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Question of the week: How has your spending changed over the last decade?
Oh boy. A ton has changed over the past decade for me. Ten years ago, I was in grad school and living in my parents basement. I had some small internship income and basically no expenses. My spreadsheet for Jan 2016 shows I spent $160 that month and earned $230. I’d started investing the previous year and had a net worth of roughly $40k.
Now I’m married with dual tech income, have a dog, own my house. My spending for last month was roughly $3000. I have expensive hobbies, go on big exotic trips once a year, spoil my dog endlessly,etc. My life is so much fuller than it was back then. My net worth nowadays has crossed the 2 commas club.
What’s been your favorite recent exotic trip? Asking in the spirit of vicarious travel as, aside from work, I haven’t traveled internationally for the last five years or so. And by some strange coincidence my oldest kid is five.
We went to Peru last year. It was incredible, though I packed way too much into a 2 week itinerary, so it was exhausting. It would’ve been much better if we could’ve done the same itinerary through slow travel. My spouse was not a big fan of the third world amenities in a lot of the places we stayed though.
I think my all time favorite vacation was the time we rented a campervan in New Zealand and drove it from Queenstown to Auckland. The free camping there was unreal.
Thanks for keeping these going. Just joined and hope more people coming from Reddit can make this more active.
A decade is a long time. I’ve always been frugal, but I’d say that I’ve relaxed a bit in some spending as I’ve approached FI, mostly as it relates to things that make life easier (tools, software, etc.). I’m willing to pay more to make things happen a little faster. But, although spending as gone up more than normal for me, it is still less than my wage has increased.
hope more people coming from Reddit
I’ve been hoping that since the third party apps got shutdown and came here a few years ago, but it’s still a pretty small place to support niche topics like FIRE, you lose sight of that on a place like Reddit that’s so large.
re:spending — I can relate to the willing to pay a premium for some things, has that translated into higher spending for you?
Higher spending in terms of dollars, but as that relates to % of estate’s net worth is decreasing.
We went from DINKs renting a place cheaply from family to SI2K owning a home. Spending is up at least 50%.
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Decided to use the holiday weekend to get a jump start on my taxes. Turns out my “crypto bro” spouse realized 6 figures in capital gains on a coin. Guess I have to claw back my Roth IRA contribution from 2025 because that puts us over the income limit.
I don’t think I can do the backdoor Roth because I have existing Trad IRA contributions from before I got married. My 401k only accepts rollover funds and not direct contributions to an IRA, so I think the pro rata rule is going to bite me if I try. Not sure if it’s worth the tax hit to convert my existing funds to Roth or not to open up the backdoor as an option.
the maxwell case; epstein files; et. al. suggested that they were in control of cryptocurrencies and you’re now benefiting from it; does it give you any sort of pause about how you getting rich off of baby fucking/eating and bombing children?
i know that this sounds snarky and it’s not intended as an attack on you, but i use this wording to make it clear that this is what’s happening and i genuinely wonder if this new crop of petite bourgeoisie are as well connected to the fundamental reality of our existence as their non-bourgeoise classes are.
Preaching to the choir here. I think crypto is a scam. But I don’t control what my spouse does with their money. We largely keep our finances separate because we have such different investment philosophies.
is your spouse aware of this reality? does this lack of care for society and humanity factor into how you regard them?
Poor you.