I try to live as frugally as possible without
compromising the quality of my life.
My parents always really pushed me towards education
as well as taught me about investing at a very young
age. And I think this is what really pushed me
towards trying to achieve financial freedom as soon as
possible. My name is Ethan Nguonly.
I'm 22 years old.
I make around $194,000 per year as a software engineer
at Google living in Orange County, California.
I was probably one of the only people I knew who was
interested in stocks and stuff like this at my age.
But as time grew on, more and more of my friends
started to get into it.
Their parents started teaching them about it in
high school, college.
It was a little bit scary at the start, but I think I
really grew for it to become a passion of mine.
I was able to graduate college, my undergrad, in
two years. This would allow me to stay within that
budget and not take on any additional debt.
So what I did was I meticulously planned every
single semester and doing so, I was able to graduate
college in two years from UC Berkeley with my
bachelor's degree in computer science.
The biggest sacrifice I made was I was not really
able to enjoy any of that traditional undergraduate
experience. All in all, though, I would say that it
was definitely worth it as it was able to put my
financial goals ahead and really get me started on a
journey towards financial independence. And I would
make the sacrifice again any day.
So I also ended up pursuing my master's degree because I
felt that I had graduated college so soon and that I
wanted to be able to really maximize my education and do
the most that I could with my life.
So I ended up doing my master's degree at Berkeley
as well. And I did this in one year while working full
time as a software engineer at Google.
It has always been a lifelong dream for me to
work for Google. If I could get into Google, my life
would be complete.
Eventually, I was able to make that dream come true.
When I moved away from startup work into working at
Big Tech, I felt like there was a lot more organization
and a lot more structure, and additionally the work
life balance was significantly better.
This is why I personally feel that a big tech culture
is more of a fit for me.
I'd say the biggest perks I love about Google is that
there's free lunch.
Another major perk that Google employees are offered
is something for personal development.
Any personal development courses you take non-related
to your job can be reimbursed up to one third
of the cost. And so I use these to reimburse the cost
of my ping pong lessons and my language learning
lessons. I would say through using perks at
Google, I'm able to save close to $4,000 per year.
I do budget to an extent where I have an idea of how
much money I should be spending on each category
per month. However, I don't set a strict numeric number,
but instead I just make sure that I am being
reasonable with my purchases and this has
worked very well for me. One thing that I really love
to splurge on is travel.
So I travel between 3 to 4 times per year.
And this is one of those things that really helps me
relax and reset from my work.
And so even though travel can be expensive, it's
definitely something I try to prioritize and make a
budget for. I primarily eat takeout and I cook at home,
but not often. A lot of my meals, though I do eat at
Google, so this is able to save me some part of my
grocery bill each month.
For transportation, I do drive an electric car, so
this saves me a lot of money on gas.
However, my electric bill is a little bit high because
I charge my car at home.
So for the last month, my electricity bill was close
to $200.
So I do save and invest money each month.
I would say a little bit over $1,000 into
non-retirement accounts and then into retirement
accounts, I would say an average of $1,800 per month
is invested from my paychecks.
I actually keep very little liquid cash on hand.
It's losing its value over time at an alarmingly fast
rate. So accordingly, I like to put my money into
investments that can grow over time and exceed the
pace of inflation. My biggest financial mistake by
far was over leveraging into cryptocurrencies
towards the end of 2021, where it had a very big
crypto pump. In doing so, I was really investing money
that I didn't have and my losses were significantly
amplified. So this mistake cost me upwards of around
$80,000. I still believe in cryptocurrencies as a whole.
However, I do think that a lot of these altcoins can be
very risky and I avoid putting any money into these
now. As my net worth and investment portfolio has
grown, my risk tolerance has definitely decreased
quite a lot. I invest fairly cautiously now.
I invest mainly in ETFs and real estate, and these have
worked very well for me over the past couple of
years. I own two properties, one investment
property that I have in Florida and my current
primary residence that I live in right now.
I bought my investment property first at the
beginning of 2022, and I did this because I knew that
once I had a big mortgage to pay each month, it would
be very difficult for me to save at the same rate.
And so I wanted to be able to build up investments
before I made the purchase to buy a home to live in.
I saved up to buy my first home by living with my
parents and living very frugally. I was able to save
about 95% of my income by not doing many expensive
activities and just really staying at home even though
I was making a six figure salary.
For the house that I live in right now.
My mortgage is $4,593, but I pay an extra $7 per month,
rounding this up to 4600.
Additionally, my HOA fees for this property are $300
per month. I currently live alone in this three bedroom,
two bathroom house.
My current goal is to retire at 35 years old.
This may seem like a very young age for a lot of
people, and it is. But for myself, I really wanted to
have more time, freedom and the ability to pursue the
passions and hobbies that I really want to do with my
life.
I'll sail the world to find you.
What I'm really looking forward to in the next two
years is continuing to grow in my career as well as
continuing to experience life on the side.
So, I have a lot of upcoming trips planned to go
and see the world, and that's what I'm going to do.
I plan to keep buying up rental properties with the
goal of buying one property every 1 to 2 years, as well
as continually contributing to my investments, both my
retirement accounts and my regular brokerage accounts.
I consider myself to be a family man, and having kids
is definitely on my plate in the near future.
One thing I really want to early retire for is because
I want to spend more time with my kids while they're
young. I do feel to an extent that I've made it in
life in that I was able to accomplish a lot at a very
young age, and I'm very proud of myself and also
recognize that I've been very blessed to do so.
I would still say that there are a lot of goals for
me to keep going towards.
And so my motto is even though I'm successful now,
there's always more for me to shoot for, and I'm always
going to keep setting new goals until I'm able to
achieve those. And once I achieve those, I'll set some
more.