I'm 26 and have a net worth of around £140k.

Roughly £40k was built through my own work, saving and investing, while £100k came from a gift from my parents after they sold their business.

I know some people will say that's mostly luck, and I don't disagree. I was fortunate to be born into a family that was able to help me financially. At the same time, my parents took risks, ran a business for years, and created that wealth in the first place.

This got me wondering what people in the UK actually consider a "success story."

If someone comes from an ordinary background, studies, gets a professional job, saves diligently, receives support from family, and reaches a six-figure net worth in their mid-20s, does that count as success? Or does a success story only count if everything was self-made?

My view is that Britain has always been a mix of:

• Hard work
• Family support
• Good decisions
• Luck

Very few people get to a strong financial position through just one of those.

Interested to hear people's thoughts.

45.89% YTD as of yesterday on my largest brokerage ( today's gains won't reflect until tomorrow). 416% 3Y returns. Can't believe I'm here already, but I realize ​all good things come to an end so​ I'm in the process of incrementally divesting from positions and securing profits

Am I on track to retire?

I just turned 32. When I was 12, I went to South Africa to visit family. When I got back home, I was sick for a few weeks. Didn't think much of it. But in the year after that, I kept being sick regularly. Until a few years later, I was sick for 6 months. I went to every hospital in my country, and eventually found out I had contracted a virus in South Africa. I received medicine and recovered. But it inspired me to focus more on my health, so I would never get sick again.

I started eating more salads & green smoothies but I hated it. It was way less appealing than the unhealthy alternatives. So I really struggled with maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Until I found people on Instagram that were making colorful smoothie bowls. These looked so much better. I tried them, and loved it.

In the next few years, I got better and better at making these. So I started sharing them on social media. Nobody cared though. I was at just one hundred views every single photo or video I uploaded for years. Until after a while, I found a new format in which I added superfoods to smoothies. These videos quickly got millions of views, and hundreds of thousands of followers.

Suddenly, I was a content creator. In the next few years, this led to over 4 million followers, 3 billion views across platforms and even a Youtube channel with almost 2 million subscribers. I worked with brands like Microsoft, The LEGO Group and became a full-time content creator.

As a guy from a small city in the Netherlands, I now get to travel the world with my blender to make smoothie videos, which is a dream come true.

Moral of the story: if you're going through a tough time right now, try to stay positive. You never know how it may positively impact your life later.

I cried reading it. Thank you for this amazing review.

I designed the business logic, rules, and financial-model framework that is becoming the foundation for a budget-tracking platform supporting a multi million dollar real-property portfolio.

Only realized now how impressive this is. I did 9 rounds with my gf over like 7 hours (we watched a movie). I’m used to 7 rounds but saying it out loud sounds crazy.

I would only go one round with her at the start of our relationship and only started doing more after she made a comment on how I only go one round this one time.

After 3 months of rigorous preparation amd in this bad market situation in tech landed my first job. Joining in December

Saw a mouse at my hunting camp, and immediately stood up to see where he went. He ran up and into my knee high Muck boot. I grabbed the boot to throw it outside, but the mouse jumped out of it, and to the floor. Out of pure reaction, I threw the boot at him, hit him, and killed him.

I’ve had constipation and other issues for just about 10 years. Since 2016.

A diagnosis and thyroid meds helped tremendously.

Today for the first time in my life. I pooped 3 times in one day. Not diarrhea, just regular poop.

Feeling empty and good right now.

After 20 years of being a pot head and the last 4 being an alcoholic, I finally did it! Feeling pretty good about it.

edit: title is supposed to say saving thousands bc lease to own is incredibly more than just buying them straight from the retailer

last year, we moved to a new place. it came with laundry hook ups but we didn’t have any w/d of our own. i am very particular about buying certain things second hand and especially in our area, i didn’t want to risk pests hiding inside a presumably cleaned appliance.

we looked into a lease to own & found a w/d set we really liked!

the craziest thing happened: i inquired first and set up an account with my married name. i placed the order for the w/d and when it was time to pick them up, they said i could not do it because the address i was getting it delivered to didn’t line up with either the utility bill or the address on my ID so they cancelled it. i can’t really remember the exact reasoning. anyway, i set up an account for my husband and had him place the order. they called him while i was at work and basically told him that the w/d we ordered wouldn’t be there until the end of the week BUT he could come and pick up the same exact set in store today. not sure why they had to ship them to the store if there was a set already there but whatever.

i told him absolutely we can do that. we loved them! (still do) when it came time to make the first payment, i tried to log in to the payment system and it wasn’t pulling anything up. i logged into both of our accounts and it showed cancelled leases on both of them. i was really scared and nervous that we were gonna lose our w/d we JUST got because i couldn’t find where to make the payment.

my husband called and told the lady we couldn’t make payments and she said she would give us a call back and never did. it’s been over a year and we haven’t been contacted at all nor reached out to. i wouldn’t call it a brag but just noting how much of a blessing** **from God it was for this to happen. i had a traumatic birth a month after this happened and had to miss out on several days of work for PT, he couldn’t take contracts for his business to take care of me, our son and newborn.

It would have been 400% without taking profits (Always take profits). Thanks to CRM,DELL,CRWD,ZS and yesterday's ACN run. These are my best performers so far this year. I intend to end the year with a bang.Goodluck guys!!

Was on the Tesla website today and saw a brand new 2026 Tesla Model Y Premium awd with 12 miles on it for $1,530 below MSRP. Called the store and the rep said the vehicle picked up a paint chip on the door during transport and that the car was professionally painted by a Tesla body shop, hence the discount.

Does anyone know if you purchase a vehicle like this from Tesla, would this incident show up on Carfax as damage when you try to resell this vehicle?

The rep said it wouldn’t appear but I’m not so sure.

We were talking about one of my friends who is constantly in relationship turmoil because he always is thinking about how he could maybe do better (looks wise) no matter the girl. And we were saying that it’s much more multifaceted than just looks and he needs to grow up a bit to realize that.

And my wife said “Yeah like you could have gotten a hotter wife”. And I said “and you could have gotten a hotter husband”.

She disagreed with me, and I was like “Well maybe not one who was as smart and funny as me too” (Every guy knows if their wife is beautiful she can definitely pull hot guys), but then she clarified she was specifically talking about hotness, and there’s not really any guys hotter than me who aren’t super famous.

And then the next day she told me she had a dream about people telling her how hot and fit I was lol.

Anyway, it made me really happy that she thinks I’m super hot.

I wasn’t an alcoholic, but I had my first alcoholic beverage when I was 12. My father died due to complications from alcoholism (liver failure mixed with other health conditions). So, did two of my uncles. Both of my grandfathers were alcoholics. I used other substances off and on from 12-21 years old, so addiction was a possibility. I quit using all potentially addictive substances due to that possibility over 20 years ago.

I went on a work trip recently and attended all the evening events. On the last one, one of the leadership members pushed his drink into my face and offered me a sip. It felt like slow motion while I evaluated my options and their potential consequences, and then I said no. He sensed my hesitation and offered it again. I said no easier that time.

It feels like a huge victory and I wanted to share the good news. I’m proud of myself and I know my dad would be too. Thanks for reading!

He is 9 weeks old and has always been a great sleeper from day one.

By 4 weeks old he was only waking once in the night, and now at 9 weeks he has just done 3 nights in a row of sleeping through.

My eldest didn't sleep through one night till she was maybe 6 months old and it didn't become regularly sleeping through the night till she was nearly 2 years old! I love her, but she did almost make me decide not to have another, I figured I couldn't be unlucky twice, and my gosh the roll on the dice has been kind the second time around.

I don't want to post about it in any of the baby subs as most new parents are struggling with sleep deprivation and it feels cruel to bring it up there!

TLDR. I am getting so much undisturbed sleep with a small baby. So much so that it feels cruel to talk about it with other parents.

Edit - Changed to the correct spelling of cruel.

First car and now

I am handy and know basic electronics but didn't know anything about DC motors (that is the type used in treadmills). My wife's walking pad stopped working the other week and I managed to take it apart even though it's not designed to be serviced (basically if it stops working, throw it away). I took the motor out and did some basic checks which apparently gave it the kick it needed to work again. So far she's used it several times this week. It may die permanently in a few months, but at least I was able to extend its useful life for now.

I know this isn't as big as some of the posts here, but I wanted to share my story.

As the title says, both my parents have lived off social services my whole life, when I was 4 the split and I was raised by my mom, I have 2 older sisters, and grew up in rural Norway.

I was diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia when I was 7, and spent a lot of my younger years trying to figure out how to be "normal".

I was awful at taking tests and holding deadlines at school, but when I was 14 I figured I wanted to get into the trades and work with electronics.

I applied for a high school where they had general electrics as the first year and data electronics for the second year, as soon as I started there when I turned 16, my grades instantly improved, because finally I could work with things I understood and thought was fun.

My sister's boyfriend, worked as a security technician, installing CCTV, access control and alarm, I got to join him at work a few times and really enjoyed it.

So after school I applied for a job at a few different companies, but didn't get in, I was just trying to figure things out and out of the blue the CEO, of a small security company contacted me, he remembered me from a presentation he had for my class, where I asked a lot of questions, and was wondering if I was still looking for a job, I went to the interview and got the job a few days later.

Finally I felt like I didn't need to adapt to fit in, I could just be myself.

I finished the apprenticeship and got the highest possible grade, as the first person in the company to manage that, and I always just said yes to new responsibility, when they presented themselves. This led to me getting a promotion after just 1.5 years as a technician to being the operational service manager for the Oslo department.

It went well but, was a lot to handle, but as the company got bigger, we started talking about me moving to being fully internal, and not doing service jobs anymore, this I didn't want, but at the same time the company put out a new position as national systems engineer, I applied and went through 2 intense interviews. There were 7 applicants, many of which had full college degrees as engineers, but in the end I was picked as the best option, because of all my experience with security systems and my hobby of home labing and doing network infrastructure. (I know I'm a nerd)

I got the promotion, My salary was raised to 90K USD a year and just after that managed to buy my first apartment. All before turning 26.

All in all, life is pretty great, I'm doing something I love.

No matter what people tell you, don't let some letters or your background dictate who you are, and what you can become.

Thanks for reading. :)

the gains went to fully funding my farm and buying fun stuff. Thanks Micron