Hello all!
I recently discovered this site and am browsing around. I think I have fallen into a vaguely Mustachian way of life by accident and now want to take the next steps. So I am putting forward my personal situation and requesting advice!
Here's the status quo:
I am married. Spouse and I are both in our early 30s. Our annual household income is in the $150,000 to $200,000 range.
We live in a crummy cheap apartment, and we both work from home, so with no car and no expensive rent we are able to save a lot. We currently have about $125,000 in the bank.
We are terrified of debt, so we have no loans and no credit cards. Someday we would like to buy our own house, in cash if possible. (We also want to have kids, which of course will cost money.)
We do spend money on dumb stuff (like restaurants all the time!). But we find our savings growing constantly due to our overall low-cost way of life, so we haven't really worried about it, budgeted, or pinched pennies to maximize the savings.
Questions:
-- What general financial advice would you have for us?
-- We value financial independence but aren't sure how to ultimately get there. I keep hearing advice like "make your money work for you!" but to be honest, I don't know what that means.
-- Should we be investing our savings? We don't know anything about the stock market. It makes us nervous. We're more "stuff the cash in the mattress" kind of people. How should we get started with this? We know nothing & don't want to lose our savings.
-- We need to be able to sleep at night. I don't want to invest in anything that is actively making peoples' lives worse, even if it generates more income.
-- For various reasons we don't want to be landlords.
Thank you for any help or suggestions!!!