No one talks about this. How much money do you have? How old are you?
Count your house equity, your bank, brokerage, and IRA. But don't count anything that isn't vested and at least arguably liquid, and don't count anything you inherited.
Tons of people talk about this - check Blind, /r/financialindependence, and the millions of people on Twitter and WallStreetBets that post every winning options trade. People are constantly comparing sizes on the internet.
I'm 35, somewhat frugal, always driven old cars, never buying new clothes and such, all furniture gotten for free (facebook has these "giving away" groups), even my stereo and TV were free. Only thing I spend money on is a new computer once every 4-5 years (but then I build a nice one).
I own the house I live in, I bought it with my savings, no loan, meaning the house was cheap to begin with, saved a good amount of money by not taking a loan.
I have around $30k in the bank and around $80k in real estate.
I work as a codemonkey, normal yearly salary for my country, about $80k/year.
Ha, you sparked some thought in me, going a bit off-topic here though :)
I'd love to see some non-profit R+D department for social media. And I wonder what's the closest thing to that existing right now.
On the science side there are dry studies, either relatively tiny or looking at what is there.
On the practical side there are technical people fighting for privacy, decentralization and against censorship, but with little feel or innovation beyond that.
No one does proper product research.
I wrote a concept for a curation tool in my studies, but it didn't really fit the program and I wonder where it could fit after all. Now I'm just earning money as a product manager and can't afford not to.
There is the trifecta of development, design, and business. Usually someone is only good at one of those things. I want to see what it's like to be good at all 3, and see if I can build a very valuable company as a single founder/employee, by leveraging automation as much as possible. Even if I can't, I'm sure I'll find a bunch of problems for which I can create a new startup to solve.
You have a mortgage. If your property is worth more than $0 you should add it to your net worth.
Potentially the same with your credit card debt. For example if you bought 100 guitars worth $1,000 each, you might have $100,000 in debt, but also $100,000 in assets, assuming somebody would pay you what you paid for them.
Of course, if you spent the $100,000 on restaurants and vacations, they are not likely to be worth anything to anybody other than you.
Not judging here. Just demonstrating the power of buying assets.
I feel like most people under 30 on this site and not in SV are not a millionaires.
Although it does seem there are tons of very wealthy people on here. I mean, I see one comment with 20ish million and another with 100 million. I'll never see that in my life.
It is HN, part of YC after all, so you'd expect to see a higher percentage than most who have large amounts of wealth through startup related exits, like me. On other fora, probably not.
I know that makes sense. I guess I just never realized how many people exist who have that sort of wealth. I know income and wealth are separate things, but making over $75k puts one in the top 25% of US earners.
I am 35. I moved to the Bay Area in 2010 with a bank balance of 10k which were basically my savings from my part time job in University. I started my first job and have been saving monthly since then. I don't own a house as it is too expensive. In the decade since, I met my future wife, married and had a child. I have close to 450K in savings + some stock. I am mostly frugal but spend for my wife and child.
