But, lo and behold, after a couple of months of lukewarm intentions, I’ve pretty much reverted to my habitual money behaviour — which may not be serving my longterm financial goals. So, I’ll start: I’m not married, 32, earning $90K and I’ve got about $20K in savings. I rent, don’t own a place. I should probably have a lot more by now, but I’ve always prioritised things like travelling, eating at good places, concerts etc. If you’re comfortable sharing, tell me what you’ve got and a little bit about yourself?" ‘HECS’ stands for the Higher Education Contribution Scheme — a government loan to help pay for your university or higher education study. —u/FourSharpTwigs —u/HandyDandyRandyAndy I am self-taught in IT and my wife has her MBA. Until we had our child (five years ago), we had no savings and a ton of credit card debt on top of our mortgages. One day, I came home from a work trip and I bought The Barefoot Investor and my wife had done the same thing. We were both on the same wavelength, which made getting ahead so much easier." —u/Evil_ET We’re planning on leaving the shares long-term and eventually the dividends will help us either go part-time or pay for a good family holiday once a year. Life is too short to work full time until your mid 60s and I’m paranoid about not making it there!" —u/lurkingjc One income went into an offset account, and the other went into the mortgage — we were effectively paying almost double on our mortgage payments, while offsetting the whole thing. We’d also regularly ’trade up’ on our property — we’d renovate and then look for another home in a good area that needed a little work. Not too much, but enough to increase its value. We’d ensure that the mortgage was about the same that we were already paying. We’d purchase that property, do it up a little, then sell again after about five years to ensure that the value had gone up sufficiently. That said, we have no kids, don’t smoke, don’t wear ‘designer’ clothes, and only have one vehicle — we purchase our vehicles outright, so we have no outstanding debt. We still manage to socialise well though and often have friends to our home to entertain — we’re not social outcasts, we just don’t squander our money on stupid shit. We don’t have the latest phones, the only membership we have is a gym membership, not extravagant shoppers, don’t take yearly overseas holidays etc. Now, we can afford to relax and wind-back a bit — go part-time with work, semi-retire early and enjoy our money while we’re still relatively young." —u/Inconnu2020 —u/Yohann_The_Yak I put that down to free medical, better wages, quality groceries at decent prices and a better mentality of getting out and about for fun, instead of just drinking/eating out/wasting money. Hoping to buy a one-bedroom apartment by the end of this year!" —u/emk1988_ —u/pman414 —u/jonoc332 —u/tiger1998tiger —u/The-Convoy I’ve got $41K in savings but just paid nearly $20K to polish off the last of my HELP debt (to increase mortgage affordability as per my broker and the bank — my minimum repayments were disproportionately high in comparison to income due to salary packaging) so my savings have peaked around $60K. Currently building a house so my savings will likely halve soon as I contribute more to my deposit and my loan goes ‘live’ (already contributed some to deposits as well). Currently I’m saving about 50% of my net pay but this won’t be for long as I start paying part of a construction loan. Calculated that I will be able to keep saving, just not as much." —u/insertnamehere2016 She had three homes to her name and just sold two of them a few months ago, with $1 million in the bank after paying her taxes. Did I mention she still works at a supermarket? Meanwhile, I have a PHD to my name, and not much more. She is fundamentally different to me in this way — I’m mostly paralysed by fear of what might go wrong and the news around me. But she has an intuition which she trusts. Her temperament is always calm. It’s worked out for her that’s for sure." —u/Dayouf It took me about four years of working in different roles in the public sector. I started out as 3/4 Administration Officer after I finished uni and was earning $68K at the time and worked my way up. I pay $400/week in rent in the Inner West of Sydney. For my area, that’s pretty cheap for a one bedroom with a parking spot. I know I could save a lot of money if I lived in a share house, but I value my sanity and space too much. The only other person I will be moving in with in the future will be my partner." —u/gloriousbinchicken —u/Abyssus_Theory —u/justputonsomemusic —u/pershanol —u/allcopzarebeautiful —u/Guilty_Impression_47 To explain these numbers a bit for those curious, I moved abroad for about six years after undergrad (graduated at 23). This is why my super sucks. When abroad, I just paid that country’s taxes. How I have $350K in assets? I saved around $100K prior to 2019 and went pretty hard into stocks (DCA) over 2019–2020 and got lucky during the COVID boom. That’s also why I don’t have a car. Sold it when I went abroad and didn’t bother buying one when I got back because I didn’t really need it." —u/Kayden_nf
