Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected]
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected].
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
Save up an emergency fund. If you can manage to keep six months to a year's worth of expenses in a savings account, it will give you a huge psychological cushion in rough times. Beyond that, save and invest as early as you can.
Learn how to do basic maintenance on a bicycle, car, motorcycle or whatever else in your life that you depend on. That knowledge and experience will pay dividends the rest of your life.
I'll second this by repeating something I said yesterday: it costs more money to have to patch things with bandaid solutions rather than quality solutions. The example I gave was someone not able to pay to turn their electricity back on because they had to keep buying candles for light. I couldn't save to buy dishes because I kept having to buy disposable plates for my meals.
When you're absolutely strapped, you waste a lot of money on what you can get while prolonging getting a real solution. Having an emergency fund that you can go to when you get sick or your car fails or whatever else is really an investment in your own wellbeing.
3-6 months is plenty. At the 6 months mark you take literally any job you can get and then keep looking for one that you want. The other site had a pretty good personal finance community. Their flowchart does a great job of summarizing things. https://i.imgur.com/lSoUQr2.jpeg
It might be plenty, depending on your emergency. But you never know when you might be asked to care for an ill family member, suffer a health setback yourself, or end up out of work in a soft labor market - which we are currently in. It's a risk based decision, but as price-to-earnings of potential investments is currently incredibly high (suggesting unrealistically high future return expectations), I would hedge on the side of more savings rather than earlier investment.