Being born into a rich western country.
Yeah, me too. I pat myself on the back for this one nearly every day. Probably the best financial decision I ever made.
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.
Learning about long term index fund investing in my early 20s.
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.
Most of the things mentioned in this thread are mostly dumb luck and not necessarily active financial decisions.
If there was an active financial decision you could make and reliably get rich, everyone would do it.
Not necessarily rich, but there are active financial decisions you can make that will set you on the path to longterm prosperity. Buying a house at what happened to be exactly the right time and making a $100,000 in 3 years in the process is not one of them. That’s just dumb luck.
I mean, “consistently save in a diversified portfolio” would be a pretty boring answer, but it would be an answer I guess. I’m not sure what the equivalent for the poor would be; stay away from substances, maybe?
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.
I wish I was smart enough to be accepted by another country. I was looking up that French legion army the other day haha.
I guess European citizenship really helped initially. But for most lesser developed countries it’s often sufficient to have special skills that are in demand there. And I’m not talking about academia; there’s also demand for construction skills, meat processing and other stuff out there.
Two of the most successful people I’ve met during my years on the roll were a German butcher who is now running a sausage empire in Asia, and a Swedish carpenter who is now working as general manager for an NGO in Kenya, building schools all over Africa. Neither of them are university graduates.
In fact most graduates I meet are middle to upper level manager who’ve been sent by their respective companies to work abroad, which absolutely means they have a decent income, but they all run into a glass ceiling at some point. And many struggled hard to readjust when they were eventually called home; whereas the more entrepreneurial types just carved a niche for themselves.
I’m curious where’d you moved
All over the world. Germany -> Luxembourg -> Norway -> Liberia -> Tanzania -> Kenya -> Nigeria -> Madagascar -> China; and next month to Malaysia.
Luxembourg was great for starting to build some wealth thanks to the super low taxes, Norway was to improve my career opportunities, and in Africa I really started to make bank since those contracts included living & “hardship” allowances that are untaxed, I invested most of that and also used it to fund an executive MBA.
To China I already came with 15+ years work experience and entered on c-level with a great salary package; and there are no taxes on foreign income here, including foreign capital gains.
Malaysia is a stopover for a few years also for tax purposes, they have no capital gains either and the company I work for is registered in Hong Kong, which in China would be considered onshore and thereby taxable. So in Malaysia I can sell my share package for free after 2 years of residency.
Also much nicer climate and friendlier people than in China.
Thanks for the detailed reply! Definitely an interesting journey, and I glad to hear it’s financially good. Good luck.
Buying a home.
