Asklemmy

Buying $109 worth of Bitcoin back in 2014. I was going to buy a year cloud mining contract, but the company (hashop) went out of business before I could. (I dodged a bullet there) I then proceeded to spend bits of it here and there (coincidentally, my second worst financial move) until I had about $70 worth left, which I put in a paper wallet and forgot about. In 2020, I was able to sell most of the Bitcoin, and bought a vehicle, which helped me get through college and made me more eligible when I met the girl who would become my wife. All this to say, I made some dumb decisions that just happened to turn out well for me. YMMV

Vasectomy BEFORE kids

Selling my home, car, boat and living a simple RV life without kids. Forget the financials, the lack of stress has made it so very worth it!

Bought a house in 2012. It's now worth almost 3x what I paid for it then. So wildly unfair.

Using a budget manager (YNAB)

I’m really bad with saving money and even having enough ready for regular bills on my own. I was always on zero before the end of the month and struggled hard when there was something unexpected. Now everything is planned ahead, I have some savings and yearly expenses are just ready to pay when needed.

It needs some time to adjust to it and I had to restructure my categories a few times until it worked for me (still not perfect).

Though I don’t feel like I’m getting my money’s worth anymore from YNAB. It keeps getting more expensive, the updates are slow and it seems very US focused. If I ever find the motivation, I want to build something on my own (I’m a web developer from Europe who’s getting a bit tired of web developing)

Getting out of renting and locking in a 30 year fixed interest rate of 3.25%.

My monthly housing payment is no longer going up every year.

My old apartment is already $300 a month more than I'm paying on my mortgage. It was only $200 a month less when I bought the house.

Not buying that over priced concert ticket for $200.. oh wait. I did that.

Getting a master's in electroacoustic music. Everyone told me I was going to stay poor forever, I decided to still do what I really wanted and it's going pretty well.

1. Started a small mutual fund and retirement fund when I was just starting out and still in undergrad. I did not have much and was fully self sufficient. But someone came to my job and showed us how retirement plans worked and convinced me to start one. Same with a mutual fund. I never put more than $20-$40 in each because I didn’t have much but boy did that pay off.

2. I purchased a small condo in the city with some of the money I put away in #1. Just sold it recently (20 years after purchasing it; lived in it for 5 years, rented it out for a profit for 15 years). I made a lot of money off that sale. More money than I’ve ever seen at once.

3. My spouse and I have always lived below our means. Now we’re not frugal - we go out for nice dinners, travel, have kids. We also have good jobs. But, when we purchased a house we could have afforded to get one that was $600k and instead opted for a smaller townhome in a nice neighborhood for almost half the price. Living this way has paid off more than I could have ever imagined. Both of us don’t have to work. We travel whenever we want. We could technically both stop working in our 40s/50s and probably be fine. It’s a feeling of freedom. We’ve never over-extended ourselves. When our colleagues and friends were buying expensive homes and expensive cars and extending themselves, we just didn’t do that.

1. No kids
   2 Studying

Buying used shit

It's either my best or my worst: I bought a house with my SO that we got for about half of the value

Making a budget and sticking to it every month. I am able to save 17% of what i make and put it into Monero to avoid it getting eaten by inflation.

Living like a pauper for a few years and paying the mortgage off early.

Also not joining the rat race, and buying new shiny shit for the sake of it.

Changing jobs instead of showing loyalty to employers who couldn’t give two shits when it was time to let me go.

Studying hard on my first year university. My GPA started high so I had a bunch of scholarships and grants. It's easy to maintain a high GPA than to bring a low GPA to a high level. I religiously apply to scholarships and grants also. I paid maybe 1/4 of my tuition fees.

Things to note:

• My 4 year bachelor degree in healthcare only cost $25,000-30,000 including books.
• The gov't even gives 60% back of tuition paid as tax refund every year until the gov't party changed a few years after I finished.
• Also gov't gives out cheap educational loans especially for low income families back then.
• Not in US.

Going all in on the stock option program, even if it was a little risky. I remember the argument: There's no lottery or casino that'll give me odds like these. I also left when we'd grown to the point where middle management didn't want to understand that when the program ran out (4 years) and had to be restarted at the new validation, that was basically a static pay cut for me. I get paid a lot more now, but I still made more from stocks than work last year.

Second, our apartment. It's a lot like a row house, except it's in the city. The other part backs right up to the park.

Third, maxing out parental leave with both of our kids at a company that (as, more or less, a recruiting gimmick) topped up parental leave pay from the capped 80% to, iirc, 100% with no cap. They turned out be quite dumb about this and had shuffled me into a corner when I came back. I was ready to put my back into it, but well, I guess not then.