Total Savings/Net Worth Forum

[Best]

Are people considering their network in combination with their wife ITT? That makes me slightly less depressed. If not, well, fml I fucked up.

I responded with $1,000,000.
I don't actually have $1,000,000.
I'm sure others responded similarly, albeit with different motivations (mine was jokingly).

If you consider that most of the actual millionaires are probably partners, it's not bad. We will be there too at that point, if we spend/save/invest wisely. Average biglaw associate has made at least $2.5 million before the time it takes to become partner (assuming they stay in biglaw, obviously).

..Why? Haha funny joke?

[Sackboy]

The anon with $200k in cash here - I understand why it should be invested (and usually I just keep a year of expenses in cash, and not three plus), but I have just been nervous about the pandemic and didn't want to do anything like, buy at the top of the market right before a crash that also includes me somehow losing my job (things were really dicey last March, in case people have forgotten). I watched my parents lose jobs and burn through all their savings until their bank accounts hit literally $0 during the recession, so I am overly cautious and paranoid about what could happen if I lost my job (especially with no parents to back me up, and no spouse to balance any expenses with). When things settle down I'll take the excess and invest it. Like the other anon said, it's helpful to hear that maybe I've been a little too cautious, and to think about getting this invested sooner rather than later, even if it slightly derails the thread. Thanks!

I think the smart thing to do would be to pick a day each month (or two months) and invest something like 15k each time, regardless of if it’s up or down. That way you’re averaging out when you’re buying and not buying at a high or low.

Averaging into the market is a very solid approach if for no other reason than to provide mental ease. Even if things remain stable, you still end up ahead than putting it in the bank, because the dividend rate is going to beat whatever you can get in a money market account. If it crashes, that's absolutely no big deal either if you have maintained a healthy 6 month emergency fund to weather any possible job loss that generally corresponds with a market downturn. Just hold. Hold. Hold. The market will go up, and you'll end up with a long-term average that beats the shit out of cash or a bond or savings account even if you're dying inside when you see your Vanguard account shows that you're down 25%. Of course, if none of these things happen like I'm telling you, then we're in a completely unprecedented era in modern history and you can go ahead and hate me for not being a divine oracle. At the end of the day, VOO/VTI/several other index funds/ETFs are incredibly safe, tried, and much-better-than-cash investments, and you'll thank yourself in 2 years when your $300k, without a dime more of contribution from yourself, is now $340k.

[Anonymous User]

Total net worth is right around $800k

I recently went in house after 6 years of NYC biglaw. Had around $85k in law school debt that I paid off in about 3 years. My breakdown at the moment is:

300k in 401k/IRA
300k in a taxable brokerage account (mostly just sector ETFs and basic mutual funds)
150k of equity in 2 rental properties
50k broken up between a numerous of different areas

[Anonymous User]

Pushed out last year before bonuses as a 5th year in NYC biglaw. Single.

Started biglaw with 280k in debt (all paid off)
12k in cash
120k in 401k and IRA
180k in taxable brokerage.
Net work = 312k

I admit I often think about how much more I'd have saved without the debt, but overall pretty happy.

[avenuem]

Are people considering their network in combination with their wife ITT? That makes me slightly less depressed. If not, well, fml I fucked up.

I responded with $1,000,000.
I don't actually have $1,000,000.
I'm sure others responded similarly, albeit with different motivations (mine was jokingly).

If you consider that most of the actual millionaires are probably partners, it's not bad. We will be there too at that point, if we spend/save/invest wisely. Average biglaw associate has made at least $2.5 million before the time it takes to become partner (assuming they stay in biglaw, obviously).

..Why? Haha funny joke?

Nothing funnier than throwing the reliability of a poll, other than a peasant replying to my posts as if its opinion matters.

[Lacepiece23]

All right, I’ll play. Married.

250k cash between my on hand cash and my two businesses, real estate and I just started a law firm.

Anywhere between 250k-350k across six rental properties.

65k loans, started with 110.

60k in Roth.

Negligible 401k, I don’t even know how much is in there, maybe 10k

Net worth around 500-600k depending on where you value my equity.

Just left biglaw as a 5th year. Never made market and worked in secondary markets. Also missed out on some bonuses due to a variety of reason. My wife is a lawyer with no loans, but also never made market.

I’m happy where I’m at, but obviously could have done better. In hindsight I would have been better dumping all of my money into retirement accounts and the market. Oh well.

[Corncob]

4th year. 130 cash - 130 student loans. 0 net worth, feels good, man.

[Anonymous User]

NW: $1.15M

9th/10th year. Previously worked in biglaw (non-market paying firms), in-house now. Graduated with $220k law and undergrad student debt. HCOL city.

$900k equities ($170k retirement accts)
$50k cash
$200k house equity ($240k remaining mortgage)

Monthly expenses ~$3600/mo

Hoping to FIRE / retire early in another 1+ year(s) with hopefully $1.2-$1.3M in equities.

[Anonymous User]

Lol. I have over 500k in cash. I’m sure it’s the wrong move, but I can’t find anything that I recognize as a better move. Also I work all the time.

for a very reasonable 1% of your portfolio i am willing to take 15 minutes to open an etrade account for you and buy $500k of SPY at market tomorrow

we would both win since i would get $5k and you would get an average of 7% annually on your $500k every year until you retire

I hear you but Im realistically never going to have time to figure out what the fuck SPY is and I’m sure as fuck not putting 500k into something I know zero about.

Stock of the largest 500 companies (not technically true but close enough) in the US, each in a percentage equal to their relative market value with almost no fees. For anyone not paying significant attention, it's the best way to invest. As for if you should buy it today or wait for some sort of "dip", probably today but that's debatable.

There is a great personal finance thread on what you should do with your absurd amount of cash.

Would like to keep this thread to facts, not advice.

If nothing else, consider using it to secure a property, rent it (with a small mortgage) and get some cash flowing in from that.

[Anonymous User]

Lol. I have over 500k in cash. I’m sure it’s the wrong move, but I can’t find anything that I recognize as a better move. Also I work all the time.

for a very reasonable 1% of your portfolio i am willing to take 15 minutes to open an etrade account for you and buy $500k of SPY at market tomorrow

we would both win since i would get $5k and you would get an average of 7% annually on your $500k every year until you retire

I hear you but Im realistically never going to have time to figure out what the fuck SPY is and I’m sure as fuck not putting 500k into something I know zero about.

Stock of the largest 500 companies (not technically true but close enough) in the US, each in a percentage equal to their relative market value with almost no fees. For anyone not paying significant attention, it's the best way to invest. As for if you should buy it today or wait for some sort of "dip", probably today but that's debatable.

There is a great personal finance thread on what you should do with your absurd amount of cash.

Would like to keep this thread to facts, not advice.

If nothing else, consider using it to secure a property, rent it (with a small mortgage) and get some cash flowing in from that.

[Anonymous User]

NW: ~$1.2M (~700k in securities, ~100k non-stock assets/cash, ~400k in home equity)
Yrs out: About 10
Role: in-house (additional unvested equity in seven figures not counted above)
Married, kids, biglaw before going in-house

Paid/paying for multiple degrees for my wife and myself (in addition to the JD), otherwise the NW figure would be higher. My unsolicited advice is to save and stay the course. All this builds over time. Then retire; don't work yourselves to death.

[Anonymous User]

Going to completely disregard the person who doesn't want to make this an advice thread. Any of you people who are carrying more than ~6 months in expenses in cash are pissing away a ton of free money by not investing. 6 months is still a very conservative emergency fund. Hell, bump it to 9 months for those of you sitting on 300k+ if that makes you feel more comfortable investing.

Throw whatever is left after establishing your emergency fund into VOO, which is an ETF/index fund that directly aligns with the value of the S&P 500 (aka the largest 500 companies) (whichever poster said SPY is wasting their money with a 3x higher expense ratio to track the same index). VOO isn't some rocket science. It's also not some witchcraft that people sell. It's the white bread of investing, because it consists of a ton of incredibly large stable companies with low volatility. To further drive home its credibility, VOO has $630 billion of net assets (aka investments). If your plan is to hold this money for a long period of time, it's just the way to go. VOO has an average return of 13.82% over the last decade.

This IS actually helpful. I'm one of those mid-levels in Big Law with over $300k sitting in savings accounts and/or CDs. Why? I grew up in a low/middle class household and worked my butt off in school to go to a good college/law school; once there, I worked a lot and saved. It's my fault, but I never took classes in, and was not naturally interested in, investing/personal finance. And I don't have rich friends for whom that is a background feature of life. So it's not something that occurred to me as a live and relevant thing for me.

Now, I work a ton and don't have the time to look into stuff like this. Maybe this thread will spur me on to do the research and take out some time for this. I literally have never heard of VOO and only have a basic understanding of what an ETF/index fund is, or who to even contact about investing. So thank you for the encouragement!

As someone who was in the same boat as you (i.e.: lack of family/friend support to point me towards the right direction), it's never too late.

If you are on forums like these and you made it as a lawyer (and accumulated that much savings) you have all the soft skills needed to be a great passive investor and really improve your long term financial outlook.

If this thread hasn't spurred you to action, I hope this post will.

Why? Because if you're anything like me, once you unlock some basic financial literacy, you will be able to pass it on to others in your family and friends who are as lost as you are but perhaps in a much bleaker position. Some of this (personal) financial literacy stuff is hope in a bottle.

I don't know what made me stumble upon all this stuff but please use this thread/post to be your spark because you, your family and your friends will benefit from it.

[Anonymous User]

This thread would have been intense in March

[Hutz_and_Goodman]

125k online savings acct
125k 401k
250k equity in house
50k educational debt for wife

5 years out. Big law. 2 kids. I know 125k in online acct getting .5% is dumb and trying to figure out what to do bc I think the U.S. stock market is overvalued.

[CovidLurker]

I feel like there's a lot of people in here with 100K+ in cash that have the attitude of "aw shucks, guess im just being too cautious/careful with my money by not investing". Let me reframe this for you - you are being reckless with your money and literally throwing it down the drain right now. You are making a huge financial mistake that will prevent you from retiring several years early. You are not cautious - you are fiscally irresponsible.

This upcoming weekend, please spend just 1 hour doing the following:

• Read this: https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/inve ... esting-101.

• Open a brokerage account with Fidelity/eTrade/Charles Schwab - whichever one you prefer. It's as easy as opening a bank account.

• Invest in either: (i) Target Date Retirement Fund (this is a mutual fund that targets a certain retirement year. If you are 30 years old and want to retire at 65, invest in a 2055 Retirement Fund. FDEWX is Fidelity's version and VFFVX is the Vanguard version. The nice thing about these target date funds is that they rebalance as you get older and get more conservative/safer as you approach retirement age. Just buy and sit back); (ii) VOO/VTI; or (iii) SPY.

Spending just 1 hour doing the above this weekend may literally allow you to retire several years sooner than you planned and/or much more comfortably than you planned.

[masterherm]

Also, lawyers think they're smart and say things like "the stock market is overvalued" without realizing that there are always people who think that, and that time in the market empirically beats timing the market. The stock market might be bound for a correction, but you don't know any better than anyone else. You aren't some financial savant who can beat the market; if you were, you sure as hell wouldn't be in big law. This intellectual arrogance is what results in lawyers making so many stupid financial decisions. Leaving money in a checking account instead of investing is probably the single dumbest thing you can do. At least people who indulge in frivolous purchases get to actually enjoy them; you're just wasting money and patting yourself on the back for being cautious and "knowing" the stock market is overvalued. Hope it's worth it!

[Anonymous User]

This thread would have been intense in March

I am a child of the 2008 recession, and the one good thing that came out of it for me was the muscle memory to know when to fight back against that panic instinct to sell. I like to use the hypo of the world's most unlucky investor. Lets say the guy made a large investment on the day before the 1987 stock crash. Then he invested again the day before the dot com bubble bust. Then he invested on the day before the 2008 recession started. That "unlucky" guy would have actually made a ton of money over the years if he did absolutely nothing on all 3 occasions and just let it sit. And the moral of course is that timing the market is a poor idea. Even for the world's unluckiest investor, time in the market was more important than timing the market.

[Anonymous User]

4th year. Texas biglaw (not market though).

K-JD. Started off with pretty much nothing in savings. Parents kindly loaned me $200k for law school at 0% interest and have asked me to repay at least $12k/year. I've paid back $86k so far.

$105k retirement
$20k investments
$50k emergency / house fund in HYSA
$10k cash on hand
$40k trade-in value of car (fully paid off)

NW: ~$110k

Looking to move in-house soon. Biglaw isn't fun, but the money sure is nice.

[Anonymous User]

Rising third year.
430 NW. No debt. 30k in cash. Rest all in VTSAX. 2 years out of law school. In house, but would have been rising third year.
I worked for a few years before law school and had 100k net worth.

[Definitely Not North]

NW: $1.15M

9th/10th year. Previously worked in biglaw (non-market paying firms), in-house now. Graduated with $220k law and undergrad student debt. HCOL city.

$900k equities ($170k retirement accts)
$50k cash
$200k house equity ($240k remaining mortgage)

Monthly expenses ~$3600/mo

Hoping to FIRE / retire early in another 1+ year(s) with hopefully $1.2-$1.3M in equities.

Awesome, nicely done. How long did you last before jumping in-house?

[Definitely Not North]

I feel like there's a lot of people in here with 100K+ in cash that have the attitude of "aw shucks, guess im just being too cautious/careful with my money by not investing". Let me reframe this for you - you are being reckless with your money and literally throwing it down the drain right now. You are making a huge financial mistake that will prevent you from retiring several years early. You are not cautious - you are fiscally irresponsible.

This upcoming weekend, please spend just 1 hour doing the following:

• Read this: https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/inve ... esting-101.

• Open a brokerage account with Fidelity/eTrade/Charles Schwab - whichever one you prefer. It's as easy as opening a bank account.

• Invest in either: (i) Target Date Retirement Fund (this is a mutual fund that targets a certain retirement year. If you are 30 years old and want to retire at 65, invest in a 2055 Retirement Fund. FDEWX is Fidelity's version and VFFVX is the Vanguard version. The nice thing about these target date funds is that they rebalance as you get older and get more conservative/safer as you approach retirement age. Just buy and sit back); (ii) VOO/VTI; or (iii) SPY.

Spending just 1 hour doing the above this weekend may literally allow you to retire several years sooner than you planned and/or much more comfortably than you planned.

Also, lawyers think they're smart and say things like "the stock market is overvalued" without realizing that there are always people who think that, and that time in the market empirically beats timing the market. The stock market might be bound for a correction, but you don't know any better than anyone else. You aren't some financial savant who can beat the market; if you were, you sure as hell wouldn't be in big law. This intellectual arrogance is what results in lawyers making so many stupid financial decisions. Leaving money in a checking account instead of investing is probably the single dumbest thing you can do. At least people who indulge in frivolous purchases get to actually enjoy them; you're just wasting money and patting yourself on the back for being cautious and "knowing" the stock market is overvalued. Hope it's worth it!

100% TCR on both of these posts. This is the way

[Anonymous User]

NW: $329k
4th year, in-house now. K-JD. Graduated with ~$65k in law school debt, now at ~$24k w/ sub-3% fixed. HCOL market.

~$314k equities, mostly index funds (~$100k in retirement)
~$41k cash

Monthly expenses ~ $5k (normally closer to $4.2k, but have had a lot of one-off expenses this year, i.e. new furniture)

No plans to get married / have a kid / retire soon; will look to build a career in-house and benefit from equity grants (above doesn't include unvested RSUs).

I'm no expert in finance and just plan to be a long-term passive investor. Dumped $52k into VTSAX, but have done DCA in the past. Unless inflation is totally out of control over the next 35 years, this will be fine by the time I retire even in the most conservative of estimates.

The one thing I would recommend for juniors (especially K-JDs) is to maximize your (backdoor) Roth IRA contributions. I wish I'd started doing so earlier.

[Anonymous User]

I feel like there's a lot of people in here with 100K+ in cash that have the attitude of "aw shucks, guess im just being too cautious/careful with my money by not investing". Let me reframe this for you - you are being reckless with your money and literally throwing it down the drain right now. You are making a huge financial mistake that will prevent you from retiring several years early. You are not cautious - you are fiscally irresponsible.

This upcoming weekend, please spend just 1 hour doing the following:

• Read this: https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/inve ... esting-101.

• Open a brokerage account with Fidelity/eTrade/Charles Schwab - whichever one you prefer. It's as easy as opening a bank account.

• Invest in either: (i) Target Date Retirement Fund (this is a mutual fund that targets a certain retirement year. If you are 30 years old and want to retire at 65, invest in a 2055 Retirement Fund. FDEWX is Fidelity's version and VFFVX is the Vanguard version. The nice thing about these target date funds is that they rebalance as you get older and get more conservative/safer as you approach retirement age. Just buy and sit back); (ii) VOO/VTI; or (iii) SPY.

Spending just 1 hour doing the above this weekend may literally allow you to retire several years sooner than you planned and/or much more comfortably than you planned.

I have a Vanguard account and owned VTI but sold it in October. I’m looking at buying something like VT and am not planning to hold cash forever.

[redtalun]

I feel like there's a lot of people in here with 100K+ in cash that have the attitude of "aw shucks, guess im just being too cautious/careful with my money by not investing". Let me reframe this for you - you are being reckless with your money and literally throwing it down the drain right now. You are making a huge financial mistake that will prevent you from retiring several years early. You are not cautious - you are fiscally irresponsible.

This upcoming weekend, please spend just 1 hour doing the following:

• Read this: https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/inve ... esting-101.

• Open a brokerage account with Fidelity/eTrade/Charles Schwab - whichever one you prefer. It's as easy as opening a bank account.

• Invest in either: (i) Target Date Retirement Fund (this is a mutual fund that targets a certain retirement year. If you are 30 years old and want to retire at 65, invest in a 2055 Retirement Fund. FDEWX is Fidelity's version and VFFVX is the Vanguard version. The nice thing about these target date funds is that they rebalance as you get older and get more conservative/safer as you approach retirement age. Just buy and sit back); (ii) VOO/VTI; or (iii) SPY.

Spending just 1 hour doing the above this weekend may literally allow you to retire several years sooner than you planned and/or much more comfortably than you planned.

I have a Vanguard account and owned VTI but sold it in October. I’m looking at buying something like VT and am not planning to hold cash forever.

you can achieve the same goal with a blend of VTI/VXUS, at a lower expense ratio.

[Lukky]

$1.7mil net worth
$250k cash
$1.35mil equities (incl. 401k/IRA)
$100k crypto

Graduated with ~$65k debt. NYC biglaw 9/10th year.

This is kinda crazy, especially in NYC. I'm guessing it's the result of taking full advantage of the bull market or having a spouse that has contributed positively.