UVA2B wrote:Anonymous User wrote:Pokemon wrote:Anonymous User wrote:Anonymous User wrote:i'm jealous, shit. Wish I had that many savings and could bail.
Honestly, if one good thing came from this job it was my learning to be extremely vigilant financially. I know most people try to just pay off their loans and hold an emergency fund, but I tried to order my finances in a way that made sense and felt good at the same time. I knew the minute I started that I didn't think I was cut out for this job, so I knew having liquidity was important. I've kept my rent below $1,500 a month the entire time I've been in NYC and I tend to not spend money on anything except food and vacations (YOLO). After I paid off half my loans (started with about $250,000), I decided to just try and save as much as possible and minimize my debt payments (I now save $5,000 a month). This helped me get there relatively quickly and still invest about $12K/year into my 401K just so I can use that compound interest/investments.
If you are in biglaw, you can do it to. Just try to get the debt down to a number you are more comfortable with and then save aggressively. My debt still isn't where I want it, but after starting at $250,000, it feels a lot better than it did three years ago and I now have "considerable" assets to go along with it.
Jesus Christ, you paid 130k plus interest in 2 and a half year, plus saved 90k and 50k in 401k?? Does not add up.
I've been in biglaw 2.5 years but I worked for a year in a different role that was much lower paying where I was able to get some savings. That allowed me to take in like $15,00 in savings and $5,000 in 401K, but my debt payments were minimums (meaning, I started with $250,000 and after a year I was at $249,800). So basically since being in biglaw (about 2.5 years), I've saved about $75,000, put in another $40,000 into 401K and paid off about $130,000 in debt. Third year bonus helped a lot (extra $30,000 in the bank). I'm a total outlier among people I know, but I also don't spend money on clothes and shit and don't go out that often.
Even still, that's some crazy ass math to get to that level of savings, 401k, debt payments, while living in NYC. Pretax income from 2.5 years NYC Biglaw is like ~$600k. After city, state, and federal taxes, that should be drawn down by about a third (absolute mental napkin math here, so I could be off somewhat). So you're saying you lived in/near NYC on ~$400k for 2.5 years while collecting $235k in other accounts? I mean, I guess it's possible, but damn.
2.5 years should not even be close to 600k. Like even if op started as a 2nd year, he should not be at 600k income until end of his third year in biglaw. op must be hiding something... drug money, securities fraud, who knows