Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
Bit of an odd answer, but for me (and my wife), the last piece of the puzzle was really budgeting. The invisible, constant financial stress is a lot, and adds to that feeling of "pretending" when you're not even sure if buying groceries will cause a bill to bounce, let alone hanging out with friends who always seem to comfortably have the money to do whatever it is you're doing.
It's been several years now (early 30s, started budgeting in late 20s), it took us a while to figure it out and progress was slow, but I can "see the line" now, towards retirement, towards home ownership, we have no more credit card debt (just student loans left, which we're working on), and we budget "fun money" that I save up to make big purchases like a 7900XTX without any guilt or credit.
We're also having our first kid soon, and at least financially, I'm not stressed about it at all, which would've been impossible in our twenties. Getting our financials in hand and headed in the right direction has just done massive work in helping me feel like I know what I'm doing, and that our life is actually getting better rather than stuck in place.