I’ve certainly been worse of, but not I’m not… Great. ButI have a roof over my head and me and the cat are fed. I can enjoy a video game here and there. However, I don’t have $1,000. Not for lack of trying, but things happen (moved, sick cat, broken car, the usual). I personally like to have at least one month of rent, but that doesn’t always happen.

Sometimes it just works out that everything I need takes everything I have.

Could be better.

I have always strived to keep between 1-2 month’s worth of expenses in savings at all times. That small buffer has allowed me to ride out almost everything without going into debt, then when I am in debt I pay it off as quick as possible.

The worst thing you can do is get on a payment plan, as that normalizes having debt and you end up paying thousands in interest. All interest is, is you giving your money to someone else. I like to keep my money, so if I have to live off of ramen and hot dogs for a couple months, so be it.

All my jobs have been paycheck-to-paycheck until about 3 years ago. My last job allowed me to save up $24k, but then I lost my job. Now I’m down to $7k and getting worried.

Not great, but I might be able to cover a grand in an emergency.

I credit my success to some hard work but mostly luck. At the end of the day my first job was from a recommendation. I believe interviewed well, sure, but I don’t think they would’ve taken my resume otherwise. I’m extremely fortunate to be where I am financially.

Shit still happens though. I lost my job about a year ago and was unemployed for like 6ish months. I had enough money in savings that it didn’t really matter but it still sucked. One thing that has been difficult for me is watching what I say. As an example, some stupid shit happened and I feel like a company owes us ~$800 and another one ~$200. (Not going into details because they’re irrelevant and I want to move on from the stress.) These things royally pissed me off. I still get upset when little things happen and I lose money. I hate it. It sucks. As much as I want to get comfort from my friends by venting about it, sometimes it’s better to shut up. Because some of them mostly just hear how I’m able to withstand losses like that and that in turn makes them feel upset that they aren’t. It’s a tricky thing.

As for my philosophy, for the most part my wife and I have been able to spend within our means without much aggressive or intentional budgeting. It’s only been since the job loss and her being unemployed to pursue writing a novel that things have gotten tight. (And by right I just mean our savings aren’t noticably increasing.)

Failures? Well, let’s ignore stuff like crypto and stock picks because that’s just gambling. I wish I had started maxing out my 401k in my 20s. I started on my early 30s. Also, we used to have a truly stupid amount of money in a checking account. We should’ve put it into stocks (as in total market ETFs) earlier.

OH. THIS IS IMPORTANT. I WISH SOMEONE WOULD’VE TOLD ME HIGH YIELD CHECKING ACCOUNTS EXIST. Like, holy hell. I should’ve done that ages ago. I don’t even wanna think about how much money I’ve lost on, especially because we kept a stupidly high amount of cash in our checking account… I still haven’t moved it because it’s hard and I’m lazy but wow wow wow. This is stupidly important. The reason savings accounts are annoying so because it’s a little harder to get to your cash. But a checking account with interest? Hot damn.

Lastly, I’ve never had a credit card. It’s been fine but it would’ve been nice to get the tiny marginal benefits of cash back and stuff.

There are a lot of very poor people in the US compared to other developed countries. There are also a lot more extremely rich people. The inequality is palpable, and it shows in the stats. The US government also doesn’t step in with coverage when it comes to healthcare, unemployment and other emergencies to the same degree as governments in other western countries.

I was born at an unfortunate time. By the time I could afford a house the housing market was already very bad. I’m just glad I’m able to buy a house but it is very expensive (we bought at the end of 2021)

I live in Canada so we can’t lock in our mortgage for more than 5 years. I just went with the variable rate because in the long term it’s generally better. However the interest rates skyrocketed. I was able to pay my mortgage still but I was pretty much house poor.

Now the rates are finally dropping so I feel a lot less pressure. With our current budget we should be able to afford one kid comfortably. I’m not sure about a second.

I’m very fortunate and grateful though. Most people my generation cannot even afford a house. It’s just insane that despite my great job it’s still so hard for us I can’t imagine what others are going through.

We aren’t broke. I have some retirement saved but I had to stop putting money in due to our mortgage. I also have an emergency funds account with enough money to sustain us ~6 months if I were to lose my job.

Having a high paying job is unsurprisingly the main reason for my financial success. Otherwise I’d say joining some personal finance clubs helped a bunch. I have my savings diversified and invested so I’m at least not losing money to inflation. But my investments will never make me rich either.

One critique I have for myself is maybe we overspent on the house but at the same time I love our neighborhood and I love our house and we have no plans on ever moving so I’m not too upset by it.

I am one broken leg away from being homeless and losing everything, and it’s been like that my entire working life. I’ve never been able to make enough to actually save. Currently I have -100 in the bank and some debt I’m trying to pay off on top of that. My rent is literally half my income.

Not saying the exact number, but well enough that I could go and buy an X5 right now. I’d rather spend any excess money on charities over materialistic status symbols though, and I’ve donated a lot of money to research charities in particular.

Im doing pretty well. Living in Germany, educated parents. Did okay in school, never studied much though. Went to university, got my Masters in Mathematics (needed to study a lot for that, but its my passion anyway). Started working at an IT company in the same city.

3 years later, I have around 50k in savings now. We live in a small apartment, are in the middle of buying a house.

Capitalism is really fckd up, especially in the US. I try not to take advantage of it too much, up my monthly donations with every raise, vote left-ish, dont support big corporations.

I think the biggest factor for success is luck for being born under the right circumstances. Thats like 99%, the rest is having some self control.

I’m doing well but i wish i could afford my hobbies.

I have 1k euro left. No job, 35 years old. I wanna kill myself sometimes.

Financially, we are well enough to have my family’s needs met comfortably but frugally. Can’t really ask for more, though additional breathing room would be nice. We can afford emergencies and recover after some time.

My parents and grandparents taught frugality; luck made ends meet like a good job and buying a house at the right time.

We have a bit of savings I have in mutual funds because I’m currently too mentally tired and risk-averse to pick something with higher return potential.

I’ve got $0.85 in savings, because I put my rent and car payment money in my savings account each month until I need to pay those bills. I did at one point have $1000 saved up as a rainy day fun, but then it rained for a whole year (financially speaking). Now I don’t even have credit cards to fall back on, as those have been maxed out and gone to collections. I’m looking for a job in an industry I left because it was driving me to alcoholism (software), but that job market sucks a little more than the service industry, so I’m not optimistic.

Oh yeah and I’d be homeless if I didn’t have family who were willing and able to loan me rent money.