Comment by phil21
5 days ago
It's only meaningful if you have enough disposable income to invest that it eventually (and I don't mean in 50 years) makes a dent against your living expenses.
If you make $4k/mo and rent is $3k, it's pretty silly to state that it's a meaningful thing for someone to scrimp and invest $100/mo into a brokerage account.
They definitely should do this, but it's not going to have any meaningful impact on their life for decades at best. Save for a decade to get $12k in your brokerage account, say it doubles to $24k. If you then decide you can get a generous 5% withdrawal rate you are talking $600/yr against rent that is now probably $3500/mo or more. Plus you're killing your compounding.
It's good to have so emergencies don't sink you - but it's really an annoying talking point I hear a lot lately. Eye rolling when you are telling someone struggling this sort of thing.
It really only makes a major impact if you can dump large amounts of cash into an account early in life - or if you run into a windfall.
If you contribute $1k per month for 10 years earning 6% you would have $162k.
5% of that would be $8100.
Is $48k / year a typical income?
where are you getting $1k/month? GP said "invest" $100 per month given a $48,000 income and rent of ~$36k/yr.
Yeah obviously if i can sock away $12,000 a year for 10 years i'll have money. Just be aware that i was in a bunch of funds from 2010-2020 and were it not for what happened at the end of that decade i wouldn't have made any additional money at all. In fact, i would have lost a decent chunk of money - not just in fees, but inflation.
Also, where are you guaranteed 6% for a decade? t-bills or something?
Who in this economy has $1K left over at the end of the month to spend / risk freely?
You'd be surprised.
The pauper who invests peanuts and receives peanuts isn't the problem. The professional who invests modest sums and boosts their retirement isn't the problem.
The centabillionaire who invests their fortune and receives $50M a day from the market and cares about nothing more than keeping the gravy train going is the problem. They head to Washington and splash their free money hose around in exchange for political support to keep that hose pumping at all costs. That's why politicians were so lock-step about how it was super important for the US to sell our industry to China and drop capital gains tax below income tax and open the Double Irish Sandwich and now they're getting rid of social programs and instituting 50 year mortgages and so on.
The fact that the guy with the firehose can pump the firehose by stepping on the guy investing $1k month is the core of the problem. Until you are at escape velocity -- your net worth is enough to cover your lifestyle from investment returns alone -- you lose by default.
Rent should not be more than 1/3 of your income so moving to an appropriate place will let that person save an extra 2k a month. It would take a year instead of a decade to have invested 24k.
> moving to an appropriate place
like under a bridge or something? Pardon the hyperbole, but you would have to assume people with no disposable income are idiots in order to suggest that solution.
Or at their parent's house or going to find roommates. If you can't afford to move out by yourself than you shouldn't do it if you want to be financially responsible.
1 reply →
Maybe not idiots, but many humans are definitely not homo economicus rational actors.
Rent should not be more than 1/3 of your income but to get an income you usually need to be in a place where rents are more than 1/3 of such income.
The lower COL areas are lower because they're less economically viable, and therefore less desirable. The job opportunities and income will, more or less, match the lower COL.
Theres some exceptions, like rural doctors can make more more than city doctors due to high demand. But the less "physical" your job is, the rarer these exceptions become.
For software devs, you can move out of silicon valley. Maybe to Texas. And now those 1.5 million dollar homes are only 700,000 dollars. But your salary will reflect that.