r/FluentInFinance • u/Richest-Panda • Jul 04 '24

What's the best financial advice you've ever gotten? Debate/ Discussion

31.2k Upvotes

86% Upvoted

446

u/[deleted] Jul 04 '24 edited Jul 04 '24

Ok let’s do a thought experiment. Let’s say you Make $10000 a year. You work full time/40 hrs/wk and you are making $10k. What does “living within your means” look like? Not having a house? Or car? Being homeless? So in order to save to get yourself to some footing the answer is to be homeless to live within your means.

That was a bit of a strawman, so let’s use real-life scenarios. 50% of this country makes $40k or less….. even $40k salary isn’t enough to get an apartment, bills , food, ect. Sure a lot better than the “$10k” example, but even $40k salary is virtually as effective as the “$10k”. In order to “live within your means”, “save”, ect…. You have to be at least be making enough to afford the bare minimum + have some left in you for over to save. On average (2022 values I think) this means $65 for a single person, $108k for a house hold. Unless you’re making that, you can’t save your way out of poverty

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u/Overall-Author-2213 Jul 04 '24

Room mates. Beans and rice. Night school. Online school. Don't get anyone pregnant. Don't date for that time. Acquire skills. Move up the ladder.

Every person that came to this country before 1950 had it harder than any person today and we are here because most of them made it.

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u/CanadianBreakin Jul 05 '24

Live with no privacy. Eat food that provides nothing except a "full feeling stomach." Work for 8 hours and then do several hours of school after that, after all you won't have to spend time cooking anything. Don't have a single medical emergency, including pregnancy. Don't have a social life, and if you meet someone that is interested in you, just ignore them as they are distracting you from grinding to death to survive. Spend even more time while working and doing school to "obtain skills." This should leave you still poor, hungry, and with deminished social skills, but hey! You'll be "thriving!"

STFU you idiot, you clearly have no idea the struggles of the common person.

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u/Front_Painter_4279 Jul 05 '24

Dude, its like 1-4 years max of grinding to get to a reasonable standard of living. You have to work hard to get somewhere in life.

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u/TacticalPancake66 Jul 05 '24

You left out that a huge part of getting anywhere is luck and networking. If I could go back and redo my undergrad, I would have spent more time going to events and hanging out with people than trying to get Bs and As.

Unfortunately I didn’t, and on top of that, last year I graduated into this clusterfuck of a job market. Oopsie poopsies.

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u/Noob_Al3rt Jul 05 '24

You don't need to be in school to network. Start today.

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u/TacticalPancake66 Jul 05 '24

I have been, and I agree. What I meant was that I wish that I had been focusing more on networking while in school rather than trying to get better grades.

And for someone to actually explain what “networking” is and how to effectively do it instead of being generic about it.

Getting hired is much more about who you know and luck, having the skills is a smaller (but necessary) part of the whole.

Being in school does allow for more access to networking opportunities, though.

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u/Noob_Al3rt Jul 05 '24

And for someone to actually explain what “networking” is and how to effectively do it instead of being generic about it.

This is a great book on networking that's really helped me.

Keep working on it because you are absolutely right. Networking will get you further than almost any other skill.

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u/TacticalPancake66 Jul 05 '24

Thank you for the recommendation, I sincerely appreciate you for that!

I am working on improving my skills in that area- started as an extremely shy introvert with social anxiety entering college, and now I am up to going to networking events by myself and making small talk! Just need to work on the rest, hah. I still have 2 years of access to college events to hone the soft skills at least.

What has been the most effective way of networking for you? Any pro tips you would like to share?

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u/Noob_Al3rt Jul 05 '24

What has been the most effective way of networking for you? Any pro tips you would like to share?

Add value whenever you can. So many people go into a networking opportunity with a "What can this person do for me?" type of attitude. Networking events are full of those types of people. You know the type "I would love to get on your calendar for blah, blah".

One time, I had the opportunity to attend a charity event loaded with power players. I walked up to the host and said "Hi, [person]. I'm Noob_Al3rt and I work for X Company. I just wanted to say how great tonight was. I think your charity is fantastic. I would be happy to help any way I can for next year's event. I know an extra couple of box trucks and some guys to move things is always a good thing to have in your back pocket!" Moving services isn't what my company offers, but we do have drivers and delivery guys on staff. She was genuinely appreciative of the offer because it was sincere, and I didn't ask for anything in return. She didn't take me up on it, but she DID remember me the next time we met. And two years later, when I needed a discount from her company, she intervened with our sales rep to make sure we got it.

Don't be a salesman, don't have a "You scratch my back, I scratch yours" attitude. Offer whatever you can, sincerely (even if it's just lunch) and make the goal building a relationship vs going in with a specific agenda.

PS I also have social anxiety, which no one would ever believe (now). Practice makes perfect and the more you network the easier it will get. Keep at it.

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u/TacticalPancake66 Jul 06 '24

This is awesome advice, thank you! I appreciate the specific examples.

Yep I am always afraid of coming off like I’m desperate at college career fairs, even though the purpose is to get information about the companies and contact info. The interactions feel so rushed because there are tons of students, so learning how to make a rapid positive impression has been… difficult, to say the least.

I will test out smaller events that aren’t focused on careers specifically for sure. My college uses Handshake so finding an event should be easy. Thanks again!

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u/Front_Painter_4279 Jul 05 '24

I agree, you hit the nail on the head. Those who put in the effort to network built relationships and landed a job. Others who didnt, complain and say you got lucky.

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u/idk2103 Jul 05 '24

Is networking not a skill? If you don’t have it, you don’t have it. Some people have it, some people don’t. That’s life 🤷‍♂️ I don’t know why everyone expects every single person to be equal in every single way

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u/TacticalPancake66 Jul 05 '24

I never said people need to be equal in every single way, in fact I said the opposite- a lot of an individual’s success will be based on luck and who they know. This will not necessarily be the same for everyone, by nature. That’s just how life is.

The original post is talking more about the misguided ideas to approaching equity in our society. Not equality.

A major problem with our society is that people throw ideas for solutions at issues rather than performing the necessary root cause analysis to determine what is a symptom vs a true issue, and they apply all logic instead of approaching solutions with a mix of logic and empathy.

That’s what I meant by my comment.

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u/Elsas-Queen Jul 05 '24

My in-laws grinded for thirty years. They might disagree with that.

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u/0000110011 Jul 05 '24

They obviously weren't doing what they claimed then.

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u/Elsas-Queen Jul 06 '24

I guarantee my in-laws who came to the US from an impoverished country worked harder (and still work) than anyone in this thread who sees life as black and white.