Wow, your life experiences own mine! However, I wouldn't have listed Canada as a place that you've visited. It pales in comparison to the other places. You're only 24 also?!!!
Um, I've graduated college and ran in a mud race for the first time recently. Lame-sauce. 🙁
I graduated college a year early so I had 3 years of work before going to med school. Gave me extra time and money to do what I wanted. Plus, I went to a state school (UF) at no cost since I am a FL resident and it was pretty easy to get a full ride. No debt upon graduation. FTW.
🙂 3 years of living expenses (technically 33 months) in a cheap college town helped. Spent maybe $900 a month max for living expenses.
Life is too short to live in a crappy house. You will spend a lot of your life in your home - it will be a place full of memories and the place you will escape too after another brutal day of work. You will raise you kids there and grow old there.
It is, in my opinion, worth spending some money on it to get something you really like or love.
As a doctor, you should be able to afford a great house without it hurting you financially unless you waste money on other crap.
Cars, to me, are a huge waste of money. They depreciate like crazy and the love affair lasts a short time.
"crappy" house doesn't have to mean anything other than a McMansion. You would be surprised at the markup construction puts on those homes. I knew a couple kids in high school who had families in real estate development. They made a killing to say the least. I never understood why some people would pay so much for a house given the quality it was. My advice would be to buy a nice piece of land and spend the rest on a modest size house (3,500 sq ft is huge).
Cars are sometimes great investment pieces, but not all the time. The Ferrari F40 I mentioned earlier was owned by a physician at the time. It was his dream car growing up so after he saved like crazy, he bought it....for about $425,000. You'd say he's crazy for spending that much on a 1991 car (this was 2005 mind you). Then the Ferrari market went crazy for a few years....3 years later he decided to sell as prices got his car up to $650ish. He didn't enjoy driving it because he was worried about something happening to it. I don't blame him...I wouldn't buy a car like that.
Another example is Jay Leno's McLaren F1. New was $1mm or thereabouts. He bought it a couple years old in the 90s for $800k. Now it's over $2.5mm and he won't sell. He said it's the best investment he's made without having to do a thing to the car. If you know the market well enough, you can make money. I personally am happy with my used $13k Japanese sports car. Reliable, fun, and cheap to maintain. No plans to ever sell it so depreciation doesn't matter.
I don't understand why people buy Mercedes-Benz, BMW, etc, brand new. They depreciate incredible amounts both in % and absolute dollars. i.e. a Mercedes S600 is well over $125k new, but surprisingly is under $30k about 7 years later. The reason is the cost to maintain is so much and MB built so many and they aren't hard to find. If a doc wants that kind of car, lease it and write it off as a business expense for your practice.
Wait, how did you do all of those unique and exotic activities if you come from a relatively modest background?
My parents (extremely frugal) were very similar to yours but we never had kayaks or partook in your type of activities. (read: expensive)
I grew up in FL, which is a pretty cheap state to live in. We didn't have an expensive home and my parents were determined to take us on a family vacation once a year. We normally traveled overseas to visit family (France and UK) or stayed within North America. Road trips up the east coast to Connecticut (family there) and then up to upstate New York and Canada to visit more. Same for the trip to California. Only South Africa and Caribbean didn't involve having family there. Saves a lot of money not paying for a hotel for most of the trip.
😉
My mom started to spend more on her activities after my brother and I graduated high school (she didn't have to pay for our post-high school education or anything). She likes outdoor stuff and is now crazy about kayaking and goes every weekend and runs her own club. Her and her siblings like all that outdoor stuff. They all flew to Mt. Kilamanjaro to climb that, went to Peru and climbed some mountain there (forgot the name), and other places.
I knew a lot of kids at my high school whose parents were well off (business owners) so we did a lot of stuff there as well and I still hang out around them. We're all in some grad program at the moment...dental, med, law, etc. Lots of freedom before I turned 18...had so little responsibility then, LOL!
