Ask HN: 30+ year olds - how much have you saved so far?
Curious to know how much people have saved (total assets) by the time they are in their 30s.
Started at $0 right after college (no student debt luckily) and got there through savings and frugality and good employment options in the Bay Area.
The cost of living is insane over here, but if you are not pretentious, financially disciplined (and in my case don't want kids), you’re going to be easily saving 6 figures a year, which you probably couldn’t in other more reasonable areas.
I am personally using a conservative estimation that my portfolio will just keep up with inflation (0% real growth), and since I don't plan to leave any legacy, my math is simple, adjusted for inflation I can withdraw PORTFOLIO / (90 - CURRENT_AGE) every year. Based on that math, I still have a long way to go.
Net worth is about $450k, ~425k in Vanguard and $25k in checking/savings accounts. Of the Vanguard money, 2/3rds in 401k or IRA accounts and 1/3 in taxable accounts. Came out of college with $210k in debt (paid for both of us to get Bachelors and Masters).
Anyone who has questions about investing or anything, feel free to reach out. Email in profile.
I save all my money in normal savings account, no investing or anything related to 'value increasing'. I don't have a separate retirement account either. I feel like I am not managing my money well enough, but I also don't feel like I have a "plan" for when I'm older. My next job have a clause where they will match retirement savings up to X percentage, that's a good step I guess? Kinda lost on the whole thing.
Also, 401k's often (don't have to be, but usually) are usually pretty moderate index funds. The risk associated with them isn't always like buying Tesla before he went and made his "$420" comment. They're a good start to investing when you don't know that much about it all.
Also the country is Thailand, so there might be differences.
Yes, it is. Though you'll more than likely see returns much higher than a standard (but safe) savings account will give you. You'll also get that 2% float on top of free money.
2% still isn't bad. Free is free, as I said.
In my particular case it's only 5% (best case):
50% match up to the first 10%.
So if I contribute 1% of my pay to it, I'll get a .5% match. If I contribute 10% to it, I'll get a 5% match. I can contribute more but I'll only ever get that 5%.
In your case, this is good compared to my situation in that you don't have to contribute 4% to get that 2% match, you can contribute even just 2%.
This is in the US FWTW. It's a pre-tax situation. I don't pay taxes on my contributions or my employers contributions; but I do when I withdraw them (earliest I can start withdrawing is age 59-1/2. The assumption is that when I start withdrawing, my tax rate will be lower than it is now so I'll still "come out ahead".
As my salary would be 135k THB (4293 USD) per month (51k/year berfore taxes) that would be only 1000 USD per year, barely anything.
I probably save more than 19k USD per year by myself though, although I'm without children/house/etc right now so that might change.
But as you mention, you're not in the US, so you may not be limited to that 19k (That's simply a different tax strategy, no one says you can only save that much).
Salary has gone up about 30%/year and I invested very heavily in that. But even with no savings, I'm much safer than I've ever been. Good insurance coverage, lots of job opportunities.
For context, about 80% of the region has no disposable income and the median annual salary for a senior engineer is US$20k. Household debt is 82% of GDP, so basically everyone owes each other, and payment often comes late.
192K in Robinhood 127k Equity in my apartment 65k 401k 82k IRA 10k Savings 3k Bonds Net worth: 479K