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where were you @24 yrs.?


shootingstar

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This guy inherited this:

Q: My parents recently passed away and I inherited close to $500,000. I am 24 years old working as an engineer-in-training in Toronto with an annual salary of $65,000. My student loans are paid off and I carry no credit card debt. I currently live off my own salary with about 40% of my after-tax income going towards rent and car payments. I put 8% of my salary towards a company matched RRSP and they match an additional 4%. My TFSA is capped in a mix of ETFs.

My question is: what do I do with $ 500,000? I have looked into mutual funds and ETFs or buying instead of renting while maintaining a safety net since I will never be able to move back in with my parents should things go south. I am unsure what would be considered ‘safe’ yet I know I should start thinking net worth and building on this nest egg.

 

for myself, I probably had only a few hundred dollars in bank. Unlike this guy, I was working part-time because that was what I could land related to my degree.  I had just graduated from university the year before. I was given a sewing machine as a gift (from my mother).  It was a good thing  --I sewed my business work wardrobe...suits, etc.

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I was working in construction. Making good money for that time. Decided to go to forestry school a few years later.

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..I wuz still attending the University of Maryland at College Park, living above a doctor's office (that had closed down the practice) in Mt Rainier, Maryland. driving a cab nights to make up the money I needed because the GI bill only paid like 300 bucks monthly, and managing the Washington Hospital Center swimming pool in the summertime, when I was not in school.  Good times !!!

 

 

 

Taxi License 1978 cropped.jpg

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Graduated from college, and got a full time job offer for $16,500 plus overtime at the CPA firm. Also got my first apartment and my parents moved out of town. As most of you remember, that is the year the NFL went on strike and they played 3 games with replacement players. 

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1 hour ago, Dirtyhip said:

I closed on my first home around that time.  Bought it by myself.  :D

Different definitions of financial success early in life. But good on you.

I paid probably 50% of my own university education BA and MA =5 yrs. with money from summer jobs.  However even back then, top rated Canadian universities still were lower tuition fees compared to today.

Rest was student grants because I came from a low-income family. (Father was a cook with 6 children.)   3 of my 5 years were living and studying in a different city, so I paid for my accommodation, living expenses also.  All my siblings were like me (with some obtaining part funding support via scholarships,.  That is also achievement academically and financially). Actually one of them borrowed abit of money from me....and I was still only working part-time post university.   I've actually forgotten to ask her to repay me.  Oh well.  I've stayed at her place awhile, eaten, etc.

I didn't buy my own home until I was 31 yrs. I didn't travel outside of Canada for vacation until I was around 27 yrs. old. I just had no money, no sugar parents.  

None of us ever plan for any inheritance because we know at final stage of life, for my mother, we probably have to sell her house to cover nursing home costs, etc.  

The financial story seems to me slightly fishy....there's something I can't quite lay my finger on.  But even if hypothetical, it's worth thinking for a young person how they should plan financially.

 

 

 

 

 

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We were living in a cheap apartment, Wo46 was pregnant and working as a cashier for a grocery store and I was working the night shift. I think that we had $250 in the bank. 

I also worked part time at a motorcycle shop trying to save up a down payment on a house.

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I was working a factory job that I really liked. I had not met my wife yet. I had five motorcycles, a pickup truck, a convertible, and a hippy van. I was a Jesus freak (still am). The van was amazing, a 1965 Chevy cargo van forward control. It had belonged to a fruit company before I acquired it and converted it. I used the van with a motorcycle rack on the back to haul my bike to most races unless I was taking a friend who also raced then I took the pickup. 

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At 24 I moved from PA to MI for a job that ended up being a great career move.  I moved to a small city in W MI and it felt like the first three months were the longest 6 years of my life.  Then I met the future WoKzoo.  New job, new state, new girl all in the middle of my 24th year.

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29 minutes ago, Dirtyhip said:

I was a go getter.  Always have been that way.  Also, I have always been a saver.  In my early twenties I made some good decisions, and got hooked up with a company that saw my potential and allowed me to work my way up the ladder, and they offered me stock options, which I exercised.  Two years later, I closed and took on a large mortgage in the Bay Area. The loan officer was super sexist.  There were some questions about me being single, and not being married to a man.  They were concerned I could not handle it by myself, even though I qualified for it.  I wonder if those same kind of questions would get fired onto a single male professional.   I jumped through their hoops and got my house.

When I wasn't tearing carpet out of the home and painting, I was enjoying life.  I climbed Mt Shasta that year,  It was a very difficult glacier climb and hike.  

24 years old were fond memories.

While it may be that as women, when one doesn't choose to have children, the journey of being a parent and dealing with a mortgage (and sometimes also college/university education at same time) is just as tough..as climbing the mountain or biking a long touring trip. (I think of a mother breastfeeding often at night....there is a physical demand while her body is also still recovering from giving birth,etc.).  

It wouldn't be surprising every women has experienced a sexist direct comments/behaviour by the time she is in her early 20's.  Even now.  :(

Of course, if I hadn't chosen to go to university, most likely I would have bought my first home a few years earlier. I would have travelled overseas earlier.  I know kids these days go to Europe or Asia much earlier in life, meaning in elementary school age.  

I realize that some people look at university grads as entitled or whatever.  But honest, for lower income students/grads., there's a lot of delayed self-gratification / exhaustion / stress, especially juggling school studies and family, part-time jobs / large debts.

My hat tip to all the parents here. 

 

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I was teaching in rural West Virginia and waiting tables at night.  My grandmother had just passed and we learned no one could touch their trust until they were 30. It seemed quite annoying then, but was, in retrospect, a very wise move.  Meet my first husband then and got my daughters. Life was good and we were happy. Thought we had 100 years ahead of us.  How quickly things change.   

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In addition to sewing my work wardrobe for my jobs, I had 2 part-time jobs- 1 @ a library on geriatric medicine and gerontology, and begin another job at medical library at hospital for adult spinal cord injured adults. The library specialized on trauma and rehab in this area of health care.  Was also doing volunteer work for literary magazine on Asian-Canadian arts. Took an evening art course on Western calligraphy.  Yes, I can do some of medieval scripts by hand, steel nib in inkpot.

I was beginning to enjoy living in Toronto, my lst big metro city.

 

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I was sashaying along international catwalks modeling figure-hugging bell-bottom trousers and Indian cotton shirts and...................................that's a lie....

I was a member of the Para's heading back to the UK from the Persian Gulf and already married at the time. A year later my daughter was born and that changed everything and made me consider the future.

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