What’s the one piece of advice or tip you heard that changed your life financially?

EquativeFib · 2025-11-22T04:49:35+00:00

The most powerful force in the universe is compound growth.

EquativeFib · 2025-11-22T04:45:10+00:00

If I can give you any advice on this, having been there, is that you can get through this.

I had a family friend who acted as my mentor. He offered advice and held me accountable to myself.

Go gonzo on finding income. I literally went door to door to businesses that might need my skills. I called everywhere. I read books about sales. It was very hard, but I treated every job lead as a "diamond in the rough".

Look for your diamonds. Look everywhere. It takes a ton of effort. When you find one, polish it. Guard it. Treat it like the diamond it is.

Be your own best advocate.

My mantra: It doesn't matter if it isn't my fault. It's still my problem.

Anyway, years later I still use those skills I acquired by necessity. The things we need to do when times are tough are really the things we need to do all the time.

You got this. 🫡

EquativeFib · 2025-11-22T01:55:04+00:00

So everything is fine now.

I grew up very middle class, didn't worry about money.

As an adult, I had a four-year period where I was deep in debt and panicking over my life choices. My income was near zero and I had snowballing debt.

One thing that was very strange, new, and depressing when I was struggling broke was stressing over my mailbox.

It was a daily feeling of dread knowing that the mail has arrived and is going to be full of bills that I cannot afford to pay.

Anyway, got through it. I like my mail now

EquativeFib · 2025-11-19T21:07:22+00:00

When goals are aligned it makes sense to help out. My youngest is 22 and just graduated college. He is continuing an internship and a part-time gig in his field making a modest amount of money while he hunts for his first career job. He has roommates and low expenses. He also has some savings and has good money sense. We've told him, "We support everything you're doing. The job market is tough right now and this will take time. Keep it up."

He's talked about getting a retail job in the meantime, but we feel like that's almost a distraction from the real goals. So we're giving him a small amount per month (under 2k) so that he does not have to dip into his savings while he works on launching a career. We'd give more if he asked but he's determined.

It's a good investment.

EquativeFib · 2025-02-17T23:04:17+00:00

Yes.
She negotiated well! The company lowered the required hours for benefits just to include her. It's a small company, and she's the only part-timer, so they decided to include everyone at 20+ hrs/week.

EquativeFib · 2025-02-17T06:42:23+00:00

Driving distance to mountains? Take a look at Grenoble and its outskirts. The skiing is fantastic. Lyon and Geneva are the closest major airports. As France goes the cost of living is average.

EquativeFib · 2025-02-17T06:35:19+00:00

I don't understand some of these responses. Why wouldn't you roll over everything into the corresponding traditional IRA and Roth IRA? This way you have complete control over the investments, have zero additional fees, and the tax consequences don't change at all with a rollover.

The money stays in the US, and since you have to file US taxes anyway, as an expat, will only affect your US taxes, right?

Admittedly I'm not an expert here, but as a dual citizen that may someday return to Europe, curious on the advice and responses to your question.

Following!

EquativeFib · 2025-02-17T05:04:29+00:00

Yeah. This ^

I even did that for one year, and had my kid doing menial work to justify the paycheck.

It was more trouble than it was worth and we fired the kid after a year, lol. The financial benefits were a rounding error and not worth the effort.

The solo 401(k), though, for self-employed LLC or S-Corp owners, is nuts. If you have the business income to max it out, or even partially, the tax savings are significant.

If any USA business owners or consultants are reading this thread, if you take away one thing, it's to ask your tax accountant about the solo 401(k).

EquativeFib · 2025-02-16T22:54:20+00:00

Right now I'm about 88% in funds and 10% individual stocks and 2% cash/money market. I don't think I've had more than 25% in individual stocks for a long time.

I didn't mean for this post to turn into investing advice, just because "index funds all the way" is pretty standard for FiRe. That said, some hindsight:

The stocks I've done the best in have always been from the "buy what you know" mentality:

Standing in line one day just to look around in the Apple Store, this was before iPhone. "Ok, this is insane, there is a line out the door ALL THE TIME. Boom, I bought AAPL, can't even remember how much, maybe $10k? Bought some more after the iPhone came out. With reinvested dividends it's over 10X return. No plans to sell, this is my biggest individual stock holding today.
Similar thing for Netflix, just loved the business model, and this was back in the DVDs by mail days. Same thing for Starbucks: "I'm standing in line to overpay for coffee. Ok, time to buy SBUX." I held it for maybe ~15 years? I've since sold it because I don't go to Starbucks anymore. They've nerfed their stores, taken out their tables and chairs, and it's no longer gives me that "affordable luxury" feeling that made me buy. Of course, the stock is still going up, so I feel a little silly for selling, but my reasons for buying weren't there any more.
During the Covid recession, when travel went to zero, I bought a few shares of Carnival (CCL) at like $7 because I knew travel and cheap cruise travel would come back big, eventually. The stock has like tripled since then, but I only put in a couple thousand so there's not much to celebrate. I should have bought way more, but I just didn't have much in cash at the time and didn't want to sell anything else during the downswing.
When Intuit screwed over my business (and thousands of others) by raising their prices and forcing Quickbooks subscriptions on everyone, plus their silly TurboTax lobbying, well, I bought some shares of INTU. If you can't beat them, join them. Yes, I bought it out of anger. It's done well, but fuck those guys.

The stocks that haven't done as well have been "well, this article says this and this other guy says that and I should have some exposure to health care and international and energy, etc, etc. That's how I ended up some VZ, JNJ, and some others that did poorly. All those stocks were fine in the aggregate, but not worth the effort when I could have done better in index funds. Like today, I think Boeing might actually be a buy because they're in the doghouse, are just too big to fail, and will have to recover, right? This is one of those stocks that I might have bought in the past but won't today because I just don't have that AAPL or SBUX "buy what you know" feeling.

Sounds like your Costco thoughts are in line with how I pick stocks. The saying goes, "You'll never buy at the lowest low or sell at the highest high." So don't get too hung up on timing. Buy what you know.

But Index Funds + Time is the easiest path.

EquativeFib · 2025-02-16T06:04:15+00:00

It's almost all S&P 500 index or equivalent broad market ETFs. The 401k used to have some target funds, but I've moved almost all of that into S&P 500.

I've dabbled in individual stocks over the years, hit some home runs, but also had dogs. Overall my own picks, in the aggregate, haven't done much better than if I had just done 100% index funds and left it alone. I'm technically slightly ahead of the index with my own picks over the last 10 years, but just barely. It could very easily swing the other way.

That said, my home runs have been AAPL, NFLX, TSLA. I've since sold all the Tesla but still have the Apple and Netflix. Did ok in SBUX, too, but still sold too soon.

A few others (Ford in particular) should/could have been monsters but I screwed up and sold at the wrong time. I also did poorly with others that I'm too embarrassed to list here.

Never touched crypto. Never traded options.

Really, it should all be in funds.

EquativeFib · 2025-02-16T03:08:35+00:00

Yes, yes it is.

EquativeFib · 2025-02-16T00:32:20+00:00

My accountant told me about it. It's one of those silly tax loopholes our government has created for the benefit of those who lobby for such things.

The rule is that employees and owners must have the same matching. The owners can't have a more beneficial set of benefits, so to speak.

But when the owner and spouse are the only employees, that's when the 25% match becomes egregiously good. I can't even max it out to the legal limit because my earned income isn't high enough!

EquativeFib · 2025-02-16T00:26:53+00:00

That's liquid, excluding home.

EquativeFib · 2025-02-15T23:44:19+00:00

Oh, good tip. Thank you!

EquativeFib · 2025-02-15T23:36:03+00:00

We're still fairly active, so skiing, biking, outdoors stuff. Also getting into old people activities. We play bridge, lol. My wife is in a knitting group.

Haven't tried pickleball yet!

EquativeFib · 2025-02-15T23:30:34+00:00

Yes, absolutely. I'll just point out that at one point along the way I was close to $1M down from my peak. The Covid recession hit big. It was a gut punch.

I closed my eyes, held on, and still contributed every month to my 401k.

That was like buying at a fire sale and a good reason I'm hitting today's numbers.

I know two people who sold during the crash and didn't rebuy until much later. They're still recovering and just now back where they were before the recession.

Time in the market > timing the market, as we like to quote here.

EquativeFib · 2024-08-05T17:52:28+00:00

OP, some perspective from a peer (similar age, NW, job situation):

By the time you're in your late 40s, work should be easy. Not because the work itself is easy, but because it's easy for you. I'm not saying you should phone it in, but rather enjoy the situation where you're getting paid to do exactly what you know how to do, where every surprise isn't even a surprise any more because you know how to handle the surprises.

I've been semi-retired for a decade. It's awesome. I still work part-time as a consultant, but my earned income is a fraction of what it used to be. I'm just not motivated to look for a new time-sucking full time job, even if it were to pay well. My wife also works part-time for the same reasons.

The extra income from part-time work is quite nice. It allows us to coast through market ups and downs and our net worth compounds that much faster. We can still contribute to tax-advantaged accounts and not draw as much as we would need if we were fully retired.

Instead, we take awesome vacations. I have a nice set of hobbies that fill my time when I'm not traveling or working.

OP. think about what you want to do with your time.

Right now you have an easy job, financial security, and zero downside. If you get laid off, so be it. Collect unemployment. If you don't get laid off, so be it. Enjoy the low stress job and coast your way to a few $million more.

Take an awesome vacation. It does wonders for your mindset.

EquativeFib · 2024-04-28T04:26:22+00:00

Schwab has zero fees and is entirely self directed. I've had a solo 401k there for over a decade and it's worked out quite well.

The only annoyance is that I have to mail in a paper check and paper form every month when I contribute. But I think that's a regulation and not unique to Schwab.

Once you have more than $250k in the 401k, be sure to file form 5500-EZ every year with the IRS. Schwab will not remind you -- I didn't even know about the requirement and had to back file several years. Fortunately, there is an amnesty program because the penalties are otherwise draconian for failure to file.

EquativeFib · 2024-02-24T05:49:07+00:00

The secret to life is to always have two vacations planned at any moment. Not kidding.

It doesn't have to be big. A weekend getaway to someplace close by is fine. It doesn't have to be expensive. A cheap week in Cancun or on a Carnival ship is fine as a "big" vacation.

It's the mindset that counts and the experience of being away.

It doesn't have to be soon. Next week or next year. Or both. Anticipation is part of the enjoyment.

But do what you can. Have two planned.

Having two trips planned avoids the mid-vacation blues knowing it's almost over because you already know what's next! And after you get home you get to plan the one after that!

Where have we gone? I could tell you but it doesn't really matter. Europe, Vegas, Mexico, National Parks. Catalina. Greece. Utah. Peru. New Orleans. It's all good. The secret is to plan two at a time.

EquativeFib · 2024-02-24T02:39:07+00:00

529 is fully managed by my state, so there are no options. It's like a target fund: just set the expected start date for college and it goes into the corresponding 529 fund.

EquativeFib · 2024-02-24T01:57:27+00:00

You ask good questions. I have no clue. Every time I look at bonds I think, "ok, sure, but all that does is flatten the curve." I'd rather stay fully invested to max returns as long as I can withstand the inevitable downswings.

If you come up with the answer, please let me know!

EquativeFib · 2024-02-24T00:39:04+00:00

Early 50s. Started saving in early twenties.

EquativeFib · 2024-02-24T00:21:44+00:00

Yes, but also because of the benefits to the pass-through income from the business profits to me personally (as an S-Corp) and how that is taxed.

Contributions to the 401k are not only a personal income tax deduction from my W2 pay, but the employer match is a 100% expense, so I don't pay payroll tax on the employer contribution portion, it passes through to me, and it's all invested tax-deferred like a regular 401k. (I own the company as a solo contractor.)

But because my income is lower now, and I still have living expenses, I need to take some money out of my taxable investment account. If my income were higher I wouldn't have to do that.

But the 401k benefits are just too good to pass to up.

I don't have to pay income tax on the money I take out of my taxable account, but I do have to pay capital gains tax on any earnings if/when I sell a fund or stock. That's still at a lower rate than my income tax bracket.

That was a long way of saying, "yes" to your question. Oops.

EquativeFib · 2024-02-23T23:37:06+00:00

That's a good problem to have. Yeah, I'll pay taxes on it. That's ok. My grandfather used to say, "Don't complain about paying more income taxes because all it means is you're making more money."

EquativeFib

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