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Yep 3 jobs... I wanted to do better with my life then a phone receptionist at an insurance company at minimum wage..
Took school loans , went to a technical school with no idea how i would pay them back.
Learned the air conditioning and REFRIG business.
Worked during the day as a technician, worked my own side business at night doing it.
Worked as a drummer doing gigs every weekend.
Whatever it took i did. I never wanted to ever go back to those projects again . learned how to make whatever i managed to save work for me as a beginning investor and just went on from there.
i try to pass on to others the things that worked and i try to stop them from doing the things that don't work.
Last edited by mathjak107; 02-01-2013 at 01:05 PM..
^ i don't blame you bro. at first, i thought you
were some type of finance wizard or someone
who started off with a lot of money trying to
tell broke people how to save lol.
^ that's not true. what's so political about it, man?
you just don't want to reveal a logical threshold,
because you know many people are survivng
day by day out here and borrowing on monday
just to eat on tuesday.
if you don't see that, you're not looking.
I thought this whole thing was about how NY'ers are not saving enough. So some of the things I wrote are reasons younger NY'ers have it harder. However, I also KNOW that we still should try and do the best we can to save for the future!
i have no answer for them. if i did and could tell them in some magical way how to do it i could make billions.
i can tell you what to do once you get a few bucks but i can not make magic happen.
in my case i thought long and hard about what i could do that had little competition. i realized folks will rebuild a car engine or build a house but they never touched the insides of a ac unit or freezer.
i chose commercial refrigeration and air conditioning as a goal.. well i picked correctly but did not like the work. to dirty, everything was freakin heavy and i was always in a 100 degree machine room or on a hot roof climbing a ladder,
i started to learn about climate control systems at malls and became a troubleshooter. went on to become a motor control specialist and that is what i have done for almost 35 years now.
i started saving at 18 and rounded up enough dough to buy a co-op as an insider. sold the co-op a few years later and made 4x my money.
invested in the markets, took a shot at the lows after the crash in 1987 and rode them up.
invested in more real estate , took a flyer on some crazy real estate deals including buying in a partnership in my wifes family real estate business with a crap load of borrowed money to buy out some partners . we were not involved with the business up until then at all.
my financial life was alot of balls and luck . but that made me take an interest in learning and that is not balls and luck anymore . that is collecting the ideas, theories and works of the greatest financial minds and putting together plans that stand a chance of working ..
i am not a market timer, i don't forecast what is next... i plan for uncertainty and not try to rule it out. i learn to play the cards i am dealt without blaming the dealer.
believe me i am far from smart, but i do search out the people who are and steal their thoughts and ideas.
thats my story....
Last edited by mathjak107; 02-01-2013 at 01:48 PM..
Since the vast majority of NY'ers don't own to begin with,the lesson is not necessarily about not owning unless you can maintain a 6 month cushion.The lesson for most NY'ers should be about not spending more on rent than will allow you to build and maintain a comfortable savings cushion.
The bigger problem in NYC is people getting way over their heads financially in order to live in neighborhoods they really can't afford to live in.
This. We could afford to live in a more expensive area but then I would have had to spend another $500+ on rent every month, that otherwise could have gone into my savings, and we probably would not have been able to purchase our co-op with plenty of money leftover.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jad2k
It's amazing how much you can save when you actually try.
I have actually found that when I ask almost everyone I know, no one actually has a budget. But when I first started working, my husband and I were both working and living comfortably so we didn't have one either. When I resigned from my job, our income was cut completely in half---so I started to make a budget. Things were tight---we canceled cable, we didn't go on vacation, we didn't go out unless it was for something free/low cost, but it was doable. Once that happened, I made a budget and I have been keeping track ever since. You do not realize how much you are spending until you take a hard look and see it on paper. I can't even imagine how much I spent on happy hour and eating out the first two years I was working full-time.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NyWriterdude
Oh, good grief. Smartphones are not responsible for the lack of savings. And yes, decades ago or even a century ago, people gambled, drank, did drugs, went shopping, etc. There were always plenty of ways to spend money, and there always will be.
And you know what? Its an individual's right to live life as he/she sees fit. If they are happy living a certain lifestyle, who are you to judge?
Not really judging---but if you can't afford your lifestyle, complain to your friends all of the time about how broke you are, can't pay your bills, eventually end up bankrupt, in foreclosure, etc---that stuff trickles down onto everyone else. Then there is a lot of "woe is me" that goes with it.
The problem is the mentality that smartphones are not responsible for a lack of savings---that's not the point. The point is that with that thinking, anything "small" will not make a difference. If a couple has a phone bill of $130 to pay for two smart phones, that's $1560 a year. Let's say $720 of that is the data plan. That's $720 that could go toward debt repayment, especially since the average credit card debt is over $7,000. When a person spends $300 on eating out every month, if they cut it down to $100 that's an extra $2,400 a year. Two small things that a person could take care of and all of a sudden you're talking about thousands of dollars. Now imagine you keep going---that's a lot of dough right there.
not only didn't we have smart phones decades ago but we didn't pay hundreds of dollars a month to watch tv and have internet service.. we didn't have i-pads either. today we have all of the above plus the drinking drugs and gambling.
just figure out what the typical family has spent in apple products .
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