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 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.

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.

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.

we’re fiiinnneeeee. could be better

Average at best.

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

My relationship with money is kinda weird. When I was a kid I would always save my allowance, but my siblings would steal it from me. My parents never did anything about it. When I had finally had enough, I stole some money back and then said all the bullshit excuses I had received over the years. The stealing stopped then.

I don’t like money and I don’t care much about material stuff. When I was in university, I was dirt poor, but I managed. Then I got a shitty job and didn’t make a lot of money, but it was so much more than what I had before, that my bank account started to grow. And that made me very nervous. Every time I saw my balance I panicked. I didn’t know what to do with all that money, there was nothing I really wanted or thought I could have. I did go on a vacation then, which was great, but I felt really guilty afterwards about the expenses I’d made.

After some time I lost my job and since then I’ve received benefits. Because of the system here and because I’m still quite frugal, I still have a significant back account. In a few months’ time I will hear if I will keep receiving benefits or not, and if I spend the money now, it will be beneficial for me financially. I should basically buy something expensive and eat out and buy lots of clothes before the government takes my money, but I can’t. I’m just not able to.

What doesn’t help is that I hate the fact that the world is in such a miserable state. Sure, I could buy a car, but I don’t need it and why would I mess up the environment even more just for my own pleasure and comfort? The same goes for clothing, equipment, furniture, anything. I don’t like this capitalist system that produces crap and ruins the planet. I don’t want it. But there’s nothing I can do about it other than what I already do. Also, most of the stuff you can buy nowadays is just plastic crap. I can’t even find decent cotton socks anymore, it’s all plastic. And it all breaks way too quickly, just so you have to buy new plastic crap again. Fuck that.

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.

I’ve got $0.85 in savings, because I put my rent and car payment money in my savings account each month until I need to pay those bills. I did at one point have $1000 saved up as a rainy day fun, but then it rained for a whole year (financially speaking). Now I don’t even have credit cards to fall back on, as those have been maxed out and gone to collections. I’m looking for a job in an industry I left because it was driving me to alcoholism (software), but that job market sucks a little more than the service industry, so I’m not optimistic.

Oh yeah and I’d be homeless if I didn’t have family who were willing and able to loan me rent money.

It is crazy given my healthcare costs are 2k. I pretty much have a monthly nut of 6k and my wife and I do not live a lavish lifestyle oh and I won’t be able to work much more before I will have to figure out retirement. I will be in ruin if I can’t produce thousands a month.

Im doing pretty well. Living in Germany, educated parents. Did okay in school, never studied much though. Went to university, got my Masters in Mathematics (needed to study a lot for that, but its my passion anyway). Started working at an IT company in the same city.

3 years later, I have around 50k in savings now. We live in a small apartment, are in the middle of buying a house.

Capitalism is really fckd up, especially in the US. I try not to take advantage of it too much, up my monthly donations with every raise, vote left-ish, dont support big corporations.

I think the biggest factor for success is luck for being born under the right circumstances. Thats like 99%, the rest is having some self control.

I’ve certainly been worse of, but not I’m not… Great. ButI have a roof over my head and me and the cat are fed. I can enjoy a video game here and there. However, I don’t have $1,000. Not for lack of trying, but things happen (moved, sick cat, broken car, the usual). I personally like to have at least one month of rent, but that doesn’t always happen.

Sometimes it just works out that everything I need takes everything I have.

I have $15.

Not just that I can spend. Not “until sometime in the future.” Just $15.