Category Archives: Wealth

Budgeting, Saving, Wealth

Food delivery apps are for millionaires

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Happy New Year!!! We are three weeks into 2026 and it hasn’t been a dull moment.

Saks filed for bankruptcy, prices for eggs are still sky high, and the cost for a cell phone are in the stratosphere.

Even concert tickets are through the roof!

Last year, I saw Beyonce front row tickets going for $3500 and as high as $10,000 for resale tickets.

Some comic conventions and meet and greets can run up a tab of into the thousands just to get your light saber signed by Hayden Christensen.

However, what I am here to talk about today are what it costs to have food delivery. It’s a delightful convenience, but it sure does cost a fortune.

Let me paint this picture for you.

It’s a chilly Friday night and nobody feels like cooking, but no one also wants to warm up the Jeep to go pickup a couple of pizzas for the kiddos. What is a parent to do? Take out your phone and order up a couple of pies of course!

Pizza is like the #1 delivery food of choice. It’s quick, hot and delicious. This won’t exactly break the bank, but doing this every week adds up fast.

Tons of workers and college kids won’t think twice about pulling out their phones and ordering up some quick takeout for lunch.

Look, I get it.

I love food! It’s awesome. Tastes great and makes you feel good.

My sister even went to culinary school to become a chef and started a food business.

And I’m a sucker for sweets. My favorites are cupcakes and donuts.

I absolutely love Georgetown Cupcake.

With a menu of over 100 different flavors, Georgetown Cupcake also ships its cupcakes nationwide. They even do seasonal flavors. The downside is they only got like six locations so you can’t get this special treat just anywhere in the world.

They even have daily specials. One is called Coffee Cookies & Crème. The Cookies and Crème cupcake is topped with coffee and cookie-infused buttercream frosting.

I haven’t been blessed with this flavor yet, but I am sure Juan Valdez would probably give it two thumbs up, Siskel and Ebert style! haha

I am sure many places haven’t even had these special little treats. These cupcakes are probably a pretty rare edible delight in places like Canada or Europe and on the West Coast. Since, most locations are in the Washington DC in the US and in other East Coast regions.

They are so good, they are like small nuggets of gold or silver.

You can trade them like currency.

I got an extra red velvet from Georgetown Cupcake. What’ll you give me for it?!

I digress.

Let’s get back to these food apps!

And don’t even get me started on meal kits for delivery services. You could probably send your kid to college on what it would cost you to purchase this subscription service.

Factors Influencing Your Cost

Restaurant Choice: Some restaurants absorb fees or offer discounts, while others add higher markups.  Think Domino’s or the Cheesecake Factory.

Delivery & Service Fees: Expect $2-$7 per order, plus a 10-15% service fee on the subtotal. The service fees can be as much as a meal!

Tips: An additional, optional cost, often $3-$5 or more per delivery. The higher the cost, basically the bigger the tip.

Subscriptions: $10-$15/month for services like DashPass or Grubhub+ can offer free delivery on qualifying orders, reducing overall costs. However, subscriptions are where you spend a small fortune just for not wanting to defrost a chicken.

Order Size: Small order fees ($2-$3) apply if your cart is below a minimum, notes CNET. Think of this as the same way you see Amazon saying minimum $25 ships with Prime for free. They make you spend more to get what you want.

I did a quick lookup for meal delivery and saw that places like Home Chef and Hello Fresh, while great food and service, can cost a pretty penny.

The average monthly food delivery cost varies, but estimates suggest Americans spend over $130 monthly, with some surveys showing averages around $130-$150+ per month, depending heavily on ordering frequency (around 3-4 times) and service fees (delivery, service, tips).

Tons of folks order food monthly.

I bet if I looked out my window I could see a Door Dash or UberEATS driver right now! Their everywhere!

So I pulled out my trusty compound interest calculator to see what this is costing over an extended period of time.

Over 10 years, at $150 bucks a month, that is $32,000. Tack on another decade, and that comes up to $123,000, assuming a 10.7 percent return, which is what the stock market has averaged starting from 1975 over the last 50 years.

What really breaks the bank is when you do subscription services weekly.

After a few swipes on your phone, this $125 per week adds up to a whopping $6500 per year!

Doing this over the course of just over 27 years, would cost you $1,091,024.41!!!

Now do you see why I say food delivery apps are for millionaires! You literally could have stashed away a million bucks by just cooking at home.

Instead of eating out, you invest that money and let compound interest do its thing and make you a fortune instead of you spending one in order to get your weekly Starbucks fix!

Let’s make million dollar wealth building decisions. Not million dollar mistakes.

Just my 2 cents.

About the author

Miriam started Greenbacks Magnet in 2016 to keep a scorecard of her goal of $1M in investable assets. Armed with a Master in Management (MiM) and a calculator, she teaches readers how to achieve financial independence while also helping them learn how to smell the roses along the way. The palpable response she got from sharing her personal finance goal in a public speaking course at Georgetown University encouraged her to share her story and teach finance on her website. She invests in AI companies as artificial intelligence is the new iPhone of the moment as she likes to invest in companies that are disruptive.

Retirement, Self-Made Millionaires, Wealth

How many people retire with $1 million

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I remember reading an article where Dave Ramsey said the top two ways that most people become millionaires in the $1M to $5M dollar range; 1) a paid off home and 2) maxing out retirement accounts.

I already knew that paying off a home is always a way to help yourself become financially secure. But how many folks are really maxing out retirement accounts? Not as many as you would think. I did some research and found that although many people polled say they want to be a millionaire one day, not many actually reach it to that goalpost. Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI for short) data estimates that just 3.2% of Americans have $1 million or more in their retirement accounts. The numbers below were posted by the Motley Fool from EBRI’s retirement savings data.

These are the amounts in Americans’ retirement accounts:

$0 to $9,999: 58.4% of Americans
$10,000 to $99,999: 20.5%
$100,000 to $499,999: 13.9%
$500,000 to $999,999: 4%
$1 million to $4.99 million: 3.1%
$5 million or more: 0.1%

You will notice that almost 80% of Americans have less than $100,000.

You may have also noticed on my post Her First $400K that I showed you a tweet from rapper Drake saying the first $100K is the hardest.

No sh*t!!!

That means only the top 20% have made it past the first hurdle of $100k.

The next 14% have reached just shy of half a million dollars.

Not too shabby.

Then the percentage just sink like an anchor.

Only 4% get beyond $500K. And just a mere 3.1% got to the holy grail of $1 million in retirement savings.

And don’t even look at the numbers for $5M, that is a paltry one percent.

Not too surprising that the 1% take the top prize.

Only the top 3% make it to the millionaire promise land.

No wonder so many folks are playing the lottery.

It can take 20-30 years of investing to make it to $1M and the possibly another 7 or so to get to $2M. That’s 40 years! A lifetime.

However, do not be discouraged.

Any obstacle can be overcome with a well-thought out plan.

Making your primary target to get to $100,000 can reap you rewards for a lifetime. Starting here can help you achieve the next goal. Whatever you do decide to do make sure you make your plan as specific as possible.

Write it down.

And no matter what, don’t stop until you reach your goal.

That is the only way to achieve anything.

You do not give up.

Pop Culture, Wealth

You’ve Got Gold: Net worth of US Olympians with Gold Medals won in Paris

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As I write this, the USA has won the most medals at the Paris 2024 Olympics, ranking them number one overall. Some of the most exciting events included track and field, swimming, gymnastics and basketball.

And as of today, Monday 8/12/2024, the Olympic flag has arrived in Los Angeles ahead of LA 2028. That’s right. The next Olympics will be played on US soil.

I’m not going to talk your head off so let’s get right down to it. Sourced from a variety of sources from a quick Google search. Here are the US athletes with the most medal wins and highest net worth’s. You know, just in case you were wondering.

Credit: AP

And although he is not a USA athlete, I had to give honorable mention to Carlos Yulo. He became the Phillipines first male gold medalist and was gifted a 3-bedroom condo worth over $500,000 and prize money of approximately $346,000 plus free food for life!

KD is dropping buckets and minting money at a breakneck pace. As part of team USA, Durant won gold medals in 2012, 2016 and 2020. And after his last win on 8/10/24 this year, he has become the most successful athlete ever in an Olympic team sport.

Steph Curry also known as Chef Curry has become an Olympic Gold Medalist. The NBA All-Star first signed with Under Armour in 2013 in a deal worth about $4 million per year. Then he re-upped and got an even bigger contract, this time with an equity stake in the company. He helped the men’s basketball team bring home the gold in an electrifying finish in the last quarter.

And the richest USA Olympic athlete…LeBron James ofcourse!

Off the court, he is a shrewd businessman, who has his hands in multiple million-dollar endorsement deals with Nike, McDonald’s and Pepsi. he is said to earn $55 million yearly just from endorsements. It’s good to be King.

Self-Made Millionaires, Wealth

How Deadpool & Wolverine actors inspired me to invest

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Photo Credit: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

As I write this, Deadpool & Wolverine just hit theaters mere days ago on July 26, 2024. It destroyed the weekend box office and broke records with an eye-popping $441 million-dollar opening weekend. That is just massive!

Not too surprising though for a movie that had the backing of one of the biggest movie and production companies in the world, Disney Studios and Marvel Productions. It was reported that Disney dropped $200 million as the budget and another $100 million for marketing.

The movie even went as far as to market to the first 100 ticket holders to receive the movie poster pendant as a way to sell tickets.

Genius in my POV!

What I am here to talk to you about today is what I learned from both actors, not in front of the camera, but what they do on their off time. Namely, investing.

Long before Ryan Reynolds went from party pimp in 2002’s Van Wilder to merc with a mouth in 2016’s Deadpool, he started putting his money to work investing in startups and these companies can be disruptive. The biggest by far was in Mint Mobile.

It was reported that T-Mobile struck a deal with Mint Mobile to purchase it for $1.35 Billion in 2023.

Courtesy of Yahoo! Finance

Reynolds, as a 25% owner, his stake would net him $300 Million. That’s probably more money than he’s made from his entire acting career! And his catalogue is pretty huge as he’s been starring in television and film for 30 years.

His involvement as a celebrity spokesmen caused a huge spike in customer interest and gained the company 12x the customers it had prior. That is more traction and eyeballs gained on them than they got with a $5 Million dollar Super Bowl ad.

He put Mint Mobile on the map and gave them access to a bigger audience just through his 45+ million followers on social media platforms alone.

And Hugh Jackman is no slouch either. Over his decades long career, he had made large paychecks in film, most notably as his Marvel character, Wolverine. He reportedly went from making $500,000 to over $20 Million playing the X-men fan favorite.

However, he did not just let that money sit in the bank. He invested a gobsmacking amount in real estate. Celebrities can actually make more money from endorsements than sheer talent alone. According to publications like the New York Times and New York Post, he is speculated to own approximately $50 Million in real estate in America and Australia.

New York Post: Celebrity Real Estate

He too has endorsed products such as Keurig and for luxury retailer Montblanc.

Although talent has gotten them where they are, their investments keeping working for them long after the camera stops rolling.

Investments don’t need to take a 15-minute smoke break, drink water, go on vacations or sleep. They are working around the clock. Making you money while you sleep.

Learning that is when I put a ton of my focus into investing. I have looked into both entrepreneurial pursuits and being an avid investor. The truth is being an entrepreneur can make you rich, but investing is how you stay rich.

I figured even if any business I ever starts fails, I would still have my investments.

I chose to work on having $1 Million in investable assets so that if I ever choose to walk away from work one day, then I would have the option to.

That’s why I started investing in Google, Apple and more recently AI stocks.

I am closing in on $400,000 in investments. At this rate, the earning are becoming quite considerable and I could hit my target of $1M in less than a decade. If I can get a 10% return on that, I could cross into the multi-millionaire territory in an additional 7 years.

Having $2 Million in investable assets is no small feat.

Since, it’s reported that only 9% of Americans achieve a $1 Million Dollar stock portfolio. You know how many make it to $2-3 Million or more…around 3%.

You would be in the small minority of Americans with a million in investable assets.

One of the tips and tricks I used to build my stock portfolio was to trim 10% of the top of all major purchases and invest the difference in the stock market.

If you budget $3,000 for a European trip, take $300 off the top and invest that in Google or the VTSAX.

Need a new washing machine.

Instead of spending $1,000, trim $100 off the budget and redirect that to your Roth IRA.

Considering that only around 26% of households have saved $100,000 for retirement, means you can definitely aim for this goal and likely reach it. That’s one in four households. Great odds.

However, once you get to $500,000 in retirement savings, this number of households goes down to 9%. You are now in a small minority. Going from a rather large majority of 26% to 9% is the difference of $400,000.

There are now more folks than ever that owe that in mortgages than they have saved for retirement.

I aim to be different. I want the elusive brass ring…to be a millionaire.

I won’t stop until I become part of the double comma club.

It’s a sorority that I have been pledging to become a member of for years.

I figure with enough time, grit and determination I could become that card carrying member. It is an elite club. The barrier to entry remains strict, but not impossible.

You have better odds of getting into this club than you do of being accepted into Harvard with its super low 3.2% acceptance rate.

You can do.

It’s like rapper and actor Master P said; “product outweighs talent.”

@earnyourleisure

When it comes to monetizing your talents, having a product is key 🔑 You can watch the full Assets Over Liabilities interview feat. Master P on Revolt TV’s YouTube Channel. #masterp #talentisoverrated #businesstips

♬ original sound – Earn Your Leisure

For example, Warren Buffet made $700 Million in dividends from his investments in 2022.

He has never made a winning shot in an NBA playoff game or had a hit record.

All that came from earnings off his capital investments.

You just invest your money into companies or products that you can’t live without and watch your money grow taller than Shaq!

Financial Freedom, Financial Independence, Wealth

My $500k Journey…The Beginning

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They say every journey begins with a single step. Well this one also began with just $1. Actually $5 whole dollars!

It’s like one of my favorite comedians said (Martin Lawrence for those folks wondering), “I got a dollar and a dream to make myself some cream.”

The first thing I needed was a J-O-B! After, I found one with a good match, I picked the ultimate goal of a one million dollar net worth.

However, its a marathon and not a sprint. I’m doing the long-play of investing my money over time. Money not quickly acquired tends not to be easily lost.

I’m going to take you from my early days growing up with my siblings in a two-bedroom apartment to buying a condo with the Roth IRA!

I started off as a telephone operator and waitress making $2.38 plus tips as a teen to getting a job at one of the most prestigious and richest universities in the world.

I’ve gone from wearing holes in my shoes to staying at the Ritz Carlton and shopping at Prada (however, I did not but that $1,000 cashmere scarf!).

I went from reading about blogs, to writing my own and riding shotgun to dinner with none other than JD Roth of Get Rich Slowly. Sound interesting. Do you want to know more? You just have to keep on reading or listening to my videos on Tiktok to find out.

My earliest memories with money was watching my father go to the local liquor store to cash his paycheck. He would always give me a few dollars to buy some snacks.

I thought money is wonderful. It allows you to buy things.

That was my first taste of sweet, sweet freedom. The freedom to buy the things you want. I learned how to save to buy the things I wanted, but I needed to learn how to earn money.

I got my first real job as a teenager making $10 bucks an hour as a telephone operator. However, I would not learn about investing until I was in my 20’s.

Financial Freedom, Financial Independence, Retirement, Self-Made Millionaires, Wealth

Coasting to FI: Compounding my way to Coast FIRE and $1 Million

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Reading, Read, Peaceful, Woman, Dusk

“One minute of patience, ten years of peace.”  – Greek Proverb

“Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.” —John Quincy

It was a hot summer day. Same as any other. I was busy working as usual.

I have been working so hard since I was like 5 years old. That was the age that I decided I was going to be rich.

I used to go outside and play on the playground every day. Those were some of the most important days of my life. I learned so much on the playground. The virtue in helping others, sharing, caring, making friends, solving conflicts and exercise.

Nothing came easy. You had to earn every inch when playing sports with other kids whether it was jumping rope or running. You played to win.

I was always pretty good at academics so I put a lot of my energy into that. I figured that could be my path to riches. It turns out I was right.

I was working 8-hour days and studying up to 8 hours a day in college. At one point, just a couple years ago I was reading 25-50 books a year.

I had a hunger for knowledge; especially, personal finance.

Once I learned what compound interest was, I knew I found my road to wealth. I would save and invest money consistently until interest would do the rest for me on my journey to $1 million dollars.

I had been grinding it out so long that sometimes the days blurred and I feel asleep at night from pure exhaustion. Then one day I looked up and realized I had made it to Coast FIRE.

Coast FI refers to saving enough to “coast” to financial independence. This allows participants in this version of FIRE (financial independence, retire early) to take jobs with less stress or pay due to reaching a certain amount of money needed to retire earlier than age 65.

Coast FIRE is a sub-genre of this early retirement movement. This version calls for having enough invested or saved so that without adding another penny of contributions to your retirement portfolio it will still grow to fully support retiring at a traditional retirement age. Your nest egg, simply put, has reached a tipping point so that it will “coast” to the target amount needed for retirement.

People who have successfully achieved their Coast FIRE (like me) still need to work, but they only work to cover current living expenses – not to build up their savings or investments for a future retirement.

The thing about Coasting to FI is that you must first do this before you can get to any of the other versions of complete financial independence; never having to work again – such as Fat FIRE, Lean FIRE, or Barista FIRE. Where compounding does the heavy lifting for you.

FIRE requires you to save up at least 25 times your anticipated annual spending and you have got a 97% or better chance of that money lasting at least thirty years. 

Fat FIRE typically means a budget of $100,000 a year, which requires a retirement savings of $2.5 million.

Lean FIRE typically involves being frugal and living in a lower-cost area, or even other countries with a lower cost of living with a budget of $30,000-$50,000 a year, which can require a retirement savings of a minimum $500,000 to $750,000.  

Barista FIRE is a hybrid between Fat FIRE And Lean FIRE. Barista FIRE is being able to retire before the conventional age of 60+, but taking on a part-time job for supplemental income and potentially health insurance. You will need to have at least $1 million in retirement accounts.

Coast FIRE requires you to save a certain dollar amount that will allow you to coast to FI such as saving $200,00, which will allow you to coast to $1 million in 15 years with a 10% rate of return.

 Coast FIRE formula for determining how large the participant’s nest egg must grow would begin with a regular FIRE number (estimated in the example below at 25 times annual spending of $50,000). In the formula below, note that “Years to grow” is an exponent.

25 x $50,000 / (1 + annual growth rate)Years to grow = Coast FIRE number

Suppose someone estimates they need 30 years to reach their Coast FIRE number and an average annual growth rate over those 30 years of 7%. The calculation would then be:

$1,250,000 / (1 + 0.07)30 years = $164,209

In this example, the Coast FIRE number would be $164,209, which would grow over 30 years (given the above-stated estimates) to the target figure (or regular FIRE number) of $1,250,000.

I like to use the $1,000,000 target for my estimate. The calculation would then be:

$1,000,000 / (1 + 0.07)30 years = $131,367

If you want to retire sooner, then just see what a different target number will do or by shortening the number of years.

For example, $1,000,000 / (1 + 0.07)20 years = $258,419. That means your Coast FIRE number would be $258,419.

Once you reach this dollar amount, you could stop investing in your retirement accounts and reach $1 million in 20 years. The higher the compound interest rate, the quicker you are able to get out of the rat race.

Once I hit $300,000 in cash and investments, I knew that with a 10% rate of return that it could turn into $1 million in 12.5 years.

$1,000,000 / (1 + 0.10)12.5 years = $303,802.

Paying off debt faster and more aggressively plus investing those funds and more could allow folks like me to get to $1 million in less than a decade.

I can now put on my eye mask, kick back and coast to $1 million. If I can do it, then anyone can.

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I started with $0 in retirement savings. I started stashing money into my 401(k) and then opened a Roth IRA to start saving even more.

If you want to coast to FI, then let compound interest do the heavy lifting for you, save $100k because the first $100k is the hardest, and allow it to coast you to $1M in 30 years.

Happy wealth coasting!

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