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I just ran the numbers for the first time ever, and it adds up to 34 months - which I realize is a pretty privileged place to be. However, I’m by no means rich; I just live well below my means and invest all my savings.
Dude, you are rich.
He's rich in spirit.
In reality, he's about seven orders of magnitude from rich, and your perspective needs a good tinkering.
Depends on who I compare myself to and how one defines “rich.” To me, it means someone whose passive income exceeds their spending - and I’m nowhere even close to that… yet.
Yeah I think that's where the distinction between rich and wealthy comes in. You still have to work for a living and are closer to homelessness than renting out Venice for a wedding (for instance).
This exact question from this thread is how rich are you and 34 months is quite wealthy.
It’s an important distinction where I’m a potential counter example. I admit it. I earn what ought to be a comfortable living but poor choices in the past (and probably still) mean that I’m only a couple months from financial disaster. And since it would affect my kids education and my old age, the affects would be major. I am clearly not wealthy, mostly due to my own choices
Surely it depends how you live though. A guy spending just £15 a week on food and living in a tent is not wealthy just because they have £2k in the bank which will cover them for a few years.
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I used to rent a single bedroom in an overcrowded house share, didn't learn to drive because I couldn't afford it.
Had over a year of expenses saved, hardly makes you rich.
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I'm in my mid 40's.
It's not particularly uncommon for people in regional Australia to own their own house with no mortgage by my age.
It's pretty tough to find a family home that costs less than 10x average wage.
So, as a kind of line in the sand I'd say maybe a third of 45 year olds living in regional Australia could "survive" for 10 years with no income.
How do you know how to invest? Asking for a friend.
I don’t. I do it the boring way - buying cheap, highly diversified ETF index funds.
That's way more than most people know... Also, wtf is an ETF?
Exchange Traded Funds, basically these funds pool money from a lot of small investors and give you diversified portfolio. Basically if you try to mirror S&P 500 yourself, it'll require about a few hundred thousand dollars to manage, but by pooling with other people you can have S&P 500 level diversification for 100$
- Open a Vanguard account.
- Buy as much of the thing called VOO as you can each month.
- Come back at retirement age to oodles of money.
Mutual funds and ETFs are both types of investments that represent a group of individual stocks and are generally managed in some way, either by a person or by a fixed algorithm. Mutual funds have some tax implications that can by annoying for people so ETFs tend to be preferred for taxable accounts (in the US at least).
Buy into a broad market tracking ETF (something that tracks s&P 500 or 1000 or similar). That way you're not betting on individual companies, your betting on the collective largest companies in the world doing well. Over a long period of time, which for over a century has averaged ~7% inflation adjusted return yearly.
Next weeks paycheck is already spent
Edit- I am very frugal and the money goes toward bills and rent
I’m still recovering from the mistakes I made 8 years ago, for another 3 years maximum, so no savings,
About a year.
The rest of this month.
3 months at the absolute most, likely significantly less, even after cutting out all "luxuries" like paying for internet/phone/electricity/water.
70% of that would go on rent for my 1-bed flat. And no - I don't live in a big city. I earn more than most. I spend less than most. I don't use any subscription services and I pirate everything. I don't drink, and I never go out to pubs, cinema, (insert paid activity here) because all of that is way too expensive.
The UK is fucked.
Literally the only thing that decides how long I can live is whether or not you rent - whatever you do or don't do as personal responsibility practically does not matter unless you own a house.
The small variations in rent price are also irrelevant, I used to pay more for less, in the grand scheme of things the variance only amounts to £100-200 per year and usually depends on how much you can tolerate free penicillin on the walls.
The blame is only on boomers who hoard property, jack up rents and collect benefits from the gov't off worker taxes. Virtually no one else is to blame apart from capitalism more generally.
The same boomers will also soon elect the alt-right and things will get a lot worse and everywhere else seems to be on the same general trajectory.
I used to dream of a utopia like Star Trek. Now 28 days later looks like a utopia.
I earn less than average (£26k), live in the south, most of my hobbies are cheap though. Fair bit of outdoor stuff - touching grass is free.
The media really is pushing reform though, it's crazy how much press they get. The party that wants to remove your human rights..
I earn almost double and I can't say I have any hobbies that require spending money anymore, unless upskilling for work counts as a hobby.
Almost all of my hobbies are centered around spending less money, e.g. building an offline music collection to move off Spotify, homelab stuff to host navidrome & jellyfin to move off having any subscription services.
I did buy an acoustic guitar I've been absolutely in love with lately. Was pretty cheap for a guitar (£200) but that's something I suppose.
I was saving for a house but by the time I could afford even the shittiest mortgage I might have to flee the country and as such lose all the gains in my LISA. Might as well live a little I guess.
Bought a house a couple of years ago, just as Truss fucked up the economy so my mortgage sucks. 2 year fix ends soon though so hopefully the rate will drop. Tempting to keep paying the same amount though as I know I am able to and then cut many years off it. Or perhaps even aim to pay a bit more and cut over a decade off. Reducing the size of the debt faster also should mean I can extend the payback period if I have financial issues and its not as much of a problem as there would be more time to work with.
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Right now, until next month's mortgage payment comes due. Every time I get something in the emergency fund either an emergency happens or a maintenance that will be an emergency if ignored. Just ordered a new set of car tires about an hour ago, as it happens.
If im lucky its about 2 months.
About a month should be covered
3 months
1-2 years before I need to look at selling the house, although hoping that the mortgage will drop when our 2 year fix ends which could push that time up a bit as that is by far my largest expense.
A month?
A couple months, but
Basically I’ve been saving up for years to redo a leaky moldy bathroom. That wouldn’t get done. Maybe ever
I’ve saved what I could to pay for my kids college. I could ruin their entire future to stay alive
I’m coming up in retirement age with way too little savings. I’ve finally able to put aside enough to catch up a little bit I guess that would go pretty quickly too
Many years technically, but I doubt the stability of… well, everything, too much to say that with much conviction.
A month on current funds and maybe a couple more if I started selling off longer term assets.
About a year.
Next week.
A month, maybe. I'd probably get arrested for squatting at work sooner, tbh. If I cut and run to the woods tonight, I could probably make it further, but I'll run out of food money faster than I could get a reliable food source going before winter hits
Around 4 months. But I could considerably decrease the rate of spending if that was an actual scenario, which would give me more like a year.
About 30 months without any cutback on spending. Pure living costs is about 60 months.
If I'm frugal, about a year. But I own a small business and this would only occur if my business is bankrupt. In which case debtors might chase my personal assets.
Is it not a limited company?
We had to wager our houses to get the initial loans during startup. Loans are almost finished.
About 4 months before I have to sell any assets. Then about 144 months, not including future growth of those assets before they're sold. But then I'm broke at nearly 50.
Five months, but, three quibbles:
If I didn't have income I'd be cutting way back, and with only essential expenses it's more like eight.
I wouldn't plunder my retirement investments to keep spending at the current rate, so if I kept spending the same but didn't plunder, it's more like two months.
I started a good job recently after being underemployed for over a year, and am still financially recovering; normally my emergency budget covers ten months without any income.
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this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
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