If my posts on the mistake of chasing value stocks or the need to invest big money to make life-changing money don’t resonate, consider hiring a financial professional to manage your portfolio. You may not be obsessed enough to consistently invest the amount needed to retire comfortably. Offloading the burden of investing frees up your| Financial Samurai
I decided to invest in two private funds: 1) Kleiner Perkins 20 (KP20), and 2) Kleiner Perkins Select2. Kleiner Perkins is a top venture capital shop which has made more recent home run investments in Figma and Ripple. This article will explain why I invest in private funds even though they charge higher fees. KP20| Financial Samurai
Want to learn how to become a millionaire by 30? Here’s my story on how I reached a million dollar net worth in my late-20s. It involved a lot of luck, a lot of effort, and a lot of risk. I believe all Financial Samurai readers will eventually become millionaires due to disciplined saving and| Financial Samurai
In order to comfortably raise a family in an expensive coastal city like San Francisco or New York, you've probably got to make at least $300,000 a year. Thanks to elevated inflation post pandemic, the middle-class lifestyle is getting harder to obtain due to rising costs of gasoline, food, housing, travel, tuition, and healthcare. You| Financial Samurai
Everybody should have a net worth target to shoot for by age, work experience, and income. Net worth targets will help you stick to your financial plan and motivate you to do more. With net worth targets, you will likely build way more wealth than if you had zero net worth targets. Too many people| Financial Samurai
When I was 23 I got lucky, very lucky. I went fortune hunting and ended up making a lot of money. A $3,000 investment turned into $155,000 in two months. The stock was VCSY, a Chinese internet company with a homepage consisting of a simple dial pad. I had no idea what the company did| Financial Samurai
Dollar-cost averaging is the act of consistently investing in a particularly security over a set interval of time. Whether you know it or not, you are likely dollar-cost averaging every time you get a bi-weekly or monthly paycheck. For example, at the beginning of the year, you may elect a fixed percentage of your pre-tax| Financial Samurai
If you're wondering about active versus passive investing performance, you've come to the right place. Overall, it's better to be a passive index investor because it is very hard to outperform various stock market indices long term. The vast majority of active equity and fixed income fund managers underperform their respective indices. One of the| Financial Samurai
If you've got a pension, count yourself as one of the lucky ones. A pension is more valuable than you realize. With a pension, you won't be forced to lower your safe withdrawal rate in retirement like those of use who don't have pensions. This post will help you calculate the value of a pension.| Financial Samurai
Although being a millionaire sounds nice, it's not that impressive anymore thanks to inflation. In order to be a real millionaire, you will need to have a net worth of at least $3 million, not $1 million. A $1 million net worth provided a great lifestyle before 1990. Not so much today. If you retired| Financial Samurai
Your net worth composition will likely change the wealthier you get. The wealthier you get, the generally more conservative your net worth allocation. However, wealthier people also have more of their net worth in business equity as you'll see below. For example, my net worth composition in my 40s looks nothing like it did when| Financial Samurai
One of the reasons why I continue to save so much is that I'm a perpetual failure. I've made so many mistakes in my life that I need a financial buffer to constantly bail me out. A landmine-filled upbringing has also embedded in me the necessity to save. If it's not an investment mistake, it's| Financial Samurai
Coming up with a sizable down payment is one of the key barriers to affording a home. Learning how to invest your down payment if you're planning to buy a house is a whole other issue. On the one hand, you want to invest your down payment conservatively so that's it's available once you find| Financial Samurai
Some people who critique my various budget charts are annoyed I list retirement contributions and investments as expenses. Therefore, I thought I'd explain my logic in this post. Once you start treating your retirement contributions and investments as expenses, you will begin to build much more wealth than the average person. And once you build| Financial Samurai
Divorce is one of the worst destroyers of wealth. May you never have to go through one. Love birds beware. The following is a guest post from Financial Samurai reader and medical doctor, Xrayvsn. A divorced ruined his life but he clawed his way back. Divorce. Few words in the English language can elicit as| Financial Samurai
Although the Roth IRA is an important tax-advantaged retirement account, there are also disadvantages of the Roth IRA that are seldom discussed. For years I've been an opponent of the Roth IRA. After the government came out with its tricky way to let us all do a 'one-time' Roth IRA conversion from our traditional IRAs,| Financial Samurai
If there's a car in your blind spot and you swerve suddenly, there's a good chance you'll get into an accident. Your accident will not only cost time and money to fix, you might also suffer an injury or even die. If you have financial blind spots, the consequences can be just as severe. I can't teach you| Financial Samurai
If you're looking to achieve financial freedom before a traditional retirement age (60+), you must build passive income. This post will highlight the best passive income investments in our current economic environment. Passive income is the holy grail of personal finance. If you have enough passive income to cover your desired lifestyle, then you are| Financial Samurai
Instead of being so honorable and making money all by yourself, maybe you should get your parents to buy you everything as an adult. Life would be much easier this way. If I could do it all over again, I'm not sure I would have scrimped and sacrificed so much in order to come up with a $120,000 down payment| Financial Samurai
If you were to guess what the average new car price is nowadays, what would you guess? I guessed $25,000, since my Honda Fit is sweet for an economy car and only costs $19,600 new. Given I'm frugal, leaving a 20% upside pricing buffer seemed logical. Too bad I was way off! According to Kelley Blue| Financial Samurai
Starting on July 16, 2024, we had a mini-stock market crash with the S&P 500 declining from 5,667 to 5,186 by August 5, 2024 (-8.5%). The NASDAQ saw a larger drop, falling from a high of 18,647 on July 10, 2024, to 16,200 on August 5, 2024 (-13%). And the bloodletting might not be done| Financial Samurai
Money dysmorphia is a negative and unrealistic perception of one's financial wellness or position. If you have money dysmorphia, you might constantly worry about your finances, even if you are doing well for your age. One significant reason for experiencing money dysmorphia is the unhealthy comparison with others facilitated by social media platforms like Instagram,| Financial Samurai
The proper asset allocation of stocks and bonds by age is important to achieve financial freedom and stay retired. If you allocate too much to stocks the year before you want to retire and the stock market collapses, then you're screwed. If you allocate too much to bonds over your career, you might not be| Financial Samurai
Everyone with children should contribute to a 529 plan. It is a tax-efficient way to save for college since none of the gains are taxable if used for approved college expenses. Today, it costs about $200,000 in total for four years at the most expensive public colleges and about $400,000 for four years at the| Financial Samurai
Living paycheck-to-paycheck is an unpleasant financial experience. Not only does it mean needing to spend everything you have to make ends meet, it may also create an ongoing feeling of despair. Never feeling like you’ll ever get out of the rat race and retire is demoralizing! You might even have to get into debt to| Financial Samurai
Everybody wants to become a millionaire. Unfortunately, not everybody's chances of becoming a millionaire are the same, partially because the playing field is not even. This article looks at historical data on your chances of becoming a millionaire by race, age, and education. Getting to at least one million dollars in net worth is a| Financial Samurai