How much money have you saved in this career?

Never contribute to any retirement plan, including 401K, that the company you work for administers. This way, you control your own money, not the company. If a company offers a 401K or any other type retirement, ask who administers the account.

 

Agreed @Chinatown, burnt once by employer, never again.

 

Hijacking this thread a little bit if you where to get in a catastrophic accident would you end up losing all of your savings? or is it full protected.

 

I have saved up 30k in 2 years. Half my check to spend, the other half goes into another bank.

I don't contribute to 401k anymore. My old 401k is still active on a stable option. It doesn't earn much but, i don't lose any of it.

I would have more saved but it's getting harder because everything is getting more expensive.

 

You own the 401k funds once you reach full vestment. They come with you when you leave a company though still untouchable until you're 65 (f dat).

 

Yea, 65. No way. That's why I stopped that. I save money faster than my 10 year old 401k ever grew.

 

Nice - is that a Case or JD ? Throw a backhoe attachment on that and you'll be real popular with the neighbors.

My neighbor has one, looks similar - handy piece of equipment.

 

$200k house
$200k in 4 rentals
$200k in 401k
$60k (depreciating) in vehicles/tractors/equipment etc.
$20k or so in accounts.

40k in loans right now, trailer/van/equity line.

Took 10 years of fairly hard work, and the last 2 have been pretty easy. 25 years till retirement, so I have no idea what to do now.

 

It's a Massey 202, it's tough getting home for the farm auctions, I got that fairly cheap

 

The best episode of savings is we had approximately 14K on hand and a bathroom being replaced in our home that month which was right at the time of the 9-11 job. The bathroom job was around 10K, paid for cash and we had 10K burned through 6 weeks most of it when the towers were destroyed killing the people who was there to cut paychecks for our trucking company. So there we were running for who knows how long on that pile of money until the company can find a new payroll contract and get the checks (Now 6 weeks behind) going again. Write down in a ledger everything you do including all information off the qualcomm so that if something like this happens again, you will not lose out on a penny due you.

When you have savings of 2000 ready to go, then freight being slow is not a problem you can keep yourself in good shape ready for the next load or when freight picks up again in a few days. Just be sure you are not being held somewhere because dispatch is angry with you being lazy or late somewhere. They like to short miles as a punishment until you have no money and quit which is very common in trucking. Easy dispose of problem drivers that way.

One tried that with me, I rested 5 weeks burning fuel daily. Finally the fuel bill got too much for them and they asked me if I was wealthy and I said yes, you have a load or not? Let's go No? Ok here is the location of the rig, Im going to orientation somewhere else next week.

A National banking chain such as Navy Federal etc is a great asset because it is not only money services but also Concierge services too. Call them up and say you need this for so and so at somewhere and they will arrange it for you quickly. Need to go to Alaska maybe? Call them up and a hour later arrangements are made without any worry or stress. Just go.

There is feast and famine in trucking. Always put away good money when it rains money some weeks because there will be a time it wont rain at all for whatever reason. And you'll have it. Without going into debt borrowing comcheks.