Financial successful beyond your wildest dreams??

[Dawg52]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Walt34 I'm better off than I expected but hardly beyond my wildest dreams. Beyond expectations would be more accurate.

About the same here. Enough money to live the life I want, but certainly not the life of wild dreams. That would be more like lottery winners and who hasn't dreamed of a life like that at some point? But those are unrealistic dreams.

No complaints here.

[robnplunder]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alan +1 No one in my extended family had ever stayed on beyond age 16 at school, let alone gone to college, got a degree and earned enough to actually buy a house. I think I exceeded my parents' wildest dreams, even before I'd moved to America and paid for them to fly out and visit a few times.

Nicely done.

I grew up in 3rd world country's poor area and never thought I would be where I am now. Like you, I was the 1st one to graduate from college in my extended family. Poverty toughened me up, and motivated me to succeed financially. And I am proud to say that I did it the hard & honorable way - no help from anyone, not ripping others off, paying my share of tax, .... Now, I just need to figure out how to enjoy the fruits of my labor.

[traineeinvestor]

The numbers are much, much more than I ever thought I would need to FIRE. The lifestyle is about where I wanted it to be. The difference is a combination of inflation, children and moving to live in a very high cost city.

[daylatedollarshort]

We are trying to move towards voluntary simplicity and just be happy with what we have. It is less work than becoming billionaires.

I read an article about a Silicon Valley investor bitter over something Microsoft did that prevented him from being a billionaire. He was only worth $300 million and had a private plane and pilot on staff. That stuck with me. He seemed less happy than we are even with all that money. If he was a billionaire he would probably be bitter over Bill Gates having more still. There are always going to be people richer or poorer, so if you have the basics met, maybe that is enough and the rest depends on your own personal attitude and not your bank account.

[jollystomper]

Quote:

Originally Posted by daylatedollarshort I read an article about a Silicon Valley investor bitter over something Microsoft did that prevented him from being a billionaire. He was only worth $300 million and had a private plane and pilot on staff. That stuck with me. He seemed less happy than we are even with all that money. If he was a billionaire he would probably be bitter over Bill Gates having more still. There are always going to be people richer or poorer, so if you have the basics met, maybe that is enough and the rest depends on your own personal attitude and not your bank account.

+1

When DW and I go back t our college reunions, we invariably run into classmates (fortunately only a minority) who from a monetary standpoint have a lot (this is an Ivy League school so we are talking real big bucks), but have a chip on their shoulder when they perceive that another classmate whom they deem "not as smart" has more. We've even had folks ask how we can be so happy without having made it into the "multimillionaire/corporate executive/Wall Street club". It is both amusing and sad at the same time.

[MBAustin]

We definitely have a higher net worth than I ever expected. Two main reasons:
- I listened to my father and started investing in mutual funds within a couple of months after starting my first job out of college and I've stayed fully invested throughout - never moved out of stocks when the market went down (although I have made my allocation a bit more conservative over the years)
- DH and I are very financially compatible and we naturally were LBYMers. I still remember when we were buying our first house together that the real estate agent was quite annoyed that we would only look at houses about half the price she thought we should look at based on our income. We decided to live as though we only had one income from the beginning so that if I decided to stay home with children at some point, we could manage OK. I ended up staying in the full-time workforce throughout and was the higher earner by quite a bit, with the gap increasing over the years, so we basically switched to living on my salary and saving his salary and my bonuses.

I still clip coupons and shop sales but I try not to sweat over spending money so much anymore. But it's a hard habit to break.

[eytonxav]

As to wildest dreams, I think many of us do not set our aspiration levels high enough, or if so, failed to act on those dreams. Nevertheless, as said many times, money alone is not a good measure of success, unlike happiness, and I would always opt for the later.

[HFWR]

I have some pretty wild dreams...

[NW-Bound]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DFW_M5 As to wildest dreams, I think many of us do not set our aspiration levels high enough...

Being pragmatic, I set the limit to my wildest dream to being a decamillionaire. No point in thinking that I could be a centimillionaire if I saw no path for me to get there. And in the 0.1% world, a decamillionaire is nobody as there are a lot of homes that cost that much already. Forget about yacht and chopper!

But in practical terms, I have about 2X what I thought my NW would eventually be, back when I was in my 30s. Of course, money was worth more then. But then, my expenses now are also 2X what my 30-yr-old self thought I would spend in retirement.

So, in short no complaints. I am happy where I am, and if I can maintain this, it's a lot more than many people have.

[Alan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by robnplunder I grew up in 3rd world country's poor area and never thought I would be where I am now. Like you, I was the 1st one to graduate from college in my extended family. Poverty toughened me up, and motivated me to succeed financially. And I am proud to say that I did it the hard & honorable way - no help from anyone, not ripping others off, paying my share of tax, .... Now, I just need to figure out how to enjoy the fruits of my labor.

Well done, doesn't it feel good to have achieved all that? Just before I retired I was talking to an ex-pat friend of mine at the place I worked. He had come from a similar background from an industrial town about 10 miles down the cost from me, and now was a very well paid manager and actually a year or two older than me. He said that he would love to retire as well and didn't know how I'd managed to be able to retire at 55. I told him that I hadn't just bought a Mercedes convertible brand new from the dealer, or the latest and greatest unbelievably expensive golf clubs to play at a club that costs $100,000 to join. (I have no idea what the ongoing costs are, but I'm sure it is high). But this was the life that he had aspired to, and achieved, but to maintain it meant to keep working all hours in the day under loads of stress. (I actually worked with him a lot and was a friend of his so I knew how much stress he was under).

[daylatedollarshort]

On a world wide scale, many posters here are wealthy beyond the wildest dreams of most of the world's population, even in the developed countries -

OECD Better Life Index

"Across the OECD, the average household net-adjusted disposable income is 23 047 USD a year."

[Letj]

Quote:

Originally Posted by daylatedollarshort On a world wide scale, many posters here are wealthy beyond the wildest dreams of most of the world's population, even in the developed countries - OECD Better Life Index "Across the OECD, the average household net-adjusted disposable income is 23 047 USD a year."

Developing countries like Chile and Mexico bring down the average.

[NW-Bound]

Quote:

Originally Posted by daylatedollarshort On a world wide scale, many posters here are wealthy beyond the wildest dreams of most of the world's population, even in the developed countries - OECD Better Life Index "Across the OECD, the average household net-adjusted disposable income is 23 047 USD a year."

Thanks for a very interesting link!

I would like to add another excerpt from the above Web page.

"Across the OECD, the average household net financial wealth is estimated at 40 516 USD.

The cost of living is taken into account in income and wealth figures as the reported values are adjusted by Purchasing Power Parities (PPPs). PPPs reflect the differences in cost of living for a comparable amount of goods and services consumed by households."

But what I find most interesting is that despite all the shortcomings that the US has compared to other countries as people keep saying, the chart right on the top of this Web page, the so called "Better Life Index", shows how life in the US (#1) is better by a big jump from the next countries in the list, namely Switzerland (#2) and Luxembourg (#3).

People do not migrate to the US for no reasons!

[Elbata]

Quote:

I read an article about a Silicon Valley investor bitter over something Microsoft did that prevented him from being a billionaire. He was only worth $300 million and had a private plane and pilot on staff. That stuck with me. He seemed less happy than we are even with all that money. If he was a billionaire he would probably be bitter over Bill Gates having more still. There are always going to be people richer or poorer, so if you have the basics met, maybe that is enough and the rest depends on your own personal attitude and not your bank account.

Played golf with members of a country club. Nice golf course and they were all retired. Got to tell ya, I was surprised by the amount of bithching and complaining. Nice guys though besides that.

[NW-Bound]

Quote:

Originally Posted by robnplunder ... And I am proud to say that I did it the hard & honorable way - no help from anyone, not ripping others off, paying my share of tax, ...

That's also how I think I have led my life, except that I did receive some financial assistance to get my degrees.

When the time came to finance my children college education, I figured I could bear the cost, hence never even knew what the FAFSA looked like (did not even know what it was called). My children would not be likely to get any assistance other than low interest loans, but I did not even want to get that.

Anyway, your philosophy contradicts your screen-name. If it's not a tongue-in-cheek choice, would you care to explain it?

[kgtest]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Walt34 Sure, yachts and private jets are nice daydreams but I choose decades ago to work in law enforcement. No one goes into that line of work to get rich. Owning a yacht was never a goal. All I wanted was a middle class lifestyle - decent but not grand home - reliable car and enough money so I could afford a brake job and didn't have to be out in the driveway in the snow doing it like when I was growing up. I have that and then some so I'm happy.

Doing brake jobs in the snow builds character....there's no better time to do it. And the general rule is, "Your breaks will need to be replaced on the snowiest and coldest week of the year."

My ole man taught me how to do a break job, inspect rotors etc etc. All of that has allowed me to save for FI.

"Boy, come here and pump these brakes for me, now!"

[Walt34]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kgtest "Boy, come here and pump these brakes for me, now!"

Yup, been there, done that. Don't wanna again.

Except then they were drum brakes. Disk brakes were for stuff like Ferrari's or maybe a 'Benz.

[eta2020]

I thought I am going to be exactly where I am after I lived with my DW for a year.
That was 19 years ago.

And I think I know where I will be 6 years from now.

[Options]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kgtest ... "Boy, come here and pump these brakes for me, now!"

Exactly like my father used to sound.

[robnplunder]

[QUOTE=NW-Bound;1379457]That's also how I think I have led my life, except that I did receive some financial assistance to get my degrees.

When the time came to finance my children college education, I figured I could bear the cost, hence never even knew what the FAFSA looked like (did not even know what it was called). My children would not be likely to get any assistance other than low interest loans, but I did not even want to get that.

Anyway, your philosophy contradicts your screen-name. If it's not a tongue-in-cheek choice, would you care to explain it?[/QUOTE]

Robnplunder was a thoroughbred race horse I happened to bet on and won few (literally) dollars in a local track. Plunder is exactly opposite of my personality. But Rob happens to be my name which I change to when I became a naturalized US citizen.