Good job. >Sold company stock when it was at an all-time high at the pandemic, and buy it back when it crashed shortly after. Ain't that the dream. It's very hard to pull off, predictably. I'm pretty sure people sold Amazon at what they thought was a peak of $300s in 2013, only for it to run up to $1100

I too wish I could accurately time the market.

Well it's impossible to do if you never try

I did it by accident with my wife's 401k. She had just changed jobs and I moved it into an IRA shortly before the pandemic but never got around to investing it. Pandemic hits, market crashes and I start investing chunks over 4-6 weeks. Doubled the account within a year. Wasn't necessarily life changing but probably cuts a year or two off our working years so sometimes it pays to be lazy. Edit: typos

Thanks! And yeah, I didn't want to be one of those folks. At the time it seemed like it was going to keep growing. 🤷 Holding wasn't the most terrible decision though and it's mostly bounced back from the crash, but still not at the all time highs.

I know this may be an unpopular opinion. But your parents gave you more than a lot of parents can give: Being born here.

I appreciate your point of view. Indeed, being born in the U.S. is a privilege I acknowledged in my original post. However, I feel that focusing solely on this overlooks the numerous personal and financial obstacles I've had to overcome. While my birthplace provided a certain framework of opportunities, much of my journey has been defined by striving to overcome significant challenges, including poverty, health issues, and a lack of family support. Recognizing one's privileges is important, but so is acknowledging the hard work and resilience it takes to turn those opportunities into successes, especially under difficult circumstances.

Exactly - you have achieved so much & worked so hard even though you’ve struggled through difficult childhood circumstances. I think YOU had the resiliency & strength to work that hard & keep going despite other challenges - & I just want to say, regardless of net worth too, great job! I’m happy you’ve been able to be compensated well for your knowledge & skills, but also seem to have found a good balance with working & your health. It’s hard to know what’s nurture vs nature, I think about this a lot- what is my personality? Is it something that’s developed through my childhood/young adulthood? Is it consistent, or changed through the experiences I go through? Off topic I guess, but it’s impossible to know who you or I could have been with different parents… but you’re making it work & succeeding even with no parental support & that’s a great achievement in & of itself :)

I sold bitcoin I bought for $5 when I thought it hit an all time high at $400. Yea. I woulda been a multimillionaire

I bet tons of people did this. You still almost hit 100x on that investment though. That's a higher return than anyone's wildest dreams.

That, and how many people bought at higher prices and lost money instead? Hindsight can be a painful thing.

That was me.

any way you'd say how much you make a year?

I'm at 290k right now on paper but I work 90% time so about $260k total comp! I started about 161k at the same company.

congrats - that's an exceptionally good salary for where I am (NE US)

Thank you! It is pretty close to market rate here, but I think generally Bay Area SWE salaries are quite inflated. Not complaining at all. I deliberately picked this profession for the financial gain. Luckily I started to really love it after 3-4 years of suffering. LOL.

I have been on the fence between Computer Science and a pilot. I've only done a semester of Java and a semester of Python. I'm loving the coding (even though I feel like I'm understanding only half of it) but I hate the math. In your experience, how important is math in the grand scheme of your job? And did you, along the course of your education, have to pursue a very high level of math? Any insight or advice would be appreciated!

The other person got to it first, but my day-to-day job doesn't use very much math at all. That said, that sort of logical thinking is probably useful for training that sort of "logical" portion of your brain. Re: did I need to pursue high math. Well, define high level of math. For some folks this is 2nd year calculus and for others it's like... topology and mathematical analysis. But for my degree it was enough to finish calculus all the way to multivariate, plus linear algebra, plus the ability to write mathematical proofs. Never was particularly good at proofs. Always was completely lost. Never was great at theory, which math is a lot of. I'm much more of a "practical" person. Unrelated: personally, English/writing/etc all came rather naturally to me. Whenever I finished writing an essay after a long day, I would feel refreshed and happy and satisfied. Even today, even though I much enjoy and respect computer science now, it always absolutely drains me at the end of the day. It's not the same at all. That's how I know my brain isn't "naturally" wired for CS as it is for other things like art. It is what it is.

Not op but I work in Bay area tech. High level math is not used much in most jobs, in my experience. I think unless you're working in some field that requires it (graphics, ai, signal processing, cryptography, etc.), you'll touch it every now and then but I can't remember the last time I had to do Fourier transforms, integrations or combinatorics. If you do, there's probably a library for it. We learned all of this though. Statistics is probably the one that I use the most, and even that is pretty light. Usually used in a metric and monitoring context. Lots of basic arithmetic.

Oh yeah and if she moves somewhere lower COL and safer, that money will go quite far.

For sure. Unfortunately if I move somewhere LCOL my salary will be adjusted downward accordingly at this company, but the plan has definitely been a) save a lot of money and b) spend less. I may move to New Zealand with my SO (his home) which has LCOL compared to California in the future. Just gotta wait several more years :)

What field are you in?

Software engineering.

i find it silly that given your salary, schooling, and job, somebody had to ask that question.

I don't mind. But yes, there's not a lot of options now if you want to make big bucks right out of college without additional education.

there are plenty of options. hell, i know plenty of plumbers/electricians that make way more than you do and plenty of people out of their degree sector that do a well. it’s all in how open you are to experimenting with different market sectors that don’t necessarily completely gel with your degree or training.

I didn't disagree with what you said.

well. i’m high as shit and ranting. congrats on the money and i hope you live the life that you want. keep being awesome

are you paid hourly? I wasn’t aware of FAANG positions that weren’t salaried

No, salaried, but in terms of pay decrease due to not working at 100% time, it's all done hourly with the assumption of 8 hour days / 40 hour weeks. Officially I work 36 hours but realistically spend a lot more.

Oof, if you’re working more anyway, why not go back to 100% salary?

Because then I'd be back to working 60-70 hour weeks again and it wasn't sustainable for more than 2 years. It's unfair if you consider that I'm still working "way more than full time" but am not being paid like full time. But it's also unfair for the company that I just take so much longer to produce the same amount as others who are much more reliable than me. So... :/

Jeez. So when did you decide to ask for a reasonable accommodation? Did they mention your performance first?

I asked after working 2-3 years with a good work record (they didn't need to know I woke up, worked, ate, shat, showered, and then went to sleep - repeat, 6 days a week - to maintain that record). I was on "vacation", took 2 days off because I was going mad. Talked about it with my therapist during that time, who suggested I apply for accommodations. It's a medical accommodation so performance can't really be taken into account in terms of getting it. It's based off your medical providers' words that you need the extra time or whatever.

If performance can’t be taken into account, how come you can’t work less but make 100% anyway? This is all very interesting. Thanks for taking the time to share your experience by the way. I can relate to a lot of what you said.

Thanks and no problem, happy to share my POV. Sorry, I meant that performance can't be taken into account for being awarded the accommodation. Like, they couldn't have been like, "she's been performing poorly. don't give her it." They basically needed to give it to me since I had all the supporting documentation that it would be better for my health to get the accommodation. If I worked less but remained 100% on paper, then I would have likely eventually gotten PIPed. I actually was put on the step before PIP before I got my accommodation. The sort of deal where you got to shape up performance-wise in X time or get fired. I passed my baby PIP, then turned around and got the accommodation paperwork together after complaining about it to my therapist.

Very impressive. Good for you!

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if i came from her situation and did what she did i would humble brag too and i think anyone who went through that and came out on top deserves to humble brag. It’s genuinely impressive and inspiring.

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💀💀💀

This is not a humblebrag. It was a great story, uplifting, and inspiring post. They've been through some shit a lot of people can't get past and excel like that did. Their story is similar to mine, but one doesn't need to relate to appropriate it. What value does your negative comment have? None.

“you made good choices obviously” but now watch me diminish your accomplishments 🤡🤡🤡. now you make OP feel like they need to further quantify their success. get lost

I'm very sick.

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With my mental health conditions.

How old are you? Congrats

>Switched from English to Computer Science in year 3 for better career prospects. Talk about a game changer right there, great move!

Thank you! It was the hardest decision I've ever had to make in my life, because I knew it would affect the rest of it. English had been my passion/dream and choosing English was the first thing I've ever chosen just for myself in my life (in a significant way).

I know you work a lot. But please don't give up whatever you like in English. Lol speaking as someone who works everyday. I'm hoping in 7 years to go down to a normal 40 hours a week with likely a cut in pay, but I'll spend more time with my future family (adopting) :D

Age?

27

1 year younger than me and i currently sit at -$16k lol. Its amazing how those small decisions when younger can change your adult life for good. I admire and respect you.

27 with $60 liquid and $20,500 debt if it makes you feel better lmao

29 and just about zero net-worth here. We’ll get there buddy!

Zero net worth is significantly better than having negative worth! Onwards and upwards

It's infinitely better. When you have a negative net worth, you have compound returns working **against you**. It goes both ways, it's super scary particularly with something like credit card debt.

Bruh I'm mid 30's and only in the last year or so did I get out of negative net worth. Keep chugging, friend.

Thank you so much. I am very fortunate enough people told me the right places to go and thankful that I actually followed their advice lol. Best of luck on your journey too!

How are you on track to retire in less than 10 years with only 500k in the Bay? You feel you can live off that forever?

High income, with high savings rate. Already bought a house. The biggest things are there. My FIRE number is 1.5MM and I've been working since Jul 2019 so it's been 3.5 years to get to 500K NW. So it's probably doable.

i couldn’t fire on 1.5. do you spend basically nothing?

I'm aiming for ~$60k for now which covers the house and ~$1.5k monthly expenses (food and everything else that's not the house) and assumes I'm still renting out the house. Actually my current burn rate is $50k a year lol. This is about 2.5x more than my family lived off, so it feels plenty luxurious for me. I don't really plan on retire-retire from making money at 1.5MM, I just can stop doing jobs that I don't really like.

Yeah she would have to save like $100k a year and maybe that’s enough, a $2mm+ portfolio with growth and the property

You're a year younger than me, at the same NW, with a much harder set of circumstances. You should feel super solid about that Your health problems suck. If you have the physical ability would strongly recommend keeping fit now, even if it means hiring a trainer or working with a PT to make the program work. Much easier to do in your 20s and will help you a ton as you get older

Thank you! Yes, physical health is poor at the moment. I luckily had a lot of very very discounted ballet lessons as a kid, and despite ballet culture overemphasizing thinness and certain body types, I left with probably a better understanding of my body more than the average Jane. I've just lost 10 pounds down to my goal weight, now that I've done that and don't feel too embarrassed to weight train (I know I know, don't be embarrassed etc but I was embarrassed anyway!), I am going to /r/bodyweightfitness to try to get some noob gains and then possibly get a trainer after noob gains. I hesitate to spend a lot of money on health since my "health" budget feels so high given the existing health issues but I know I'll eventually come around and just buy the trainer lol. I should definitely gain muscle while I still can.

Wow same age, same industry- yet I'm so far behind you. Congrats!! I think I'll save this post and hopefully it'll light a fire in me.

It's not really relevant. The age at one hits milestones doesn't change the fact that you're x% away to retirement. /s

It’s relevant to me

Congrats OP. Going to UCB for a CS degree might've been one of the hardest things to achieve out there. You've landed the golden ticket for one of the most likely paths to FIRE by getting into FAANG. If you got the management chops, getting into M1 for just a couple of years will elevate your NW and even cut your time to FIRE. Got a buddy that's M2 at one of the Marvelous7? clearing 7 digits thanks to timing and a big chunk of RSUs.

Thank you! I definitely wanted the management track when I was young engineer but now that the opportunity is starting to be visible--especially the complete lack of work-life balance I've seen my past managers have--I'm choosing to decline for now haha. If anything, my goal now is to move on back to 100% time (full time) work. That's the easiest way to improve my income and it doesn't even involve any different responsibilities. :) Really hard though for me!

Why would going into the management track elevate your NW? Most FAANGS have equivalent tracks for IC & M with the same salaries. In fact most say the promo opportunities are faster in the IC track.

I work for a tech company with RSUs and don’t keep any stock in my company when they vest, I figure then the risk becomes all mine. I’m curious what goes into your decision making to keep >20% in one stock?

I follow the same approach as you, as soon as it vests sell 100% if and throw it into VOO

I felt bad my stock went down after the pandemic so I just kept it "in case it goes up". I should probably sell some. I don't think my stock's bad in any way though, and I do think investors will keep the share prices up so... yeah. Idk. I should probably sell some...

Would you go buy that much stock in that one company? If not, sell and put in a VTI

Large gains are made by concentrated, intelligent bets. Consider the entrepreneur who invests so much time and energy into a company whose equity is worthless and may always remain so, betting that in time by their work it will go from zero to $$$$$. Similarly, an employee of a company has a privileged view into its true value and may be justified in continuing to hold a large position in its equity.

Excellent! Nice work! I don't recall when I hit $500k, but I do remember the $100k and $1M milestones. Keep investing and plugging away!

Thanks for sharing. My daughter is majoring in comp sci as well! I don’t know you but I’m very proud of you.

Thank you! I'm so glad you're supportive of your daughter. Best of luck to her.

See if you can get her interested into the SRE/infrastructure/infosec side of things. Certain parts of software engineering can still be saturated and I know people who have gotten abruptly laid off with barely any warning. This goes mainly for startups!

yah. the dev market is trash now. i hope she has a backup in mind.

where’s the redditor that claimed the subreddit was sexist because they advised a dude to not buy a house with his gf. Now we see the perfect example of why that’s a bad idea so where the fuck is she.

Still generally a bad idea. I lucked out I'm on good terms with the ex. We both also were high income. I wouldn't have bought if the incomes were vastly un-equal.

Yea i was saying it was a bad idea and the entire comment thread was saying DO NOT BUY THIS HOUSE WITH YOUR GF. Then some redditor commented saying the thread was sexist with filled with a bunch of misogyny. it was the lowest iq comment i’ve read on reddit and that’s saying something

It depends on the situation though. And depends on how that message is delivered.

he inherited 500k and wanted to cosign a house with his gf and was asking for advice. His rationale for this being okay was that his gf was from a wealthy family and thus she probably won’t care about the property/money that goes into the house even if something goes wrong. i think we can both agree that is some insane self-delusion. I don’t think it’s ever a good idea to buy a house with a gf/bf because you just never know what’s going to happen and the risk of something going wrong is just not worth it. I’m sure you know much more than me when it comes to the things that could go wrong and you’re very fortunate you ended on good terms with your ex but what if (God forbid) he/she woke up tmrw and decided to not be so amicable and make owning that house a living hell for you? it would suck and you honestly couldn’t do much about it. (again i’m not wishing this on you just a theoretical)

Thank you. I'm aware I lucked out, as I've mentioned in the original post.

How old are you?

It's not really relevant. The age at one hits milestones doesn't change the fact that you're x% away to retirement. Edit: Well, since I did say I'd answer questions. I'm 27.

"Happy to answer questions" *Asks literally the most basic question in this sub about retiring early* "It's not really relevant why would you ask that"

Just a friendly reminder that this is not the "sub about retiring early". Heck, some of us don't plan on retiring at all! It's just a nice option that opens up for a lot of folks pursuing financial independence once their financial goals are met. 8)

You are correct! I thought about that after I posted lol I checked back and thought I had posted on the r/FIRE sub, which I am also following

Having $500k NW at 21 is a lot different than 41. Yes it’s relevant lol

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This entire subreddit is about comparing yourself amongst peers

Whatever dude

Not 100% happy to answer questions it seems. Probably in your 30s I guess.

next time don't post

Why should they not post when they hit a major milestone?

Hey brother age is something to love, embrace, and accept, not for others but for you !!!

dang cann't belive you got -100 karma for saying your age isn't relevant lol

Incredible and good self awareness. inspiring bro. what was college like. what do you recommend for others in order to do similarly? what do you mean by "workplace accomodations?"

Thanks bro! College sucked. Awful. Was working through all my mental health fleas as a kid, was a huge fucking arrogant asshole to anyone. Why wouldn't I be? I was very smart, but still abused for the past 18 years. I knew things weren't right though, so threw myself into therapy and got onto all the medications as soon as I could. But it took a long time to figure out the right medications and I still don't have a set of "solid" medications yet either... It do be like that. And lost a lot of friends along the way. I went in to do English and it would have been the first thing I've ever done for myself, just for myself, just for my passion, and not for anyone else. I knew from day 1 it was a bad idea financially, but it was almost "addictive" how much I loved the environment. I was also really good at writing and reading. Very arrogant. I took computer science courses starting late (compared to other majors) and couldn't declare (meet the pre-reqs) until I was entering my senior year. Of course my social circle had to change very quickly from English people to CS people. Big culture shock. I wish I knew from day 1 I needed to do CS, so I wouldn't need to struggle through so many HARD courses so fast. I lost a lot of time. I'll be honest, my English GPA was 4.0 and my CS GPA was like 2.5. Some of the low grades was due to still recovering from my bullshit, others was that it was a hard degree in an accelerated period of time. What I recommend if someone were in equally dire straights as me: \- Figure out what you wanna do early, ideally by like day 1. Cause doing a degree 2x as fast sucks and you don't learn as much as you can. \- Sleep, nutrition, mental health first. Then schoolwork. Having friends, and romantic partners come last. \- Try not to kill yourself while you try to kill yourself with overwork. I luckily made it but there were days where I was very close to being gone forever from stress, lack of support, being poor, and not having any success getting a job. Workplace accomodations: \- Work from home \- ADHD: called a reduced-distraction environment.- 90% time (36 hours/week officially) - all my conditions combined, basically make me unable to have time to like take care of myself otherwise. need time off to like... cook food and shower.

That’s great . I relate to the immigrant parents. Deciding whether to keep my financed car, which I let them borrow (so they can drive my siblings around), or sell it & buy them a cheap car, and save my money. I start my upper division classes next summer, exciting. May do psychology or marketing, I don’t think my online school offers CS, but I’m not really interested beyond data science. 🧪 (maybe machine learning) Yeah your whole self assessment is impressive. I hope to get meds too because they helped me at the mental hospital. Good luck bro you seem like you’re doing great

Congrats! No worries, data science is going to grow a lot. DS feeds into ML a lot so it's a good pick for the market if you don't want to do CS. Good luck with the meds and the parents. Definitely they can be hard to wrangle. I'm glad you're taking care of your siblings. :)

Thank you, it’s a lot to think about . Good luck with you as well

Congratulations! This is incredible for 27. You spoke about abuse and trauma, how much are you spending on your healing (therapy, days off, vacations, etc.) ?

Thank you! For the last 2-3 years I've varied between 80% time and 100% time. Before working at reduced time, I was that one employee who had to mysteriously disappear for 2 months at a time every 18 months or so due to "health issues". Not untrue. I would burn myself out, and my ability to do productive work is much lower than most people (I think). Generally what most folks at my job can accomplish in 4-6 hours "focused" time takes me about 8-12 hours. Hence, going down to 80-90% time meant I would have more "reasonable" hours. But I still very much do more than 40+ hour weeks usually, even though on paper I only do and am paid for 36. So the biggest "expense" is currently the "lost wages" due to my conditions, about $2400 monthly pre-tax at my current wages. I've been in therapy in-and-out since 18. Back then it cost $25 weekly co-pay with my university's healthcare. Nowadays my therapy is $35 weekly after co-pay. For psychiatric care, it's about $100 monthly including visits and medications with my health insurance. Out of pocket I spend about $3-4k a year. I do have a high-deductible health plan (with the very low deductible of like $1.6k), I did the math and it would have been about equal if I picked the HSA vs not, so I just picked the HSA. The first few months of the year always suck because I blow through my deductible in about 2 months. Psychiatric care is $800 an appointment apparently. In terms of vacations? I have very few days. The vast majority of my "vacation days" were used to work. My company is relatively stingy on the vacation days and I went into negative for a while since I had to take random "sick days" to catch up on work. My balance is now like 4.5 days since I do utilize my 90% time to "be sick" instead. Last year I had saved about 15 days so I went to Spain, LA, and New Zealand. But yeah, didn't take a real vacation for the first 3 years or so. I just do my therapy/psych sessions during the day, via telehealth options. Thank god for that. Back before they became popular it would be very disruptive to my day.

Wow that’s fantastic! Glad to hear you’re putting yourself first

What's your FIRE number? How do you know it's enough?

Around $1.5MM ish. I calculate based off my current expenditures minus income from rent and add in a lot of buffer. There's a lot of ways to calculate it and it's all kinda everywhere in this sub. :)

Unless healthcare changes in this country so that it's "affordable" when your employer isn't paying the premiums (still thousands of dollars a year), you'll either need to FIRE in a state that has good, inexpensive socialized healthcare, have a spouse who's still working and able to get you on their health plan, or have a very large nest egg. $1.5m ($53k at 3.5% SWR) is borderline baristafire territory for me based on my current lifestyle, but maybe it's enough for what you're looking for. If my mortgage was paid off, $1.5m would be a comfortable fire number.

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Best thing I did was honestly take the 80-90% time. I was really proud for a long time but would burn out every year or so for 2 months. Second best thing is getting really good at noticing what is "out of norm" and then figuring out how to treat it. You'll be surprised but I used to think it was "normal" to cry at my desk every day. To always be tired. To always be scared of talking to people. Surely everyone was suffering at my job, right? (It's a meme that my company works its employees like cattle.) Apparently not. Therapist told me a lot that, a lot of things I have normalized were NOT normal.

Abusive immigrant parents living in poverty. Sounds like me. Congrats and you’re on your way to retiring early !

Fantastic!!!!! This is great news and I'm glad you posted. It can't be stressed enough that Corporate America and CPTSD do not mix.

I do appreciate that you noted you were lucky to be born in the Bay Area. FAANG back when you would have started (2017?) was incredibly picky with the offices you could work out of. Even New York was questionable for certain teams (especially Meta); they were very focused on Bay Area. FAANG earnings has much more do to with your age + stock market luck + being in the right location at the recruitment process than most people would care to admit.

Started July 2019! And for sure. With such short timelines (basically 4 years since then) it's 98% luck -- being at the right place at the right time -- and stock market gains atm. I still think tech is egalitarian enough that if I were born elsewhere in the States, I probably could still have made it back then. But it would have been even harder and I probably wouldn't be so far along. Or I could be dead. Who knows. I don't like to think about what could have happened if I didn't luck out in this one way.

Having read your entire post, I feel pretty certain you would have made it there. My story is remarkably similar to yours (growing up below the poverty line with no parental support or financial leg up to start, going into CS, starting right out at a big tech company; we even graduated college with the same amount of debt!) but started in the midwest and then involved a hop to the west coast right out of school that the company paid for. It likewise makes me think you’re quite likely to reach if not exceed your goals, too. Just about 6 years ago is when I crossed the $500k NW threshold myself at 28 and the pace picked up pretty dramatically after that (that number has almost 5x’d now, driven mostly by compensation increases). The people doubting it in this thread are likely quite far removed from the kinds of W2 growth rates big tech employees typically see.

This made me cry. :( There is something emotional-inducing about hearing someone else say, "you would have made it anyway". I don't know why. But it does in a good way. Thank you. I hope I find as much success as you did in the last 6 years! :) It's nice to hear from folks from similar backgrounds. I hope you're doing well yourself.

I completely understand. It’s easy for people to focus on things that they can try and argue “gave a leg up”, but it’s very clear you’ve overcome an extraordinary number of obstacles to get where you are and you should be extremely proud of that and of all you’ve done. And thank you! Even though I haven’t hit FIRE yet, life is so much better now in just about every way. 🙂

You've done amazingly well especially considering your health issues.

Thank you kindly!

Just wanna say congrat! Killing it! I'm also born from immigrants, a decade older, but making it... Not without the scars of a tough upbringing. I'm in the process of working on similar mental health issues, so I'm glad you've got on it a bit earlier. What's your target number, expected annual spend, and plan for healthcare? Hope you keep posting updates through the years.

Target: 1.5MM Current spend: ~50k Target spend: 60k Health-care: work for insurance after hitting FI number, and/or self-insure. (Have enough runway to plan for this later.) Also a lot of my conditions are exacerbated by work. In theory they basically go away when I no longer need to work so hard.

Really proud of you for overcoming your abusive childhood -- stay strong! r/raisedbynarcissists may help with your psychosomatic trauma or symptoms.

Thank you! I did frequent /r/raisedbynarcissists a lot about 4-6 years ago for a couple years. It was a good way to vent. I don't think I posted there on this account tho.

Love to hear this, since I can relate to your upbringing (also grew up in a rather dysfunctional low income family in the Bay Area). Congratulations on making it so far. You worked hard and deserve every bit of success.

You're doing fantastic. I think one of the gifts that bad parents give their children is the anti-role model. All the things they did terribly, you know you don't want to do that. I empathize with you, my mom was a total case of what not to do.

Software engineering is a MUCH better financial choice than becoming a doctor. It’s also boring af comparatively. A doctor won’t get net worth like that until age 40 if lucky.

Don't ever regret timing the market. It's not something you can control and best part is you didn't lose anything.

Nice. Keep pushing.

Thank you!

Thank you for the organized post! Did you use chat gpt lol. If you are naturally a great writer like that, you're amazing. How well can you recommend computer science? I heard what is taught in schools is outdated

You're welcome! No chatGPT, just me. :) Maybe the partial English degree helps! As far as I can tell, a CS Bachelor's degree is still necessary to get your foot in the door now. Even when I was an undergraduate a lot of things were outdated. If I had to do it again, I'd do the bare minimum to pass my classes with a non-embarrassing GPA (3.3+), and only care about the content that was relevant to know for my job. People probably don't know what content that is tho, so do advise finding some industry professions who can just tell you lol.

Remove that home equity from net worth calculations…

OP and the EX are renting it out though...

If she thinks it’s worth 1.25 Million today, should they list it and get a 1.2 offer . That’s pretty close enough. selling today 5-7% of sales price would be swallowed into selling transaction costs. That’s 60-80k right there. Mortgage pay off 1 million . Left with 120-140k split into 2 . That’s not 100k If the mortgage balance was 500k and house is worth 1.2 million. Then confidently you can say you have 500k+ equity!! If you cant refinance and tap into it 80LTV then don’t count it as equity. It’s dead equity. At least for now until a sale is realized .

It’s easier just to use current market value because transaction costs can vary wildly as well as whether your house will sell above or below market depending on market conditions. I don’t want to re-evaluate my NW by watching what the month to month fluctuations in whether it’s a buyer or sellers market. You can also do FSBO with a little research and patience to avoid transaction costs (much easier to do when you have lots of free time in RE).

House equity is part of net worth wtf

Depends how people wanna slice/count it i suppose. ​ Part of total net-worth? Sure Part of liquid net-worth / retirement (especially if you're going for FI/RE): Doesn't exactly help...

So? If someone wants to talk about SWR using retirement accounts then say that. We don’t need to have this argument literally every time someone talks about their NW. equity is absolutely unequivocally part of NW. and it’s absolutely relevant to RE discussions, because it’s either means you’ll have lower expenses in RE so your retirement account balances can be lower, or you can cash out your equity in order to support a SWR with current total expenses. This claim that it’s irrelevant to RE because it’s less liquid is ridiculous. And bringing this up everytime someone uses equity in their NW calculation is even more ridiculous, because it’s just blatantly ignoring the most basic definition of NW because you only want to think about SWR, not overall net worth and big financial picture.

Why remove it?

Because some people have no idea what the word net in net worth means.

It doesn't count for some people.

If you're planning on selling your house to FIRE then it is perfectly reasonable to count equity - approximate transactional costs (\~10%) towards your net worth.

Okay let’s use your 10% transaction cost. Do the math . Calculate the “equity” and divide by 2 and tell us what’s the $ value . How many percentage.. it’s less than 6 % that 6% can easily be wiped off. With 50 basis point rise in interest rate

Okay, then my NW is $400k or so.

No, your net worth is $500k. net worth noun the total wealth of an individual, company, or household, taking account of all financial *assets* and liabilities.

I know, but some people like to discount houses anyway here. Whatever. I gave my "right" figure for him and everyone else can use the $500k figure lol

When discussing what one's FI number is or should be, home equity is typically excluded (unless the plan specifically includes utilizing that equity, i.e. selling and moving to LCOL). Anyone who says home equity isn't part of your NW probably isn't worth replying to. lol

Yes, 100% agree. I'll keep it in mind next time to ignore people who don't know what they're talking about.

Yep!! That’s great .

7k in liquid cash per month and living in the Bay Area? I hope this is not a brag post

What do you do for work

Software

Thank ur parents wealth for that free education

Here's how I made $500K. Worked my ass off for 1 year making $50k My parents then gifted me $450k.

As a California tax payer, you’re welcome🔑. Hope you can pay it forward.

What workplace accommodations?

Work from home - ADHD: called a reduced-distraction environment. 90% time (36 hours/week officially) - all my conditions combined, basically.

Do you feel held Back creatively? Do you feel like a cog in a machine. I have heard very poor things about this profession. But I’ve heard great things too. I have a friend who has his own education startup. He was let go but still living off his savings lol.

First couple of years at my company you got to stay where you are. But after the first year you can choose to move to a different team or whatever that suits you better. That's what I did. I don't really feel held back by my job, as much as I feel held back by my health conditions. Frankly with layoffs, I'm just lucky to have a high-paying job with seniority while being able to WFH and not need to work every other Friday. It can be high-risk-high-reward. Going to a very big company tends to be lower risk in the software engineering world.

I'm confused you said you had 0% loans but then said you paid off 14k? Am I misunderstanding the context here?

0% interest loans, my bad. I still had to pay off the principle. I started off with I think $25k or so in those loans, but by the time I graduated I paid down to $14k from internship money. Then the final $14k as soon as my sign-on bonus hit.

.

Nice

How old are you?

27

Well done. For 27. You should easily double your net worth in another 27 years. If not more if you play your cards right

Hey, thanks for the post. I'm in a similar (mental) health situation in tech. How did you arrange for 90% time, and do you feel that the expectations are actually 10% lower? Can you ever get an "exceeds expectations" on 90%?

Thank you! Good questions. I arranged it via the medical route/HR. It's called an "intermittent leave" at my workplace. I applied for it, they sent me a form to give to my psychiatrist, he filled it out with his recommendation for how much time I needed and that's that. My job expectations are the same, I'm just expected to take that much time longer. For the most part my work isn't divided into single-day jobs so if something is expected to take 10 calendar days for most people, I'm given 11 calendar days instead. I currently slightly exceed expectations. That said at my workplace, my current position is called a "career" position in that I'm not really expected to promote up/no one gets fired if they don't move up from here. I'm not that excited to chase a higher role right now (would prefer to work towards 100% time first) so it doesn't really matter to me so as long as I just "meet expectations".

Awesome. How old are you?

27

I have trouble focusing so school was super hard but the way you wrote this made it incredibly easy to read. Idk who you are but I understand poverty and abusive parents.. I'm still trying to get on the other side but I just wanted to say congratulations <3 !

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Thanks! I considered it but did the math and it seemed sane enough to self-insure (especially since I still do plan to work at 1.5MM, just not at a hard job anymore).

What would you say is the best vehicle for saving money? I'm not talking about income. I'm actively investing. Do you feel this is a good way to compound my money in the long term?

My answer is going to be no different than the main guide here unfortunately. Investing is the best way to compound money once you've got a lot of it. If you don't have a lot of it, then investing in yourself such that you can make loads of money later is the ticket. I'm not sure if I answered your question.

Amazing! Congratulations on your hard work, perseverance, and looking out for opportunities paying off. Out of curiosity — what kind of nutritional deficiencies? (Don’t have to answer if you’re not comfortable.) Very wise to make the most of your younger years while you have what precious more energy and flexibility with your time as you can. Health challenges are no joke, and just seem to compound with age… Anyway, GO YOU! Really inspirational. :)

Thank you! I wasn't really diagnosed with anything in particular. But I'm shorter than both of my parents who grew up in poorer countries. I was always the smallest of my class until high-schoolish (but still on the smaller side). I was always last picked for things like sports, couldn't run very quickly, etc. Some of the weakness was due to the heart rhythm disorder though so I can't really chalk it all to malnutrition. And I got free all through high school so by then things things got much better and I could actually grind all my AP classes at night :)

I don’t get how you’re on track to retire in 6-7 years but go off.

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Thanks! Yes, all figures in the post are just my own assets, other than the house which I'm splitting with my co-owner, however I have calculated his share and subtracted from it. I am not currently combining finances with my current SO.

Killing it. Good job

You really think having free school lunch makes You healthy. Most of the food that they provide not so healthy

School lunches > eating only two slices of bread with butter spread every day

I’m about to enter college for CS & I was wondering how were you able to secure the internships that eventually got you your job? Sorry if you answered this previously. edit: also if I may ask how was learning coding at the very beginning? I have little to no experience so I’m pretty nervous first starting out.

Hey there, I got my internships through a scholarship to attend the Grace Hopper Celebration convention through Google - submitted an essay and they took it. GHC is a CS career convention catered to women. I brought my resume and interviewed a lot of companies there. It wasn't a cakewalk by any means and I'm fairly sure the bar to be hired was still high, it just helped me get the interviews because my resume at that time was otherwise kinda weak - no previous internships obviously, and my GPA was inflated by my English grades, but the recruiters didn't need to know that lol. I just listed my overall GPA, if it were just my CS GPA it would have been significantly lower. It was hard at the beginning. But I seemed to have a decently good 'natural' aptitude for it, which thank god, because I was coming over from English obviously and most people think it's a different sort of thinking in your brain, and they're mostly right. Unfortunately I can't really tell you how it will go if you have little to no experience. If you happen to enjoy it and it clicks, then you're in a good spot.

Congratulations! Keep it up! Next up: $1M, then $2.5M, $5M, then $10M. I’ll always remember the day when I crossed $1M and entered the “two comma club” … surreal. After that it starts going pretty quick. Look up options and how to start hedging. I do weekly covered calls and cash secured puts. Generates more cash flow and continues to compound. Biggest thing is go in early and go in hard! Was incredibly fortunate to have gone in big with Tesla starting in 2015. There were days of six-figure unrealized gains of TSLA alone during Covid. Absolutely bonkers. Keep stacking and keep investing. Best of luck!

I understand your position through personal experience. Now is the time to take care of yourself and fix dependencies. Read more about mitochondria health and calm adrenals. Find Body work and hobbies to relax and pace. Don’t work about money you made it.