r/Millennials • u/Particular_Maize6849 • 10h ago
Discussion What once in a lifetime financial windows have you hit?
And which have you missed?
For example, the mortgage interest rates right before COVID were at once in a lifetime lows. If you bought a house before 2019 you won amazing house value inflation with 2% interest rate home loans.
Home equity alone made many people into millionaires.
Also, we are coming out of the window of a once in a lifetime stock market rally. People who invested in AI stocks made bank. Actually you could have just been invested in the S&P500 and made huge amounts of money. The same for Bitcoin a while ago.
I missed all of these windows. I did hit one window though. During 2022, tech companies were hiring like crazy. I was lucky enough to slip into the industry during this year (with my underwhelming talent and disappointing skills) missing the terrible job market both before and afterwards. I literally applied to one place because it was close by and got an offer and so far I haven't been laid off. š¤
Did you hit any of these windows? Are there other windows I'm missing?
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u/BarbellsandBurritos 10h ago
I actively remember being super dismissive and probably straight up rude to a coworker when I was in college because she was telling me about this bitcoin thing that only cost like, $70. Surely that must be a scam.
WELP.
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u/Traditional-Ebb-8380 10h ago
I owned 15 Bitcoin at $1000 each in 2017. Had a chance to turn it into $650k a year later. Would be worth $1.2m today.
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u/tenderbranson301 10h ago
Sure, but you and I had no idea. Plenty of people held on to Gamestop stock for too long.
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u/tristand1ck 10h ago
My cousin got robbed at gunpoint for an in person swap of Bitcoin. Looking back, that was easily a multimillion dollar "transaction"
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u/Anon_please123 10h ago
My ex BF talked about it all the time. I understood it theoretically, but didn't appreciate his hype (bc he was fucking nuts, but I digress). Boy do I regret not picking up $100 worth back in 2012!!!!!
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u/ImOutOfIdeas42069 10h ago
Everyone at work was building mining rigs in 2015 and I looked into it and decided I didn't have time to figure it out, I had other hobbies going on. Fml.
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u/BusyCountry1985 5h ago
I had 20 bitcoin in 2012 and had to sell it after losing a job to pay my rent. I really was going to hold it. I was just unemployed too long in NYC and young and my emergency fund ran dry. It broke $100 a few months later. I wanted to cry when I watched that value hit 2.5 million a few years later. Canāt complain life worked out very well for me anyways.
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u/Geovicsha 1h ago
Yep. I sold in 2013 to help fund a Europe trip. And then sold again in 2021. But the reality is: Bitcoin has the ethos of HODL. Would I still be holding now, unable to do anything with it given nobody is actually using Bitcoin for transactions? When does it become useful?
Warren Buffet and Bill Gates talk about this.
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u/spaceman60 10h ago
Yep, a college friend asked if I wanted to compute pi, which led them to bitcoin. I decided to go the noble route with Folding@Home. I joined the overclock.net team and did that for a few years. If I had mined bitcoin, I wouldn't be working (or probably on reddit) right now. I just have to hope that that research helped someone somewhere.
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u/ohreallynameonesong 10h ago
I know a woman I run into from time to time. She tried letting me know about this new industry she thinks is going to blow up. We're like... is this gonna bomb or make us rich? I wish there was a way to know right now lol. I wish I put more in bitcoin like 8 years ago when I first heard about it but idk if I would have believed it would be worth what it is now
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u/howhardcanthisbe123 2h ago
My husband begged me to buy a couple hundred dollars worth of Bitcoin all his friends were buying. We were broke, and I thought it sounded dumb and said no. His friends that did buy at the time turned it into almost a million dollars. Never quite forgave myself for that one
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u/livin_the_life 10h ago
Yeah, I was in "that circle" in college in 2010. All my friends were STEM with a fair number of engineers/comp sci. Nerdy, LAN, MTG type folks.
We ALL mocked Bitcoin. I think the top price in 2010 was like $0.40?
I hold onto the fact that I am too risk adverse to hold onto an individual asset for THAT long. If I had put like, $1k in I would have inadvertently cashed out at $10k. And then I would be spending the rest of my life realizing I cashed out something that would have grown to $200M today.
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u/Clueless_willow_4187 10h ago
I hit the mortgage lottery, but now we are in a āstarterā home for ever. I am 100% not complaining, because I am not sure how my kids will be able to purchase a house.
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u/bachstakoven 10h ago
Same situation. Frustrated because we need more room. The kids will be fine, there will be a housing market collapse as the boomers age off and give up their homes.
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u/Banana_rocket_time 8h ago
lol this. I mean I wouldnāt call our home a starter home but in 2022 when we bought we bought within our range. 365k home on 120k gross. But I wish we had a crystal ball to predict that weād be making 250k gross now. I would have stretched a bit and got that pool I wanted. š
Itās fine though we are fortunateā¦
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u/Liquid_1998 10h ago
I won $200 on scratch ticket once. Does that count?
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u/Fluffranka 10h ago
I once won a bucket of cheese balls by guessing the number of cheese balls the closest. Does THAT count? Lol
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u/Rude_Employment8882 6h ago
Missed em all. Iām a fuckin dumbass.
But, I also havenāt done anything major to ruin my life, either.
And I have saved and invested for a while. And Iām employed, probably stable, and have been for a while. Just not in ways that have created true wealth.
Plus Iāve got my health, for now. And my family has theirs. So I canāt complain. Shit is great, when it comes down to it.
I did miss on all the chances so far to escape the grind, though.
And I just bought a house this month, which, blessed to be able to do, but itās like the worst possible time in the past 40 years to do so.
Luckily Iām in for the long haul on this place, so should be ok, in a couple decades.
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u/Particular_Maize6849 6h ago
itās good to be grateful. I also have my health and a husband that I love and a cute cat shouldnāt complain too much.
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u/thisisjacksparrow 5h ago
A once in a generation slow down or crash or the economy is coming thanks to incompetence. Youāre in luck with those savings.
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u/myairblaster 10h ago
Bought AAPL in 2003 with some money from my university fund
Bought NVDA in 2017 with divesting some of my AAPL
Got a COVID era mortgage at under 2%
Missed out on BTC
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u/doctormalbec 9h ago
What are you investing in now? You have had great picks
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u/myairblaster 9h ago
Companies that produce actuators and servos for humanoids have been my main jam for the last two years, as have silicon chip production companies. ASML, and AMAT mainly, but also Eaton and Parker-Hannifin.
I've shifted my focus to companies that make stuff for companies who make stuff.
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u/markpemble Bottom 80% Commenter 10h ago
I'm about on the same path. Bought AAPL in 2007.
Bought a few Bitcoins in 2016.
Also, I like that you snagged the AIRBLASTER handle. IDK if you know about the AIRBLASTER company, but I'm a big fan.
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u/winniecooper73 Xennial 10h ago
I sold 1000 shares of Nivida in 2017 and Tesla in 2018 thinking I was smart because I made a few bucks off them. Iām an idiot.
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u/HenneseyConnoisseur 9h ago
Damn 1000 shares of nvda in 2017. Worth around 8 mil today
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u/winniecooper73 Xennial 9h ago
I didnāt even buy it for AI stuff, I bought it for the self driving car stuff that was so hyped up 10 years ago. I bought back in around 2022 and have held with all the AI stuff but damn, I couldāve been retired by now
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u/Leather_Life8257 10h ago
I have some Bloom Energy stock that Iām going to hold onto for the long term. I keep telling myself that no matter what it becomes, Iām going to hold on for at least 20 years. Could you imagine if someone held onto Nvidia stock for 20 years??
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u/UnprecedentedEchos 8h ago
The housing crash of 2008.
I bought my 3/2 1,400 sq ft house for $145,000. With the down payment help from my parents, my mortgage is $755ish a month until 2038.
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u/lish_dalish84 Millennial AF 5h ago
Bought a starter house in 2015 at 3.75% and people looked at me with pity like "well, that's not the worst..."
11 years later, my mortgage is a fraction of what others are paying, even including the extra I put towards the principle every month. So I think I'm doing alright.
Also, I got into my state job just 3 months before the legislature changed some of the retirement criteria for folks who started in the next fiscal year, so I'm set in a better way than most.
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u/eazy_flow_elbow 9h ago edited 9h ago
Golden handcuffs for my house but Iām very much happy with it and donāt intend to sell it. Iāve already gained more than 50% in equity from what I bought it at. My mortgage is less than some peoples rent. I know we can argue all day long about own vs rent but whatever works for you is great. Iām pretty handy with tools and have worked on numerous home projects on my own.
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u/BadFinancialDecisio 9h ago
My spouse and I are fighting about moving. 2.1% interest rate. I ain't moving.
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u/_ism_ 10h ago
I missed everything. I even tried to join the Army in 2008 because I was desperate and they told me I was too old at age 30.
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u/bachstakoven 10h ago
Not to be pedantic but if you were 30 in 2008 you're not a millennial.
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u/_ism_ 10h ago
i was 28. i'm from mississippi, we experienced everything a few years late. the army simply thought i'd be a poor investment by the time i was 30, the recruiter was like "we need talented women like you but we need them a little younger. you'll be 30 before too long." it was like that, i got calls about my ASVAB scores but as soon as they learned my age they were like "oh, we don't need talented women THAT Bad."
the genxers keep telling me i'm too young and i inhabit this and Xennials bc i relate more to the people here. Most of them.
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u/_ism_ 10h ago
I even tried Bitcoin out but I didn't really understand how to turn it into cash and went on these Wild Goose chases for something called a Bitcoin ATM that didn't exist in my city and having to transfer it to Linden dollars and some game I don't play and then I just lost all of it at some point because I didn't know how to cash out.
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u/Chameleon42O 10h ago
Owned AMD stock @ $17 a share. Sold it off around $65 š
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u/AdCharacter9282 10h ago
There will always be more opportunities in the future, so I'm sure you will catch one of those.
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u/philipptj 10h ago
Back when bitcoin was like $20 a friend tried to convince me to buy some and I told him it sounded like a scam.
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u/Particular_Maize6849 10h ago edited 8h ago
I think we all had this experience (unless you were the friend trying to do the convincing).
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u/oopsallsexy 10h ago
Jumped on the Game Stop stock train and scored enough money to buy all new appliances and carpet for the house I had just bought. I didnāt get rich but man was that helpful.
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u/planningperiodguy 8h ago
i didn't get rich off of gamestop, but i made bank on amc. the problem was i didn't do anything with the money. this craze happened smack dab in the middle of alcoholism, so i just used the money to help us get caught up on bills. needless to say we were right back to being broke/poor again like 6 months later.
i've kicked the alcohol. apparently that was all i needed to do to live like a normal human being financially lol
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u/oopsallsexy 6h ago
Congrats on getting sober!
We made like $17,000 on Game Stop and spent it all on the house. Donāt regret a thing! Just thankful we didnāt follow the trend of holding too long. We got out almost right at the top.
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u/Ill-Manager-1108 8h ago
Well unlucky that I married a horrible POS, but I lucked out getting $2200 a month in child support. I've seen and heard so many stories of people getting $50-$500, and I do definitely feel I lucked out. It technically covers most of our bills, mortgage, car payment, etc and he has to pay my mom for childcare and even pay up through them graduating college and 50% of their tuition and both girls were under 3 when I filed. I just look back like wow that affair cost him a lot, she wasn't even attractive
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u/JewelCove 2h ago
Guessing you are getting 2200 a month because your ex has a good income, thats usually how that works
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u/chaawuu1 8h ago
Question, if your ex was more amicable and respectful about his feelings and made it clear he wanted out respectfully, would this child care situation be different?
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u/Ill-Manager-1108 8h ago
He cheated with over 100 men and women, mostly without condoms, including while I was pregnant and almost killed our child, so I don't think he ever would've approached me amicably. I had to find out everything at 10 weeks postpartum when people started sending me pictures of him out on dates. He still is with one of the woman today, so that's why I mentioned she wasn't attractive, but there were plenty of others, too
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u/Is12345aweakpassword Secondhand Marlboro Light Quality Assurance Tester Child 8h ago
I was a big gamer back in the day. I liked NVDAs graphic cards so Iād taken Shaqās advice (along the lines of invest in things you love) and put some pocket money into them for probably a decade or more in the middle 2000s
This whole chip and bitcoin mining thing the last few years has beenā¦ rather lucrative
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u/dumbestsmartest 7h ago
I hate you because I literally talked myself out of doing that back in 2012 (IIRC) when pretty much Intel, AMD, and Nvidia had slumped a bit.
Thinking about how much I missed out on hurts.
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u/Is12345aweakpassword Secondhand Marlboro Light Quality Assurance Tester Child 7h ago
Ouch, sorry friend!
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u/1800generalkenobi 10h ago
we got our house in 2014 with 4.5% interest. We paid a lot onto it, got it down quite a bit. We hit a sweet spot that I missed. We could've refinanced the house in 2021...might've been 2022 for under 3%, taken out 40k of equity to buy a brand new toyota sienna van, and gotten a 15 year loan and ended up paying about the same or less than what we're paying now, and gotten a brand new van, but it was going to cost me 3k to refinance and I was like pffftttt, I don't want to pay 3k to refinance.
I checked it again 2 weeks later and it was now 8k to refinance and still I was like pfffftttt, if I wasn't going to do it at 3 I'm not doing it at 8. Then rates went up, the vans disappeared and went up in price. We ended up getting a used van for 20k that we've since paid off but...man. Dropped the ball on that one. The only bright spot is that since the van was used and we got it because we have three kids I don't care about it getting trashed much. Every so often I see a new scratch in the paint and I'm just like whatever. But getting a hybrid, we would've saved a lot in gas and we wouldn't have had the 20k to pay off.
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u/mvanpeur 9h ago
The car market is definitely one we missed. Our daily car got smashed by someone who ran a stop sign in early 2021 before covid affected the car market. We made due with just our gas guzzler for 2 years to try to save money. Welp, by the time we bought in 2023, car prices more than doubled. Oops.
But we bought our house in 2018 and refinanced in 2020, so can't really complain.
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u/simplequestions2make 4h ago
Bought some homes 2010-2012 then 2019-2021.
Technically millionaire.
What windows did I drop ball - holding AMC. Selling GME too early.
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u/Glittering-Benefit68 10h ago
My first teaching position was as a TA and I made enough to live alone. Didn't seem so special 17 years ago, but students holding that same position have two roommates now.
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u/bailasola 10h ago
I bought a house with low interest and itās doubled in value. But I hate it here and desperately want to move.
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u/markpemble Bottom 80% Commenter 10h ago
I'm in the same situation. I bought a home and paid it off, but the location of the home has hurt me in all aspects of my life.
So on one hand, I have a paid off house.
On the other hand, it really isn't making my life much better.
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u/apache_brew 10h ago
I did that in 2015 when we lived in a hcol area and then sold it in 2021. Locked in a 2.5% rate on our now forever home in a lcol that wonāt see nearly the same growth but weāre all much better off.
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u/Ok-Corner5590 10h ago
Buy first home in 2010 at historically low rates after the 2008 financial crisis.
When the historically low rates came back again in 2020, made sure to scoop up 2 more homes (one for the in laws).
Bought TSLA at $200 PRE split, sold at $800 PRE split. š
Mined bitcoin when it was about $1k each but decided the electricity bill was too high š
I got a few tech stocks for ācheapā that Iām still holding on (got into AMD at $100 etc).
For the AI bubble, I bought some stocks to hedge and gambling a bit on options.
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u/Pitiful_Fox5681 10h ago
I graduated college into the recession and had a bumpy ride into the last 2-3 years when things have finally started to feel stable.Ā
Misses:
I still don't own a home. I tried in 2020 right before the lockdown, but a cash buyer kept sweeping in behind me. I was the second best bid on a dozen properties. I never quite (emotionally) recovered from that. The down payment we had saved ended up going to my wife's healthcare, so the house wasn't meant to be, I suppose. At this rate I will be able to buy in 8-10 years, so it's not a lost cause.Ā
I graduated into the recession and didn't have much to invest. I put a few hundred bucks in and then pulled them out a couple years later to make rent.Ā
I pursued a graduate degree that was encouraged by several departments of government as in demand after 9/11. It never amounted to much after that and the field all but collapsed in the recession.Ā
Hits:Ā
I don't live above my means and mostly never have (with the exception of my wife's health, which took her out of work and was very costly for a while). The recession mindset has stayed with me. Despite being a single earner on a median income, I can't relate to people who "don't have anything to save/invest" (I don't judge them either, of course)
I invest regularly and am unbothered by downturns that seem to really shake a lot of people. Once you watch Lehman collapse before your eyes, a few red days in the stock market don't faze you.Ā
My job is very median paying but quite stable. It's nonprofit in human services, so harder economy sometimes means more need to step up to the plate. In that sense it's defensive against the normal layoff cycles.Ā
My wife now receives disability and Medicare, so we're far less worried about her medical expenses than we used to be.Ā
Opened a high yield savings account right as rates became pretty great during the lockdown. That's been good for my emergency fund.Ā
I just paid off our car, which was a 2019 low interest loan on an affordable and relatively dependable vehicle.Ā
Speaking of debts, we carry some from my student days and from when my wife needed to stop working, but they're all pretty manageable/low interest.Ā
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u/Clayfool9 10h ago
Missed anything good, heard about Bitcoin early on too but dirt poor to invest at the time.
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u/Rodeo9 49m ago
I lost like 80 btc on a college computer that I purposely destroyed to get a warranty on it
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u/Strikereleven 10h ago
I thought it was stupid and didn't make sense, I could have mined it with my gaming pc. Unfortunately a lot of stupid people have given it value by throwing money into it.
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u/markpemble Bottom 80% Commenter 10h ago
People are going to hate me for this ... But
I have hit all the windows.
Bought a home with a 5% interest rate - paid it off.
Been investing since 2002.
Had a job through the Great Recession. However, I was only making $12 per hour till 2012.
Bought a few bitcoins in 2016.
Had some hits and misses with the investments, but overall I have been up by quite a bit.
Living on less than I make. Not 100% comfortable, but retirement is going to happen for me.
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u/ExpensiveError42 10h ago
I'm sure most of us missed Bitcoin and stocks.
I bought a low-end house right before the 2008 collapse. Even with the house being on the low end, we lost when we sold, just not at the level some people did.
Second house was purchased in 2017, which was a lucky break because prices hadn't yet recovered. Our house was being sold by a sketchy landlord so I feel good about it not getting a deal at a family's expense. Then refinanced in 2021 and knocked 6 years off the mortgage. Also bought a new car in 2021 with almost no interest and right before prices skyrocketed.
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u/captainstormy Older Millennial 9h ago
I missed Bitcoin in a super annoying way. I got into it when it was super easy to mine early with just regular average desktops. I was a computer science student and I thought the tech behind it was really cool and thought the concept of a currency that wasn't tied to a country was amazing.
I mined a few hundred Bitcoin. But they weren't worth much. At one point they got up to the point where they were a couple of bucks each. I sold them all and bought some computer parts, pizza and beer. I thought I was doing something awesome.
It's okay though. I did well with investments in real estate and the stock market.
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u/kloakndaggers 10h ago
I poured pretty much every penny I had into various real estate endeavors back between 2010 and 2016. luckily I was running a small business back then and I was able to save up a nice nest egg to do so. I now do real estate full time. transitioned out of finance and engineering to real estate but it worked out well so got lucky. missed Bitcoin in all the random tech stocks I'm blowing up but I mostly a broad index investor now
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u/Traditional-Ebb-8380 10h ago
I owned 15 Bitcoin at $1000 each in 2017. Had a chance to turn it into $650k a year later. Would be worth $1.2m today.
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u/no-influz 10h ago
Too young to have benefitted from 2008 recession, just shitty $8/hr job for doing the work of 3 people
Bought before COVID spike in real estate in my market
Refinanced and got 2.8%
Bought another house 4.5% fixed when market rates were 6.75%
$200k+ equity in old house, we also put a lot $ in updates
Survived 4+ layoffs at old company
Laidoff while pregnant
Survived another 4+ layoffs while pregnant
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u/Diligent-Lettuce-455 10h ago
Home ownership and COVID refinance, mostly.
And then just general market participation to the greatest extent possible
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u/Leather_Life8257 10h ago
My (now) husband was new-ish in his career in 2008 and 2009. He had been putting a percentage of his salary into his 401k for a few years. Stocks tanked in the recession and everyone was freaking out. When we were brave enough to check his retirement account, it looked the same. We come to find out that he never actually set his contributions to invest. Instead they were going to into treasury bills, essentially acting as a giant savings account.
I was just finishing up my undergrad in Finance and I told him that it would be a great time to buy because it was like getting a 40% discount and we were young enough to ride it out.
He dumped all that money into the S&P 500 when it was less than $700 a share.
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u/reddit_liaisons 9h ago
Buying a 3 family townhouse in NYC in 2010.
The prices were rock bottom.
I had to eat falafels for a year or two but I was young and didnāt have the lifestyle creep so I was used to being poor.
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u/MNmostlynice 10h ago
I bought a house in 2019 and sold it in 2021 for 60k profit and all I did was paint some walls.
That helped my wife and I with a down payment on our current house with a 3% interest rate.
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u/Potential-Still Millennial '88 10h ago
I bought my house in February 2020, first time home buyer and got 4% interest rate. We have put about $20k into renovations and repairs and the house is worth almost double what we paid for it.
I am not a financially smart person, this was entirely by accident.Ā
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u/SandSubstantial9427 1h ago
I bought a good bit of GameStop stock in 2012 and sold a good bit in 2021.
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u/MourningOfOurLives 10h ago
I bought my first house in like 2018? Then bought my second house a couple years ago. In Sweden, in a smaller town. So i lucked out both times, actually. My retirement fund is not too bad either.
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u/halexanderamilton 10h ago
I managed to buy a house in April 2021. 2.75% interest. I want to move somewhere new, but it seems like a bad financial decision.
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u/bluetruedream19 Older Millennial 10h ago
We bought our first house in 2008, had to sell at a loss in 2010 due to a cross country move. Was awful. Bought again in 2011 but the market was so stable in our area we didnāt make a huge profit when we sold in 2020. Enough for a down payment though. Bought our current home in 2020. Pretty much will always keep that house because of the low mortgage/low interest rate. We could sell for a good profit and have been approached about selling but we donāt want to.
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u/Inkqueen12 10h ago
We bought a house in 2015 at 3% and still are living in it. Itās up a couple hundred thousand and will eventually help us into our next place.
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u/epochwin 10h ago
My luck has been more related to getting a green card and then American citizenship which made it easy moving between jobs in the tech industry, getting access to VC money, started and sold a company, getting all sorts of consulting gigs, and benefiting from lower corporate taxes. The connections alone Iāve made have secured me against layoffs and other swings in the tech industry right now.
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u/MartyCool403 10h ago
None. I messed up my twenties and early thirties so I may never hit any of those goals.
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u/Select_Pilot4197 10h ago
My husband and I bought in 2016 and were able to refinance in 2021. Moved to a 15 year mortgage with an insanely low interest rate. We are paying double to our mortgage now to pay it off in the next few years. Iām so grateful for my husbandās time in the military for affording us the opportunity to buy at all.
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u/spartanburt 10h ago
The Great Reshuffling.Ā The work from home craze opened up a ton of remote opportunities at companies I never would have been able to consider before.Ā Since then the number of openings has dropped probably 75% or so.
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u/adrlev 10h ago
Bought a house in March 2019 before COVID hit, when prices were low and interest rates were relatively low (mine was originally 4.6% in 2019). Refinanced during COVID when rates were insanely low. My homeās value has doubled since I purchased it.
I originally intended it to be a starter home, but it looks like itāll be my forever home because I wonāt be able to afford another one in todayās market.
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u/Own-Introduction-380 10h ago
Missed home ownership. Very much missed it. Iām 39, husband is 42. We will never own ourselves due to living in VHCOL area. Heās from here and also has to be here to work in his industry. I thought I would inherit half my momās house but she gifted it to my brother because he had children and I didnāt. My MIL owns a condo in our area but surprised us with a third marriage to a younger man and the condo is being left to him and not her only son.
Thankfully Iāve always lived under my means, saved and invested. So Iām on track to retire early. Worst case retire on time. giving up the dream of owning a home has been difficult. Iām on the other side now but there was a lot of grief.
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u/BlessedLikeASneeze 10h ago
Bought a house in 2017 that needed interior cosmetic work. Refinanced in 2020 to 3.0%. Home value has gone from 165k to around 300k in those 9 years.
As a DINK, Iāve been able to get solid returns on higher than average contributions in aggressive 401k and Roth accounts the last 10 years.
The only window I actually tried to hit, I tried to buy $100 worth of Dogecoin at $.004 which could have turned into around $15k if I timed it perfectly, but my account wasnāt verified very quickly and I gave up on it since I thought it was just a joke anyway.
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u/00Qant5689 Millennial 10h ago
When I moved to DC for grad school in 2021 just as the lockdowns were ending, I ended up living in an apartment that rented at pretty low rates relative to the DMV in other years (about $1500 a month). It was pretty much the best value I couldāve gotten at the time given the circumstances.
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u/Chumlee1917 10h ago
I should have taken even more advantage of the covid freeze on Student Loans and probably would have been free
to which, I already did enormous damage because I was able to take it from 8 loans to 4 loans and then consolidated it to 1 loan with only 1 interest rate and got on PSLF and am sooooo close, and compared to others, it's not horrendous, but at the same time, if I had no other commitments, it'd be gone within a year
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u/jerseyben 10h ago
Tried to buy the dip in 2008 but had almost no money to invest. Bought a house in 2012 and refinanced in 2020. Bought the dip in March 2020. Bought the dip on "liberation day". I feel like taking advantage of a slew of bad situations should be the defining ethos of this generation.
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u/Emberglo27 10h ago
My husband and I are elder Millennials and we got a house with a great interest rate and now we watch houses in our neighborhood go for crazy prices. Husband and I did not gets jobs that we wanted because of the job market and recession but we made a good life. Our first child was part of a small baby boom. Our second was also born in that time of hope. We invested the stock market and have had used it as financial cushion when things got tough.
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u/ForeverInBlackJeans 9h ago
Bought SOXL for under $50 a few years ago. Sold this summer at $270. Turned $10k into $80k.
Also bought a house at the peak of the market in 2022 and am currently -$300k in equity sooooo š¤·š¼āāļø
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u/magistersmax Millennial 9h ago
We moved to a different city for work in 2018, and entered an agreement to sell our house that involved a lease for six months and a purchase contract with a close date at that 6 month point. The guy was going through a divorce and didnāt want a house on the books until the divorce was settled. We set a reasonable monthly rent amount and figured that being landlords for 6 months wasnāt the end of the world.
6 months comes and the divorce was still ongoing. We terminated the purchase contract and extended his lease by a year. We ended up extending another year the following year too.
Fast forward to about 2.5 years down the road, itās spring 2020 and the housing market has blown up in this area (in a good-for-sellers way). There were some issues with the tenant pissing off the neighbors among other things, so we let the lease lapse. We end up selling the house for about 50% more than what it was originally listed for 2.5 years earlier. Since the house was our primary residence for at least 2 of the prior 5 years, the capital gains on the house were not taxed either.
It was probably the best case of our original plans to sell that house falling through and it being a huge unexpected benefit to us.
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u/bolivar-shagnasty 8h ago
We refinanced our house in 2021 at 2.35%.
We canāt afford to move because any new mortgage it literally 300% higher interest rate.
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u/Wilhelm-Edrasill 10h ago
the problem is the age bucket is super none helpfull.
If you are 40+ "mellenial " sure.
If you are 33? There was literally no way to catch any of these as you were not inside a career.
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u/LilAbeSimpson 10h ago
Yeah Iām one of those ātechnically a millionaireā millennials who bought at home in CA at the right time. My monthly expenses are still enormous and I drive a 10 year old Subaru.
Itās nothing to write home about. š
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u/ConstantLight7489 9h ago
Yep, I am one of those millennials too. Bought our first house when I was 21, wife was 19. (It was my $18K of savings that was the down payment, and my credit score).
We are in our third home, and I havenāt worked in 5 yrs due to deciding to go to law school. Our home is paid off because the way we did things from one house to the next.
Technically a millionaire a few times with mine and my wifeās retirement accounts, and an $850K home in a nice medium size town in NorCal.
I legit have like $1500 in liquid assets right now, and like $2K in bills this next month because of life and children. Haha, this is not a joke. Fingers crossed, I pass the bar when results show in like a week, cuz all our savings is goneā¦.. is this what being a millionaire is supposed to feel like?
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u/FanBladeFleshlight 8h ago
I've missed every window and basically had my hand forced in one way or another at the worst times. Good example is that I bought a house almost 2 years ago, and that only happened because my rental was being sold and I had nowhere to go, so I bit the bullet.
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u/luckyelectric 8h ago
Timing-wise, so far in life; I made cautious and deeply thought choices which allowed me to benefit from excellent timing. However, my skills and abilities have never been valued by the economy.
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u/dalcowboysstarsmavs 8h ago
In the 90ās, I had like a three week stretch of winning a free Dr Pepper every day when they had those twist and win cap contests.
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u/GarlicSnot 8h ago
I went to business school during the pandemic. Got 0% interest loans for my education (like 130k) and paid it off before major interest could kick in and bought Facebook stock at $19 a share whenever I was in college back in like 2010.
Missed out on NVIDIA post Business school even though my buddy was working there and told me to buy
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u/Comfortable_Love_800 7h ago
I bought a rundown TH in 2009 (I was 20yr and crazy), fixed it up and turned enough profit when I sold to buy a SFH in 2015 when I got married, and in 2021 we sold that house and rolled the equity into our forever home at 3%- this house was also a fixer upper, but I'm up 60% after renovations and only owe the mortgage.
I also got super lucky and landed a FAANG job in 2022 after a decade in the industry. My initial grants and sign-on bonus helped me wipe out ALL of our student loans, auto loans, and credit card debts completely. Only debt we carry right now is our 3% mortgage.
Other than basic S&P investing, I couldn't tell you squat about stock picking or crypto. I've made the vast majority of my net worth through real estate. But with all the big life hurdles out of the way (car, house, kids), I'm trying to learn so I can make the most of my 40's!
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u/NICUmamatherapist 7h ago
Bought in the Bay Area with an interest rate of 2.75%. Otherwise, I miss all the economic booms!
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u/Cold-Cost-4154 7h ago
My husband and I got a low interest low cost house in 2016 (age 25), sold in 2021 for double what we paid, paid off debt, cars and rolled 20% into the next house at 3.25% interest rate So that's our winning And we are very proud because we did this with no guidance, first time home buyers in our immediate family. We just really wanted a house/home
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u/lookn4a304 7h ago
Since none of us have a crystal ball, the best advice is to start today and DCA into equities, BTC, commodities, and even cash. If/When cash becomes enough for a 20% down payment while still having a few months in reserves, just get the house you want and can afford. This idea of waiting for a certain price or interest rate will do you harm in the long run.
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u/YesterdayAmbitious49 7h ago
Bought an 800k house on 150k income that doubled in value over 5 years from 2015-20.
Pulled all equity out and refinanced the debt at 2% fixed 30 yr.
Stuck all the proceeds into the stock market during peak covid fear March 2020 on the day the sp500 fell 12.9%. Went all in on one transaction 5 minutes before the close.
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u/starwarsyeah 7h ago
A lot of the house value inflation, at least in my area, has gone away to some extent, as I learned when I sold my house this year. Don't get me wrong, still a huge profit on it, but $30k less than what it was a year or two ago. But I bought in 2020, so still crazy low interest rates and really good appreciation. Wasn't big enough to make me anywhere close to a millionaire.
Buying and holding total market index funds has gotten me from divorced with $80k debt (hers), to coastFIRE in 8 years.
I also won the lottery on the remote work window, and did the overemployment thing for almost 3 years, which helped me bank up my retirement that I had missed out on in my 20s/early 30s through a mega backdoor Roth.
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u/Striking-Mouse9613 6h ago
We have a sub 3% mortgage after refinancing during COVID. Pretty proud of that right now.
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u/bus_buddies Zillennial 6h ago
I 18x'd my investment in NVIDIA. Bought once in 2020 and never sold.
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u/OldManAbides333 6h ago
We bought our first house in 2011, near historic low prices. Bought our second house in 2019, near the bottom of interest rates. I credit my wife for both. I didnt feel like we were ready when we bought the first one, and didnt want to take on a bigger house note with the 2nd, but she was right on both accounts.
I wish we had done MORE to capitalize on the stock market boom but I cant complain about what we have managed.
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u/BusyCountry1985 5h ago
Hit a life changing tech IPO at their peak with my wifeās company. We both did startups and one of hers unicornād we invested very heavily onto her RSUs and diversified over the years. Hit the low mortgage rates during COVID because of it.
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u/Scared-Currency288 5h ago
Bought my first house in 2018 and was forced to sell it before COVID šĀ
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u/redsunglasses8 5h ago
I got unlucky buying a house in 2005 right before the housing crash. But lucked out in getting a 15 year mortgage at 2.75% in 2021. Between my increased equity and crazy low house payment, Iāve now got the golden handcuffs to a home I love.
My kids tho, I worry about my kids.
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u/Redditor2684 5h ago
Graduated in 2006 and was employed and stayed employed through the 2008-2009 GFC.
Invested and stayed invested through 2020-present.
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u/Illustrious_Ad6548 5h ago
We missed the first time homebuyerās credit under Obama by a year when we bought our first house (2011).
We bought our current house in 2020 in a transitional neighborhood, so got a property tax abatement for 10 years as well as a 2.75% interest rate. We also sold our previous house as the COVID market was heating up, so it didnāt even make it to the open house before we had a full ask offer, site unseen (which I know has been somewhat normalized, but is an insane way to buy a house IMO).
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u/SeveralConcert 5h ago
Gladly I refinanced in 2019 my mortgage.
Best financial decision OF MY LIFE.
My monthly payments went down and the amount of years to pay decreased from 20 to 18
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u/_jamesbaxter Millennial 5h ago
I did buy a house in 2019, but not really a home for me that I wanted for myself, itās an income property meant to be a stepping stone toward having my own home. I needed the extra income because otherwise I will never make enough money.
And Iām really fucking lucky because I got laid off a year later and became disabled and I have not been able to get hired since, so Iāve been living off of what was meant to be supplemental income and I canāt even afford to put gas in my car because now Iām at risk of losing said house. Itās so fucking hard. I donāt have support, or a partner, and I turn 40 soon. I wanted to go on a special trip for my 40th, I havenāt even been on an airplane since 2021 š one of the most upsetting things is I havenāt been able to freeze my eggs š
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u/SlowlyTowardsTheCake 5h ago
Started a state job right before the retirement system changed. Because of that Iāll be able to retire at 55 with a pension roughly 75% my salary, with medical, and no state income tax. I worked through many years of very low pay (just over minimum wage) hoping it would work out. It paid off because my final average salary will be over $200k. Then, I bought a house in mid 2020. Interest rate 2.85 and itās tripled in value.
These are the only two āgoodā financial decisions Iāve made but theyāre huge (and mostly dumb luck)
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u/JiffTheJester 4h ago
I got a low interest rate, and bought some Pokemon cards before they went crazy š so Iām doing okay
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u/GoodbyeTobyseeya1 4h ago
Bought a foreclosure in 2008 when the market tanked. Refinanced during covid at 2.175%. Invested all our stimulus money when the market was down.
Definitely lucked out with timing for a lot of these.
I do remember asking on reddit about an investment in Jan 2021 and someone told me to dump into GME, but it was Wallstreet Bets so I brushed it off and posted in personal finance instead. Oops.
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u/GoodatAprons 3h ago
Was able to work remotely during COVID and stash a bunch of money away in retirement and brokerage nvestments due to quarantine (NVDA, AMD were top holdings)
Bought a house in 2017 refinanced in 2022 missed sub 3% rates due to my own lack of understanding.
Baby awarded 1k investment account (first time I ever heard of such a thing)
I sold my semi stocks too early trying to buy a 2nd house just to back out after inspection, now I got ~70k realized gains i gotta pay taxes on this year.
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u/pementomento 3h ago
2.75% mortgage, post great recession house purchase, COVID run up in house prices.
Stock market performance 2008-2026.
Iām just waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak.
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u/TransylvanianHunger1 3h ago
Bought my condo in 2018 for 72k. It's worth double that now. Monthly mortgage payment is 574 and change.
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u/nojustic3nop3ac3 3h ago
Hit most of them and it was totally by luck timing. Bought my first place in 2016 with a 3.5% rate and then started investing heavily since then til late 2019 and sold just before the pandemic downturn to purchase 2nd home with a sub 3% rate in 2020 and kept on investing throughout covid til now.
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u/Mail_Order_Lutefisk Gen X 3h ago
Many. Born in the United States in the 70ās. Graduated college into raging bull market. Married a lady who doesnāt waste money on frivolous crap. Went overseas and then finished law school right as private equity started taking off and didnāt get fired in the recession. Lost money in 2008 but bought the bottom. In 2020 I bought 1700 shares of Valero and 2000 shares of Exxon each for under $40 a share on a dark day where the experts insisted oil was dead. Skipped buying a house in 2006 and got one in 2010 at a 35% discount to its 2006 sale price.Ā
Iām buying 30 year Treasuries now. Negativity is extremely high in the Treasury market but if the economy goes to crap theyāll run up 20-40% pretty quick as interest rates go down. Iām in for over a million bucks on that trade but my wife is extremely risk averse and isnāt comfortable with too much in stocks and pushed hard for it a couple weeks ago. She bought the 2009 and 2020 COVID bottoms to the day so I trust her gut feeling more than any āexpert.ā Worst case I get a little over fifty grand a year in interest if itās the wrong trade.Ā
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u/Last_Employee_8265 3h ago
Bought my house when they were all on sale in 2010. Then Refiād for 2% in 2020! I also live in a state that only increases property taxes by a certain percentage per year so even now 16 years later my taxes are 1/8th of the taxes that would be on the same size unit 5 doors down if I were to buy it today.
I also consider going to undergrad 05-09 a steal as well. Tuition was much much cheaper!
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u/FixIllustrious6554 2h ago
Became a first time buyer December 2019, refinanced later so weāre locked in at 2.75%. I technically pay extra principal every month which is just rounding up to the nearest ten for clean budgeting. Itās shaved off nearly four years of the loan already. Zillow says weāre up at least $100,000 in value since original purchase and with the work weāve been doing itās likely higher than that.
We were incredibly lucky and thank goodness I was stubborn and decided it had to happen then and there would be no more renting. Iām still not sure how we managed it since we had just enough for a measly down payment and money was tight with the earnest money and closing costs. Sometimes itās frustrating that we have to fix and pay for everything ourselves but now I donāt have to ask anyone for permission to paint a room and I have a garden and a dog.
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u/borninusa96 2h ago
I pulled all of my money out of stocks twice in my life (due to major life changes where I couldnāt monitor my investments for ~6-12 months). These two periods were early 2000 and late 2008 before markets imploded.
Third one in a lifetime was reinvesting cash from 2008 on March 9, 2009 when I started my exec job.
Fourth lifetime window I hit was scoring a massive comp structure in march 2009 that lasted 17 years.
Fifth, Refinanced our house at 3.25% for 30 years.
Sixth - yet to come?!!!!
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u/Terakahn 2h ago
I was 25k in debt with no assets to show for it. I fucking hope that's once in a lifetime lol.
But nothing positive to speak of.
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u/horribletakeguy2026 2h ago
Misses:
Bitcoin
Bought a townhouse just before 08ā crash
Any tech stock from the early 00ās (Facebook, Netflix, Tesla)
Hits:
Bought forever home in December 2020
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u/goodsnpr 1h ago
Choice between $1100 in Bitcoin when it was 25 cents a piece, and a laptop. I chose a laptop.
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u/DaMeLaVaca 1h ago
Welllll we bought our first house in 2012, for $117,000. We put maybe 10k into it, and sold it 5 years later for $168,000. Then we bought in 2018, and refinanced in 2020 for 3% interest. We also got an inheritance that we have kept invested, and so now at 40/41 we have assets of 960k.
Day to day we run lean because we have 4 kids but knowing we are ahead is comforting.
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u/Yum_Waffles 44m ago
A few lucky breaks I guess. The first being putting an offer in on our forever home in 2020 and locking in a 2.7% 30 year fixed interest rate. Second, staying employed at Micron the last 10+ years with the AI boom - especially the last year or so since our stock exploded. While I had already been saving and investing heavily, my vesting RSU's having exploded 10X have really helped speed things along.
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u/gringgotts 42m ago
Bought a car early covid. It was worth more than I paid a few months later. Relaly wish I had bought a house then.
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u/o_safadinho 41m ago
I bought a large duplex in February of 2020, literally right before Covid. Property values have almost doubled and rents are up almost 50% since I bought my place.
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u/jeffreyan12 18m ago
Younger brother was about to move out and get an apartment with his friend in 2010. We both had money saved up. Dad and I told him it would be better if him and I put our savings into a down payment for a house. Closed that December near the bottom of the market.
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u/BtheBanker151 6m ago
Me and wife were in a rental, not much money, bad credit at the time. Uncle dies, I get $100,000, my father matches it so I got $200,000. I pay off debt, raise credit score drastically. Then get our first house with 30% down payment, 5.5% and the mortgage payment is even more manageable for us since I now have a better paying job.
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u/Freddy_Pharkas 1983 10h ago
During the Texas Hold'em craze of the early 2000's, Pokerstars.net was just getting off the ground. Online gambling wasn't really regulated back then so you could sign up in pretty much any state, grind out 1c/2c limit and in doing so, get a free set of quality poker chips in a cool briefcase-type thing, by signing up under different accounts. I think they were even giving out $100 balances. Good times.
But yeah those in the OP are good too. I bought my house quite a bit earlier (2011) and still locked in 4.375% for a 30-year, which is good by today's standards. And I've been in straight S&P ETFs since around that time as well. Who's to say you missed the boat though? To the moon!
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u/ohreallynameonesong 10h ago
I got a 4.75% interest rate in spring 2022. I missed the crazy low rates but I feel okay, considering what rates are now and what they'll probably be for a while to come. It's a whole drama but I should have been able to buy that property sooner with an even better rate.
I made the window for the stock market run we've been on this year. I had a good amount invested and the gains have been nice. I might actually get to retire.
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u/JadieBugXD 10h ago
I bought my house in 2019 with an interest rate in the 5% range and then refinanced in 2021 for an interest rate in the 2% range.
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u/gravyjackson 10h ago
I was late getting into investing outside of my 401k. But when the market dipped it March 2020, I happened to be paying attention and knew it would be a good time to buy in. I knew nothing then, but put everything I could into MSFT and AAPL.
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u/Pro_Hobbyist 10h ago
When my car lease expired, I bought it with a new loan at 0.99%. rates went up the same week.
I also bought MU during covid and still hold it...
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u/morningwoodsir 10h ago
Bought a house in 2019, refinanced in 2020 and 2021. The lowest interest rate I had at one point was 2.89%. Sold the house this year and bought a new one, 6.99% interest rate š
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u/PurpleSausage77 10h ago
I know and admire some people who went all in on stocks like Apple, Tesla, AMD, Nvidia and became millionaires, or at least well enough off to pursue whatever it is they want (start their own business) rather than work for someone.
I aggressively saved $75k for a downpayment in 6 years & bought a brand new house in a developing area in 2018, and just from then to now itās gone up 30% in value without needing to do anything to it.
Since then Iāve still been aggressive on hustling and saving, dumped $50k in to a stock I have 1000% honest to god conviction in. Been 5 years, another 5, 10, 15 years is nothing. Whatever tf it takes gādammit.
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u/mike-gundys-ballboy 10h ago
I remember a coworker trying to convince me to get into crypto in 2018... I had the money... I could easily have dumped 10 thousand dollars into bitcoin.
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u/Ferrite5 10h ago
Oh I CPU mined like 75k dogecoin years before musk got involved (like 2014), but lost the hard drive my keys were in because it had been so many years stuck at .0001 and I kinda moved on, then saw the big jump to over a dollar and was really annoyed at myself
On the other end, my wife and I made out like bandits selling our starter house for a lot over asking and buying our forever home with mid 2021 interest rates
So I guess it evened out
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u/cytomegalovirus 10h ago
We committed early to aggressive index fund investing starting in the mid 2010s and have come out on the other side 10 years later with very, very healthy investments. Combined with our strong salaries, we have a substantial cushion thatāll only continue to grow.
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u/Lopsided-End-1985 10h ago
I missed out on Btc (would have sold it long ago anyways), didnt start investing in stocks until 2020 but got lucky on rental properties. Pretty much spent 8 years of my life working afternoons while renovating houses in the mornings and weekends. Never thought RE would go crazy, sold it all in 21
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u/captainstormy Older Millennial 10h ago edited 9h ago
Real estate.
I bought my first house in 2008 at 24. It was like 75K @ 5% interest. My wife bought her first house in 2009 for similar numbers. When we got married we bought our current house in 2014 for 140K at 1.5%. We still own those first two as well. Her parents live in one and my mother will be moving into my old one in the next year or so. My buddy who is renting it now (at an extremely low rate, half of what his 1 bedroom apartment he used to be in was) is looking to buy his own place and once he does my mother is going to move into that one.
We also own a small business where we would buy poor condition houses for cheap, fix them up and then rent them. Between 2008 - 2021 we bought 10 houses for that business. Prices were cheap and interest rates were low. The most we paid for a house for that business was 55K and the interest rates were in the 2-5% range on 15 year mortgages. We would put about 40-50K worth of work into them and then rent them out.
There was a good window between 2008-2021 where real estate was cheap in our Midwest metro and interest rates were low. Today prices are 3-5X higher on property and interest rates are like 8%. For example that house we bought in 2014 at 140K we live in is now valued at 650K.
I know people are going to say I'm a terrible person for buying 10 houses for a business. But I will at least say that every house I bought for that business had been on the market for at least 90 days. That's part of how I got them so cheap. A lot of them had hit 120 days even. They were houses people really didn't want because they needed major work and weren't in desirable areas. Thou some of those areas have now become desierable.
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