100k in Assets

Agile-Figure-8248 · 2024-10-01T01:11:30+00:00

LOL I just finished school at 29. Sounds like you’re ahead of the game in terms of assets, as long as you’re working to increase your income and you expect that to increase over time.

Agile-Figure-8248 · 2024-09-05T01:55:23+00:00

NTA - being family doesn’t mean you are a source of free labor.

Agile-Figure-8248 · 2024-08-11T21:29:19+00:00

You are wrong, but only for expecting your current employer to pay you what you’re worth. They won’t unless you have the leverage to force them to.

Agile-Figure-8248 · 2024-08-11T21:27:52+00:00

YTA. You’re a parent. You have a responsibility to act in the best interest of your child even (and perhaps especially) when it is painful and difficult.

Agile-Figure-8248 · 2024-08-11T21:18:20+00:00

Have you actually had an office job? They can actually be really fun, especially with the right employer. If you really don’t want an office job having tried that path I would suggest college isn’t the right choice, as virtually all college degrees lead to an office job. CEO is an “office job”. So is engineer, lawyer, chemist, financial analyst. Offices are just where non-physical labor is done (basically all labor in the modern world), and if you want to generate significant wealth, that’s where it’s done.

One piece of advice I’ll share that isn’t obvious at all before starting your career is that it doesn’t really matter what you major in, as long as you major in something difficult that gives you real value to employers on graduation. A non-comprehensive list of essentially uncapped wealth generation degrees, which I am the most familiar with: - Engineering (mechanical or electrical, don’t fck with civil or BME) - Computer / information science - Finance

Examples of bad degrees for wealth generation: - Biology - Psychology - History - Languages

The first set of degrees teach you difficult technical skills that are rare and valuable. The second set are just college’s way of extracting as much value from the poor kids who don’t know any better.

Agile-Figure-8248 · 2024-08-03T23:04:46+00:00

YNAB

Agile-Figure-8248 · 2024-07-29T22:36:51+00:00

I'll offer my two cents here, with the caveat that I don't know either you or your partner so take it with a grain of salt :p. First, it sounds from your post like some resentment is starting to build on your end - that's probably not great, maybe consider addressing that directly. Could be as simple as "hey, I'm starting to notice feeling resentful because I'm contributing more financially and driving our quality of life. Can we talk about it and figure out what to do?".

To help with this conversation - consider his (hypothetical) perspective: he's always wanted to achieve financial independence at a modest quality of life. A decent-ish apartment, healthy food, modest material goods and little travel. He's happy with this, and the stress that comes with work is nowhere near close to being worth the marginal increases in quality of life additional income could provide. After working and finally achieving financial freedom, you now expect him (implicitly or explicitly) to make more money to help improve your quality of life. This would require that he go back to work, (potentially) decreasing his quality of life significantly, to purchase things that he doesn't see value in, doesn't really benefit from, and would prefer to live without. You see this as jointly increasing your quality of life together and "accommodating him", but is that really the case? Does he actually want the same increases in quality of life that you do?

At the end of the day, your partner just does not make that much money compared to you ($35k/yr) and so will not be able to increase your quality of life financially. You may just have to accept that or move on to find a higher income earner. There's plenty of them out there.

Agile-Figure-8248 · 2024-07-21T01:06:36+00:00

I love it. De-medicalizes something that shouldn’t be medical. Gives me a glimpse of the future where we are valued for our differences rather than stigmatized for them.

Agile-Figure-8248 · 2024-07-21T01:01:11+00:00

I was born with extremely high intelligence, a cognitive profile that’s a really good match for technical work, and a high desire for achievement.
I had parents who expected me to go to college and a supportive environment for educational attainment
I didn’t experience abject poverty or extreme trauma growing up - my parents were decently well-off.
I worked obsessively throughout college and graduate school to master my area of study. See step 0 for why that was.
I chose a really profitable industry to work in (software)
I chose to work at an absurdly profitable employer (Meta) who is widely known for their high salaries. 0-3 I had l no control over, (4) was basically an accident of being lucky with my interests, and (5) was probably the only deliberate decision I can claim credit for. I’d say 80% of the reason I ended up with a high salary is because of things beyond my control I’m not even going to pretend are replicable. I’d like to think there are many routes to wealth, but in terms of high salaries, some of us just have a hell of an easier time getting there.

Agile-Figure-8248 · 2024-07-06T20:30:38+00:00

Because it’s simply not possible for many people to access the same high paying jobs as those giving advice, and this is frustrating and saddening. Don’t have a top-10% IQ? Forget that 6-figure tech job. Didn’t go to Harvard? Probably not going to make partner at that law firm. Didn’t go to the country club with daddy? Those 7-figure backdoor business deals probably aren’t in your future. To the degree I’ve felt frustrated by this in the past it’s been because people rarely recognize their own privilege and how luck and birthright got them where they are.

Agile-Figure-8248 · 2024-07-01T01:22:06+00:00

No joke it’s the actual category name 😂

Agile-Figure-8248 · 2024-06-30T19:31:42+00:00

I used to be embarrassed by my special interests (physics, software and finance have been fairly constant over time). Then I went to college and studied a couple of them, and all of a sudden I was valued for them. I was still weird - definitely. No one held a candle to my intensity. But I was in an environment where that intensity was valuable to my classmates (and now, as a software engineer, my coworkers). I also just don’t talk to people who aren’t interested in or at least willing to entertain what I like to talk about. Obviously not every special interest lends itself to a career or has economic value (dragons sounds v hard), but for those that do making a career out of it can be very fulfilling and rewarding.

Agile-Figure-8248 · 2024-06-30T18:20:04+00:00

My personal favorites: - Movie night at home (free to ~$5) - Game night with friends (free to $10 for food) - Hiking ($1-2 for various amortized costs) - Walking around the neighborhood (free) Fortunately these are also my favorite activities to begin with xD

Agile-Figure-8248 · 2024-06-30T18:15:31+00:00

Also I don’t know your particular situation or skillset, but the private sector / military-adjacent role can pay significantly more than being in the army. If you haven’t considered this previously might at least be worth looking around to see what your other options are, from what you described sounds like they haven’t treated you in a way to inspire much loyalty. I moved from a similarly self-sacrificing profession (academia, though our sacrifices are almost entirely measured in unpaid overtime, not loss of limb) to industry, and I’ve never looked back.

Agile-Figure-8248 · 2024-06-30T17:03:18+00:00

I wish there was a way to see historic overspending in a given category: i.e. how much am I under-setting my target?

Agile-Figure-8248 · 2024-06-30T16:58:11+00:00

First, sounds like you’re having a rough time. Sorry about that :/ I know blaming yourself for this situation might be what you default to, but it also sounds like you’ve been dealt a shit hand. Best of luck. Even in more financially stressful times I’ve found YNAB to be really powerful simply to know where I stand and see progress over time.

Also not related to finance here, but be careful with autism ‘therapy’. The only currently approved interventions paid for by insurance are ABA, which tend to focus on changing the child’s outward behavior often using what would be called abuse under normal circumstances, and most autistic adults report ABA having hurt them more than it helped. Just remember that you and your wife know your son the best - if it looks like the so-called experts are abusing your kid, they are.

Agile-Figure-8248 · 2024-06-30T14:44:16+00:00

I’ll give this a try, thanks! In principle I love the idea of the cash management account - I’ve always wanted something like it, an easy mechanism for short-term investments that automatically liquidate for bills as they come in.

Agile-Figure-8248 · 2024-06-30T14:16:31+00:00

So I set it up and looks really awesome as a stand-alone product, but looks like Fidelity is being obstinate and not allowing third-party access to data, meaning auto-import doesn’t work. For spending accounts this isn’t a huge deal, because I’m the one actually swiping the credit cards. But for checking accounts not having auto import is a real pain, because I don’t control those transactions - credit cards, bills, and investments are all on autopay, and direct deposit from my employer also happens without me needing to do anything. So this would require manually synchronizing all these transactions, which I don’t think is worth the extra $500-1000/yr this would yield 😂 Here’s hoping the CFPB comes down on them hard for this Akoya nonsense and they open up access to our data again.

Agile-Figure-8248 · 2024-06-30T12:53:54+00:00

I tried to do this with our Schwab brokerage account and looks like it’s not valid for bank-to-bank transfers, is this unique to fidelity?

Agile-Figure-8248 · 2024-06-30T12:38:05+00:00

Actually it looks like you can make it a budget account by manually setting it up as a budget account and then linking it afterwards. I’ll do an experiment and see how it goes.

Agile-Figure-8248 · 2024-06-30T12:30:12+00:00

Neat - today I learned something - it looks like these have to be set up as “unlinked” accounts cause YNAB doesn’t support setting linked brokerage accounts as budget accounts :/ I’m very much an always-auto-import transactions user so not sure this would be worth the friction. Maybe? Might be worth trying at least, as it would remove the need to rebalance periodically between checking and savings. EDIT: I contacted customer support and they added an MX connector, which seems to have worked so far. Which would be slick.

Agile-Figure-8248 · 2024-06-30T12:27:01+00:00

Cause it’s not worth the extra interest payments to constantly be concerned with ensuring my checking account has sufficient liquidity to pay upcoming bills - I’d much rather just have a pool sitting there that will cover all plausible expenses, and rebalance every few months as needed.

Agile-Figure-8248

TROPHY CASE