4 Popular Financial Decisions I Won't Make!

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MONEY
4 Popular Financial Decisions I Will Not Make

A pretty common experience as you get older is looking around, seeing decisions other people make, and wondering “How can they afford that?”

While I will never judge someone else’s financial decisions (we all live our own lives!!), I have started to see a lot of very common decisions people make in their later 20s and 30s that I personally don’t align with.

So today, I will be sharing 4 popular financial decisions I won’t make.

Just as a preface - never say never. I guess who knows how my life will unfold. But with what I know today, and the information I have now, these are decisions I don’t see myself making at all.

And of course I have to add the friendly disclaimer here: just because I won’t make a decision decision mean it’s bad or that you shouldn’t make it if it makes sense for you!!

1️⃣  I will not go back to school for a graduate degree

Graduate degrees are unbelievably expensive - whether you go part-time or full-time they often start in the 6 figure range. For the career path I’m on, even if I were to go back to a corporate job, I wouldn’t need one.

Not only does it not make financial sense in terms of the upfront cost, but it also can often result in years of lost income (if you go full time) as well as taking out debt that can delay financial progress for years in the prime earning window of your life (30s to 40s).

Graduate degrees make sense for certain career paths, and if your workplace is paying for it (or at least some of it), it may be worth it for you, but it isn’t for me!

All this to say, I WOULD go back to school in a non-traditional sense if I found myself pursuing a venture that required it (ex: culinary school, esthetician school, etc)

2️⃣ I won’t buy a house just to own my primary residence

The more I look at home ownership, the less and less it makes sense for me right now. Aside from the egregious housing market, interest rates are so high and the sunk cost of purchasing is too high for me to take on by myself.

To buy a home, it needs to make both financial and life sense for me, and I am just not in a phase of life where I know where I want to buy or what I would want to buy. And my monthly housing cost would double. Pass.

So I will continue to rent, keep my expenses low, and invest the difference into the stock market to build wealth!

3️⃣ I will not spend $50k+ on a wedding

Last week I asked you on Instagram what you spent on your weddings, and the numbers were crazy. You can look at them here.

While I do hope to get married, I’ve never dreamed of having a big wedding. I think the price of weddings has become outrageous, and many have lost the plot on the true purpose of the wedding because they get so caught up in the image and perception of it all.

Personally, I’d rather elope or have a very small wedding and use the money otherwise spent on a big party on quite literally anything else.

4️⃣ I will not change my investment plan based on the president

I see a lot of discourse online that is fear mongering related to the stock market lately. Yes, policy can impact the financial markets. But at the end of the day, we cycle through presidents on both sides of the aisle every 4-8 years. This is not new. It has been happening for 100+ years. And the stock market has still historically returned 7-10% annually.

And so, no matter who the president is, I will continue to invest in low-cost index ETFs on a set cadence every month. I will not let social media scare me out of a proven, long-term strategy. And you shouldn’t either.

WEEKLY RECOMMENDATION
You can’t escape politics.

On the topic of #4, I recently read this article titled “You Can’t Escape Politics. But Your Investment Decisions Can” and I think it is something everyone should read. The hypothesis is that the stock market doesn’t care how you vote, and this seems to be a lost theory in our current political climate. I recently subscribed to the WSJ so I can continue reading about personal finance and world events through a different lens, so I highly recommend spending the $5 to subscribe and read this article!

RESOURCES
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