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The highest probability for success for the 'everyday person': - Earn as much as you can from your own work. Take a 2nd job, change to a higher paying job, ask

The highest probability for success for the 'everyday person': - Earn as much as you can from your own work. Take a 2nd job, change to a higher paying job, ask for more responsibility and a raise at your current job, go back to school for a more lucrative degree, ... - Spend much less than you earn. Economize, share an apartment, buy an inexpensive car, shop at Trader Joe's and Costco, .... - Learn how to invest. This is really important. The most deliberate and highest probability of ultimate success is likely mutual funds. Individual stocks can goose it, but should only a small portion of your wealth, as they start to bring a luck factor into the mix ... - Protect your investments. Health insurance is really a must in the US, might be a must elsewhere. Work for a company that offers health insurance. Car insurance is a must. Other insurance is probably wise. - Be patient. The compounding effect of investing takes a long time, but once it gets rolling, it's pretty much unstoppable.

nojvek 8y ago
Health insurance is a must in US because the entire country systematically doesn’t give a shit about how inefficient it is. I guess some people make fat bucks at the expense of people’s lives. My pay + company benefit == $650/month to Anthem. I still end up paying $5000 for all pre-pregnancy costs out of pocket and the baby isn’t even here yet. In Australia it would be 10% of that, purely because they got their shit together a long time ago.
- Someone1234 8y ago
  In the US insurance companies themselves are meant to fight to keep prices down, but right now due to a miscalculation during the creation of Obamacare ("Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act") they're incentivized to INCREASE medical costs... Why? The 80/20 Rule ("Medical Loss Ratio" rule). > The 80/20 Rule generally requires insurance companies to spend at least 80% of the money they take in from premiums on health care costs and quality improvement activities. The other 20% can go to administrative, overhead, and marketing costs. Meaning insurance company executive wages can only come out of 20% of your premium, so if the CEO wants that pay increase they have to increase overall healthcare expenditure, premiums, and by extension their 20% cut. While the 80/20 rule was a fantastic idea on paper, it changed insurance company's incentives in such a way so that premium increases are good for them. You might be thinking "but in a competitive landscape people would just switch!" but there's nothing competitive about health insurance, people cannot even pick their own (their employer does) and most employers only offer two of the larger ones from that state.
  - frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago
    So insurance in the US wants to take even more than 20% as profit? Am I correct in thinking that this actually makes socialized systems more efficient? They never have to front any profit overhead.
    - Someone1234 8y ago
      No, they want to increase how much that 20% share is worth. If premiums increase from e.g. $500 to $600/month, the insurance company makes $20 more per insured via their 20% share. The other 80% ($480) really does go towards medical costs, but the issue is that insurance companies aren't incentivized to help you keep those medical costs down (via negotiation with hospitals/drug companies), but may be incentivized to increase them. That's a problem. In an ideal world insurance company's incentives and their customer's goals should be aligned (e.g. both save money). That makes them the ultimate advocate for you and fighting to keep healthcare costs low, that isn't what is happening (either before or after Obamacare).
    - rustybelt 8y ago
      Not profit. The 20% is supposed to cover all overhead. 80% is mandated to be spent directly on claims.
    - s73v3r_ 8y ago
      No, they want to grow the costs so that same 20% represents more money.
  - aaavl2821 8y ago
    Increases in premiums have always been good for insurance companies, just like increases in revenue are always good for other companies Insurers do actively try to reduce healthcare costs but in many cases they are at the mercy of providers
- indemnity 8y ago
  I’m in New Zealand, have a six month old son, we paid $0 from finding out she was pregnant up until going home after she stayed three days in the hospital to get comfortable with feeding him (there were no complications, no caesarean). All checkups + scans pre-birth were free. It would have cost money only if we decided to go for a private obstetrician, I think it’s the same in Australia. So if it’s one of the 90% of births with no complications, going for the free public option just makes sense.
Someone1234 8y ago
> shop at Trader Joe's and Costco Huh? Was that trying to say save money at the supermarket? Because those are two stores I don't associate with saving money, they're stores that offer premium products at reasonable prices, but they aren't going to compete with actual discount retailers. It is just really odd examples/usage in that context...
- k__ 8y ago
  Also, this only helps if you're living in some place where food is expensive.
- ryanSrich 8y ago
  The lowest end Grocer in my area is Safeway. Trader Joe's is still cheaper.
- ethagnawl 8y ago
  N=1, but shopping at Trader Joe's in NYC will save you money -- if you can bear the crowds.
  - Someone1234 8y ago
    NYC is definitely an N=1, most other places in the country Trader Joe's is quite expensive. The food is high quality (and value good) but in absolute terms, more expensive than discount supermarkets.
    - electricslpnsld 8y ago
      > NYC is definitely an N=1 Where I live in California, my options are Safeway, Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, and a co-op more-organic-than-thou each egg has a name tag and resume type place. Trader Joe's is by far the cheapest of them all. The fact that Trader Joe's fixes their prices nationwide makes them much cheaper than the alternatives in expensive metros.
- 11thEarlOfMar 8y ago
  Yeah, for sure you can find $60k diamond rings and $30k cognac at Costco (not kidding, see Costco in M.V.). But you can also get the least expensive per weight corn flakes, milk, potatoes and beans. And croissants... I used those examples as a versus to the daily $7 Starbucks breakfast that many young folks seem to go for.
falcolas 8y ago
Counterpoint: Your chances of dying before "making it big" and retiring are somewhere in the 1-in-10 range. Investing works mostly because of the current trend of artificially propping up the stock market. Any failure in your investment strategy leave you in the same boat as the current boomer retirees who are trying to get back in the workforce. Not to mention, your life is going to be pretty miserable if you're working two jobs and spending a lot of effort on living frugal. There's just something off-putting about the thought of spending decades living frugally and working yourself to the bone so you can retire and finally have fun. The exemplar folks who advocate doing this, a'la Mr. Money Mustache, are real pieces of work too. They tend to hide the fact that they went into the process with an inheritance to fund their their nest egg and are working nearly full time in their "retirement" as paid frugal advocates.
- 11thEarlOfMar 8y ago
  I have no mustache and was born with no silver spoon, Had to work my way through college. This approach to building wealth worked for me.
  - falcolas 8y ago
    > I have no mustache and was born with no silver spoon, Had to work my way through college. My parents said this quite a bit. Of course, my dad did blue collar labor for an inflation-adjusted $30 per hour (the same position today pays around $11 an hour), plus overtime and a pension. My mom was a part time waitress to pay her way through 4 years of college. It was surprising how quickly they stopped saying that when they looked at the cost of a new house because they had to move. Or when they looked at what it would cost to put their granddaughter through the same college my mom went to.
    - gascan 8y ago
      There is a certain amount of inflating expectations going on, IMO. I'd bet a lot of the people who worked their way through college, went to community college. Also, even comparing like for like- my father attended Berkeley in the 60's. I think he'd be one of the first to tell you it wasn't quite the same world-famous ultra-elite school kids are applying to today. Similar to complaints about how one's parents were able to afford a house in Silicon Valley, why can't I? Well, gee, fifty years ago Silicon Valley was an orchard.
ryandrake 8y ago
Hmm... I’m still sitting here waiting for that “magic” of compounding interest to take effect. So often HN (and r/personalfinance) investment advice reminds me of the ol’ Draw the Rest of the Owl meme[1]. Just “do mutual funds” and you’ll one day be a millionaire because Compounding Interest. Ok well thanks to a few recessions, poor timing of grad school and bouts of unemployment, my retirement is not much more than what I put into it. So there seems to be some other secret step between “buy mutual funds” and “retire comfortably“ that I’m missing... 1: http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/572/078/d6d.jpg http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/572/078/d6d...
- 11thEarlOfMar 8y ago
  'bouts of unemployment' this is bad luck and you are correct that it can take the wind out of anyone's sails. Looking at the math, it's not difficult to find a mainstream mutual fund like FCNTX that has been pretty big for a long time. Since 1993, 25 years ago and encompassing both the dot com bust and the sub-prime catastrophe, it has returned, on an annualized basis, around 9%. I use that example because it's a pretty mainstream fund that has been highly rated by Morningstar most of those years, so it isn't hard to identify it as a fairly safe place to get excellent returns. I've been in it for most of those 25 years and when I first chose it, I was for sure a novice at investing. Note that today, it is only one of several funds in multiple sectors that I hold, I've diversified over time. There really is no way to get rich quickly that does not involve a large dose of luck. The <30 multi-millionaires in Silicon Valley tilted the odds in their favor via a variety of means, but I'd guess that for every example of those people, you'd find dozens who moved to the area, worked their asses off in startups for a few years and then crashed and either settled for a regular job or moved elsewhere.
- graedus 8y ago
  > Ok well thanks to a few recessions I'm interested in this guy's[0][1] approach to take most of the downside risk out of recessions/bear markets/crashes compared to buy-and-hold. Basically, start with a diversified portfolio, and when any of them closes below their monthly 12mo moving average, sell it and buy treasuries. I'm sure there are thousands of more sophisticated models out there, but the nice thing about this is its simplicity - minimal management, just rebalance once a month according to a single rule and forget about it. Looks like it works well, backtested against lots of historical market data sets. [0] http://michaelritger.com/2017/10/19/tactical-asset-allocation-tested-back-to-1930/ http://michaelritger.com/2017/10/19/tactical-asset-allocatio... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGnNGuo5ywg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGnNGuo5ywg
hoechst 8y ago
this is way better (and more real) advice than a collection of disjointed, pretentious one liners.
empath75 8y ago
Don't get sick. Don't have kids. Don't get laid off. Don't have any unplanned emergencies that wipe your meager savings out. Don't enjoy life now.
orasis 8y ago
Read MJ Demarco’s book “Unscripted” and you might come away with the opposite opinion.
jandrewrogers 8y ago
Even simpler, it is an equation with three variables: income, expenses, and rate of return on savings. An important point is that you do not need to hyper-optimize all three variables to achieve a good outcome, which makes it adaptable to many lifestyles and circumstances. Hyper-frugality is not the only path. There are multiple viable strategies that can be built around optimizing one or two variables and paying minimal attention to the others. Frugality (minimizing expenses) is the easiest strategy to execute and it covers the broadest range of individual situations. I know some engineers that take the approach of aggressively maximizing income, which requires a different kind of investment/sacrifice, allowing them to achieve their goals without hyper-optimizing expenses or rate of return. I would make the observation that this strategy tends to take a human toll, so not for everyone. The rarest strategy in the wild, because it is the most technical to execute, is hyper-optimizing rate of return. I only know a couple examples of this, including one who went from -$50k (debt with no assets) to financial independence in ten years (and handily beat the S&P500 every single year) on a modest engineer's salary. This requires a deep investment in understanding a foreign domain almost no one is familiar with and achieving a degree of mastery. It has the highest payoff long-term but it also requires the most diligence and effort upfront. Making this work requires an unusual kind of person. Being frugal and investing in index funds is definitely the path of least resistance for many people, but many people (or their partners!) do not want to live a hyper-frugal lifestyle. Fortunately, there are other options available with their own set of tradeoffs and engineers are well-positioned to take advantage of them.
- sizzle 8y ago
  As an investing noob, most of my money is parked in low interest savings accounts. How much of my life savings should I park in index funds? Any smart investing resources/guides you recommend? Thanks for your time.
  - nostrademons 8y ago
    Rule of thumb: 6 months of living expenses in liquid cash (savings accounts, rotating CD ladder, money-market funds, etc.). Any money that you'll need in the next 5 years in low-risk, non-volatile investments (eg. bonds, T-bills). This usually applies to retirees, but also to folks like entrepreneurs or commission salespeople that have unsteady incomes. Only invest in real-estate, individual stocks, crypto, precious metals, foreign currencies, collectibles, etc. if you know what you're doing. If it's not your full-time job (eg. a venture capitalist or real estate developer), no more than 10% of your net worth in these investments. Put the rest into broad-based stock index funds.
jandrese 8y ago
- Make sure you don't marry, or if you do absolutely don't have kids. - Become a hermit Saving money was so easy before I had kids. Once you have kids you need a car big enough to transport them. You need a house big enough to hold them. The missus insists that just going camping isn't really a vacation and they need to see some sights (real travel). And travel with kids isn't cheap. You gotta start getting the family insurance plans and the million little school fees and your bigger house has more stuff to break in it and the kids break stuff... Worst of all you multiply your chances of having some big medical problem--the death knell for any frugal living plan--the more people you have to care for. Also, Costco doesn't really save you that much money unless you were the kind of person who always bought the top-of-the-line premium whatever. For people who typically only buy the base model widget the price is pretty similar or slightly more expensive typically.
- starchild_3001 8y ago
  I do agree with your assessment that kids are the biggest expense and possibly the biggest joy in life. Well it’s a risk and difficulty worth for many of us. But do your math. After certain age family is the biggest and maybe the only close friend. Social ties are important and usually healthy. Having kids and family can also be very motivating. After all, why do we live?
heedlessly3 8y ago
also don't have kids. They are a money suck.
joeblow9999 8y ago
"Work for a company that offers health insurance. " Small nitpick: You can always buy your own insurance. Obamacare made it harder to buy good high-deductible plans for yourself but even so, you can get your own directly. Don't go without health insurance, especially catastrophic coverage, unless rent and food are all you can afford.

nojvek 8y ago

Health insurance is a must in US because the entire country systematically doesn’t give a shit about how inefficient it is. I guess some people make fat bucks at the expense of people’s lives. My pay + company benefit == $650/month to Anthem. I still end up paying $5000 for all pre-pregnancy costs out of pocket and the baby isn’t even here yet. In Australia it would be 10% of that, purely because they got their shit together a long time ago.

Someone1234 8y ago
In the US insurance companies themselves are meant to fight to keep prices down, but right now due to a miscalculation during the creation of Obamacare ("Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act") they're incentivized to INCREASE medical costs... Why? The 80/20 Rule ("Medical Loss Ratio" rule). > The 80/20 Rule generally requires insurance companies to spend at least 80% of the money they take in from premiums on health care costs and quality improvement activities. The other 20% can go to administrative, overhead, and marketing costs. Meaning insurance company executive wages can only come out of 20% of your premium, so if the CEO wants that pay increase they have to increase overall healthcare expenditure, premiums, and by extension their 20% cut. While the 80/20 rule was a fantastic idea on paper, it changed insurance company's incentives in such a way so that premium increases are good for them. You might be thinking "but in a competitive landscape people would just switch!" but there's nothing competitive about health insurance, people cannot even pick their own (their employer does) and most employers only offer two of the larger ones from that state.
- frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago
  So insurance in the US wants to take even more than 20% as profit? Am I correct in thinking that this actually makes socialized systems more efficient? They never have to front any profit overhead.
  - Someone1234 8y ago
    No, they want to increase how much that 20% share is worth. If premiums increase from e.g. $500 to $600/month, the insurance company makes $20 more per insured via their 20% share. The other 80% ($480) really does go towards medical costs, but the issue is that insurance companies aren't incentivized to help you keep those medical costs down (via negotiation with hospitals/drug companies), but may be incentivized to increase them. That's a problem. In an ideal world insurance company's incentives and their customer's goals should be aligned (e.g. both save money). That makes them the ultimate advocate for you and fighting to keep healthcare costs low, that isn't what is happening (either before or after Obamacare).
  - rustybelt 8y ago
    Not profit. The 20% is supposed to cover all overhead. 80% is mandated to be spent directly on claims.
  - s73v3r_ 8y ago
    No, they want to grow the costs so that same 20% represents more money.
- aaavl2821 8y ago
  Increases in premiums have always been good for insurance companies, just like increases in revenue are always good for other companies Insurers do actively try to reduce healthcare costs but in many cases they are at the mercy of providers
indemnity 8y ago
I’m in New Zealand, have a six month old son, we paid $0 from finding out she was pregnant up until going home after she stayed three days in the hospital to get comfortable with feeding him (there were no complications, no caesarean). All checkups + scans pre-birth were free. It would have cost money only if we decided to go for a private obstetrician, I think it’s the same in Australia. So if it’s one of the 90% of births with no complications, going for the free public option just makes sense.

Someone1234 8y ago

> shop at Trader Joe's and Costco Huh? Was that trying to say save money at the supermarket? Because those are two stores I don't associate with saving money, they're stores that offer premium products at reasonable prices, but they aren't going to compete with actual discount retailers. It is just really odd examples/usage in that context...

k__ 8y ago
Also, this only helps if you're living in some place where food is expensive.
ryanSrich 8y ago
The lowest end Grocer in my area is Safeway. Trader Joe's is still cheaper.
ethagnawl 8y ago
N=1, but shopping at Trader Joe's in NYC will save you money -- if you can bear the crowds.
- Someone1234 8y ago
  NYC is definitely an N=1, most other places in the country Trader Joe's is quite expensive. The food is high quality (and value good) but in absolute terms, more expensive than discount supermarkets.
  - electricslpnsld 8y ago
    > NYC is definitely an N=1 Where I live in California, my options are Safeway, Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, and a co-op more-organic-than-thou each egg has a name tag and resume type place. Trader Joe's is by far the cheapest of them all. The fact that Trader Joe's fixes their prices nationwide makes them much cheaper than the alternatives in expensive metros.
11thEarlOfMar 8y ago
Yeah, for sure you can find $60k diamond rings and $30k cognac at Costco (not kidding, see Costco in M.V.). But you can also get the least expensive per weight corn flakes, milk, potatoes and beans. And croissants... I used those examples as a versus to the daily $7 Starbucks breakfast that many young folks seem to go for.

falcolas 8y ago

Counterpoint: Your chances of dying before "making it big" and retiring are somewhere in the 1-in-10 range. Investing works mostly because of the current trend of artificially propping up the stock market. Any failure in your investment strategy leave you in the same boat as the current boomer retirees who are trying to get back in the workforce. Not to mention, your life is going to be pretty miserable if you're working two jobs and spending a lot of effort on living frugal. There's just something off-putting about the thought of spending decades living frugally and working yourself to the bone so you can retire and finally have fun. The exemplar folks who advocate doing this, a'la Mr. Money Mustache, are real pieces of work too. They tend to hide the fact that they went into the process with an inheritance to fund their their nest egg and are working nearly full time in their "retirement" as paid frugal advocates.

11thEarlOfMar 8y ago
I have no mustache and was born with no silver spoon, Had to work my way through college. This approach to building wealth worked for me.
- falcolas 8y ago
  > I have no mustache and was born with no silver spoon, Had to work my way through college. My parents said this quite a bit. Of course, my dad did blue collar labor for an inflation-adjusted $30 per hour (the same position today pays around $11 an hour), plus overtime and a pension. My mom was a part time waitress to pay her way through 4 years of college. It was surprising how quickly they stopped saying that when they looked at the cost of a new house because they had to move. Or when they looked at what it would cost to put their granddaughter through the same college my mom went to.
  - gascan 8y ago
    There is a certain amount of inflating expectations going on, IMO. I'd bet a lot of the people who worked their way through college, went to community college. Also, even comparing like for like- my father attended Berkeley in the 60's. I think he'd be one of the first to tell you it wasn't quite the same world-famous ultra-elite school kids are applying to today. Similar to complaints about how one's parents were able to afford a house in Silicon Valley, why can't I? Well, gee, fifty years ago Silicon Valley was an orchard.

ryandrake 8y ago

Hmm... I’m still sitting here waiting for that “magic” of compounding interest to take effect. So often HN (and r/personalfinance) investment advice reminds me of the ol’ Draw the Rest of the Owl meme[1]. Just “do mutual funds” and you’ll one day be a millionaire because Compounding Interest. Ok well thanks to a few recessions, poor timing of grad school and bouts of unemployment, my retirement is not much more than what I put into it. So there seems to be some other secret step between “buy mutual funds” and “retire comfortably“ that I’m missing... 1: http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/572/078/d6d.jpg http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/572/078/d6d...

11thEarlOfMar 8y ago
'bouts of unemployment' this is bad luck and you are correct that it can take the wind out of anyone's sails. Looking at the math, it's not difficult to find a mainstream mutual fund like FCNTX that has been pretty big for a long time. Since 1993, 25 years ago and encompassing both the dot com bust and the sub-prime catastrophe, it has returned, on an annualized basis, around 9%. I use that example because it's a pretty mainstream fund that has been highly rated by Morningstar most of those years, so it isn't hard to identify it as a fairly safe place to get excellent returns. I've been in it for most of those 25 years and when I first chose it, I was for sure a novice at investing. Note that today, it is only one of several funds in multiple sectors that I hold, I've diversified over time. There really is no way to get rich quickly that does not involve a large dose of luck. The <30 multi-millionaires in Silicon Valley tilted the odds in their favor via a variety of means, but I'd guess that for every example of those people, you'd find dozens who moved to the area, worked their asses off in startups for a few years and then crashed and either settled for a regular job or moved elsewhere.
graedus 8y ago
> Ok well thanks to a few recessions I'm interested in this guy's[0][1] approach to take most of the downside risk out of recessions/bear markets/crashes compared to buy-and-hold. Basically, start with a diversified portfolio, and when any of them closes below their monthly 12mo moving average, sell it and buy treasuries. I'm sure there are thousands of more sophisticated models out there, but the nice thing about this is its simplicity - minimal management, just rebalance once a month according to a single rule and forget about it. Looks like it works well, backtested against lots of historical market data sets. [0] http://michaelritger.com/2017/10/19/tactical-asset-allocation-tested-back-to-1930/ http://michaelritger.com/2017/10/19/tactical-asset-allocatio... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGnNGuo5ywg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGnNGuo5ywg

hoechst 8y ago

this is way better (and more real) advice than a collection of disjointed, pretentious one liners.

empath75 8y ago

Don't get sick. Don't have kids. Don't get laid off. Don't have any unplanned emergencies that wipe your meager savings out. Don't enjoy life now.

orasis 8y ago

Read MJ Demarco’s book “Unscripted” and you might come away with the opposite opinion.

jandrewrogers 8y ago

Even simpler, it is an equation with three variables: income, expenses, and rate of return on savings. An important point is that you do not need to hyper-optimize all three variables to achieve a good outcome, which makes it adaptable to many lifestyles and circumstances. Hyper-frugality is not the only path. There are multiple viable strategies that can be built around optimizing one or two variables and paying minimal attention to the others. Frugality (minimizing expenses) is the easiest strategy to execute and it covers the broadest range of individual situations. I know some engineers that take the approach of aggressively maximizing income, which requires a different kind of investment/sacrifice, allowing them to achieve their goals without hyper-optimizing expenses or rate of return. I would make the observation that this strategy tends to take a human toll, so not for everyone. The rarest strategy in the wild, because it is the most technical to execute, is hyper-optimizing rate of return. I only know a couple examples of this, including one who went from -$50k (debt with no assets) to financial independence in ten years (and handily beat the S&P500 every single year) on a modest engineer's salary. This requires a deep investment in understanding a foreign domain almost no one is familiar with and achieving a degree of mastery. It has the highest payoff long-term but it also requires the most diligence and effort upfront. Making this work requires an unusual kind of person. Being frugal and investing in index funds is definitely the path of least resistance for many people, but many people (or their partners!) do not want to live a hyper-frugal lifestyle. Fortunately, there are other options available with their own set of tradeoffs and engineers are well-positioned to take advantage of them.

sizzle 8y ago
As an investing noob, most of my money is parked in low interest savings accounts. How much of my life savings should I park in index funds? Any smart investing resources/guides you recommend? Thanks for your time.
- nostrademons 8y ago
  Rule of thumb: 6 months of living expenses in liquid cash (savings accounts, rotating CD ladder, money-market funds, etc.). Any money that you'll need in the next 5 years in low-risk, non-volatile investments (eg. bonds, T-bills). This usually applies to retirees, but also to folks like entrepreneurs or commission salespeople that have unsteady incomes. Only invest in real-estate, individual stocks, crypto, precious metals, foreign currencies, collectibles, etc. if you know what you're doing. If it's not your full-time job (eg. a venture capitalist or real estate developer), no more than 10% of your net worth in these investments. Put the rest into broad-based stock index funds.

jandrese 8y ago

- Make sure you don't marry, or if you do absolutely don't have kids. - Become a hermit Saving money was so easy before I had kids. Once you have kids you need a car big enough to transport them. You need a house big enough to hold them. The missus insists that just going camping isn't really a vacation and they need to see some sights (real travel). And travel with kids isn't cheap. You gotta start getting the family insurance plans and the million little school fees and your bigger house has more stuff to break in it and the kids break stuff... Worst of all you multiply your chances of having some big medical problem--the death knell for any frugal living plan--the more people you have to care for. Also, Costco doesn't really save you that much money unless you were the kind of person who always bought the top-of-the-line premium whatever. For people who typically only buy the base model widget the price is pretty similar or slightly more expensive typically.

starchild_3001 8y ago
I do agree with your assessment that kids are the biggest expense and possibly the biggest joy in life. Well it’s a risk and difficulty worth for many of us. But do your math. After certain age family is the biggest and maybe the only close friend. Social ties are important and usually healthy. Having kids and family can also be very motivating. After all, why do we live?

heedlessly3 8y ago

also don't have kids. They are a money suck.

joeblow9999 8y ago

"Work for a company that offers health insurance. " Small nitpick: You can always buy your own insurance. Obamacare made it harder to buy good high-deductible plans for yourself but even so, you can get your own directly. Don't go without health insurance, especially catastrophic coverage, unless rent and food are all you can afford.