It's a big milestone of accomplishment in my life, but I feel weird just telling family members or my online friends about it. The only other people who know are my coworkers because we all got the same raise. Money doesn't go as far nowadays due to crazy inflation post COVID and my area has higher cost of living than where I grew up, but I'm still very happy about this. I remember back when I used to only make minimum wage. All those years of schooling eventually made their way back to me. I'll never make as much money as someone like a doctor, but it's definitely enough for me to live comfortably as a single person.

Anyway, I'll delete this in a bit (or sooner if it gets removed by a mod), but I hope you guys out there have a good weekend.

Edit: Thank you guys very much :)

Edit 2: Jeez there are so many more comments than I expected. You guys are so nice!!

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[–] ngdev 10 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

Congrats! Some unsolicited money advice I wish I had known earlier in my career:

If you have a mortgage and the interest rate is less than 7ish percent and you're wanting to pay it early, something to consider:

You might put whatever extra you were planning into a Roth IRA until it's maxed and also max out your 401k if your employment has that. Historical yield is 7ish% and compound interest will help you immensely 20-30 years down the line.

Paying off the house early is nice feeling but you can possibly refinance for lower rates later if it's currently similar to or higher than historical investment yields. You could also do a little bit of both but prioritizing retirement accounts is the smarter move imo. So if your mortgage rate is 5% and you want to pay that down, you're leaving 2% on the table by not putting it into either an IRA or an index fund instead.

This is assuming you're not carrying other debts at higher rates like credit cards, those should be your priority. Next would be 3 months of all bills saved up, you can find some decent interest rates on savings accounts. I have Acorns and it's at 5% so the 3 months reserves will stack interest for you too.

[–] ultranaut 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This is great advice. Hearing about people paying off their super low rate mortgages early is kind of shocking. With rates higher now that's literally just throwing money away.

[–] ngdev 3 points 10 months ago

Oh yeah and if you math it out over 30 years, 2% can be a difference in the hundreds of thousands

[–] dingus 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I forget what my mortgage rate is but I think it's somewhere between 5.8-6.8%. I'll have to look it up.

My wanting to eventually pay the mortgage off earlier is to dramatically decrease my monthly bills and make it easier to save and easier to put money in my pocket each month. I'm not really keen on dumping all of my money into something like an IRA. I discovered recently that high yield savings accounts are a thing and I'm much more comfortable with that. Granted, mine is only like 4.3%.

While I do need to put more into retirement and do plan to contribute more to my 401k, I don't really want to go ham over putting every penny I have into retirement. Life is uncertain and you really don't know how long you'll live, even if you try your best to do a healthy life. It's all about balance between enjoying the now and planning for the future, and not putting too much emphasis on one or the other. You don't want to live like you're homeless only to die in a car accident and never get to enjoy what you've worked for.

[–] ngdev 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Absolutely! I grapple with that all the time. I love having fun and traveling and having cool stuff. It's fun having some money you're not afraid to spend.

You deserve it, you're the one who got yourself to where you're at. At the end of the day do what's right for you, just maybe spend a little bit less over the years and instead put it toward the end game.

As time goes on, sitting on ass collecting interest and being able to live off that interest comfortably will be awesome, and if you were able to live it up the whole time is priceless. Treat your now self and future self, but future self likely won't regret now self traveling etc. (so long as you're not doing illegal tax evasion and damaging your body long term lol)

[–] SendMePhotos 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You can max out a 401k?

[–] ngdev 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah it's like 21.5k for 2024. They have yearly maximums on retirement accounts in the US, and that number is higher if you're past a certain age ("catch up"). IRAs are a lot less, like 7k this year

[–] dvlsg 2 points 10 months ago

I think it's 23k for 2024.