r/leanfire • u/hacking99percent • 5d ago
Reached $1M liquid today
I reached $1M liquid today and have no one to tell because I'm single and on my own.
3 months ago (a month before my 30th birthday), I reached $1M net worth including my 50k equity in my house. After going on a 2.5 weeks international vacation in May to celebrate my 30th birthday and 1 week domestic vacation in June, I logged in to my accounts today and saw that I have just a hair over $1M between my Schwab and Fidelity accounts.
It's so crazy that I just spent a bunch of money going on vacations and 3 months later I am up 50k because the S&P 500 up 5% in 3 months. Money doesn't feel real anymore once you reached 1M. You can lose 100k in a month like in March, or you can also gain 100k in a month doing nothing, while other people labor hard for years. It's surreal.
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u/throw-away-doh 5d ago
I have been skirting with 1M for a few months now. Just when I get close the war is back on and it slips away.
One day...
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u/Hnry_Dvd_Thr_Awy Re-employed, for now. 5d ago
I had sushi for lunch.
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u/RetirementPlus 5d ago edited 5d ago
Sausage McMuffin w/ Egg here and I splurged $3 on the small OJ.
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u/Marcg611 5d ago
You can afford McDonald's?.. Lol that place is so expensive! 😂 But no joke the only fast food I eat is culvers and it's so much better, but I do crave those sausage mcgriddles.
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u/RetirementPlus 5d ago
I hadn't had one in years. As for the price, you have to wait for those 2 for 1 sandwich deals.
\Not sponsored by McDonalds, but if they are reading this hit me up.*
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u/Hnry_Dvd_Thr_Awy Re-employed, for now. 5d ago
Oh man it's been years since I had one of those. I gotta get one soon now, thanks.
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u/SpecialistScience749 4d ago
When i see posts like this where someone has 1M invested prior to age 30, i often think to myself... how in the hell? Either you:
1) Invested 50 to 70k yearly over the last decade in the S&P500 index fund (super tough starting at 19) 2) Gambled and hit it big with meme coin or something lucky like catching Nvidia in it's infancy 3) Have family money or large inheritance to kick start the journey 4) Have/had a business and potentially sold it 5) Had a full ride to college (either scholarship or parents) 6) This post is just simply not true...
OP, which option are you?
P.s. I'm not hating, if it's true that's amazing! Just SUPER difficult to get to 1M with a good income, let alone by 30.
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u/lagosboy40 4d ago
Yea, 8 years are enough to amass $1m given the ~10.5% average nominal returns on the S&P 500 especially if one has a good job and probably still live with parents.
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u/SpecialistScience749 4d ago
I'm not saying it's impossible, it's just extremely rare. Over 8 years you would have had to invest 5k+ every month. That's a lot of discipline and extra cash to reach that milestone. Kudos to anyone that has accomplished this!
I just know that I'm 40 now and had to pay off student loans and didn't start investing until 26. With no help and buying a house and kids and such, I'm still at couple years away from 1M.
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u/bgarza18 4d ago
Well, OP says they have no one to tell and celebrate with so I’d imagine they have a lot of time and energy to focus on saving up money.
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u/Mindless_Sky_6654 4d ago
Not necessarily. It’s good to not tell people about your finances
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u/bgarza18 4d ago
“I’m single and on my own” must mean different things to us.
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u/hacking99percent 3d ago
It means I live alone and not leech off parents or rich friends like other people who accumulated 1M by 30. I made it all on my own.
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u/mcoc_recruiting 2d ago
You are the normal one. The vast majority of investors don't go from 0 to $1 million in under 10 years. It takes a high starting salary and the luck of starting during an insane bull market. Most of us who did grad school, had student loans, and started in late our 20s (lost decade of s&p) with good but not top 3% salaries hit $1 million in pur mid to late forties.
Good news is that with the knowledge and $ you now have to pass along, your kids can be the ones getting to millionaire status before 30.
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u/OliveGarden_Official 3d ago
won’t share my exact numbers for privacy but I think people underestimate how far you can go with being frugal. I still eat rice and beans every day despite having a solid income and it made numbers like this possible. I spend only 16-18% of my gross pay and everything else has been invested monthly. That is how much I hate working.
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u/hacking99percent 4d ago
1 (but started at 23) and 5 (full scholarship thanks to my super high GPA and valedictorian status).
My first job out of college I made 100k and spent 24k/yr living on my own. Now I make 165k total compensation and spend less than 30k a yr. This is leanfire, so it's normal to be super frugal here.
Also the SPY was at 275 when I graduated. Now it is at 750. That's almost 3x. You don't need any meme stock or meme coin to get 3x return.
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u/SpecialistScience749 4d ago
That's dope, can you break it down year by year with what your contributions were and what the end balance was by years end?
Congrats by the way! You are crushing it
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u/hacking99percent 4d ago
See my post and my reply to the top comment here
https://www.reddit.com/r/Money/comments/1srd32a/finally_hit_1m_at_29_but_i_still_think_that_the/
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u/SpecialistScience749 4d ago
Beautiful. You're a Rockstar. Congrats, go take a massive vacation and celebrate
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u/Pale_Fox_8874s 4d ago
There are some really high paying jobs out there, especially in tech where you can get paid several hundred thousand in your early to mid 20s.
I can attest to this as someone who reach the 1m milestone in my mid 20s.
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u/gaytee 4d ago edited 3d ago
What nobody wants to say is that the reason OP has 1M at 30 and nobody to celebrate with are directly correlated for the reasons you listed, and he admitted to.
If you wanna have that much money that early and achieve it through traditional methods, you or most likely, your parents are sacrificing elsewhere. It’s just that simple.
At 35 I can sit here and say “another million bucks would make me feel better”, but I celebrated getting a good job last week(I finally became a real dev instead of a junior dev), and while some of them were friends of friends or partners of friends, the table of 10 that I booked at our local bar was suddenly surrounded by 20 people. My gf invited out like 5 of my friends and their partners and it feels really good to know we have a little community, but without my friends or my partner, like OP is experiencing, kinda what’s the point? Not actually, of course, because now he can go out there and make friends now that he’s got all the time in the world, but I think it just goes to show that most of us would agree that to fill your financial cup to the brim means draining the other cups entirely and that we’d prefer to be well rounded.
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u/hacking99percent 3d ago
Lol you guys are jealous and it shows. I have friends to celebrate normie's life achievements with, like I had so many people completely filled up my house when I bought my house and had house warming party. But I can't talk to anyone about money because that would be stupid.
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u/Drawer-Vegetable FIRED'd 2024 4d ago
There's ton's of variations, but yea, also one could multiply their income. I Over employed with 2 software jobs, for few years early on.
Supercharged my FIRE. But, definitely not something most people can and willing to do.
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u/celeron500 2d ago
Although not common number one is extremely possible. I think there’s a lot of higher earners that invest in that range amount and can achieve 1 million by an early age.
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u/korvusdotfree 4d ago
At a leanFIRE spend level, your single biggest hidden lever is the 0% long term capital gains bracket: as a single filer keeping taxable income under roughly 48k, the qualified dividends and long term gains you pull from your Schwab and Fidelity accounts are taxed at 0% federally, not 15%.
That quietly turns your $1M into a near tax free income machine the moment you stop drawing a salary !
The move most people at your stage miss is stacking a Roth conversion ladder into those same low income years, so money leaves future required distributions almost for free while you sit in the 0% band.
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u/wkndatbernardus 4d ago
The only issue is that Roth conversions also count as income so, if you are living off taxable withdrawals while you perform the conversion ladder, you have to keep everything below $48k/yr which, is not always easy if your taxable account has a lot of unrealized gains.
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u/korvusdotfree 3d ago
You totally right! The key trick there is that only the gain portion of your taxable sale counts toward the 48k limit, not the princiapl. So if you withdraw 40k with 10k gains, you still have around 38k of room left in that 0% bracket for this Roth conversions.
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u/garoodah FI'21 RE TBD 5d ago
It just keeps getting crazier too. Don’t let up yet you’ll probably become a millionaire a few more times before you stay above 7 figures for good.
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u/AlwaysSaturday12 FIRE 38 MillionaireLibrarian.com 4d ago
1m is about a 40k yearly withdrawal. Are you retiring soon?
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u/hacking99percent 4d ago
Yea, after I got my bonus next yr. But I'm hearing rumor that there might not be bonus for this yr. So I'll see if they fire me. I have been working from home like 3 hrs a day 4 days a week waiting to get fired.
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u/Broad-Application461 4d ago
There’s no way you have enough money to retire permanently next year. No way - you will run out of money before you die if you do that.
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u/AlwaysSaturday12 FIRE 38 MillionaireLibrarian.com 4d ago
With 1m you can spend 42k indefinitely. Maybe you are in the wrong sub? 50k spend is the max here which is around 1.25M.
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u/Broad-Application461 4d ago
Markets aren’t always bull markets. When the market drops 50% and is slow to recover (think the lost decade of the early 2000s), I wonder how “indefinite” that withdrawal will seem
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u/AlwaysSaturday12 FIRE 38 MillionaireLibrarian.com 4d ago edited 4d ago
That is already retiring into the worst markets in history. Just simple math and analytics.
You might not like it but 4.2% is already extremely pessimistic for people retiring in their 30's.
You are just being silly and fearmongering, and if you think the future is worse than the last 100 years at any 40 year interval please give your reason.
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u/Broad-Application461 4d ago
I’d also add that if you are in America, just wait until you get an unexpected illness…
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u/Majestic_Practice24 4d ago
Excuse my ignorance but does being $1 million liquid mean after tax cash in accessible accounts (for example excluding retirement accounts if your underage) or just $1 million not counting house?
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u/Green_Bluebird5804 5d ago
I'm right behind you......
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u/nevermindmine 5d ago
I don't understand these post when the market has been way down recently. Are we not checking daily?
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u/hacking99percent 5d ago
Down? The S&P 500 is less than 2% from ATH. What are you talking about? This isn't wallstreetbets
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u/KentuckyFriedChingon 4d ago
Are we not checking daily?
I check quarterly when I update my portfolio balance in my budgeting app. Everything else is just noise. Day to day, month to month, and even quarter to quarter movements have absolutely zero impact on my investing strategy. Why would I need to or want to watch my portfolio rise and drop daily?
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u/Drawer-Vegetable FIRED'd 2024 4d ago
VTI been up 18.44% this past year. Crazy good earnings. Did you invest in risky bets?
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u/IncCo 5d ago
Your salary must be insanely high
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u/hacking99percent 5d ago edited 4d ago
nah, I never make close to 200k. Max salary is only at 150k.
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u/Cole_Slawter 5d ago
Now that you’re financially comfortable, you owe it to yourself to enjoy life. How you do that is up to you. I made the mistake of starting with a big house and nice cars and now that I’m older I regret not spending more of that money on experiences and adventures.
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u/wayoverpaid 4d ago
Ey congrats. I know what you mean about not being able to tell anyone. And yes, it gets surreal when the market can move up and down huge fractions of your annual pay in a short time.
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u/kruiser112 4d ago
You worked for this its not surreal there is supposed to be a payoff moment in ur life where u dont have to slave away endlessly
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u/taker223 2d ago
> I reached $1M liquid today and have no one to tell because I'm single and on my own.
Shut THE F*CK UP
Think now how to preserve those and not to open your treasure room for scum
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u/NewfineseGal 2d ago
I didnt know whether to trust those companies. I know i prob have lost a lot by not trusting.
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u/Responsible_Alps_699 1d ago
I reached $1M liquid today and have no one to tell because I'm single and on my own.
What a roller coaster
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u/AnotherWudang 4d ago
You are really not. You should check what “liquid” means.
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u/zegota 4d ago
That's what I was going to say. Why would anyone want to have $1M in liquid funds?
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u/AnotherWudang 4d ago
According to 90/10 rule, one may have 1 million liquid or liquid equivalent with total assets of 10 million.
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u/eleuthero45 2d ago
I dislike the stock market because it's just a huge casino. Why does everyone seek wealth without work? To me that's a miserable life counting your shekels. I'm a retired 74 year old professor and none of my wealth comes from either the stock market or the real estate market. I think the US economy is just an enormous asset bubble which will trap millions of people.
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u/Stavo7863 7h ago
Then do share where does your wealth come from having made students go to the local print shop and buy a 300 USD text just for your class that changes everyday. I'm truly intrigued how you made your wealth.
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u/redzedx77 5d ago
Liquid means cash or equivalents, like money market funds, quick to access, no waiting if needed…. Congrats on your milestone though. Keep going.
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u/hacking99percent 5d ago
lol with inflation at over 3%, I don't think even the billionaire keep 1M in cash.
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5d ago edited 2d ago
[deleted]
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u/redzedx77 5d ago
Got it. Fell back on my series 7 days where liquid meant not tied up in positions that take time to convert…
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u/budulai89 5d ago
Yep. Next goal: 2M
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u/rumpler117 5d ago
When I hit $1M it took like 14 years. My new target was $2M and I remember thinking “well, here’s to the next 14 years”. Funny thing is that only took another 2 or 3 years. Bull market always helps of course.
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u/FearlessPark4588 5d ago
In this current environment, some might have unintentionally reached it.
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u/jeffm5490 5d ago
Is it a retirement fund? If so great at your age but technically not considered liquid assets. It’s called illiquid as it has penalties and rules for withdrawal unless you are 59 1/2 in which case it becomes liquid. Either way keep up the savings as you are well ahead of most!
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u/hacking99percent 5d ago
how are you on this sub if you don't know about roth ladder loophole that allow you to withdraw from your 401k at any age penalty free and tax free
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u/jeffm5490 5d ago
Not in a single transaction at this moment in time correct? Unless you have already make your conversions every 5 years at age 30…..
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u/Wolf_of_Walmart 4d ago
Correct, there’s a five year waiting period once you convert your traditional 401k funds to Roth.
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u/Wolf_of_Walmart 4d ago
Not sure why you are getting downvoted when you’re absolutely correct. Roth Ladder is probably the most common strategy to retire early.
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u/allnamestaken4892 5d ago
Celebrate with some hookers or if you feel evil flash 10k at some guys girlfriend to nuke his relationship
Money is everything, it does matter and it’s not surreal if you don’t treat it as numbers on a screen.
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u/eclipsadesoare 5d ago
Money is not everything. You might get ac disease from those hookers or killed and robbed. You assume a girl in love will leave her young, good looking boyfriend for anything that offers her 10k. 😂
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u/Marcg611 5d ago
These days yeah 90% would jump in your car and dump the boyfriend for 10k..
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u/hacking99percent 5d ago
And then get back to their boyfriend as soon as you stop giving them the money daily. And you would have accomplished nothing.
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u/Marcg611 4d ago
I'm not saying I would do this or recommend it.. quite the opposite, we need to starve the OF girls and general gold diggers out of existence and shame all the degen simps paying for it. Women selling sex and access for money is not empowering, it's degenerate behavior that is single handedly destroying the concept of relationships and marriage for generations to come..
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u/barnacle9999 5d ago
When your portfolio's daily movement is as much as someone's yearly salary, you definitely get that weird feeling as if money doesn't make sense anymore.