Biz- Is saving 500 a month acceptable for a 31 year old with

First let me ask this question.

What do you want?

>>981694
>>981694

Honestly, nothing really. I want to save money. I want enough money to eventually take smaller risks and make nominally the same amount I would from leveraging up currently. Overall I want to have a good amount of reserves over time. That's vague, but I don't require much money to live now and don't really strive to live a grandiose lifestyle should I ever fall into some money or save a good amount of money.

>>981681
Since you don't have any concrete goals, it's impossible to say whether 500 is appropriate. Your milestones will allow you to make a down payment on a house, I guess that's a good thing.

You may already realize this, but money left to sit in a bank account is more or less wasted. Bank interest is just a notch above putting your money in a coffee can and burying it.

Build up a reserve appropriate for your income security and start thinking about building an investment portfolio, or using some of that cash to improve your income.

I'm 27. I don't make much and my freelance work can be spotty, but my expenses are low. Trying to put away 500-1000 a month. My goals are to build some cash for an IRA/conservative investments, keep a reserve of 1yr expenses for emergencies, and leave something for some projects that may or may not turn into businesses.

>>981681

>31 and only 15k in savings

lmfao

>>981812

I know it's vague, but I do have 'general' goals such as yourself. I just don't have concrete goals. I guess if I had to throw a number out it'd be roughly 100k saved to invest. My goal is to eventually have enough to carve out 3-5+% gains a month swing trading short time periods. I also want to dabble in real estate investing down the road, but that's a larger commitment than having x amount of money and putting it in the markets. I should note I have 4 years experience trading stock options and several side 'freelance' businesses.

I just wanted to see what other biznezens were doing.

>>981824
I guess we're a little vague because the end goal is financial security and independence, which always seems very slippery. Any investment can shit the bed, and there are circumstances no one can prepare for. It's a much more ephemeral goal than "acquire expensive car, acquire big house, acquire supermodel wife who need 1k a day minimum to be happy"

>>981836

That's what I was trying to avoid. I'd like to have some of those things eventually, but they're absolutely not what drives me. Maybe I should have a more visceral goal ha. I want to hoard money. Financial indepence is one way to put it, but I legitimately just want money to 'be in the game.' You can't even join the game if you don't have a good amount to begin with. I mean, some people can start with nothing, but I'm just being realistic. Consistent savings and small reasonable returns over time coupled with a middle-of-the-road frugal lifestyle and I'll eventually reach one of those benchmarks.

I also firmly believe that wealth accumulates wealth and that the savings process is exponential to a certain point. So, as I save more I should hypothetically begin to 'return' more assuming I manage risk/ position sizing (in whatever it is I do) correctly.

>>981844
I get what you mean. There's a bit of hunger for status and power in all of us, and there's nothing wrong with it. We want to do important things, not just live paycheck to paycheck and barely get by.

>>981824
http://dropcanvas.com/zpf5p
Please take a look at self made wealth in here.
...
Not having a REAL goal might hurt your long time prospects. Its important to know the math but its more important to know why the hell you're doing this whole life thing.

Surviving is not thriving.

I guess what I'm saying is figure out what you'd like to do, that you can really sink your teeth into. Once you have that make sure not even the armies of hell can stop you. Really Take the time to figure figure it out and in the meantime just stack.

So in annualized terms we're talking 6k a year. So 60k every decade nominally.

But It seems like you're trying to do everything yourself. You seem industrious. Why not leverage your skills and other peoples time to build a business. ROI in business are usually measured in Multiples not percentages.

>>981844
It seems like you're discounting the power of leverage as well. Take a business with a small margin of say 7%. Take a loan for 4% Interest 1 % principal . I costs 500k. So take home is 2% You invested 50k. 2% of 500k is 10k. Your personal ROI is 20%. with a 5 year break even. And thats just a pure ROI play, anything value added just adds to your multiple.

I'm 19 right now, no steady employment, but next year when I start at college I plan on putting away around $1000 a month, and hopefully $20,000 a year in total, for my 6 years at college (doing a double degree, Business + Law).

Thankfully my parents are helping pay for my degree, which costs $180,000, and I'll have around $120,000 saved up before I actually "start" life. I'm 2 years behind, but in the 2 years I've learned a lot about personal finance, so I think I'm okay being a little later and older than everyone else.

My goal is first to buy a really expensive car, it's something I've been wanting since I was a boy. It's a Lamborghini. I'm not sure exactly which one, but in 6 years time, buying a Gallardo will be stupid, so it will probably be an Aventador or a Huracan. That's been my main goal forever, and that's what I plan to do first.

>>981681
Nice painting btw. I would buy something thats undervalued like silver or oil. Maybe not silver quite yet but deff under 12 bucks. Id say you'd probably want to get into oil asap. Dont spend all your 15k of course but if you put 800 into oil you will be happy when it turns into 1200 next year or 4000 10 years.
Silver is just a wonderful thing if your looking to preserve wealth for the long run. Just make sure your only buying it when its low like 9-13 bucks.

>>981681
I try save $4k per month minimum. Currently at $230k savings $55k vanguard. Savings will be used for house down payments in a few months. Probably. Goal used to be "YOLO ima save n buy a LAMBO" but now it's more like "I'm 31 and would like to semi-retire so if I do x/y/z it means I'll only need to work 10-20hrs per week"

That's about where I'm at

>>981681

Saving is a wise decision in general.

Try to convert your active income into a good passive income source. Set a certain passive income goal for yourself for the next 20 years.

>>982107
Cool story bro, now greentext it and /b/ got a new copy pasta

There's no one size fits all when it comes to savings and long term retirement goals. It depends entirely on where you want to be.

For the way I live and my goals, $500 a month savings would not be enough. I'm at around four times that depending on the month and still not entirely happy with it.

As far as wealth accumulating wealth, that's not as true as it used to be. The days of 8, 10 even 12% returns are long gone for the most part. You're in the 3-5% neighborhood right now in the US unless you're trying some wolf of wall street nonsense or running some kind of side business.

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>>981681
15k, 500 monthly and 50k in 4 years? Easier than fuck. I mean 500x12x4 alone gives you 24k. 24+15=39k

With a correct use of leverage, Even 100k in 4 years should be an easy task. And for that little you dont even have to take risk really.

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>>982496
>you're in the 3-5% neighborhood right now in the US unless

Well, it certainly does not look like that if you look the past 7 years lol. Basically even a monkey would have made 250%-300% just with sp500 and dow with leverage that is so small it's practically bulletproof.

>>982653

I said right now, not the last 7 years.

Tell me, where can you get over 5% annual return right now in the US starting with 15K without wolf of wall street nonsense, a business or risking your only nest egg?

>>982282

I always loved this painting. I'm not sure who it is unfortunately.

I've been thinking of accumulating some oil and nat gas stocks and just averaging down over time. I want to 'wait' for a capitulation day, a true murderous down-day and buy some LEAPs so I'm leveraged years out on a longer term rally.

This is outside the scope of this conversation, but you can combine leaps with options -if- you have a large enough net worth to cover the shares. It's an esoteric covered call strategy except you're covering your shares with LEAPs and not actual shares.

I don't 'need' a lot to start because I've always been that guy that makes something from nothing, but it would be nice to sleep at night knowing my risk is somewhat mitigated.

>>982310

Wow, that's amazing man! I once had the 'save for a used exotic' dream, but you realize as you save how difficult it really is to accumulate wealth without having an exotic and no means to justify/ pay for it otherwise. I'd still entertain the idea of owning one for a bit, but only because I could buy it for a little less and maybe sell it for a little profit/ breakeven when I was finished with my vanity purchase.

Thanks for the motivation anon.

>>982496

My comment about 'wealth accumulating wealth' wasn't necessarily directed toward any one investment strategy in general. Take for instance real estate: the guy that has 500k cash is going to get a better 'all-cash' deal for a flip/ investment property than the guy that has to take out a loan with interest. You can argue semantics about this scenario, but the simplistic approach is the same: you need money to play the game. People with less money have more refined skills that offset not having large amounts of capital like being able to control inventory better or hunting deals better. Couple those skills with a large amount of capital and you're set.

Money attracts money. A man will feel more comfortable 'partnering' with you if you have a good amount of capital. A bank will give you a better rate if you have a good amount of capital. It's not about having x amount of return in the markets and compounding interest (altho that helps a lot).

The best quote I ever read was "money is like water: it always finds it's own level." Money will always go to where it should go. Some people can fill up while others are riddled with holes. It's why millionaires become broke, and broke people become millionaires.

>>982942
Honestly, I can feel these are magical times when you can easily triple your money. Between oil, natural gas, and silver you should not have trouble finding a capitulation day where your almost certain the price can't go much lower. Its so easy, there is absolutely no way that buying oil under $40 a barrel will screw you over. There is literally no risk involved! We already have the cars, trucks, tractors, airplanes, and ships manufactured that take oil! Plus we have the roads built already so there is no way we're not going to use oil over the next 10-20 years. And if you add into account the population growth with the fact that it takes 10 units of oil to produce 1 unit of food with modern agriculture is just icing on the cake.

Ive never personally researched or invested in natural gas but just looking at the chart and understanding the fundamentals to some extent you can see its becoming more and more undervalued.

With silver, I'm probably the only guy on these boards that actually bought a shit load when it was $7 an oz and was selling it all at $40 an oz. I'm not taking full credit tho, honestly Jim Rogers told me exactly how the silver market would play out 8 years ago. He literally said (almost a decade ago) silver is undervalued right now, its going to go up a lot, I hope it doesn't go up too fast or ill have to sell some and buy back after the correction. So 8 years later were near the end of the correction and its time to buy again. He thinks there is still going to be a better time to buy tho around 11-12 bucks. I see buying silver under $12 having almost no risk if you look at how the fundamentals have only gotten stronger as the price has gone down. Paper currencies around the world are a wreak and the debts are unsustainable so were probably going to see people lose trust in fiat paper money very soon and bitcoins have a lot of flaws as well. So if people want to have limited sound money again our only real option is gold probably.