What percentage of your income do you invest?

I've been taught by my parents to essentially make my life sh*t in my twenties and thirties so that I could have money saved up in my forties. I'm just wondering what percent of your income (or amount) per month do you guys invest in stocks or real estate or other investments, and also what percent (or amount) do you spend on fun (like alcohol, restaurants, events, etc). Do you regret your choices/lifestyle?

 
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80%+. No regrets. Optimize your investments early on for learning opportunity and you'll be able to do much much much more later on. I've always rolled as much income as possible into investments even if it means eating canned tuna and hot sauce and am glad I did it.

For example, invest $10,000 in a vertical you're familiar with where you get to help the founders on the finance end/raise a round/help the company (assuming your core skill set is finance here) etc... and worst comes to worst, you're out $10k but you learn a shit ton and can roll that experience into the next investment you make.

The biggest benefit here is how fast you'll scale high value skill sets VS passively investing in some bullshit that returns 7% a year and the networking ops are huge too, especially if you're in a big city like NYC/SF where investing in small startups can easily lead to interactions with real VC/PEs, well known entrepreneurs, people on their a-game, etc...

My favorite example of this is Chris Sacca, dude literally just hustled and took on as many advisory roles + angel deals as possible, then did whatever he could all day long to help the companies in his portfolio. He would do shitty lawyer gigs on Craigslist at night to pay off debt + invest more and even used credit cards to invest in Twitter (lol).

Anyways, TL;DR is invest for the opportunity to learn new skills/upskill and NOT raw alpha, especially when young.

 

Where do you look for opportunities like this? Is it local businesses? Word of mouth? Do you begin with developing a skill set and then find opportunities where you can deploy it?

 

I max out my 401(k), throw a couple hundred per month toward Vanguard, pay a thousand a month over my set payment to student loans to get that guaranteed 5% return, and have a few real estate investments.

So maybe 15-25% are real "investments" but I am far more focused on getting out of student loan debt rapidly at the moment and am making good progress.

Commercial Real Estate Developer
 

At a minimum, try to max 401k and IRA. I have a basic budget I stick to and the rest gets invested. Also, if you're working your ass off in your 20s, its not that hard to save. I'm too busy to spend most of my money anyways.

 

My wife and I have been investing 60% of our combined gross income and still have a pretty sweet life... our combined gross is around $145,000 (plus carry, but I am not including in this) all the saving is not about being able to grow equity as much as it is about having enough to live off of when real opportunity comes along and we need to drop everything, whether that is buying a sailboat and going sailing for two years, or a business opportunity. Life is short, having options is important.

 

Shooting for 60%+, probably going to achieve 50%. If you save 50% of your income every year you could retire in 16 years (assuming your income stays the same, stock market gains of 7%)! Obviously most of us are probably hoping to grow our salaries over time and live a more expensive lifestyle at 40 than at 22, but you are not going to complain when you're 35 and have a million bucks in the bank

 

70%. My COL is pretty low aside from the occasional watch. I am addicted to shopping so it is best for me to spend my money buying investments rather than clothing.

Cash and cash equivalents: $138,311 Financial instruments and other inventory positions owned: $448,166
 

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