a layoff at my company.

Even if I’m doing well at the moment, I’m still a couple paychecks from not doing well, and am no where near on track to eventually be able to retire

I have five digits of savings for the first time since my kids were born, but I also have college expenses for them, and at least that much in deferred house maintenance

I credit Apple, of all things. I always chose credit cards to minimize interest and fees, so this is the first time I’ve had one with significant cash back. Now I pay essentially everything with Apple credit card, pay off at the end of the month, get a surprising amount of cash back, directly into the high yield savings account. While of course my job is the reason I’m doing well, I credit this for turning things around to actually let me put money aside, to boost my savings

Im doing well. Started off in my mid twenties reading books on finance and investing. Lived in a drug house where I rented out a room and had a dead end job. Got an education, decent job, and invested aggressively for the next 20 years. Im planning on retiring in my mid 50's if everything goes to plan. 🤞

I dislike money. I worked hard to have enough that it’s not on my mind. I don’t need to think about the cost of eating out or buying food, or pursuing hobbies. But I also don’t really spend much. I don’t make big purchases very often and when I do I still over-analyze them.

If I had a lot more money I could retire, but I still have half my life to live. I hope to retire in 16 years. I have a job that pays well, with good job security, and minimal stress. I get 38 hours of leave time per month and I live in California.

I have cash savings earning enough per month in interest to pay my cell phone and home internet bills entirely. But I don’t really have any other discretionary monthly subscriptions. My savings will probably be used on a new kitchen and bathroom eventually.

I credit my success to some hard work but mostly luck. At the end of the day my first job was from a recommendation. I believe interviewed well, sure, but I don't think they would've taken my resume otherwise. I'm extremely fortunate to be where I am financially.

Shit still happens though. I lost my job about a year ago and was unemployed for like 6ish months. I had enough money in savings that it didn't really matter but it still sucked. One thing that has been difficult for me is watching what I say. As an example, some stupid shit happened and I feel like a company owes us ~$800 and another one ~$200. (Not going into details because they're irrelevant and I want to move on from the stress.) These things royally pissed me off. I still get upset when little things happen and I lose money. I hate it. It sucks. As much as I want to get comfort from my friends by venting about it, sometimes it's better to shut up. Because some of them mostly just hear how I'm able to withstand losses like that and that in turn makes them feel upset that they aren't. It's a tricky thing.

As for my philosophy, for the most part my wife and I have been able to spend within our means without much aggressive or intentional budgeting. It's only been since the job loss and her being unemployed to pursue writing a novel that things have gotten tight. (And by right I just mean our savings aren't noticably increasing.)

Failures? Well, let's ignore stuff like crypto and stock picks because that's just gambling. I wish I had started maxing out my 401k in my 20s. I started on my early 30s. Also, we used to have a truly stupid amount of money in a checking account. We should've put it into stocks (as in total market ETFs) earlier.

OH. THIS IS IMPORTANT. I WISH SOMEONE WOULD'VE TOLD ME HIGH YIELD CHECKING ACCOUNTS EXIST. Like, holy hell. I should've done that ages ago. I don't even wanna think about how much money I've lost on, especially because we kept a stupidly high amount of cash in our checking account... I still haven't moved it because it's hard and I'm lazy but wow wow wow. This is stupidly important. The reason savings accounts are annoying so because it's a little harder to get to your cash. But a checking account with interest? Hot damn.

Lastly, I've never had a credit card. It's been fine but it would've been nice to get the tiny marginal benefits of cash back and stuff.

I was born at an unfortunate time. By the time I could afford a house the housing market was already very bad. I'm just glad I'm able to buy a house but it is very expensive (we bought at the end of 2021)

I live in Canada so we can't lock in our mortgage for more than 5 years. I just went with the variable rate because in the long term it's generally better. However the interest rates skyrocketed. I was able to pay my mortgage still but I was pretty much house poor.

Now the rates are finally dropping so I feel a lot less pressure. With our current budget we should be able to afford one kid comfortably. I'm not sure about a second.

I'm very fortunate and grateful though. Most people my generation cannot even afford a house. It's just insane that despite my great job it's still so hard for us I can't imagine what others are going through.

We aren't broke. I have some retirement saved but I had to stop putting money in due to our mortgage. I also have an emergency funds account with enough money to sustain us ~6 months if I were to lose my job.

Having a high paying job is unsurprisingly the main reason for my financial success. Otherwise I'd say joining some personal finance clubs helped a bunch. I have my savings diversified and invested so I'm at least not losing money to inflation. But my investments will never make me rich either.

One critique I have for myself is maybe we overspent on the house but at the same time I love our neighborhood and I love our house and we have no plans on ever moving so I'm not too upset by it.

I am one broken leg away from being homeless and losing everything, and it's been like that my entire working life. I've never been able to make enough to actually save. Currently I have -100 in the bank and some debt I'm trying to pay off on top of that. My rent is literally half my income.

we're fiiinnneeeee. could be better

Average at best.

Financially, we are well enough to have my family’s needs met comfortably but frugally. Can’t really ask for more, though additional breathing room would be nice. We can afford emergencies and recover after some time.

My parents and grandparents taught frugality; luck made ends meet like a good job and buying a house at the right time.

We have a bit of savings I have in mutual funds because I’m currently too mentally tired and risk-averse to pick something with higher return potential.

I'm doing well but i wish i could afford my hobbies.

I've always saved very aggressively, even when I didn't have any money. When I first moved out, I ate nothing but rice, lentils, eggs, and lard for several months to save a slush fund. Even today, I make ~15-20k USD below median income for my city, and I've managed to save just shy of 10k in the past year and a half.

Obviously the ongoing coat of living crisis is a big deal that needs to be addressed, but we also need to acknowledge that saving your money is unpleasant, and a significant number of people aren't willing to do what's necessary in order to build financial security.

My friends (I don't get out much, I only have a couple) all have significantly better income/expense ratios than I do, and have exactly nothing saved. Honestly I don't think that would change if you gave them all an extra $20k/year, because they will find a way to rationalize something into being a necessity.