&yes, i will be updating this post with more things as i think of them, so scroll to the bottom of this post for additional bits.
Bank of America was the closest bank to the house I was living in, so I walked in and opened savings and checking accounts, and the bank offered, and I accepted, a $1,000 line of credit with my very first credit card.
An Intermediate working toward Advanced (&beyond) Financial Literacy Comprehension Check:
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| ₹20 INR = $0.21 USD [08aug26 0650] $1 USD = ₹95.21 INR [same timestamp] about ₹250 INR will buy you the US equivalent of a Big Mac in India [today] |
Late Teens/Early Twenties
First things first, for women like us, GET A JOB.
You gotta make money, and you gotta make as much as you can.
So start early.
If you're a teenager, hustle your ass off. If there's an opportunity to make money (say, someone's offering a hundred bucks to anyone willing to help them move, and they'll split it between everyone who shows up; you'll quickly learn that you're splitting that hundred with yourself) seize it. Seize every opportunity to make money that comes your way. Save every penny. You're a teenager living under your parents' roof. What expenses do you have? If you are a teenager with expenses due to circumstances beyond your control, get a job.
When you're twenty, you have seemingly endless energy (trust me, i am forty), so use it. Burn out. Do the thing. Take the risk. Leap before looking. Go, Go, Go! Seriously, gurl, get off your ass and GO! Your twenties are not the time to "reap the rewards;" you haven't sown any seeds; you don't even have any money with which to buy seeds.
If you're not in school, job as many jobs as you can physically accomplish. If you're in school and can manage your class load, get a part-time job. Students are extended a lot of flexibility in the jobforce. If you need to focus only on school to get through school, then do so. Everything you decide to do in this life comes at a price, and you are the only person who can know which price(s) you want to pay and why.
My early twenties were spent in college: three years in Waco, Texas, USA, a one-year break in Syracuse, NY, USA, followed by two years to graduate in Boulder, Colorado, USA.
Thus, my tuition and rent was financed by my scholarships, financial aid and student loans while I was in school, and I jobbed a job in Syracuse.
If you are not attending college, no problem.
If you're living at home, then your parents are subsidizing your rent and food, so the texture of your financial life isn't actually all that different from someone attending school.
I worked my ass off while living at home all summer, and then, I lived off that money during the school year.
I had to take out a lot of student loans after my freshman year, cause scholarships don't inflate with tuition, lol. By the time my junior year rolled around, I got a piss-poor part-time job so that I could have some extra cash. The money I made over the summers was no longer enough to cover tuition plus daily/social expenses. I had to come up with my own money for anything beyond rent and school. I didn't have to make much money, but I had to make some money. I think I worked three, four-hour shifts in the middle of the day between my MWF classes. I think I got paid about $7.10/hr (adjusted for inflation, about $11.50/hr today), plus maybe about ten or fifteen bucks a week in tips, a far cry from my one-to-three-hundred dollar days waiting tables *weeps*
My parents were paying for my cell phone and car expenses (except fuel).
I did not have a credit card.
I had my debit card (along with its checkbook), and that was it.
I cleared $10K over three-months of waiting tables during the summers, and all of that money got thrown into my checking account (the money in this account is the money I accessed with my debit card).
My account simply got smaller and smaller as the school year went on.
Not a great strategy for building wealth, but whatever, I was twenty and was not financially educated by my parents, so simply getting by was the goal, and I got by just fine.
The paychecks I received from the job I jobbed my junior year were simply cashed, cause it was all disposable money with which I could eat and socialize.
I was in college, goddammit!, without a financial education!
If I could do this portion of my life over again, everything would've been different, and so, it's tough to give advice here, cause for most of us, we're simply trying to figure shit out. Everything seems expensive. $1,000 sounds like so much money. I remember writing my first $1,000 check, and I was like, "Oh my god, so many zeroes!" *weeps* Working with payments that are a mere few-hundred dollars is overwhelming when you're twenty.
The important part, at this stage of your life is simply finding a way to support your life.
There's no need, at this point, to strive for the life you want.
YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU WANT; I PROMISE.
You don't even really know what money is!
Nevertheless, what you need is money, so, get out there and make some money.
Make enough money to live a life.
Save all of the rest.
You don't have to make enough money to live your whole life, and you especially do not need to make enough money to live a luxurious life.
You can get a roommate.
I had a roommate for all of my first three years of college, and then I rented a room in a woman's house when I lived in Syracuse while dancing.
Once you've found your footing juggling a job and some responsibilities, maybe school, then you can start to really look at your money.
For normal, regular people, we don't simply have money flowing to us. This is why you're "poor" or "working class." You must trade your time for money. But the whole point of this writing, the whole reason why you're reading this thing is cause you've realized that you don't want to keep trading your time for money, like an economic slave on Empire.
Thus, you need a job.
You don't need a great job.
You don't need a job that you "like."
You don't even need a good job.
All you need is a job that you're willing to do and that pays you to do your job.
The job needs to cover your expenses.
Your expenses need to fit inside the amount of money you bring home.
This is when everyone bails, cause they think they "deserve" whatever they want, NOW.
If this is you, fuck off. Good luck!
If this is not-you, congratulations. We're gonna be rich!
A job is cash flow.
Cash is flowing to you in the increments of hours that you toil away for someone else.
Look at your paychecks.
Look at where your money goes.
Look at how your hard-earned hours are divided up by The State.
LOOK AT YOUR MONEY.
In your early twenties, the most-important habit you can develop is simply: LOOK AT YOUR MONEY.
No judgement.
You're twenty.
You don't know anything.
You haven't been alive long enough to understand much.
You've been alive long enough to "know" a lot.
But you haven't learned the lessons, cause you're about to, lol.
Late-Teens/Early-Twenties Cash Check:
- Does cash flow toward you through a job?
- How much money does The State take of your paycheck?
- Do you have enough money to cover the expenses that are your responsibility to cover?
- Are you a capitalist?
*deep breath in*
there was a time when women had no rights to a job or money of their own
*deep breath out*
*deep breath in*
i am so grateful to be a woman,
today,
able to make as much money as i please,
all by myself,
that is all mine
*deep breath out*
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| this is all the money that i've found on the ground since moving here in 2023 [not including the $20 in the below photo] $44 &it's being saved for our future kitten ive always found money on the ground everywhere ive lived &average about $30/year &i think it's mostly due to our pedestrian nature that i find money on the ground so often &don't worry if there are people around (which is never) i check to see if someone's lost any cash obviously |
Early Twenties/Mid-Twenties
Now we're talking expenses.
Unfortunately, this is the time in your life when you really need to start understanding what your life costs. If you were in school, you're probably out of school by now, and so, the full force of the cost of your life is going to hit you like a ton of bricks. Life is fucking expensive. Life is even more expensive if you're trying to pay for all of it yourself.
Remember, you're building your life, one paycheck at a time ... for now.
Your largest expenses will be rent and a car.
I am of the no-car camp.
I am of the no-car camp.
Nevertheless, I have had two cars, which is why I know there's no point in owning one.
Nevertheless, I know that not-having a car is not-possible, cause like, well, I mean, it is possible, it simply requires a level of effort that creates too much inconvenience in the lives of people who have lives.
I don't really have "a life."
I don't socialize often, and I've never been susceptible to social pressure to socialize.
I, personally, do think that life is doable without a car, and I fully acknowledge your opinion if you think that life is not-doable without a car.
Depending on where you live, it is true, a car might not be optional, which sort of suggests that you should really pay attention to where you decide to live, right?
If you must have a car, then what you're looking for is something that will last a minimum of 100,000 miles. So you're shopping "reliability." You also want to keep the repairs cheap. Every car will break down. Every car needs constant upkeep. Choose a car that you can buy in cash, save up that cash, and then choose something that's boring, run of the mill, a dime a dozen. The thing about dime-a-dozen cars is that their replacement parts are easy to come by, which is what makes the parts cheap. If you're driving an ultra-rare luxury vehicle, the parts are not expensive because they're "better." The parts are expensive because there's only ONE place where you can buy this ONE part, and guess what, there's only ONE of them. When you buy a regular old car, there are literally millions of parts that are made to replace parts that will inevitably break. Also, befriend a mechanic ;)
Some food for further convincing: personal vehicles spend ~95-99% of their useful lives unused.
There's nothing wrong with renting.
Rent is not money being flushed down the toilet [i've already explained this here].
Rent is paying to live somewhere.
You gotta live somewhere.
And that somewhere costs money.
If you think that you're somehow investing in a house by paying a mortgage, you're not.
If we need to do a further discussion on buying a home to live in versus paying rent, that's a whole thing all its own.
If you don't want to believe me, that's fine.
Before you buy that "dream house," however, at least do the math on all of the expenses that come along with home "ownership."
If you do this math, you will quickly learn that home "ownership" is not ownership at all.
It's a racket.
There will come a time for property ownership, but now is not the time.
You have to have decent credit to rent a decent place.
The better the credit the better the place.
Credit is money that is being extended to you through Trust.
The credit card company is giving you money AND trusting you to pay them back.
Your credit score is essentially your ability to pay back the money that is loaned to you.
If you have a low credit score, a landlord KNOWS that you are bad at paying your bills.
If you always pay your bills, you never need to check your credit score.
If you're living at home, now is a good time to start using a credit card.
If you went to school, you probably needed a parent to co-sign on a lease.
If you don't know someone with good enough credit to help you get a lease, then you're gonna have to live at home while you build credit before you can rent a place all your own.
If you need to ask someone about the specifics about how to build credit, ask.
Creditors don't give one flying fuck about your good grades, beautiful hair and extra community service; they ONLY measure monetary events, of which you must create an official history.
For me, I rented a room out of a woman's house while I started building my credit.
I did not need a credit score to live in her home.
She did not require one, although she could have.
I was part of a teensy-tiny ballet company that arranged all of my housing through various members of the church with which the company was associated.
Andrea was the name of the lady who owned the home.
She had inherited it from a grandmother.
While I was living there, I was not in school, and so, I was jobbing during all of the hours I was not dancing.
I was a Starbucks barista.
I was paid the state's minimum wage of $7.15/hr plus tips, and I received $0.10 (ten cent) pay raises every few months.
My paychecks were about $300/week plus about $50 in tips.
I sold the car my parents gave me (a 1995 mazda 626) for $3,000, and bought a 2004 volkswagon new beetle (in light blue) for $5,000. I put down the $3,000, and I used my mother's credit score as a co-signer on a $2,000 loan.
My expenses at this time:
- rent $300/mo (flat)
- car $125/mo
- car insurance $0 (parents, will explain below)
- cellphone $0 (still on the family plan)
- food unknown
- savings unknown
As you can see, I had very little knowledge of my spending habits and expenses. My parents were still floating my car insurance, because as a veteran, my father gets really good insurance rates through USAA, and I was grandfathered into his low rates even after I opened my own account with all of my own information so that I could pay all of my own bills (but this doesn't happen for another two years or so).
I used to spend a few hours every payday looking at my paychecks, divvying up all the money.
I took 20% right off the top, and that would remain in my checking account.
I used my checkbook proficiently, so I knew how much money I had.
My mom and I went to the bank when I was maybe thirteen and opened my first checking account with $20, and she taught me how to balance my checkbook. I bounced a check maybe six months later.
I added everything up.
I made a chart of the percentage of each paycheck that I needed to stash away so that I had enough money for rent, my car payment, gas, and then whatever was leftover went toward food.
Then I'd write down how much cash I needed and in which denominations so that I could put the exact percentage (rounded up to the nearest dollar) amount into the various envelopes of my expenses.
I had an envelope labeled "RENT," and every paycheck, the amount of money that needed to be taken out of that paycheck for RENT would go into that envelope.
I typically received four paychecks a month.
I made about $300/week.
I had to put away about $100 of each paycheck into the RENT envelope.
I had to put away about $32 into the CAR envelope.
I had to put away about $20 into the GAS envelope.
(This is where you could create a Transportation Budget in lieu of a car)
Bank of America was the closest bank to the house I was living in, so I walked in and opened savings and checking accounts, and the bank offered, and I accepted, a $1,000 line of credit with my very first credit card.
I only used my credit card for gas, to build credit.
I'd run my card to fill my tank, and then, I'd pay it off every month.
One time, however, I was being a stupid ho, and I let a friend run a tab on my card at a bar. I woke up the next morning to a $300+ receipt. I was livid and terrified. An entire paycheck! Needless to say, I paid that thing off with the next payment, and I cut the card up.
I had envelopes for food and frivolous spending.
I would go to the bank with every paycheck, and I would deposit the check and withdraw the exact amount of cash I needed, in the denominations of bills that I needed to fill my envelopes. When my bills were due, I'd pay them, and at the end of the month, I deposited any leftover cash that I had back into my checking account.
I lived this way for exactly eight months before I moved back to Colorado to finish school at twenty-three.
When I left Syracuse, there was no Bank of America in Boulder, so I had to find a new bank.
The 20% that I scraped off every paycheck totaled nearly $2,000 by the time I left.
I wasn't much of a spender, cause I didn't have much of a social life.
I spent 90% of my free time in the local library just down the street, lol.
By the time I moved to Boulder, I had about $4,000 to deposit between my new savings and checking accounts.
I opened a new savings account and a new checking account in 2008.
I deposited $500 into a "No Touch" savings account, and the rest into the checking account.
To this day, I have the $500 "No Touch" savings account, and I have not *knock on wood* touched it.
Every banker comments on it.
The bodybuddy/lifemate wishes I would invest it.
The account is worth a whopping $503, today.
By all accounts it should be invested, but it is not, and it is because it is a remnant of a life long past.
$500 is enough to save most people from a financial emergency, or at the very least, it's enough to get through one day in the face of an emergency.
Saving actually destroys wealth; when money isn't multiplying, its spending power slowly erodes. Today, in 2026, that $500 only has about $325 of 2008 spending power; or, put another way, I need $775 today to buy what $500 bought me in 2008. By saving it, I now have less to spend.
I did not come from money.
The security of these five-hundred dollars gives me peace.
$500 is nearly nothing in our portfolio, a drop, but I never, never ever, want to embody a mindset wherein I would take $500 for granted!
I traded my time, a hundred years ago, for that money.
And yea, it would've grown to be more than $503 if I had invested it, and even if I invested it, today, I could still earn on it at a rate greater than it has grown in the past nearly twenty years, but nobody can tell you what to do with your money.
Yea, a lot of ifs and woulda-couldas have come and gone, and I have more money today than I would've ever let myself dream of back then, AND I still have that $500.
By the time I had settled back into college, I was feeling really confident about my money. I had enough to cover my life. I was confident in my ability to show up to some job and get paid. I transferred to a Starbucks in Boulder so I did not lose my seniority or my pay rate. I jumped right in where I had left off in Syracuse, but now I had a little confidence knowing I had enough money to cover my life sitting in the bank. Of course, I still had to show up to my job to continue to collect paychecks to afford my life from here on, but I had a little stash of cash to cover my life for a few months without a job. My scholarships and student loans continued to cover my tuition and rent ($800/month at its height, not including utilities, a lease co-signed by my parents), but that was it by this point in my schooling. My job really was supporting me, although, my rent was still being financed, and so, I had a really great opportunity to save even more money, but of course, I squandered it, cause I was a young ho who was never taught about money, what it is or how to use it to work for me.
I also opened my second-ever credit card, a Target card, in 2008.
I furnished my apartment through Craigslist and at Target.
Target lures you in with percentage discounts off entire purchases if paid on Target Credit.
So, I got the card to save 30% off about $200 (~$60) of furniture and used it exclusively at Target from then on, and I paid it off every month.
When we moved to Seoul in 2013, I canceled that credit card and closed its account.
In 2012, I opened the credit line, through my bank, that we use to this day.
It is our only personal line of credit.
We used to pay off the balance every month.
Since our thirties, we've kept a small balance on it, cause now we know what money is and how it works.
Every once in a while, we will pay it way down, and every time, our credit gets extended.
If I could go back, this is the point in time I would return to.
I would tell myself to invest all of that extra money I did not have to spend on rent.
I'd pat myself on the back for saving any of it at all, but then I'd tell myself that saving it is not enough.
Saving feels secure, but saving does not create wealth.
I would, obviously, need to explain a lot of things to myself, but this is the time in my life I would return to myself.
This is a point in time when:
I have consistent cash flowing to me through my job.
I like my job.
I have reasonable expenses, because school is subsidizing my early adulthood.
I'm comfortable with the whole act of paying bills.
I'm not bouncing on zero between paychecks.
I've graduated from college.
I'm twenty-four years old.
I'm about to move in with the bodybuddy/lifemate.
Our first apartment is $1,000/month, not including utilities.
I have a car and car payments (until 2012).
I paid off my car at twenty-seven.
I pay my own car insurance.
We move off our family's family plans.
He does not have a car.
We split everything else down the middle.
After about a year of living together, we start thinking of our money as "our money"
We pay all of our life's expenses.
We have really great credit. (Never. Miss. Payments.)
We're logging our every expense.
Now is when everything begins to get complicated, cause this is when we started our first business, and so, this is when everything that we thought we knew about money became, "We don't know anything about money." We were affording our life, just fine, but we were going nowhere, fast. We'd been "scammed" out of $1,000 when we were too stupid to know that we could file our own business registration paperwork. We started searching for answers to our money questions.
Early-Twenties/Mid-Twenties Cash Check:
- Do you have money in your accounts between pay checks?
- Have you built some consumer credit?
- Do you understand what money is? What a credit is? What a debit is?
- Do you know what Debt is?
- Do you track every penny flowing in and every penny flowing out?
- Are you a capitalist?
The reason why this is the point in my life I wish I could return to (only for a day to talk to myself, not live, ugh *boo*) is because this is the point in my life when I wish I had started to invest my "extra" money. But investing your money feels no different than letting it go. It's not in an accessible bank account (it's in a brokerage account), so it's a terrifying feeling to let that money go be somewhere where you cannot access it or spend it.
It's a truly terrifying feeling. I know. I've lived it. But you get used to it, and then you get used to having money, and then your life changes.
This point in time, nevertheless, is the exact point in time to utilize a thing we call "compound interest."
When you save money, you're doing basic addition. You have $500 today, you add $100 tomorrow, now you have $600. Linear math. Linear growth. Add one, now you've added one. Not only that, you have to trade your time for all of those additional deposits.
When you invest money, you're MULTIPLYING your money. Your money grows by a percentage ... it multiplies. If you have $500 and it's going to grow at 5%, that's 500x0.05, which is $25, that $25 is what you've "earned" on the $500, and it's "returned" to you, so now you have $525.
Now, your money is going to multiply 525x0.05, which is $26.25, so now you have $551.25.
Now, your money is going to multiply 551.25x0.05, which is $27.56, so now you have $578.81
Now, your money is going to multiply 578.81x0.05, which is $28.94, so now you have $607.75
If you keep going ...
you're creating exponential growth, at which point, your money begins to double, infinitely ... in theory.
This is compound interest. This is wealth.
When you reach this point where your money is doubling, you are wealthy beyond measure.
The only way to get here is through ZEROES.
You must collect ZEROES.
Zeroes are how multiplication works fastest.
Add a zero, you're multiplying your multiplication.
Look at 10x1 ... it equals 10
Look at 10x10 ... it equals 100
That zero that makes the difference between one and ten is the difference between being rich and poor, today, on Empire.
Here are some examples of a $100 stock that grows by $5 or 5% of 100 or 100x0.05 for the sake of math:
Pretend that you buy 1 share of a stock that's worth $100.
This is called investing in a public company;
the company is collectively owned by the public: people like you.
You own the right to 1 share of the earnings of that public company
And the day you bought it 1 share = $100.
If the share price goes up by $5 in a day, you own 105x1, which equals $105.
Now you own 1 share that equals $105, the share price for one stock.
Pretend now that you buy 2 shares of a stock that's worth $100.
You have 200 dollars in stock.
The stock goes up by $5 in a day.
You own 105x2, which equals $210.
What was $200 is now $210 in stock.
Pretend now that you buy 10 shares of a stock that's worth $100.
You have 1,000 dollars in stock.
The stock goes up by $5 in a day.
You own 105x10, which equals $1,050.
What was $1,000 is now $1,050 in stock.
Example One made $5, while Two made $10, and Three made $50 all in the exact same time frame.
This is capitalism-as-usual with public companies: THE MONEY MUST GROW.
You can make your money grow by buying stocks and simply watching the market grow, &or you can buy more stocks whenever you have some extra cash.
What I would've told myself at this point in time to which I would (if I could) return is that I MUST LEARN HOW TO INVEST MY MONEY, AND I MUST LEARN IT NOW, AND I MUST SHOVEL AT LEAST $1,000 (about $1,500 today) INTO THE MARKETS, NOW.
We went down the road of investing, but the road that the mainstream "financial educational" seminars and meetups focus on is real estate investing and entrepreneurship.
The reason why there are so few mainstream avenues for stocks &bonds securities investing is because securities are governed, literally, by the law.
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| these are the two laws that govern investing in these united states |
These fucktards on socials think that they can tell you how to invest, but if you were to ask them what the rules are for investing, I'd bet big money that 0/100 of these fucktards would cite these laws.
If they're not quoting the law, they can't help you, lol.
In 2013, we learned that we were not going to be able to reach our financial goals without some major lifestyle changes. I had injured my neck and was unable to hold down full-time or even consistent employment. The bodybuddy/lifemate worked his little butt off supporting us and taking care of me. At some point in late 2012, we looked at each other, and we knew we couldn't go on like this and reach our goals. So, we decided to move to Seoul, South Korea. We made it to Daegu, South Korea in 2013, and then we finally moved to Seoul in 2014. I sold my car to cover all of our consumer debts, and the bodybuddy/lifemate sold his very expensive trumpet to buy my plane ticket.
We spent our first years in South Korea learning and honing our money skills. We saved up a ton of money. The bodybuddy/lifemate was making good money. We basically had zero expenses, cause housing was covered. I made a little money here and there, and it was enough to create a little luxury in our life, because it was 100% disposable.
By 2016, we had filled our coffers and saved enough to finally invest. I highly recommend not-investing money that might be needed at a moment's notice. This is why, while investing is key to generating wealth, it cannot be done too soon, because you have ongoing expenses to pay, forever, and so, if you might miss your bill payment, cause you're short $20, you should not be investing any money at all. There can be delays, penalties and fees for removing your money from stock market investments, and so, it is important that you've first saved enough to cover your daily life before you begin shoveling extra money into the markets.
If you are drowning, you cannot help someone who is drowning. It is very important, especially for us women, to be extremely selfish during this time of financial foundation building. I know how challenging it can be, as a woman, to not help out, to not lend a helping hand. The time for this WILL COME, but for now, you gotta be selfish.
When I was thirty years old, we purchased our very first stocks. Ten shares of Tesla for $2,294.99.
Our strategy has always been to live at the lowest possible level we can reasonably tolerate. In short, we have, for the past decade, on paper, lived "in poverty." We have a plan for every cent that enters our life, and every cent follows its plan.
You do not need to be this "invested" in investing, lol. There are easy methods for stashing your cash in stocks &or bonds. The point is for YOU to learn what sort of capital outlays work for YOU. You do not have the same goals that I have. You do not know the things I know. I do not know the things you know. All we can know is what we learn, and so, if you want to invest your money so that it can grow, learn how money grows, and then learn how and where to put your money so that it can grow.
Today, our financial portfolio and our capital strategy is far too complicated to outline here on this blog.
I will say this, however, we track every penny, incoming and outgoing.
We have many checking, savings, credit, and brokerage accounts at many different financial institutions, all carefully tracked.
We have many checking, savings, credit, and brokerage accounts at many different financial institutions, all carefully tracked.
We set a budget.
It doesn't matter how much money we make, we have a budget much lower than any amount we would ever reasonably make, and coming under budget is so satisfying.
The budget is reassessed with every new fluctuation in cash flows, which is about every quarter.
The budget is set based on current and future, upcoming expenses.
Once the month has begun, the budget cannot be reexamined, except in the case of emergencies, duh.
We still rent our living space, and we will continue to do so until we have so much money that we literally need to stash it in property.
Property ownership, here on Empire, is only for the truly wealthy. Don't get it twisted. It's called a housing market, and until you have the cash flow to throw down cash on that property, you're too poor to shop in the housing market. Treat the housing market like any market. Some of us can't afford organic.
But the most important piece to all of this is actually not about investing. Investing will come naturally once you have a stash of cash. It just will. When you get to that point, it is imperative that you seek the Truth about how money works, about what investing is, what your options are when it comes to securities. Securities are a big deal. People go to jail. You cannot simply start a business and monetize your investing advice. You cannot. By law. This is why it's so difficult to find good advice.
If you take advice from social media, you deserve to lose all of your money and be poor for the rest of your life. Would you really give away your money based on something you saw on a highway billboard?
So you either need to learn it yourself, or you need to find someone you trust who can teach it to you for free. Or you can get a job in the industry, lol, but that way lies lies, corruption and madness.
What you really need to know is how to stay out of debt.
The only way to do this is by living within your means.
If you want more means, job more.
If you don't want to job more for more means, fuck off.
Once you have your expenses under your control, you log every penny exiting your control and every penny entering your control, you will know exactly, to the penny, how much money you need to get through one day, one week, one month, one year, one decade.
If you do not know how much money you need,
how can you ever hope to know how much money you want?
We currently use Charles Schwab for all of our brokerage services:
- We have a schedule and a plan for every penny that comes in and goes out
- We make plays and take positions in the stock market every week
- We have different interests when it comes to companies in which to invest
- We have different approaches to investing
- We have the same philosophy about what types of companies interest us
- We're playing the long-game, always
- I prefer to stay away from big tech sector, infotech-type companies and lean more naturally to all-american, big brands, everyday consumer goods, the sorts of products that prop up everyday living
- I also like services that are non-negotiable, like, say, trash collection
- He pays attention to companies that are going to be affected by geopolitics and the law
- He also likes to throw his hat into rings that are untested, and so far, all of these picks of his have been gobbled up by larger companies, and we've been paid out our shares. He knows what he is doing; he is NOT a beginner.
- We're mostly in it for this next wave of trillion-dollar corporations, because this next wave of trillion-dollar corporations is going to be heavily reliant on a few, very specific materials, and if you understand what these materials are and the companies producing them, these companies are trading at next-to-nothing, because they're essential for building the future, but the building of the future has only just begun
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| kinda chic to use money found on the ground as decor for more ₩500 KRW = $0.36 USD [08aug2026 0653] $1 USD = ₩1,408 KRW [same timestamp] about ₩5,700 KRW will buy you a Big Mac in South Korea [today] |
An Intermediate working toward Advanced (&beyond) Financial Literacy Comprehension Check:
- What is the Federal Reserve's dual mandate?
- How much does it cost to buy/sell money?
- What does "ownership" mean?
- What does "privatization" mean?
- What does "securitization" mean?
- If you were to add up the total weight of your groceries every week (every product has the weight labeled on it, and every receipt has the weight of any fruits and veggies), what is the cost per pound of your weekly groceries?
- What is the margin buffer on your weekly budget?
- What was your non-wage income last month?
- What is an accredited investor?
- What is your total net worth excluding the value of your primary residence?
- What happens when The State prints more money?
- What is capitalism?
- When you deposit $100 into a bank account, what does the bank do with it?
- What is the FDIC?
- Tell me about your money.
- Are you a capitalist?
Once you feel confident in your ability to talk about all of the above talking points, you're probably ready to hop on over to tkscmlimiteddotcom and start reading TPDEARR articles (our more advanced financial literacy retail investment resources).
We wish you well on your Quest,
Sun &Ahd
[for the truly curious]
yes, you are 100% normal if you hate talking about money.
i wrote about 90% of this thing yesterday,
and then i quit.
i nearly deleted the whole thing,
cause writing about one's own finances
is terrifying.
and so yea
i woke up this morning
and had the physical reaction of throwing up
before we (the bodybuddy/lifemtea&i) sat down to finish this thing.
so if you're thinking that it's so easy for me to talk about money,
and so difficult for you;
don't get it twisted.
money is a tough thing to talk about.
i love talking about making money,
but i do not like to talk about my money.
so no worries if you hate it.
you're good.
and do it anyway.
[added 09aug2026]
 |
| R30 ZAR = $1.86 USD [0821] $1 USD = R16.05 ZAR [same] a Big Mac in South Africa costs about R68.50 ZAR [today] |
 |
| L68.000 RON = $14.99 USD [0828] $1 USD = L4.54 RON [same] a Big Mac in Romania costs L18.35 RON [today] |
&here are a few more currencies for some currency exchange practice *yippie*
a little more food for convincing [added 10aug2026]
why is $10,000,000 the magic number (for those of us aspiring for wealth beyond comfort)?
well, find out what a thing called Treasuries are.
Treasuries are the closest thing to a "sure thing"
why?
well, that's up to you to figure out.
what Treasuries do, is grow about 5% annually.
why?
well, that's up to you to figure out.
if you have $1,000,000 in Treasuries,
and it grows 5% in one year,
how much money did you "make"?
you can, essentially, siphon off the 5% that you made,
and live off it.
5% of $1,000,000 is a decent "salary,"
but these days
that amount of money is not enough to live off of, alone.
&so, yes,
it's a significant amount of money,
but it's not enough.
what happens, then, when you have $10,000,000 in Treasuries,
and it grows by 5% annually?
what is 5% of $10,000,000?
now that's far more-than a comfortable amount
to live off of;
don't you think?
&ideally,
that'd only be one of your vehicles that grows your cash.
when is enough "enough"? [added 10aug2026]
i mention above how women need to be extremely selfish during these years of financial foundation building. this does not mean that you cannot be generous. it simply means that you gotta make sure you have "enough" money to cover your own expenses before you start giving away money that you actually need to pay for your life. "enough" is going to be a different amount for each of us. think about this. ask any man in your life the last time he gave someone money or a gift, unprompted, and for no reason. 100/100 men will say, "never."
my love language is gifts (not only tangible gifts, i enjoy all sorts of gifts, the more-creative, the better, i would even consider a text message a tiny gift from some people), and so, i have always had an envelope to budget this sort of spending. i know myself. i've known myself for a long time due to the traumatic experiences of my childhood. i know how to pay attention, cause for me, it was literally life or death. i was abandoned on a door step, and the biological family who left me there, took my picture on that doorstep before they left me there. this is all beside the point.
my point is that you can do with your money whatever the fuck you please with it. for most of my childhood, i was trained to "tithe" 20%. The Church, literally, has no way of making money, which is why they sell salvation, and for those of you who think that this salvation is "free," it is not; it's tiered pricing, a percentage, 20% of whatever you make. once i realized that The Church is full of shit, i also realized that jesus was probably a pretty good guy just trying to look out for other people, and it was the powers of the institution that has made the beliefs that were supposedly built upon this man such crass hypocrisy. while i left my salvation behind, i took the idea of generosity, giving back, with me. i started to save that 20% for myself. and then, by the time i returned to school in boulder, i soon realized that i could spend 20% of that 20% on others, but only if i had "enough" to pay for my own life, which i did by the time i arrived in boulder, and so, i started to volunteer my time to a group of young women high schoolers. and since i had been stashing away 20% of that 20% i scraped off every pay check, i had enough money to be a good leader to them. if they wanted to do something, i could make it happen. i absolutely did NOT pay for everything, no way, but i broke down their request so that they could understand what they were really asking for, financially, and then, i explained to them the cost of their idea, and then, they came up with a plan on how to split the cost between themselves plus me. i donated my time, and i would pay for my portion of the event, and then we'd all go have a great time! and i would also usually pay for one extra little thing for the event, etc. if that money i had been saving hadn't been there, i'd be a terrible leader to them and myself. if i had to put these events on a credit card or if i couldn't contribute financially at all, then i'm doing them a disservice by being unable to lead them in the way that they were deciding, and i'm doing myself a disservice by taking on debt. i'd be a burden on them, and i was there to serve them. i'd be burdening my future with debt, and i was there to grow.
for me, "enough" is being able to afford my life.
for me, "enough" is being able to walk around on any given regular day and afford anything i might want to buy (i am a cheap person, i have very few wants).
for me, i've had "enough" for quite some time.
why do i want more?
well, because when you find out what life is like when you have enough, how much help you can actually provide in the lives of the people around you, you start to get hooked on this idea that money can actually help people. and so, if i'm good at making money, why not make as much as i can so that i can help out as much as i can, and no, i do not support the idea of charity.
you using ai to read for you? good! [added 10aug2026]
REMEMBER, however, that ai is an ASSISTANT.
use ai like you would a HUMAN assistant.
if you asked your assistant to read something for you,
and someone asks you about what you read,
you wouldn't say, "well, my assistant says ..."
NO!
you would have your assistant read whatever you need them to read
and then you'd read whatever they said the book was about
and then you'd go through and fact check everything that comes up in their notes
and then you'd make your own opinion about it.
the best way to use ai, these days,
is as a research assistant and a drafter.
ai is an incredible learning tool.
these days, the gap that ai is creating is in learning.
for those of us who know how to learn and can learn quickly,
ai can accelerate this learning speed.
so use ai to learn, cause ai is really good at facts, finding information, parsing through a lot of information to present to you what's out there.
the onus is still on you to be able to recognize which pieces of information ai brings back to you are useful and which ones are crap,
and then, you tell ai which pieces of information it brought back were useful and which ones were crap,
and then, ai will learn, more precisely, what it is that you want from it.
ai can build tools to help you achieve your goals,
but it must be trained to fully understand your goals.
it's not much more capable than that.
you still gotta put in all of your hours
as a human thinker
but ai can help relieve a little of the work load
by creating tools that you think of that will help you,
but you must treat everything that ai "says"
as if it's someone you've hired to tell you what you want to hear.
would you ask your assistant for ideas?
maybe just for brain-storming, but you have your own ideas, that's why you're using ai to help you make-real your ideas.
would you ask your assistant to create something for you?
i'd hope not.
would you ask your assistant to do all your work and submit it without looking at it?
i'd hope not.
so yea,
ai is pretty good at reading,
but it does not read perfectly.
ai reads really well to parse and find facts, but there are nuances to human logic and reasoning that ai simply does not understand, yet.
what ai does best right now, imo, for the everyday run-of-the-mill student is find information by "reading through" thousands and thousands of pages of information quickly and flagging facts and citing exactly where it found a quote or whatever, but it cannot make anything of it for you.
you can train ai to flag whatever information you're looking for, but then you must still go look at the information that ai cites and read it.
so use the tool as if you're working with a human assistant.
what would you task that human to do for you?
i, personally, would only task a human assistant to complete tasks that, essentially, can be done automatically. i need an assistant to check my emails and route them to the corresponding people who need to read them, but i certainly do not want my assistant to reply to my emails for me. maybe there are a few email types that i'd have them respond to, but no way are they ever going to speak for me. i would never off-load my thinking to my assistant, ya know? i have dreams, goals, ideas, and so, if i utilized an assistant (i do not, at this time), the assistant would be here to assist ME as i bring forth MY ideas.
