Congratulations! You have acquired life long tools that have changed your life for the better! Being frugal is a gift to yourself of never having to live paycheck to paycheck with all of the stress that goes along with it.
Enjoy the journey! Miss Prim
Indeed! As soon as I've finished paying the student debt & moving house costs (should be good in January), I'm going to give full force to the emergency/FUMoney fund, then invest in Vanguard.
What an inspiring post, GoldenNeko! Congratulations, and I'm sending all good wishes for continuing Badassity!
Thank you! Sometimes I feel like my stash isn't growing fast enough, or that I'm not doing enough. But then, I remember where I come from, and all the small steps that finally paid. I had to learn how to walk before running...
Congrats! Keep up the good work!
I could only afford paying for my driver's licence when I was 27.
Out of curiosity, is it a lot more money to get a license in France? Or did you just have that little money growing up? I think it is like $15-20 here.
In France, you have to pay for 2 exams at minimum: theoritical, and then practical.
To be able to present yourself at the theoretical one, you have to pay around 80/100€. And same price for the other. BUT: the law says you can't try the practical exam without a least 20 hours of practice before. So people pay for driving school lessons (In Paris, it was 55€ per hour of practical lesson) + without these schools, it's really hard, as a non affiliated candidate, to be put on the exam lists to get a day to try to pass the exam..
And the 20hour thing is a minimum. And when you fail passing the exam (40% failure rate at first try on national average), you have to wait around 3-6months for trying again (and, pay again lessons or you're losing your driving habits). My own driver license cost me around 3000€, cause I failed the practical exam once.
Minimum cost should be around 1000€/1200€. National average cost is around 1600€ according to some associations.
Yes, it's quite expensive. For reference, the median salary in France is 1730 € (50% of population above, 50% of population over it). As a student, I earned around 300/500€ per months. So it was not affordable. And my first years of work, I was at minimum salary and had some unemployment. So still not affordable until quite late.
At least, I always lived in areas with good public transportation.
At least in Germany a license can easily set you back $500 to $1000. You need to take a certain number of classes (usually taught at the driving school) and have a minimum number of hours driving with an instructor (daytime, nighttime, highway). Then there is testing fees, a failed attempt is probably $200-$300.
I know a few people that don't have a drivers license because it's too expensive and they get around fine using public transport.
Viva public transport!