How can an IT specialist save his finances?

It is no secret that IT professionals in our time earn good money. The term “not bad” means the absence of the need to live in the “from paycheck to paycheck” mode and the possibility of saving some money.

However, the Russian reality is such that even a good salary today does not at all mean a satisfying future at least tomorrow, let alone a more distant future. Not being an expert in economics or finance, I decided (primarily for myself) to speculate on the topic, and how can we, IT professionals, not lose, and, ideally, multiply our savings?

Banks

As far as is known, revenues from ruble deposits usually amount to 10.5-11% per annum. In fact, this means that taking into account exchange losses / inflation this year, one could really count on 2-3% (comparable to foreign currency deposits). This is not enough, and considering the increased risks associated with some kind of suspicious activity of the Central Bank on revoking licenses from various banks, it looks rather ambiguous.
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In addition, I was always, on the whole, interested in the expediency for banks to work with deposits - after all, in fact, these are “demand” funds and I can always take them away, even if I lose interest. And what will happen if, for some reason, many clients of my bank need to return their money? Will he give them, as it should be, or will he by all means drag out this process (a good post on the topic was not so long ago at Banki.ru).

As for the deposit insurance system, it is not very convenient, if only because in order to protect yourself somehow with more or less large amounts (even if a million rubles), you need to open several deposits in different banks. In addition, in the event of a large-scale banking crisis, when several banks close at once and people start demanding reimbursement of their deposits, will the DIA have enough money for everyone? According to recent data, supporters of storing money in banks have already become noticeably less .

Forex

I will make a reservation right away, I have nothing against Forex, probably there you can earn. However, all these huge shoulders, allowing to trade in this market even with a deposit of one hundred dollars, as well as the fact that Forex brokers do not withdraw their clients' transactions to the real interbank market, reducing the applications “inside themselves”. Details are described in this article - it gives a good idea of ​​how things actually work.

Stock market

Ideally, the stock market should fairly accurately reflect the situation in the country's economy. In Russia, as we all know, the outgoing year was not remembered by any particular economic growth, rather, on the contrary, stagnation takes place and even the expectation of some future changes for the worse.

Deaf side and the drop in volatility in the market is confirmed by the fact that the distance from the maximum to the minimum in 2013 is only 295 points on the MICEX index. Even in 2012 there were about 400 points, despite the fact that the market levels were about the same. If we calculate the trading range in 2013 in relation to the annual maximum and compare it with previous periods, then it turns out that it was the lowest volatile year for the entire, albeit short, history of the Russian stock market. This is quite an interesting fact, if we recall that in parallel the same US market during this time showed a completely opposite situation, when the trend movement upward continuously continues throughout the year. ( Source )

Our market is lagging behind in growth from the world - this is a fact. The S & P500 index grew by almost 30% over the year, having updated historical maximums more than 4 dozen times, and the growth of domestic indices, except for the period at the beginning of the year when the maximums were set, almost did not grow - MICEX rose only by ~ 1%.



In such a situation, it is not possible to count on the opportunity to earn money on some large price fluctuations, even if it is late to the beginning of the movement. For IT specialists, the good news is that in order to engage in so-called algorithmic trading, it is not at all necessary to have such large movements. Now there are quite a lot of literature on stock trading, various companies provide platforms for writing robots (from domestic, I found StockSharp and TSlab ) and training programs. With due diligence on this, obviously, you can earn by resorting to various arbitration strategies, but efforts will have to be made very much.

Bitcoin

Of course, the hottest financial topic of the year. Bitcoin is extremely interesting, and the high volatility of the course makes it possible to obtain significant profits. By the way, automated trading is possible on Bitcoin exchanges (there are both foreign and domestic developments), which makes cryptocurrency even more attractive for an IT specialist.

The property

With this, everything is somehow even more rotten and incomprehensible - to buy real estate in Moscow without getting into hell mortgages is something on the verge of fantasy. And then, it is difficult to imagine how a conditional apartment in a residential area, which at the same time stands, like an aircraft carrier, can pay off in some foreseeable future.

If someone from respected users has a successful experience in real estate investing, it would be very interesting to hear the stories in the comments.

Startups

Recently I read an interview with the famous venture capitalist Arkady Moreynis in Kommersant, and there he said a thing that slammed into the memory:

I have one idea under the code name "Club 42". It is about the formation of people who are 42 years old or a little more. They work as top managers in large companies and earn from 250 thousand to 1 million rubles. per month. In five or seven years they will be thrown into a landfill, and they have almost no money, most of them now spend on life, mortgages, children, mistresses, hobbies. My idea is that, until this collapse happened, I can offer them salvation. After all, they are potential partners and co-investors of new projects. They have an understanding of the market, common business, communication. And young startups are mostly hands and partly ideas. My golden dream is to try to unite them.

With regard to the topic of this topic, the question can be formulated as follows: “Why IT-specialists, who are younger than the mentioned top managers, know firsthand how different products should work, often have managerial experience (team leaders, etc.) know how to work in team and have free money, can not invest them in projects at the seed stage? "



As the experience of individual habrazhiteli shows , an experienced IT specialist who is not burdened with family and other obligations can save a pretty decent amount. Given that at the initial stage of many projects it is not about hundreds of thousands of dollars, then a fairly large circle of IT people can afford to invest in one or another startup.

The disadvantage of this option is obvious - the risk is too great, it will be problematic to cover several projects, and the chance that 1-2 invested projects will not be so big yet. Plus, there are still problems with how to document our investments in a documentary and legal manner - I have repeatedly heard that Russian legislation is far from ideal in this regard.

findings

It’s not possible to draw conclusions yet, so it would be logical to think about how best to save money with the entire Habr community. Next, a survey is attached that will help us determine the means of preserving and multiplying funds that are more close to the masters.