Troutsrunner
New member
Im tired of putting in the hours and not having anything to show for it. im just ranting so you can continue to scroll i just needed to say it. I cant even pay my bills half the time. Life sucks.
My wife is out of work right now with the newborn in the house, and things are tight. We're paycheck to paycheck right now, and I hate paycheck to paycheck. I feel your pain.
The OP lives in the Lowcountry of SC, where housing prices as well as prices for cars and commodities are quite high (but nowhere as bad as here in DC). In the rest of the state one's George Washingtons have much more purchasing power.
Go work at Boeing. My old boss is in the paint shop there, bringing home about $70,000 yearly with overtime as of last year.
The OP lives in the Lowcountry of SC, where housing prices as well as prices for cars and commodities are quite high (but nowhere as bad as here in DC). In the rest of the state one's George Washingtons have much more purchasing power.
Go work at Boeing. My old boss is in the paint shop there, bringing home about $70,000 yearly with overtime as of last year.
Once you break out of the rat race, lower your spending to start saving hugely, and do a bit of math and realize that owning a house is actually slightly profitable in general (I've got a very complex spreadsheet to get me this result) you realize you're better off in an area which pays more, even if housing costs more.
Technically at this point, my house that I've owned for 4 years has paid me money in appreciation on the order of $6k a month, while my mortgage is a measly tiny fraction of that amount. But in general without property bubbles, your house ends up being basically free to live in when everything is factored in, including appreciation, mortgage, maintenance, taxes, and tax writeoffs.
My personal index fund investments due to my increased saving due to lowering spending have turned huge profits over the past 5 years, in general around 20% a year as the economy recovered from the dip in 2008. That's a doubling of money every 3.8 years. That's free money that required me to do 0 work. Build that up enough and you can basically retire as mrmoneymustache did.
Honestly that's how you break out of the month to month rat race, and that's why I sent that article I posted in my previous post. It works.
The OP lives in the Lowcountry of SC, where housing prices as well as prices for cars and commodities are quite high (but nowhere as bad as here in DC). In the rest of the state one's George Washingtons have much more purchasing power.
I personally find that most people need to start with this advice:
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/02/22/getting-rich-from-zero-to-hero-in-one-blog-post/
And this is his detailed timeline of how he got to that point:
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011...e-saved-from-zero-to-retirement-in-ten-years/
Don't think all your problems will go away with your bills paid.
I don't ever think about money or bills but that doesn't mean life is still always awesome.
Interesting so far and I was good with it all up until he said this: "Assignment: Watch a few of the great documentaries like Fast Food Nation and Food Inc., and An Inconvenient Truth.. then you might build up the appropriate level of guilty awareness to take the innocence out of shopping."
Op - would you mind sharing your age? If it's MYOB I understand or if you'd prefer to pm it, cool. I'm just curious.
Being smart with your money puts the power back into your hands.
Sure its no problem, I'm 22. Life hit me young and life hit me hard.
You're young enough you should be able to recover and learn a lesson that took me 10 years longer than you to learn. I hope things work out for you. I'm not religious but I do believe in a "master plan" thing and maybe this will be the eye opener I wish I had gotten when I was your age. I was adding up the money I've made since I turned 18 (approximations) and what I've actually got now and I'm absolutely ashamed. I hate having to admit to myself that I've made mistake after mistake but my goal for 2014 was to get to the start of a path in the right direction and 9 months in, I think I've achieved that goal. I definitely should have listened to people when I was your age.