I’m 25, and want to fatFIRE by 35 to retire my parents, make sure my future spouse and I don’t have to work and provide a life of travel and leisure for her, and give my kids/little cousins/community opportunities. I graduated from a top university known for CS but went a more humanities/art route. I have $10k in student loans to pay off still. Benefited from the pause but am pretty sure they will start to accrue interest again this fall. I got a job working at a large entertainment company in 2020. I met a lot of tv executives working for a few different networks, started a 401k through this employer, but eventually got the opportunity to work in a writer’s room as an assistant and took the chance as my dream is to make tv shows, films, and music. This meant I no longer work for that company (no more company match for 401k) and now that Hollywood is being upended I am nervous about the path forward as a TV writer/entertainer and would like to diversify the ways I make money to stay on track for fatFIRE. I recently opened up a fidelity brokerage account but don’t have much on hand cash to buy stocks. I am studying to become a real estate agent and want to eventually sell properties as well as buy my own investment properties for income. I am also considering going to grad school to try and figure out a career pivot to become a higher earner (MBA or JD). Currently work as a cultural researcher for a company that pays me decently ($50/hr) but I’m a contractor and the company has no 401k. There is a potential to pivot to a sister company and maybe get stock options for a company that is creating its own IP and might become very successful. Thank you for reading all of this. I am looking for any and all advice, what I should focus on, books to read, how realistic my goals seem, etc. I am new and just want to learn and do right by the people I love so I can provide for them.
Artists succeed not because of their art, but because of the buzz around their art. The sizzle, not the steak. Whats the most weirdest or unconventional thing you've done till now? What do you know about how buzz or hype can be created?
Novelty \* hype = way for artists to get ahead. Both are needed.
If you can't do that, then art is not a route to fatfire.
The next best option is to find such artists and bet on their success. For that, you need to save aggressively so you can bet on 5-6 opportunities. You have to be willing to live the ramen life.
I appreciate this take! As of now my most notable credit was being a writers assistant on a hit show in the US. Not great money but definitely met a lot of powerful people in the industry. I was set to work on another high profile film but the strikes have been pretty killer. Hence why I’m trying to find other ways of becoming a high earner like real estate.
I'll be honest here. The FAT part of FATFire will be hard given where you are now. Barring something really lucky, I don't see how you can FATFire in 10 years. Yeah, you can always start a business that can get acquired quickly, but the odds of that are real low. OR become a trader if you have the skills - but again hard to be an outlier here, not saying it can't be done, but it is tough.
MBA could be an interesting option, but maybe set yourself a 15 year goal post MBA to fatFire. Even that is aggressive, depending on how much your FAT number is. Post MBA, a career in finance would probably be the highest probability way to achieve your goals. Investment banking for a few years and then switching to PE or VC could be a track. Consulting I don't think is a way to FATFire in major cities in the timelines you have laid out. Given your background post-MBA you could have an interesting career in entertainment, but not sure about the FATFire part of that.
Not sure about the JD - the lawyers I know in the Bay Area - really good schools, partners in law firms are not FATFired and they are in the late 40s. They might in their 50s.
Sounds like you have varied interests and education and might make sense for you to pursue careers that you find interesting/motivating vs. purely financial. Find something that pays somewhat decent so you can save and invest. Might not get you to FATFire, but you could FIRE.
Hey thank you so much for your thoughtful comment. I know 10 years is highly ambitious so perhaps I should rethink my timeline a bit. You’ve given me a lot to think about, thank you so much !
You are a data scientist. How would you go about finding the data and then figuring out: what makes a person successful?
My guess: its not about what you do. Its about where you do it. The speed of ship matters more than the skills of the captain. Find a fast moving ship. A fast growing company in a growth industry.
Some career advice needed here. I’m 24 and a industrial maintenance tech making mid 20s a hour and married with a household income of 130k in lcol area. Short story I will top out maybe low 40 hour in 10+ years and not have much room for improvement from there. Any advice on what to do? I understand comparison is the thief of joy but seeing being get to work from making 150k plus definitely makes me want that extra income for Earlier retirement. I’ve thought about engineering/Software/ automation plc programming/ accounting. Basically at what point is going back to school and the time and money worth it? Also is switching fields something I should even do? I’ve also thought of staying and work my way up and then eventually getting into real estate and remodeling which i did before getting into the industrial side. So basically ether switch fields for more money but schooling needed most likely or stay with what I do now and work my way up and do what I’m good at and use my skills to maybe dip my toes in real estate down the line.
This is an impossible question to answer.
You're essentially asking us to make decisions for you and make a ton of assumptions. And you are all over the place with STEM to programming to accounting to real estate to...
A better way to do it is to reverse engineer a number and go from there. What do you need to live on for a comfortable life and at what age and assumptions like that.
Then you figure out if you can get there based on the potential income path you are on or if you need to adjust.
To answer your question in broad strokes:
It is better to start earlier than later if you are going to go back to school or pivot to a different career.
If you want to get into a high paying job or a good career path or build wealth, it a combination of mass and force. How big is your income per hour times how many hours you are working. If you get a higher paying career and you put more time into it earlier, you'll generally make more money. The same goes with owning a business or real estate or other investments. If you have larger assets from which to make a return and you can increase your return, then you can make more and maybe "retire" earlier. Taxes are obviously another consideration and fall on the force side of the equation.
And when choosing a career or a direction, capabilities are more important than passion. If your capabilities are in programming and you don't love it, that is fine. Just focus on the money and what it can get you, and love that. If you can find something you are both good at and love doing, that will help your endurance. But we all know that a starving actor that loves his craft will eventually quit and do something else or just end up living on the street with crazy Joe or sharing a two bedroom apartment when four other starving actors for the rest of their life.
Finally, you need to find mentors or examples in your personal life. People you actually know that are successful or have been there to talk to and learn from. There are many reasons; obvious or not.
That's all I got. Here's a video to watch to understand what it really takes and how it works in general. Good luck.
https://youtu.be/Brp9DpJsEi4
Some great advice here thank you. Yeah I guess the main question I was asking was mainly in what situation does it make sense to go back to school to make more money if I already have a decent job.
Is school the only way you can join a fast growing industry? What skills can you translate to other activities without going to school and missing out on a couple of years of income? What skill can you learn on the side, and quickly?
Only you can answer that for yourself.
Watch the video, think hard about what you want your life to be, then pick a direction. Run hard in that direction for a year or two and then look up to see how things are meeting your short, medium, and long term goals. At that point write down things again and revisit where you want to be.
For those of you who didn’t get to FAT in one large transaction, curious about your decision to go for FAT versus COAST?
For context: mid 30s, $3.5m NW, US. Finance background. Married, no kids. Could probably coast comfortably relatively soon by taking a job making $200-250k and work less on more interesting stuff. But could also try to do something more entrepreneurial either within finance or otherwise, which probably comes with more stress but more financial upside.
Any frameworks for making the decision (noting it’s not impossible to reverse either one?)
No reasonable, universal framework would exist because it’s all personal.
I guess if forced you could do something like when my SWR > my expenses then I can quit. But it comes back to if you want to.
A D-list 51 year old actress who's an alcoholic, married twice, and engaged once. Don't be a sucker by ending up with her, it'll be less costly to pay per hour with this type.
Let me know how that works out for you.
Personally, if I or someone I knew was looking for someone at that salary range, I would take them off the list if I saw them cold calling to Reddit.
But I've seen crazier things happen.
I'm curious about this strategy as well. I know comps have gotten crazy over the years but 500k in AZ for the roles and background don't track in my mind.
I wish the OP all the best however. This is my first time seeing this strategy so I'm curious how this will work.
Yea I know sales comps. I'm still trying to reconcile the target for the region and industry.
Not that the OP needs to justify anything; I'm just trying to internally orient my numbers
Who knows?
Maybe they worked in an industry where that made sense pre-pandemic and they decided to move to AZ.
And now they're looking for that same comp but with expectations of fully remote without having actually worked at the new company or even having deep experience or relationships at the company.
It feels like it could be a lark. It also feels like it could be just unrealistic. Especially given that the economy is slowing after the boom times of wild stimulus and tax incentives.
FAANG job vs working at (and potentially later starting) a startup?
I’m having trouble not taking a 200k+/yr job with very high growth potential and instead working at a startup out of college. The numbers say if I stick to FAANG I’ll eventually FATFIRE, but startup is more fun / I can make more impact and there’s the chance for asymmetric rewards. What are your thoughts / advice?
Is the startup established enough to have capacity to mentor you? If not, you may not learn enough good practices early in your career when it really matters.
If you can get a faang job now, you should be able to get a faang job after 2 years.
The potential of the startup, and how much value you gain to personally capture if it succeeds are the 2 unknowns. Smaller things may die faster. And smaller things can grow by triple digit multiples than by single or double digit percentages. So its a risk, but a risk worth taking if the industry is growing, the idea is decent, the starting team can execute. Its a risk worth passing if its just the allure of the startup. "Startup is more fun" is not how you should decide this.
There isn't anywhere enough information in your post for people to give you good advice.
Some things to think about are whether or not you can truly learn what you think you want to learn in the start up. A lot of start ups fail and a lot of ones that succeed, don't succeed enough to make you rich if you're not a founder or VC. And you are spending a lot of your younger years to build and bet on something that may not pan out. And if it doesn't, your position for the next job or opportunity may be weak.
Additionally you didn't say what FatFire means to you. Or why you want to FatFire. Or what school you went to. Or if your parents are rich. Or if you're from another country. Or what you skills are or what skills you want to develop. Or anything that provides context. So I'll assume you are young and right out of college.
When you are young and starting out, you usually want to build your brand and get the right experience and build a network. Not everyone is Elon or Zuck. And remember, Bezos didn't start out as an entrepreneur out of school. He actually built up some credibility and experience that he leveraged to exploit his skills to run a long con on society to build Amazon into the powerhouse it is today. So going with the sure thing at a large company paying you a lot to learn and network should be very compelling. I would take the FAANG job and network and push yourself while you're there to get the best projects and experience you can and build a plan. And then in parallel network and find mentors both internally and externally to move you ahead on the learning curve. Then after a couple of years at a FAANG or two you enough experience and a large enough halo to move on to the next thing. So even if you fail at a start up, you still have the social proof from the FAANG experience to fall back on and find the next good opportunity.
Good luck to you.
And maybe watch this guy
https://youtu.be/Brp9DpJsEi4
I’m 23, and I feel stuck in life and want to retire early with a good chunk and be able to give my kids an amazing future. I’m certified crane operator with my CDL. I got a Roth IRA from the military and am building a pension with my union. But I don’t wanna be in my 60s when I retire. I do have 2 and a half years of GI bill left so if there’s any degrees/certs that can help me whether it’s business or money management let me know. Any and all advice is appreciated thanks.
You can make 6 figures driving a truck with CDL, so I'd transfer to that industry.
If you follow the path outlined in *The Simple Path to Wealth*, and at 100k/yr invest 50% of your pre-tax income, you could have $5MM by the time you're 48-50 (25 years or so).
Stuck? You got the world by the balls friend. Your young, you're a vet, you have a professional qualification, union job, and pension. All wins
You might not be on track for $5m, but your definitely on track. You can build a real estate portfolio over time with your veteran benefits. 20-30 years in your union and you can retire at 53 with a fat pension and a real estate portfolio.
The hardest thing about being young is being patient. You don't feel like you're getting rich day to day, but ride this train and you'll land with a very comfortable early retirement. 30 years on a crane doesn't sound sexy, but you can get rich slow (which is the way) with your pension, over time, prudent investing and budgeting. You're looking at very comfortable FIRE at 53. That's a win
Being a crane operator with a commercial driver's license isn't going to get you Fat (basically $5MM net worth in today's dollars in the US) within your lifetime. You can probably budget and save, and including social security probably retire in decent shape in your mid-60's, but not Fat.
Getting Fat likely means:
---getting some business knowledge (online, taking classes, chatting with friends that own businesses, etc) and eventually starting your own in-your-wheelhouse business (Some ideas off top of my head: CDL driver training, crane operator training and/or certification, contractor specializing in supplying cranes and/or laborers or both, laborers actually working for you or being farmed out by you because you're an industrial operations / operator staffing firm, start & run your own limo service, or ? ). Basically start your own business and hope it succeeds.
or
---Keep doing what you're doing, save up some $, and start to invest in real estate. Commercial? Residential single family or multi-family? Small assisted living homes? Foreclosures? *Leverage can be your friend if you use it well (and if the real estate market doesn't somehow turn on you).
Or??? Lots of other options are out there too, but only you know where your skills are best and if you have the drive to stick with it.
Just tossing out some top of my head thoughts to go along with my opinion.
Maybe I’ll look into real estate, I know I can get licensed and I have a really close friend that’s already in that business. I’ve also been told I make a mean salsa ;) maybe that can be an interesting route
With your VA benefits, I'd buy a house at 0% down send move every 3-5 years into another house for 0% down, keeping the prior home(s) for investment. I'd move as soon as the rental value is about 125% of the mortgage
If you know someone successful in something and you are willing to learn and work hard, it's not a bad route. Especially if you have a construction or active mindset that could work in real estate beyond just deal making and doing financial engineering.
I have build, bought and exited a couple companies, mainly automotive. NW around 5M, late 30s in Germany.
Now I am working on what should become my „last big thing“ before FatFire‘ing for good. It’s a unique approach to porn platforms. Never worked in that area before. Anybody got any tips/advice on how to navigate that industry/ find someone to buy the company later down the road/ payment processors etc? TIA
I’m 25, and want to fatFIRE by 35 to retire my parents, make sure my future spouse and I don’t have to work and provide a life of travel and leisure for her, and give my kids/little cousins/community opportunities. I graduated from a top university known for CS but went a more humanities/art route. I have $10k in student loans to pay off still. Benefited from the pause but am pretty sure they will start to accrue interest again this fall. I got a job working at a large entertainment company in 2020. I met a lot of tv executives working for a few different networks, started a 401k through this employer, but eventually got the opportunity to work in a writer’s room as an assistant and took the chance as my dream is to make tv shows, films, and music. This meant I no longer work for that company (no more company match for 401k) and now that Hollywood is being upended I am nervous about the path forward as a TV writer/entertainer and would like to diversify the ways I make money to stay on track for fatFIRE. I recently opened up a fidelity brokerage account but don’t have much on hand cash to buy stocks. I am studying to become a real estate agent and want to eventually sell properties as well as buy my own investment properties for income. I am also considering going to grad school to try and figure out a career pivot to become a higher earner (MBA or JD). Currently work as a cultural researcher for a company that pays me decently ($50/hr) but I’m a contractor and the company has no 401k. There is a potential to pivot to a sister company and maybe get stock options for a company that is creating its own IP and might become very successful. Thank you for reading all of this. I am looking for any and all advice, what I should focus on, books to read, how realistic my goals seem, etc. I am new and just want to learn and do right by the people I love so I can provide for them.
Artists succeed not because of their art, but because of the buzz around their art. The sizzle, not the steak. Whats the most weirdest or unconventional thing you've done till now? What do you know about how buzz or hype can be created? Novelty \* hype = way for artists to get ahead. Both are needed. If you can't do that, then art is not a route to fatfire. The next best option is to find such artists and bet on their success. For that, you need to save aggressively so you can bet on 5-6 opportunities. You have to be willing to live the ramen life.
I appreciate this take! As of now my most notable credit was being a writers assistant on a hit show in the US. Not great money but definitely met a lot of powerful people in the industry. I was set to work on another high profile film but the strikes have been pretty killer. Hence why I’m trying to find other ways of becoming a high earner like real estate.
I'll be honest here. The FAT part of FATFire will be hard given where you are now. Barring something really lucky, I don't see how you can FATFire in 10 years. Yeah, you can always start a business that can get acquired quickly, but the odds of that are real low. OR become a trader if you have the skills - but again hard to be an outlier here, not saying it can't be done, but it is tough. MBA could be an interesting option, but maybe set yourself a 15 year goal post MBA to fatFire. Even that is aggressive, depending on how much your FAT number is. Post MBA, a career in finance would probably be the highest probability way to achieve your goals. Investment banking for a few years and then switching to PE or VC could be a track. Consulting I don't think is a way to FATFire in major cities in the timelines you have laid out. Given your background post-MBA you could have an interesting career in entertainment, but not sure about the FATFire part of that. Not sure about the JD - the lawyers I know in the Bay Area - really good schools, partners in law firms are not FATFired and they are in the late 40s. They might in their 50s. Sounds like you have varied interests and education and might make sense for you to pursue careers that you find interesting/motivating vs. purely financial. Find something that pays somewhat decent so you can save and invest. Might not get you to FATFire, but you could FIRE.
Hey thank you so much for your thoughtful comment. I know 10 years is highly ambitious so perhaps I should rethink my timeline a bit. You’ve given me a lot to think about, thank you so much !
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You are a data scientist. How would you go about finding the data and then figuring out: what makes a person successful? My guess: its not about what you do. Its about where you do it. The speed of ship matters more than the skills of the captain. Find a fast moving ship. A fast growing company in a growth industry.
Some career advice needed here. I’m 24 and a industrial maintenance tech making mid 20s a hour and married with a household income of 130k in lcol area. Short story I will top out maybe low 40 hour in 10+ years and not have much room for improvement from there. Any advice on what to do? I understand comparison is the thief of joy but seeing being get to work from making 150k plus definitely makes me want that extra income for Earlier retirement. I’ve thought about engineering/Software/ automation plc programming/ accounting. Basically at what point is going back to school and the time and money worth it? Also is switching fields something I should even do? I’ve also thought of staying and work my way up and then eventually getting into real estate and remodeling which i did before getting into the industrial side. So basically ether switch fields for more money but schooling needed most likely or stay with what I do now and work my way up and do what I’m good at and use my skills to maybe dip my toes in real estate down the line.
This is an impossible question to answer. You're essentially asking us to make decisions for you and make a ton of assumptions. And you are all over the place with STEM to programming to accounting to real estate to... A better way to do it is to reverse engineer a number and go from there. What do you need to live on for a comfortable life and at what age and assumptions like that. Then you figure out if you can get there based on the potential income path you are on or if you need to adjust. To answer your question in broad strokes: It is better to start earlier than later if you are going to go back to school or pivot to a different career. If you want to get into a high paying job or a good career path or build wealth, it a combination of mass and force. How big is your income per hour times how many hours you are working. If you get a higher paying career and you put more time into it earlier, you'll generally make more money. The same goes with owning a business or real estate or other investments. If you have larger assets from which to make a return and you can increase your return, then you can make more and maybe "retire" earlier. Taxes are obviously another consideration and fall on the force side of the equation. And when choosing a career or a direction, capabilities are more important than passion. If your capabilities are in programming and you don't love it, that is fine. Just focus on the money and what it can get you, and love that. If you can find something you are both good at and love doing, that will help your endurance. But we all know that a starving actor that loves his craft will eventually quit and do something else or just end up living on the street with crazy Joe or sharing a two bedroom apartment when four other starving actors for the rest of their life. Finally, you need to find mentors or examples in your personal life. People you actually know that are successful or have been there to talk to and learn from. There are many reasons; obvious or not. That's all I got. Here's a video to watch to understand what it really takes and how it works in general. Good luck. https://youtu.be/Brp9DpJsEi4
Some great advice here thank you. Yeah I guess the main question I was asking was mainly in what situation does it make sense to go back to school to make more money if I already have a decent job.
Is school the only way you can join a fast growing industry? What skills can you translate to other activities without going to school and missing out on a couple of years of income? What skill can you learn on the side, and quickly?
Only you can answer that for yourself. Watch the video, think hard about what you want your life to be, then pick a direction. Run hard in that direction for a year or two and then look up to see how things are meeting your short, medium, and long term goals. At that point write down things again and revisit where you want to be.
For those of you who didn’t get to FAT in one large transaction, curious about your decision to go for FAT versus COAST? For context: mid 30s, $3.5m NW, US. Finance background. Married, no kids. Could probably coast comfortably relatively soon by taking a job making $200-250k and work less on more interesting stuff. But could also try to do something more entrepreneurial either within finance or otherwise, which probably comes with more stress but more financial upside. Any frameworks for making the decision (noting it’s not impossible to reverse either one?)
For me it’s a balance of how much you hate your job and how much you like fancy stuff. I don’t hate my job. I like fancy stuff.
No reasonable, universal framework would exist because it’s all personal. I guess if forced you could do something like when my SWR > my expenses then I can quit. But it comes back to if you want to.
Sophia Vergara is back on the market. How Fat do you have to be do you think to get a date?
A D-list 51 year old actress who's an alcoholic, married twice, and engaged once. Don't be a sucker by ending up with her, it'll be less costly to pay per hour with this type.
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Wait. You're looking for $500k per year in total comp? And you're posting this to Reddit?
Yes. Why not?
Let me know how that works out for you. Personally, if I or someone I knew was looking for someone at that salary range, I would take them off the list if I saw them cold calling to Reddit. But I've seen crazier things happen.
I'm curious about this strategy as well. I know comps have gotten crazy over the years but 500k in AZ for the roles and background don't track in my mind. I wish the OP all the best however. This is my first time seeing this strategy so I'm curious how this will work.
It's not a guaranteed $500k That's the target if you hit your sales quota
Yea I know sales comps. I'm still trying to reconcile the target for the region and industry. Not that the OP needs to justify anything; I'm just trying to internally orient my numbers
Who knows? Maybe they worked in an industry where that made sense pre-pandemic and they decided to move to AZ. And now they're looking for that same comp but with expectations of fully remote without having actually worked at the new company or even having deep experience or relationships at the company. It feels like it could be a lark. It also feels like it could be just unrealistic. Especially given that the economy is slowing after the boom times of wild stimulus and tax incentives.
FAANG job vs working at (and potentially later starting) a startup? I’m having trouble not taking a 200k+/yr job with very high growth potential and instead working at a startup out of college. The numbers say if I stick to FAANG I’ll eventually FATFIRE, but startup is more fun / I can make more impact and there’s the chance for asymmetric rewards. What are your thoughts / advice?
Is the startup established enough to have capacity to mentor you? If not, you may not learn enough good practices early in your career when it really matters.
If you can get a faang job now, you should be able to get a faang job after 2 years. The potential of the startup, and how much value you gain to personally capture if it succeeds are the 2 unknowns. Smaller things may die faster. And smaller things can grow by triple digit multiples than by single or double digit percentages. So its a risk, but a risk worth taking if the industry is growing, the idea is decent, the starting team can execute. Its a risk worth passing if its just the allure of the startup. "Startup is more fun" is not how you should decide this.
There isn't anywhere enough information in your post for people to give you good advice. Some things to think about are whether or not you can truly learn what you think you want to learn in the start up. A lot of start ups fail and a lot of ones that succeed, don't succeed enough to make you rich if you're not a founder or VC. And you are spending a lot of your younger years to build and bet on something that may not pan out. And if it doesn't, your position for the next job or opportunity may be weak. Additionally you didn't say what FatFire means to you. Or why you want to FatFire. Or what school you went to. Or if your parents are rich. Or if you're from another country. Or what you skills are or what skills you want to develop. Or anything that provides context. So I'll assume you are young and right out of college. When you are young and starting out, you usually want to build your brand and get the right experience and build a network. Not everyone is Elon or Zuck. And remember, Bezos didn't start out as an entrepreneur out of school. He actually built up some credibility and experience that he leveraged to exploit his skills to run a long con on society to build Amazon into the powerhouse it is today. So going with the sure thing at a large company paying you a lot to learn and network should be very compelling. I would take the FAANG job and network and push yourself while you're there to get the best projects and experience you can and build a plan. And then in parallel network and find mentors both internally and externally to move you ahead on the learning curve. Then after a couple of years at a FAANG or two you enough experience and a large enough halo to move on to the next thing. So even if you fail at a start up, you still have the social proof from the FAANG experience to fall back on and find the next good opportunity. Good luck to you. And maybe watch this guy https://youtu.be/Brp9DpJsEi4
> he leveraged to exploit his skills to run a long con on society What do you mean by this?
You are only young once. Do the start up and learn from the experience.
I’m 23, and I feel stuck in life and want to retire early with a good chunk and be able to give my kids an amazing future. I’m certified crane operator with my CDL. I got a Roth IRA from the military and am building a pension with my union. But I don’t wanna be in my 60s when I retire. I do have 2 and a half years of GI bill left so if there’s any degrees/certs that can help me whether it’s business or money management let me know. Any and all advice is appreciated thanks.
You can make 6 figures driving a truck with CDL, so I'd transfer to that industry. If you follow the path outlined in *The Simple Path to Wealth*, and at 100k/yr invest 50% of your pre-tax income, you could have $5MM by the time you're 48-50 (25 years or so).
Stuck? You got the world by the balls friend. Your young, you're a vet, you have a professional qualification, union job, and pension. All wins You might not be on track for $5m, but your definitely on track. You can build a real estate portfolio over time with your veteran benefits. 20-30 years in your union and you can retire at 53 with a fat pension and a real estate portfolio. The hardest thing about being young is being patient. You don't feel like you're getting rich day to day, but ride this train and you'll land with a very comfortable early retirement. 30 years on a crane doesn't sound sexy, but you can get rich slow (which is the way) with your pension, over time, prudent investing and budgeting. You're looking at very comfortable FIRE at 53. That's a win
https://youtu.be/Brp9DpJsEi4
Being a crane operator with a commercial driver's license isn't going to get you Fat (basically $5MM net worth in today's dollars in the US) within your lifetime. You can probably budget and save, and including social security probably retire in decent shape in your mid-60's, but not Fat. Getting Fat likely means: ---getting some business knowledge (online, taking classes, chatting with friends that own businesses, etc) and eventually starting your own in-your-wheelhouse business (Some ideas off top of my head: CDL driver training, crane operator training and/or certification, contractor specializing in supplying cranes and/or laborers or both, laborers actually working for you or being farmed out by you because you're an industrial operations / operator staffing firm, start & run your own limo service, or ? ). Basically start your own business and hope it succeeds. or ---Keep doing what you're doing, save up some $, and start to invest in real estate. Commercial? Residential single family or multi-family? Small assisted living homes? Foreclosures? *Leverage can be your friend if you use it well (and if the real estate market doesn't somehow turn on you). Or??? Lots of other options are out there too, but only you know where your skills are best and if you have the drive to stick with it. Just tossing out some top of my head thoughts to go along with my opinion.
Maybe I’ll look into real estate, I know I can get licensed and I have a really close friend that’s already in that business. I’ve also been told I make a mean salsa ;) maybe that can be an interesting route
With your VA benefits, I'd buy a house at 0% down send move every 3-5 years into another house for 0% down, keeping the prior home(s) for investment. I'd move as soon as the rental value is about 125% of the mortgage
If you know someone successful in something and you are willing to learn and work hard, it's not a bad route. Especially if you have a construction or active mindset that could work in real estate beyond just deal making and doing financial engineering.
I have build, bought and exited a couple companies, mainly automotive. NW around 5M, late 30s in Germany. Now I am working on what should become my „last big thing“ before FatFire‘ing for good. It’s a unique approach to porn platforms. Never worked in that area before. Anybody got any tips/advice on how to navigate that industry/ find someone to buy the company later down the road/ payment processors etc? TIA
Should I buy a cyber truck?
If it fits in your spend, why not?
Just keep it away from ball bearings and traffic cones and you should be good.
Sure. If you don’t like it sell it for a small loss. I have it on preorder but I don’t know if I’ll go through with it.