Piracy

Not having kids.

Being born into a rich western country.

A literal move actually. 20 years ago I moved from America to a country with universal health care. That has saved my family probably close to a quarter million bucks in health care fees alone.

Bullshitting my way onto a high salary career track and just learning shit as i go.

Most of the things mentioned in this thread are mostly dumb luck and not necessarily active financial decisions.

• Not having a car (always living/renting in walking or biking distance of my work)
• Moving in with my partner straight out of college so we could split expenses
• Moving (with partner) to a low-cost-of-living city for the first 5 years after college
• Putting most of my medium-term and long-term savings into low-expense-ratio, passively managed index funds starting in my early 20s
• Buying almost exclusively second-hand clothes, furniture, and cookery
• Borrowing all desired books (and many desired movies and TV shows) from the library
• Only buying games when they are bundled or otherwise on steep discount years after release
• Pirating any other media in which I'm interested if its distributors make it even remotely difficult for me to buy it at a reasonable price
• Planning all dinners in advance every week before grocery shopping (leads to almost never eating at restaurants or ordering takeout, and almost no food waste because grocery list is based on actual meals)

Now, if I had to choose the best financial move out of that list? Probably the index funds. Though not having to pay for a car (or car insurance, or car registration, or car repair and maintenance, or parking, or fuel) is a close second.

In 2017 my landlord raised my rent from $1k to $1100 a month for the place I rented with my daughter because I finally broke down and got her a dog. I was annoyed because this wasn't in the lease but I was month to month by this time and figured I could probably get a house around me for the same cost and at least I'd be building equity. I closed in 2018 on a $120k fixer upper on 12 acres. I got a $30k rehab loan and my mortgage/insurance/property tax payment ended up being just over $1100. I spent 7 months in major renovations.

Fast forward to today, I have a 2.875% mortgage rate with just over $1000 a month all in payment (early COVID refi saved me about $100/month), my house was just appraised for $415k, and I was able to sell 5 acres of the land for a total of about $160k.

A free shelter dog ended up turning $150k into $575k. 10/10 would recommend.

Leaving Sydney for a cheaper quieter life in Central West NSW!

Nice 4 bedroom home with views, 1200m² block with trees, quiet area, school almost across the road, close to everything else and best of all, a tiny manageable mortgage!

Learning about long term index fund investing in my early 20s.

As 2023 was beginning I set a goal that I would have $5k in the bank no matter what.

Up to this year I’ve been living paycheck to paycheck. But resolving to save up $5k pushed me out of that for the first time ever.

I never did hit $5k. But I stopped living paycheck to paycheck. I haven’t checked my balance before paying rent since february of last year. I always have enough, and I just pay the bill.

Mined a Bitcoin in college.

Deciding not to get a car; it saves ~400.000 euros in my lifetime which at 40k net a year income means 8-10 year earlier pension

Working with my SO to start budgeting each month. We now have a system in place that works for us and a habit of getting out in front of expenses.

Budgeting helped us see that increasing your income is far more powerful than reducing spending, so we’re focused on spending to gain skills and increase our top line right now.

Not buying a boat

Choosing to be child-free.

Paying off my fucking car. New cars are a scam guys, don't be stupid like me 6 years ago.

Accidentally buying a modest house in what at the time was a "distressed" neighborhood because it was all we could afford. 15 years later the neighborhood has been gentrified and is highly desirable. The property has tripled in value and the land is now worth more than the house itself.

Anyhow, it was dumb luck on my part and again, mostly had to do with the place being affordable and relatively close to my wife's parents.

It was accidental.

So I started working at a startup right after I graduated college. They couldn't pay a competitive wage, so they gave me a ton of stock. A year into working there, about half the company was laid off. I survived. They begged us not to leave the company by giving us more stock. I started interviewing elsewhere, because I have bills to pay, but I never got any other jobs. Then one day they handed me an envelope. It contained paperwork for even more stock. I thought it wasn't going to be worth the paper it was printed on, so I kept looking for other jobs. Never found one.

Well, a few years go by and the company starts doing very well. Then we got bought out. Suddenly all the worthless stock they gave me was worth a fuck ton of money. The buying company bought ALL of it. Even unvested shares. One day they wrote me a really, really big check, then I went and bought a house.

It was absolutely life changing, and I tried to throw it away at every chance I got. I got so lucky.

Never buying into the crypto hype when several of my friends and coworkers told me to. (Maybe I would’ve made money, but probably not.)

I decided to basically stop buying anything unless I absolutely needed it for about two years. I put everything I had towards paying off my car and student loans. I had holey socks and shirts, torn up shoes, etc. Refused to spend money.

As a result, I was able to invest the money I was paying on my car and loans and eventually worked enough for a down payment on my current house.

I'm in the States so dunno how this translates... But my parents made get a 500usd limit credit card when I was like 14. It had been the best decision that I've made. My credit is so dn good now that I can get what ever I want easily approved. That and they insisted I make a home purchase at like 23- right be fore the mortgages went nuts. My mortgage is like a quarter of what others pay for a rental...

Thanks ma and pa 🤜🤛

Buying a house during covid when I saw rent was increasing drastically for no apparent reason. I could barely afford it at the time but thanks to inflation and a couple raises, I'm comfortably sitting on a house that's now worth 50% more than I bought it for, and paying way less than current rental prices. Rent is insane right now.

Move abroad, halve my taxes, triple my income, reduce my cost of living by nearly 80%, effectively increased my savings rate by ~1100%, from 500 EUR/month to now >5k EUR/month. That's 5k in fixed savings (investment plan), plus whatever else I don't spend accumulates in my savings account.

Securing a long-term fixed rate mortgage just before the war in Russia. Other than that it’s basically been any time I saved money rather than spending it.

Don't fall for trends. Save instead, and spend on true passions.

Vasectomy like 10 years ago. Kids are expensive.

Starting investing into index fund ETFs

I only started about 3 years ago but even if I stopped putting in more money right now it would still keep paying me interests around 2000 to 3000€ each year for the rest of my life and it's 100% passive income. In my case it's all invested back into the funds though.

The second best move was starting to track my finances. It's almost impossible to not change your spending habits once you actually see where all the money is going. Almost anyone can cut atleast 100€ a month from their grocery bills by just being a little more mindfull about what you buy. That's 1200€/year or 12k€/10 years.

I bought gas before it went up $0.30/gal

Staying unemployed to get free healthcare.

1. For the first few years of my career after college which has a pretty generous 401k company matching scheme I put the maximum amount possible into my retirement accounts and lived well within my means to build up a nest egg. Now that I am married I have dialed back my investments so we can afford to live a little bit nicer with the knowledge that we have a really great start in our retirement accounts.

2. My wife and I moved in together two years before getting married. This made living substantially cheaper for both of us and made us positive that we wanted to live together and could tolerate each other prior to tying the knot :).

3. I got a vasectomy mid-last year. My wife and I both agreed long before marriage that we only want to adopt. Adoption is obviously very expensive, but now we have the peace of mind of knowing we have full control over when we start to invest in that process to expand our family. No "accidents" can happen which is very liberating.

Buying $109 worth of Bitcoin back in 2014. I was going to buy a year cloud mining contract, but the company (hashop) went out of business before I could. (I dodged a bullet there) I then proceeded to spend bits of it here and there (coincidentally, my second worst financial move) until I had about $70 worth left, which I put in a paper wallet and forgot about. In 2020, I was able to sell most of the Bitcoin, and bought a vehicle, which helped me get through college and made me more eligible when I met the girl who would become my wife. All this to say, I made some dumb decisions that just happened to turn out well for me. YMMV

It wasn't huge in terms of actual numbers, but it still feels like my biggest win. I bought my first car for like $750. It needed some work, but I fixed it up. Before long, I crashed it. It was totalled. But, it was a 1973 Dodge Charger. I started pulling parts off of it and selling them on this new thing called eBay, and by the time I ran out of parts, I had made more than twice what I bought the car for.

Remember luck is just the intersection of preparation and opportunity.

Saving 60% of my take-home pay was the smartest financial decision I ever made. Difficult to execute, but very rewarding long-term in the behaviors I developed.

Was saving 60% of my income the most impactful financial decision I ever made? No, I had some luck in other areas. But this level of self-discipline helped me develop the skills to handle good luck later