29M, 1.6M net worth, 670k income. Got incredibly lucky working remotely for a US based startup that took off
Literal shameless brag post, but also AMA I guess. All values below in NZD:
Income: I graduated from UoA with a degree in Software Engineering and started working full time immediately with $0 to my name and around $60k in student loan debt. I read about FIRE while in uni and saved ~50% of my income from the get go by living fairly frugally and later this increased to ~70% despite a lot of travel by sheer force of career windfall after windfall.
- 22 - Job 1, Graduate Software Engineer @ 97k base, NW negative ~60k. Savings rate ~50%
- 23 - Job 1, Junior Software Engineer @ 115k base, NW negative ~30k. Savings rate ~50%
- 24 - Job 1, Software Engineer @ 120k base, NW finally positive ~10k. Savings rate ~50%
- 25 - Job 2, Software Engineer @ 145k base + 10k equity bonus, NW ~55k I took this job working remotely for a US company after grinding interview practice for months when Job 1 forced RTO post-COVID after giving me a short sweet taste of the remote life, which was the best thing that ever happened to me financially. Savings rate >50%
- 26 - Job 2, Engineering Manager @ 200k base + 90k equity bonus, NW ~120k. The company I joined grew from ~30 to ~200 employees in this time and I also landed a promotion. Savings rate >60%
- 27 - Job 2, Engineering Manager @ 335k base + 170k equity bonus, NW ~300k. The company grew from ~200 employees to almost 700, which grew my team size and allowed me to negotiate to be paid the same as my US peers. Additionally, the equity I had earned in previous years became liquid at around face value (which as anyone who has worked in a startup knows, is a huge stroke of luck). Savings rate ~70%
- 28 - Job 2, Senior Engineering Manager @ 370k base + 340k equity bonus, NW ~600k. Landed another promotion - this was also the year compounding really started to take hold. Savings rate ~80%
- 29 - Job 2, Senior Engineering Manager @ 400k base + 270k equity bonus, NW to start the year was ~1.1M, rising to >1.6M as of writing with the S&P going up so much and my high savings rate. Value of equity compensation went down a little as a lot of capital flight to AI companies (my company is not in AI).
Investments: Almost my entire net worth is liquid in a brokerage account (I use IBKR) with 100% in VTI, with the rest in Kiwisaver and cash in ASB. I currently earn and invest in USD because I have strong conviction that NZD is going to continue to lose value vs USD over time. I have never invested in anything except VTI which I buy more of every time I get paid.
I do not own a house and do not intend to buy one in the near future unless house prices stay flat a little longer, to my eye housing in NZ is an incredibly bad deal and has been for some time. I rent in Auckland and continue to invest the difference.
Lifestyle: Despite the high savings rate I have obviously not needed to be particularly frugal since right after starting job 2. I travel A LOT (which I usually do while still working remotely), drive a fairly nice car (not a gaudy sports car), and don't cook much any more. What I do not have - unlike a lot of my colleagues - are any expensive vices or expensive hobbies, I mostly do cheap outdoor activities like tennis/hiking, read, watch horror movies, and play video games with my friends.
Money does not fix all problems (and actually causes some, I struggle with dating since I don't seem to relate to almost anyone my age except people I met before all this + I work weird hours to align with US, and am thus quite lonely at times), but it absolutely removes almost all non-work related stress from my life and most days are very peaceful as soon as I shut off the laptop, though I do get paged from time to time in the middle of the night.
AMA for career/investment advice, or feel free to call me an A-hole, lucky A-hole, bragging A-hole, or all of the above.