u/IdliVadaDosaUpma

A few months ago, I had broken up with my ex, and I’ve had time for myself to self introspect a little about the 3 years of my first relationship.

I (26M) feel now, that I used to treat her as a lesser person, possibly because she was a bit behind on the kind of trajectory I would hold myself accountable to - in career & finances. In reality, She was actually doing amazing in her career, in the medical field. It’s just the nature of the medical field that it takes a long time.

This mostly manifested as me giving more importance to my time and my comfort over hers. I gave my decisions more importance than her expectations.

I am able to introspect on this and have this in the back of my mind. But I feel, I, just as most other people, would continue this kind of behaviour even after having realised it.

I feel a majority of people wouldn’t be able to have an equal relationship or marriage when there are significant differences in finances, power, fame, network, career, and maybe even Age.

What do you people think about this? Or Is it just me?

I (26M) recently got a full health checkup at the results were basically shocking.

I had some unexplainable minor permanent kidney damage to both kidneys, some sort of treatable but chronic gut issues that’s probably auto-immune and some amount of fatty liver despite being a teetotaller and only eating home food.

None of this was there during a health check up 2 years ago, that I had done to get myself a life insurance policy.

None of this actually affects my daily life in any meaningful manner, nor do I use any medication at the moment.

Would you disclose any of this to anyone if you were in this position?

This is something I learned very early into my career - it is we who decide the level of work life balance we have.

There’s a few things I follow for this -

- Never let anyone know the full extent of what you are, or are not doing. Especially not your colleagues.

- You’re barely ever available. I respond to messages and tags with atleast a 15 minute, and up to a 2 day delay. Every colleague needs to be given this treatment on & off over the course of months.

- Don’t volunteer. You never volunteer for extra work. Always pick the easiest long term project. Any extra work must delay timelines in the long term project.

- Justify your JD & payscale. Never work over and above. A permanent state of quiet quitting is the name of the game. I’ve been on a quiet quit mode for the last 4 out of 5 years of my career. I’ve experienced myself get praised, despised, promoted and PIPed over this period across various companies.

- Always have side gigs as a backup plan while applying the same tenets within the side gigs too.

And lastly, AI tools - compel the company to give you access to them. It’s been 2.5 years or so since I’ve weitten code. Recently in an interview I was not able to remember how to declare a for loop in python. And I have a senior dev title today, and lead multiple projects and manage people.

AI’s your friend. People skills are your livelihood. And work life balance, work from home and a sufficient bank balance is the platform over which you build your career trajectory.

I just love watching the markets crack. Especially watching individual stocks hit lower circuits.

It’s the kind of real life entertainment that you can never get in scripted shows.

People ranting about their nonsense stock bet losing 30-40-50% sometimes 80+% in value, and them diamond-handsing it and buying more, is the kind of entertainment that I learned to appreciate as a post covid newcomer into the market.

The last couple years have been amazing in that direction. I’ve myself lost money to inflation as my investments have barely returned a 6% return in the 2 years span.

But it is certainly fun watching stock bets not playing out as expected.

This year, my monthly TDS deduction of more than 1L has exceeded my first year monthly salary credit of 1L from 5 years ago.

I am working for 18 weeks a year for the govt for every extra rupee I make going forward over and above my current income. It just doesn’t make any more sense to optimise for more salary

I am currently working on increasing my professional income. Every 52 weeks I work on making professional income apart from salary, I pay only 9 weeks worth of taxes.

It is an absolute win to be able to do that. There’s no reason to work 16 weeks a year for the govt.

What are the most expensive products you’ve got, apart from necessities like phone, laptop, kitchen appliances, furniture and vehicles? Experiences like vacations also don’t count.

For me, I’ve generally kept up with a cadence of buying 1 product a year that I want to buy. A sort of a “gift” for myself for being on track for that year.

The first couple of years into my career, I got myself things I need - a phone and laptop replacement. Got myself an iphone & macbook.

The last couple of years, I’ve been able to venture out into the “wants” territory. I got an apple watch for fitness monitoring for 35K, a PC to use for homelabbing and tinkering with AI for 40K over the past couple of years

I’ve been thinking of getting myself the PS5/GTA6 for about 60K this year once both are available.

What are those things that genuinely bring you materialistic happiness or recreational value or anything else like that?

I was having a discussion with a friend regarding his AM, and his approach to AM surprised me. I think he’s kind of an a*hole, but a very smart one at being that

One of his criteria was Dowry. A hefty dowry was a non negotiable for him. But dowry’s illegal. So his non negotiable changed to families having an only girl child. He’s cool with waiting for that money to start rolling in at a later point.

Dude’s very close with his FIL when it comes to advising him how to invest and grow his money.

He’s digging gold while also expanding the mine, lol.

I receive money in USD in paypal for freelance work. Paypal converts it into INR and sends it to my bank account in INR.

For claiming Zero gst rated exports, we need to receive payments in forex.

Now, since I receive the money in INR into my bank account, does it count?

If I have foreign inward remittances directly into my bank account and also through paypal, do I need to file each transaction in schedule FA or something?

A couple days ago, I was all set to buy myself a mac mini M4, 16GB ram and 512 gb storage. It was a killer deal at 80K rupees.

I added it to my cart and was going to buy it. Then I got a call from a friend and some other things happened and i didn’t pay for it.

I opened my cart today to complete the payment. Imagine my horror when I saw the mac mini costs 1.2L today☠️

Apple raised prices overnight for everything due to AI driven ram and storage price hikes.

I guess anyone who is not already into the apple ecosystem, is now locked out. Next gen Iphones are probably going to cost 2L.

Luckily i still have a couple years of life left on my current iphone/macbook to weather this storm. Hopefully these price hikes are not a one way ticket 🤞

We have a 20LPA limit to freelance outside our jobs without employers finding out. Use it.

Once you breach that 20L limit, you have to file for GST and you will have other compliances and headaches, and the paper trail will be public.

But still 20L is a decent chunk of change. Taxes on it will be 3.5L if you’re making above 50L in your main job as there is surcharge. But you still get to keep 16.5L from it atleast.

Make sure y’all software engineers make use of this.

It’s not easy to find gigs. Often more difficult than finding your main job. But worth it to keep looking and hopping around gigs.

Some work out, and some dont. There’s a lot of down time too.

Like, in 2024, I made 2L total. In 2025, it was 50K.

This year, it has been good. I made 60K in april, 110K in May, just 10k this month, but expecting that i will be able to make about 30-40k a week from next month.

There’s definitely inefficiencies though. Paypal charges like 9% in USD/INR transaction costs. So it’s almost half of the income tax you pay.

There’s luckily more efficient alternatives. But not all clients are willing to use them

I recently got a side gig contract job that pays me around 15 dollars an hour. This is for a startup and there’s just lots of work. I can bill them for a maximum of 8 hours per day, irrespective of how much work I do.

While I have worked in many startups full time in the past, I’ve never worked in them as a contractor.

The thing with this contract work is you need to fill timesheets and justify every 30 minute window on what you did.🥲

I worked a full 7 hours today. And that translates to about 105 dollars/10K rupees.

I was doing this alongside my main job which takes just 2-4 hours a day but pays bomb.

The thing about full time jobs is that you get paid to live and breathe. Whether work is happening, not happening, production is alive or unalived, creating a button is taking 1 hour or 1 month, nothing matters.

But in these hourly contracts, you can’t play them. They play you.

For the first time in my 5 year career, I have sat all day and did real work. If feel like I have been violated in exchange for peanuts.

I have just sent a mail to the company that this is not my cup of tea, and that I am resigning.

As a long term investor, financial life’s pretty boring. You don’t get to participate in the daily volatility of the market.

But when markets are crashing and burning, what an amazing sight it is to behold 🫶

People panicking, content creators predicting mass extinction, mom sending me whatsapp forwards.

It is the time when investment life lits up, and things feel interesting. It’s the time when I add to my positions.

What an Amazing time we’re living in when korean stock index is hitting lower circuit once a week. When people are losing 33% of their net worth in a week on spacex stock. When Indian market is being kicked around like roadkill.

What an amazing time to be in the markets

Kinda scared to ask this question, but here goes - Why is married DINK a thing, when the same can be achieved without getting married?

There’s also less fallout if things go wrong.

When Kids are a thing, it makes sense to have legal protection for them. But if it’s just 2 adults, given the legal landscape of india, how does it make more sense to be married than unmarried but cohabiting?

If things don’t work out, you won’t lose years over a divorce.

With Unmarried DINK, you have everything to gain and nothing to lose over married DINK.

Since we all change over time, the partner we chose 10 years ago might not be the person they were, neither are we the same person. And that’s perfectly fine. We should both be able to find a new partner without all the unnecessary hurdles that legal compliances bring.

Kinda scared to ask this question, but here goes - Why is DINK a thing, when the same can be achieved without getting married?

There’s also less fallout for men if things go wrong.

When Kids are a thing, it makes sense to have legal protection for them. But if it’s just 2 adults, given the legal landscape of india, how does it make more sense to be married than unmarried but cohabiting?

If things don’t work out, you won’t lose years over a divorce.

With Unmarried DINK, you have everything to gain and nothing to lose over married DINK.

I have this far-fetched plan - to retire early and move to a village within a 50KM radius to the centre of my tier 1 city. Basically all the top schools, hospitals and other essential services would be accessible through a 40 minute highway drive.

1 acre of land costs 2 crores. I want to buy 2.5 acres, construct a house on a half acre and the rest would be used for farming and livestock.

Basically 5 crores will be tied up to the land, 1 crore for construction and I plan to have a 4Cr liquid corpus that must be sufficient for the next **40 years**

This is a plan, not a dream. I would be able get to a position to execute it in 10 years or so.

But, I want to understand, is my romanticism of such a lifestyle leading me towards a wrong path?

Has anyone here lived such a lifestyle? How is it compared to the city life?

A 4Cr corpus will provide a max of 10L a year in safe withdrawal rate. Will that be sufficient for a family, along with all the working capital required for some amount of farming and livestock keeping?

And most of all, is it worth it?

It’s funny looking at the “InsideIndianMarriage” sub with contrast to this sub.

Here, people seem to be all about communication & getting to know each other before getting married. And in that sub, it’s the same people complaining about having married the most incompatible person they could possibly find😆

What’s up with the judgement? There’s also LM folks complaining about the same after years of dating and then getting married.

Where are people going wrong, and what are you doing to not go wrong?

Also, people seem to be slightly delusional when it comes to believing there won’t need to be compromises and adjustments needed to be made after marriage. I guess some of the incompatibility and resentment stems from it.

I have a theory - AI costs way too much for employers to pay for a subscription for each employee. So I think that employees will be on the hook to subsidise the AI costs going forward.

The employee already subsidises the employer on commute, clothing, food, mobile device, network subscription, rent and many other things that the employee does specifically for work.

AI’s going to be just another thing. Employer will not explicitly ask you to use AI, but expect productivity that can only be fulfilled by use of AI🙂

While your paycheck will not go down, it will also not go up to compensate for the higher productivity, nor to compensate for the costs of AI

My employer pays for claude subscription which gives me 100 dollars worth of usage. It takes just a single coding session to blow through it. They still expect me to have AI tier productivity for the whole month.

Enterprise subscriptions are orders of magnitude more expensive than retail subscriptions because they are billed on token usage. If I spend 100 dollars on a retail subscription, it will last me a whole month easily.

And the employers know that. Mine has even “gently nudged” me to consider it.

Ofcourse the top tier product companies will not do sh*t like this. But your average WITCH tier companies? I’m sure it’s going to happen sooner than later

I have been very disciplined over the past 5 years that I have been working and have controlled lifestyle creep as much as possible.

But this year, it has been taking hold. My average order value on swiggy has gone from about 250 to 500. Things that I never spent on in the past have started becoming fair game.

Credit card bills have risen from 20K a month to 45k a month.

Routine haircuts that I used to spend 250 on - i am treating myself to 750-1000. Pizzas are going from sparsely topped to densely topped. Auto rides are turning into cab rides.

Time spent on looking for deals is being spent enjoying.

The worst part is I am absolutely loving the spending. It’s improving my life. I can afford all this. I just chose not to until now. And i am unable to stop the spending.