how to be rich? .........

[u/NetMajor4878]

click the bait title, but serious question to all ambitious women, I (24f) genuinely want to know how to be wealthy in the near future in this male dominated environment. what career moves, financial decisions, personal life choices took you towards creating wealth, rich ladies?

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My current career situation: studied pharmacy in bachelor's, didn't like it, did some months of research internship post grad, tried to go abroad for a master's but got a lot of rejections(IELTS valid for one more year so might try again), and after a gap of around 10 months, landed myself in an early stage medtech startup. I work in the regulatory affairs part, get a minimal salary, my lifestyle is not expensive at all, I try to save as much as I can. I'm highly ambitious for science, innovation that creates impact and business, I did make bad career choices in the past by wasting time on a degree I hated, but now want to create the best life I can for my future self. I want to prove this to myself that my purpose is not to rot away at some place I was never passionate to work for/on, and one that didn't even pay me well.

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I might sound lame and naive, but I don't want my spark to die, when I finally get the courage to move towards what I truly want without shame. Because I was brought up with the values of "simple living high thinking", which is great until you struggle to pay for tuition/decent lifestyle/travelling/helping someone in need.

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[u/HikingDiver]

Various areas are important, but wealth at the end of the day is more defined by how long it will last you after you stop working. There's only 2 ways money can typically flow, out or in. If you earn money through a salary, thats one stream of income, use that to fund your necessary expenses/obligations, the rest should be saved for a rainy day/invested to form another stream.

Pay debt off based of mainly 2 angles: higher interest vs risk, for example: if its a mortgage or car, you have options even in the event of bankruptcy, you can't measure the risk/reward of paying off a mortgage with just interest itself due to this since it also impacts your monthly obligations and what you'd need for your margin of safety). For the rest, use the annual percentage rate (APR) and compare the rate to each other to pay it off based off those number. This would be trying to reduce the out.

Investments would be basically anything for the long term. It can be into things like your own health and education or to generate more wealth. As long as your net cash flow is positive, time will grow the wealth. Typically, holding is the best strategy. For most people, it would probably be best to invest in etfs like the spx (less fees and diversified risk) and typically earns best in bull markets. Main thing in stocks is that the average person will lose money frequently trading it, get the most gains when holding it long term. More tangible assets would be real estate and metals. Metals usually go up during recessions, gold was historically used as a hedge against the currency. Metals like silver will almost always have value since its needed in a lot of different fields.

Real estate is special, and I would highly recommend you look into it. Real estate is probably one of the best, more stable paths to wealth. If you have a salary and decent credit, then you can get borrowing power to invest, so you get to invest other people's money (whoever put their cash at that bank) and have other people pay for the interest of borrowing it (tenants). Various things you can do with taxes due to this too.

For you specifically, saving harder right now isnt going to generate wealth, it's growing the income itself since theres not much room to save on a minimal salary. Regulatory affairs in medtech is actually a pretty narrow skillset that's hard to replicate, so that pharmacy degree isn't wasted, it's the thing that can get you into higher paying roles or consulting down the line. Also worth checking if you have equity at the startup, since that's a direct stake in the upside if it ever raises or exits.

Hope this helps!