Personal financial journey and next steps in life

26M

This is my first ever reddit post, though I have been a lover of reddit and this community for a while. Looking for some general advice based on my financial situation. Also wanted to share this because no one knows of my love of personal finance (or my net worth) and I am not sure who else to talk to about these things, but I just hit 500k and the end of last week (7/3/25) which made me think about how I got here. Huge thanks to my parents, though they will probably never see this, for helping me start my journey with no debt and teaching me lessons they learned about money. I was raised middle to upper-middle class by immigrant parents who came to the US in the 80s and did everything they could to give me and my brother every opportunity to make us the best version of ourselves. So for that, and being dealt a better hand in life than others, I want to say I am very lucky and none of my personal achievements would have been possible without them. Here is the rest of my story:

My goal was always to retire early, preferably by 50, because working everyday doing something that you don't love sounds like mental prison to me. I graduated with a degree in engineering because I was told from a young age I needed to work in a respectable profession that makes stable income. Since none of my passions or hobbies fit this mold, and I wasn't the smartest kid, I chose mechanical engineering. I had 10k in savings when I graduated during peak covid, and was again not sure what to do so I worked at one of the first jobs I got in the food and beverage industry making 90k. It was awful and I left within a year to join the semiconductor industry, where I have worked since (4 years) in various roles including engineering and project management (current role) making 110k + 10k bonus. I enjoy working at my company and in my industry (40-50hrs /w) and have worked hard to get to this wrung of the ladder which I obediently climb. However, work doesn't bring me happiness the way a hobby does, or how I'd imagine the best freedom of all to be: time with money (do I have a flawed world / life view?).

I discovered this community when I graduated college in covid, during my personal renaissance of investing and personal finance as there was not much else to do. Because this new love of personal finance (and I guess manual labor), I began tracking cashflow for every expense, paycheck, etc. and continued to do so to this date (can send some links or screenshots to any data nerds out there). This helped me stay on track and learn about my spending a lot (but none about automated technology). Now it has become quite annoying but the data is nice to look back on. I have mostly maintained my cost of living and general expenses over the past 5 years (about 4k a month spit between rent, utilities, car payments and insurance, food, travel, and other) to try and avoid lifestyle inflation. The rest of the money has gone to strictly investments, which I did so aggressively since I was able to earn. This ranges from retirement to stock to cash savings, but my hope is that it will be the main enabler of early retirement.

My portfolio:

310k in brokerage (S&P mutual fund and individual stocks)

60k in Roth IRA

85k in employer Roth 401k (5% match)

35k in employer stock

15k cash

I have a couple short term goals within the next 5 years, like change jobs within my industry that allows me to move (currently living in Texas), buy a house where I move to, get a masters degree to help become a higher income earner. However, I am not sure if this is also a result of subtler lifestyle inflation, capitalism, my pre-established flawed world view, or my immigrant parent upbringing to always do more. I was hoping this community could give me some advice, maybe a mix of life and financial based on where I am at and my goals. Not sure if other people have a similar upbringing and life stories out there either, but please share with me as I am eager to learn from this community.