Budgeting:
I've been fortunate to have been given several thousand dollars by my mother a few years ago. Basically I got that check and afterwards I'm on my own as far as my parents are concerned. They're not paying for college, it's up to me to pay for college with that money, or choose not to. College is a funny thing. It costs say, 30k a year for all expenses. So for two years (two since I am not accounting for general education), that's 60k. Well, I currently only have 56k. So am I rich or am I poor? Am I +56k or am I -4k?
I hear stories of people barely able to afford college. They rack up debt and they have to work part time, even full time while they studied. In both their case and mine it's not entirely clear what I'll get out of college, and whether there will be some nice job waiting for me on the other end. Me, I've been taking a break from college for now. I hear Joe Rogan about how he was living paycheck to paycheck when he was young and having a check to pay for his expenses for a year just lifted this huge weight from his shoulders. I don't know what that's really like because I've never been in those shoes before.
Some people try to romanticize the broke college life and make jokes about. I think the truth is that nobody wants to be like that. It's only notable because it was a period of growth, doing dumb things, and trying to go somewhere in life. Being broke like a college kid outside of college is not cool anymore, it's just sad. And while young adults in college try to make it seem like a hard but cool life, they probably only do it to make themselves feel better.
Earning 10k a year goes an awful long way if you don't have to pay for insurance or rent or electricity.
When it comes to buying stuff I've always had a more conservative view of things. The idea of spending every last dollar just wasn't a thing. It wasn't an option. Of course, it's easy for me to say 'never borrow, just buy when you have saved up cash' when I can basically afford whatever trinkets I want. On the other hand people have a too high expectation of what necessities of life are. You might need a phone service for your job and for internet for many odds and ends. But you don't need an AC and you don't need a heater in San Jose. I have more money than a decent amount of people already and I drive a 96' Corolla hand-me-down with two broken windows and a cracked windshield. Why? A good car is a luxury. If I spent more time in a car a better driving experience would be more appreciated of course. I drive nice and slowly and I spent about $19 per month on gas. But anyways. While a cell phone might be important and necessary for some, nobody NEEDS a high end cell phone. Personally, I bought a $25 cell phone just for listening to podcasts and for an alarm clock.
Stocks:
For many years GPUs were stuck on a 28nm process. I knew that last year would finally be the year where the process goes 16nm. Basically, I knew ahead of time that last year would have been a big year for GPUs. AMD stock grew seven-fold and Nvidia grew four-fold over the last year. Granted, with AMD it was riskier due to their finances. Had I invested all of my money I would've been at a quarter of a million dollars. Realistically if I were to invest I probably would have gained 10-20k.
I really only thought about this because a Final Fantasy Discord channel I was talking in was talking about stocks for a bit in the tech channel. It sort of lit a fire on my ass to get me to start investing and looking at money and how to manage it. My current idea is to invest in mostly Silicon Valley companies. Facebook, Google, Nvidia, AMD. Computer companies are Silicon Valley companies and are companies I tend to know a bit more well. We all know there's no way Apple or Facebook would go under next year.
While I am generally not a betting man, if the odds are sufficiently in my favor I would take up a bet. I've had beliefs that were strong enough to the point where I was willing to bet at 10 to 1 odds. My friends who would be on the other end of that bet typically declined. In all of those cases I ended up being correct. But that's neither here nor there.
On my radar: AMD's Zen processor reveal, with Nvidia and AMD GPU releases sometime in Q1-Q2 most likely. Also, Snapchat's IPO.
The way these stock services work is you pay a flat fee per transaction. This means buying a single cheap stock is a dumb idea because a huge amount of that cost will be paying the service.
Credit Cards:
Speaking of inflation, I discovered that the interest rate of credit card balance is only 0.01-0.06%. In other words, at 55k balance I would only earn $25 year after year. The amount of money required to live off of interest would be insane. $10M would only net $6000 a year.
Credit cards give cash back though. The Bank of America way is to give 1% for all purchases, 2% for groceries, and 3% for gas. I discovered the statistics tab on my bank page, and based on data from the last year that would be about $70 in cash back a year. That comes with a gain in credit score, for whenever I need it for some reason.
The real problem is getting such a credit card in the first place. Bank of America's ridiculous paper system means waiting 10 days for mail to come my way to figure out why I got rejected. They want me to have a secure version of the card, which requires a deposit and has a $40 yearly fee. Perhaps what I have to do is to go for it, take the hit but still come out a net positive due to cash back, and switch to the normal card once my credit score is good enough. It's pretty dumb how I have 50k+ in my bank and I've been good with my finances year after year but that is not factored in into my application.
Looking at the statistics window let me know that I was paying $5 a month on my savings account since it did not have $300 balance. Scrolling at the history showed that it was constantly fighting the $5 charge month after month and barely gaining. Here's the rub: It was getting close to the $300 requirement. So I added money into it, and now I should be fine.
And finally, the tier on credit card depends on the balance. So it's basic at 0-25k, gold at 25-50k, platinum at 50-100k, and platinum honor at 100k+. The higher the tier the better the cash back. It could go from $70 to $100 since I can't enter platinum honor territory. The issue is that my funds are not very far from 50k. If I have 56k and 3k go away for investing, that's already 53k. Minus 2k for water cooling and that's 1k left. That limits what I can do with investing.
I think the plan right now is to sign up for a better savings account, dump most of the money in there and hit platinum tier, and get a credit card going. Not having to live paycheck to paycheck I guess I didn't have that much of an incentive to stay on top of things. I see all these footnotes and terms and conditions and I just got turned off from the walls of text and jargon I had to look up.
