Financial Independence Daily FI discussion thread - Tuesday, July 06, 2021 |
| Daily FI discussion thread - Tuesday, July 06, 2021 Posted: 06 Jul 2021 02:02 AM PDT Please use this thread to have discussions which you don't feel warrant a new post to the sub. While the Rules for posting questions on the basics of personal finance/investing topics are relaxed a little bit here, the rules against memes/spam/self-promotion/excessive rudeness/politics still apply! Have a look at the FAQ for this subreddit before posting to see if your question is frequently asked. Since this post does tend to get busy, consider sorting the comments by "new" (instead of "best" or "top") to see the newest posts. [link] [comments]  |
| First Quarterly Update / Q2 2021 / You gotta start somewhere Posted: 06 Jul 2021 01:08 PM PDT I've been motivated to start doing these updates since I was first interested in the FI/RE movement in the middle of last year. I always held back because I never felt like I was "good enough" or that my updates would be interesting enough. But now I'm debt free and have no more excuses. I think this sub could benefit from the voice of a low-average income earner at the 'beginning' of their FI journey. Backstory: I am a US citizen who was living in the UK before moving to Australia. I came to Oz in April 2019 on a Working Holiday Visa with a backpack full of clothes, 2000£, and about 10k USD in credit card debt. I had just finished backpacking around SE Asia after finishing the in-class portion of my Masters degree and decided I wanted to spend my time writing my thesis in Australia. I landed in Brisbane and was only supposed to stay for the weekend to visit a friend….but I never left. I ended up apply for a temp 6-month contract on a whim my first night and ended up getting the job. April - December 2019 My first 6 months in Australia were just focused on writing my masters, having fun, and working. I've always been naturally frugal and have never watched my finances much. I ended up saving about ~5k during my contract and left there in December 2020 to go complete my regional work to qualify for my second year holiday visa. January - March 2020 I moved up north to an island off the coast of Queensland to work at a holiday "resort" full time for 200$/week. This was almost exactly how much it costs to pay the minimum on my credit cards. It was a rough 3 months. March 23rd 2020 I was laid off with the rest of hospitality staff around Australia. I took the first plane back yo Brisbane and moved in with my partner at his mothers house to wait out lockdown. March - October 2020 My partner thankfully kept his job throughout lockdown. We were living off his 72k salary and I was paying my credit cards/phone bill/gym fees/personal items with my savings for my first job. I spent 7 months applying to multiple jobs every day, going to countless interviews and being rejected. This was the time I started to become interested in budgeting and, through that, the FIRE movement. During this time I took on all of the household and financial duties. I took control of our budget and we were able to save ~200$/week living off of my partners salary. October 2020 to now I finally landed a full time job in October and have been there since. The pay isn't great and I'm way overqualified but I am happy to have a stable income and there is a lot of room for growth. I don't hate working, my main motivation because FIRE is to be able to devote my time to traveling and more humanitarian focused careers. Updates for Q2: Paid off debt: In the first two quarters of 2021 I paid almost 13 thousand dollars to debt.
This was a mixture of my phone, master's tuition, london living, and overflow from my undergrad years that I just never paid off. This was my top concern as I did a balance transfer and only had 6 months to pay it off before it went up to 23% interest. I paid this off in February.
This was half the cost of my visa to stay in Australia (partner visa) and a small personal loan of money my partner lent me when I got my job as I needed professional clothes and shoes before working in an office environment. Raiz: I put my first amount of money towards shares in my name! It's not much, but every week I transfer some as a motivation to not spend all my personal money. (The VDHG is under my partners name while I figured out my tax issues) PFIC/taxes: I spent the last month researching how I can invest while being a US expatriate. The laws are very convoluted and gave me a head on more than one occasion. On top of that, many online brokers don't accept US citizens ( e.g. Selfwealth) or require a minimum net worth that I don't meet (e.g. interactive brokers) I know that Raiz is not a great investment for me because it has punitive taxes associated with it since they are not US domicile funds. However, I recently came across Stake and will hopefully be using that as my main brokerage going forward. Goals:
Tl;dr - Income: 55k + super Budget:
My partner and I rent a 2b/2b in inner city Brisbane. He pays a higher percentage of the cost as he makes 2x my salary. Additionally for 6 months out of the year we also have a roommate
Total: 1540/month Net worth: Raiz - 222.91 Super - 4,010.07 Savings - 4,500 VDHG - 1500 Total: 10,232.98 AUD Q3 plans and beyond:
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