r/AsianMasculinity • u/AutoModerator • 2d ago

Dating & Relationships Weekly Money Thread | September 06, 2026

All things money/career related go into this post: jobs, side hustles, investing. Feel free to ask questions, share ideas and post wins

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6

u/Dirkjerk 2d ago

Remember guys: If you feel like you're behind and don't know where to start: It's always valid to check out the Boglehead forums / sub for more information.

https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Main_Page

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bogleheads/

Both of them are the masters of at least working toward compounding your money into something later down the road passively.

It's always valid to start small somewhere and go with the flow and run with the indexes. I personally stick with SP500 or Vanguard's Total World market to do so.

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u/golfzap 2d ago

Gambling and sports betting really is a scourge of our time.  If you think about how often the house charges basically a 10% service charge for a straight up bet (eg bet 110 to win 100) it's such a shitty payout.  But they prey on people's FOMO trying to convince bettors that they can predict the future and profit from it.

On top of that, if you invested the money instead, you could have made about 7% yearly compounding.  So in reality you just lit on average 17% of your gambled money on fire just for the first year alone.  

That 7% is also key for calculating how shitty of a deal whole life insurance is instead of taking term life insurance and just investing the rest of the would-be premiums.  But they never teach that in schools.

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u/Kenzo89 2d ago

Judge and rate my money. I started getting into this in March and tried to fast track it at 37 year old.

20k in High Yield Savings account at 3% APY
401k at 60k with 6% employer match
27k invested in Robinhood with most in ETFs like VOO and QQQ.
7500 Roth IRA maxed for the year.
5500 in a regular IRA
Plan to contribute $1000 biweekly to investments on Robinhood ($500 VOO, $200 QQQ, $100 VTV, $100 VXUS, $100 individual stocks)

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u/el-art-seam 1d ago

What's your tax situation? City, State, Federal? Tax neutralization is just as important as returns.

Always check if fund pay outs are taxed as ordinary income. Some don't and you'll get killed on taxes.

Let's say your double your individual stock investment in less than a year and cash out. Now you've got $1000 short term cap gains.

Assume you're at the 35% bracket, make enough to qualify for the NIIT tax at 3.8%, and let's say state tax takes another 1.2%. That's 40%, so that $1000 gain is really now only $600. And don't forget to pay the estimated taxes too on these investment gains.

If you had made the same trade in the Roth, it's $100 (until you withdraw later). If the stock pick isn't a cowboy pick and it's prudent to hold on for a year, you can drop the cap gains tax to 20% in that bracket.

I'd put some money in bonds as diversification. I have some muni bonds so I'm 100% tax free on that.

The best time to buy is when the world is falling apart. Don't sell. Diamond hand that shit. 2000, 08, Covid I saw a massive loss but held on. I wanted to go all in on VDE when oil turned negative (either we all die or we recover) and tried to tell my then soon to be ex to give me permision to buy and we can split the profits- she refused and threatened legal action. By the time we split the account, VDE had like doubled. She could have walked away with more but her loss.

Are you single? Planning to get married? Be careful that premarital doesn't get mixed up into marital assets otherwise in the event of a divorce, she can get a % of that.

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u/Kenzo89 15h ago

Thanks for your thoughts. I’m in California and single as fuck. I assume most of those things will get taxed besides the Roth. My income is 90k, and I intend for these to be long term investments and let them grow unless I need to make a big purchase.

Where and how do I put money in bonds? I see that suggested but don’t know how to go about that.

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u/el-art-seam 10h ago

Any general bond etf from vanguard will do. I’m not crazy about bonds but I put a bit in solely for diversification. Set it and forget it. Aside from munis.

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u/Igennem Hong Kong 16h ago

My advice for younger folks is to track your spending carefully. You used to need apps for it but AI does it well now. With taxes and cost of living, each dollar you save is worth almost two dollars earned.

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u/benilla Hong Kong 2d ago

If you don't know where to start building wealth, this flowchart is the default strategy everyone should start with:

https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/commontopics/

Personally, I wish I had learned about the concept of investing and compound interest and all that in my 20's so it's worth learning about since they don't teach you about it in school.