Ether's Journal

[fiby41]

*Attempting to get Italian Citizenship via Jus sanguinis so I can expand overseas. If your great grandparents or more recent were Italian nationals you qualify for citizenship. More Italians overseas than in Italy and with demographic issues and economic mismanagement immigration laws are super liberal.

There's an Italian in our class who has to fly back every time he needs to renew his visa. Ditto for Scandinavian countries. This tactic employed by countries with reducing population was hitherto unknown to me until last week.

[ether]

It's honestly silly. I don't speak the language like a native and have never had a close cultural identity to the nation, but since a distant ancestor was a citizen and conscript in their army, I'm considered "blood." Just seems like a way to stem population decline while keeping the nationalists happy. But hey free access to the entire EU labor force and financial system is pretty sweet.

[ether]

May 2019

Age: 23
Networth: 195k USD (185k in US equities index, 10k in car)

Quit my job(s) today for a better one. New wage is $116k base + 30k year in travel expense + 10k in fringe benefits.
I'm a traveling consultant for a boutique data analytics firm based in Chicago. It's 90% travel so excited to see the world. Hotel life here I come!

All the grinding and weekends of extra work finally paid off. I now have an in demand skill that people are willing to pay a ton for. I'm going to miss teaching and my old team wasn't happy to see me leave after only being with the group for 18 months

[classical_Liberal]

Congrats on manufacturing the life you want!! May the travel God's shine upon you.

[ether]

Fun fact, I just released a blog talking about my niche which helped me a lot during the interview process
http://discoverdata.tk/

[Gilberto de Piento]

Congratulations on the big salary, I hope the job works out well for you.

[thedollar]

Looks interesting. I clicked the bootcamp post but not sure what it is? Is it a bootcamp you are currently attending?

[ether]

Looks interesting. I clicked the bootcamp post but not sure what it is? Is it a bootcamp you are currently attending?

I built it for the class I was helping teach, so I put all the subject areas we will be covering into a gantt chart and the line is today's current date. It will also help them talk about all the technologies they have been exposed to. Trying to encourage everyone to design a blog so they can show their portfolio to their prospective employers/clients.

For anyone that wants to make a website for free and host it for free let me know and I'll help you debug and get started.
On a high level you want to use this tutorial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRZQOoiULvk

Then install these wordpress plugins:
https://elementor.com/
https://wp2static.com/

Then export your wordpress CMS into static HTML files and load them to gitlab who will host for free
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BA_c3bGQXlQ

Bam you're well on your way into getting into serverless programming
Lot of small businesses and aspiring business owners get ripped off by "web design experts" who will charge insane dev and hosting costs for SIMPLE websites.

If you hate wordpress with a burning passion, check out https://www.layoutit.com/build

[thedollar]

I am more interested in the course! Where do I sign up?

[ether]

Here's the funny thing, it's a for profit company (NYSE: TWOU) that essentially subcontracts classes with local universities and uses their branding to get students. The perfect symbiosis between public and private interests, the trust of public brands with profits being sent back to shareholders and university coffers. Website to find if your local university is a partner:
https://www.trilogyed.com/universities/. Quality is so-so, I've been finding free online resources that teach the exact same material that the paid course covers since I'm all about free knowledge. I'll post it on my blog once I compete it.

[ether]

Jan 2020

Age: 24
Networth: 235k USD (100k in traditional IRA, 120k in taxable brokerage, 10k car, 5k fundrise)
Portfolio makeup: 90% US equities, 10% short term debt @ 2.8% (ticker: GSY)

Updates
*I've been job hopping like a mad man, been out of college 3 years and have worked for 5 different employers so far.
*I've kinda reached the top pay range for my current skillset of ETL and data visualization. I'm pulling about 135k W2.
*Taxes are by far my biggest expense ~40k/yr while I spend like 20k/yr
*Housing is paid for 60% of the time since I'm traveling on the companies dime and I just do airbnb for the off days
*I've been working these 6month 12month contract jobs with different firms and realized I could really quit any day and no way they could verify a gap in my employment since I've signed NDA with all my clients.
*I really think the next logical step is to form an S-corp and be paid via my business. The logic I've read is that you can stash about 40k/yr into your 401k if you own the company and you can get away with only giving yourself a 70k salary meaning you only have 30k in taxable income and the rest is taxed at the corporate tax rate of 21%. Honestly seems like it will make sense to just move all my money into a corporation and just pay the flat 21% rate on my profits and just retain all profits in perpetuity. Let me know if you know anyone that does the same.

[ether]

Dec 2021

Age: 26
Net worth: 500k USD (150k in investment property (no loan), 100k taxable brokerage, 250k in IRA)
Expenses: Very low at $2k/month due to paid off home and car

Updates
*Got promoted to middle management on team (only one direct report so working leader) and bumped to 250k USD/yr W2
*Gross rent of 25k USD and profit of around 10k USD from rents (It's all section 8 and 60+ year old property so they are higher maintenance)
*Pretty much my expenses = my passive income of $24k USD/yr so I'm lean FIRE which is lit! I want to keep growing and making money for the fun of it.
*I'm going to cash out refi the investment properties once I wrap up the remodel on the properties. Could get 90% of my money back due to high appraisal (new roof, new HVAC, added SQFT via the garage)
*Job is remote and pretty chill. So I'm just going to keep milking that for a while and keep improving my tradesmen skills with the remodels on weekend. I'm getting better with basic plumbing, electric, landscaping, flooring/tile, and carpentry. Been doing the remodel solo except for some plumbing work on the garage since I want a permit shown for appraisal for the extra SQFT
*Will keep grinding at real estate, wrote some code to automate the analysis of all new MLS deals so I'm always monitoring my local market for deals that hit my buy box. Also in the process to get my real estate license to save the 3% on buying and selling. Took only 40 hours to complete.
*Main reason I'm getting deeper into real estate is due to super high equity valuations and crazy high cash flow for sec 8 homes. I will get my purchase price back in profits within 6 years and there are not really any stocks that have a P/E of 6. Shiller P/E ratio is like 40 right now. Obviously there is a time loss for running the property, but once I hit 30 properties I plan to just add someone to the payroll at 40k/yr to deal with repairs. Also the 1031 loophole is pretty motivating for me.

[fiby41]

so I'm lean FIRE which is lit!

Congrats on becoming FI, you've 20 years of expenses saved!

[chenda]

Congratulations ether that's great news. Did you become Italian?

[Jupiter]

Wow! Your journal is impressive to me. You became FI really fast, I hope I can manage something similar too. I hope to be out of college before the end of this year so I can start having a representative cashflow for making FI projections. Anyways, I wish you luck, health and happiness for this year. Thank you for the inspirational stuff

[ether]

Congrats on becoming FI, you've 20 years of expenses saved!

Thank you! It's a modest amount, but it feels good to know I'll never be broke

[ether]

Congratulations ether that's great news. Did you become Italian?

All my documents are lined up, just need to travel to the consulate in Miami, FL in 6 months. COVID made it very slow and Italy is known for being very bureaucratic. For example to sign up for a meeting you need to stay up until midnight EST and refresh a web page and all the slots for a month fill up within minutes.

[ether]

Wow! Your journal is impressive to me. You became FI really fast, I hope I can manage something similar too. I hope to be out of college before the end of this year so I can start having a representative cashflow for making FI projections. Anyways, I wish you luck, health and happiness for this year. Thank you for the inspirational stuff

Thank you
You can do it. The biggest advice I have is to reduce your housing expense as much as possible (house hack, roomies, buy a cheap place), live in a low tax area, and go into a practical and well paying field. At the end of the day also try to figure out what you want to do once you get the money and security. For me this money just gives me motivation to make more so I can buy more real estate and eventually hire people and provide decent and affordable housing to my community.

[ether]

- Hit the 1m milestone at 28 this week. Thanks Powell for saying you will cut rates
- I have a slight confession, the way I was able to start making $250k/yr with a normal office job was by having two remote jobs at once.
Shoutout to https://www.reddit.com/r/overemployed/ which is a great online community of people like me.
- asset break down is 35% real estate and 65% equity. With high interest rates, real estate returns are not much better then long term bonds now. The main upside of real estate is that it's inflation adjusted on the principle while bonds are not.
-I made the call to quit both my jobs and take some time off. I will most likely never stop working but if I return to work it will be through small business not through an employer
-I've been on here for over a decade and I just wanted to say thank you to the community, having the money part of life figured out has really enabled me to focus on the things that matter to me and make me happy <3
https://ibb.co/34r2td1

[Egg]

Love to see this. I never saw your initial post in 2014 (around when I joined the forum) but if I had read it, I would have thought your goals were optimistic. You've then completely smashed it all out of the park, even relative to aggressive goals. Pretty amazing stuff All the more because your only really posted a few times along the way so it feels like even more of a space rocket