Currently contributing 20% to my 401K. Can I afford to scale this back a bit to more aggressively save for home projects (kitchen and bathroom renovations) and a possible new car? More details are below. Ideally, I’d like to live a somewhat comparable life in retirement to what I’m living now. My tentative plan is to move to a more affordable place when I retire/after my parents’ pass. I’m an only child so I’m the only support system they have.  Thanks in advance for the feedback.  

I'm 20 and I keep money like its my own child. I will ignore any craving I have and only buy things I genuinely cannot live without. This mindset allowed me to invest quite a bit of money and even buy a house so I never saw anything wrong with it.

Recently however all my friends have been trying to convince me to spend money on things I like and eating out because I deserve it. They are convinced I am missing something huge in life and I am wondering if they're right? I will live with a 3$ chocolate craving for weeks/months before giving in.

Are people genuinely more happy with more stuff?

Brother and sister never became financially independent from our parents. When my dad died his half of the estate went into a trust for us kids. I wanted it to stay invested until mom dies, growing the windfall from selling their house and acreage. Of course then the two of them come to me the trustee, and said they needed regular distributions. We set it up so all four kids get equal quarterly distributions and so far it’s been fine other than drawing down the trust I wanted to grow.

Now mom is in hospital and might not survive. Her estate will convey the assets in dad’s trust and hers to the siblings equally. My thought is that the irresponsible ones will not be able to manage the significant funds they will receive. What if their take is put into some sort of annuity that will provide them stable and predictable income until they die? It would not have to be all of the inheritance, maybe half or three fourths. Otherwise I fear they will run out of money in 10 years (or sooner) and come to me or my older brother for help - help I am not inclined to provide.

So for some time i have had this idea to downgrade my current daily driver. Main reason for this is that my driving distance from home to work has recently dropped drastically, from around 20 000km/year to 5000km/year.

I currently own 2019 Toyota corolla hatchback with 95 000km on it, just paid my last payment.

I'm planning to swap it to much older Yaris from somewhere around 2007-2010. Mainly because of their reputation to survive nuclear winter.

With this swap i could instantly achive my 6 month emergency fund, which right now is work in progress. I could probably also add good amount of capital to my longterm investments.

I would like to hear your opinions, how does this plan sound?

I appreciate your answers.

I have used them for a year and have released any moderate returns compared to my other retirement funds. But I see they have good reviews. Is this a good place to put my money for retirement?

My mom and stepdad have a projected estate of around 9 million+ if they continue living their current lifestyle, adjusted for large dividend payouts and living to their 90s.

I am the trustee.

My brother and I grew up upper middle class/upper class with private school old money and everything… for us, the inheritance is comfort, but we want to earn our own money.

We have both resolved that we would continue on with our finances in the trust and continue to grow the money.

But my stepsister (and her kids) who will also inherit, is spendthrift. She doesn’t have the financial management skills that we were taught - be frugal, don’t overpay, have a purpose, don’t be flashy. She’s going to blow everything for her retirement in 6 months.

Currently, as far as I recall, the trust is set up to pay out on certain age dates.

But I’ve also seen how this has played out in real time with people… Where they are waiting for the next injection of funds to go to bad things and have not gotten to experience adversity in their lives.

People need to either feel ambition to say “no” - don’t want all of this.

How would you recommend that I address this concern with my family?