Ask HN: After earning how much money are you planning to retire?
I don't plan to retire. I had a nice half year break after selling my company. It's not that great. Productive engineer = happy engineer.
I'd like to be a kind of tech monk. Someone who goes around on the bare minimum needed to survive, be away from the distractions of society, and polish my skills day after day.
Every now and then I'd leave my monastery to rescue a half billion dollar project somewhere or to take down an evil tech giant with open source. Then I use my loot to continue another few years of peace and solitude.
I have had 2 involuntary 3 month breaks between jobs and even though I was strapped for cash I really hated how much my mood fell apart without having the structure of work. I told myself I want to move away from having so much of my life's meaning defined by what work I do (while it's software for any enterprise anyway.) I'm at the stage now where I'm hoping to take off at least a month for travel next year.
Are there any learnings you had from your half a year break like this?
It wasn't great. There's a lot of anxiety watching my bank account go down with no plan at all. Resting seems even more unproductive, it resulted in a lot of bad habits forming.
I find I am much happier working 14 hours/day than resting 24 hours.
I did have an extremely productive remote work era during that period for a side project, but unfortunately the team fell apart.
> it resulted in a lot of bad habits forming
What kind of bad habits did "resting" form?
Well things like needing more rest. I ended up "resting" 3 weekdays a week. Or things like taking 3 hours to prepare for the work day, via meditation, clearing up my workspace, getting exercise, and so on. I wouldn't say it's laziness, but having too much time makes you bad at time management.
I strongly suspect I'll never earn enough retire.
For me, I think the answer is very different depending on whether you've got a job with set hours and location (which we should all get away from) or whether you're more flexible and maybe running your own business.
I've run my own businesses since leaving school and although I expect to slow down as I get older, I don't ever want to retire. I just want my role to evolve and spend more of my work time doing the (work related) things I enjoy most. I've always thought that business owners who look forward to retirement need a new business.
5.6MM
based on spending 18,668/mo = 224K/yr
25 x 224k = 5.6MM
assumptions:
- withdraw 4% per yr
- earn avg 7%+ per yr
- inflation 3%
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-sim...
ps. I will hit this number in 47 months. Here's how I know: https://lab.madfientist.com/
Wow thats a ton!!! I suppose you must live in a higher cost of living area than me.
Haha - family of 4. Expensive travel hobbies. Too much house. "Fatfire"
Higher cost of living personality, not area.
FYI, that link requires a login. Is it supposed to be public?
Sorry - if you sign up this site will allow you to input your monthly savings, spending, and net worth. Then it will estimate the amount of time before you achieve Financial Independence. It is free. I'm a big fan.
Any recommendations for a free spreadsheet version or open source version that doesn't require giving my financial data to yet another 3rd party and tying it to a unique identifier via login?
Here's a login-less one that looks like it doesn't make any network calls with the data you enter: https://networthify.com/calculator/earlyretirement
http://firecalc.com is the best.
Why do you need to a $5.6M coffin?
I intend to give most of it to watsi.org to keep others out of coffins.
I'm barely making it so retirement is not likely going to happen for me.
Aren't you worried about that?
Yes, I'm terrified.
Why are you barely making it?
I'm not good at selling myself, I don't live in a tech-hub city, and I'm probably mediocre at my job. I feel good about the work I do and do have strengths but I'm not proving to be a competitive candidate for the work I want.
I'm spending my free time acquiring better skills so hopefully this will change for me.
Regarding mediocre: https://lwn.net/Articles/641779/
The take-away from the post (and vid, linked at bottom) is that most people should be mediocre. It's not a bad thing. Take pride in having reached that far.
As for the selling issue; you're aware of it, so that's obviously a good thing. Next is to put together some kind of promo that you can live with. A portfolio site, some blogging about what you've learned etc.
Sure you'll get decent opportunities if you keep skilling up and making folks aware of your current abilities.
Regarding non-hub city: remote work an option? Biggest local companies?
EDIT: Just saw you've seen the post linked to above already. And you're probably more experienced than I'd understood from your comment. I'm tempted to say you might only be bad at selling yourself because you self-deprecate too much. But that's another assumption!
Thanks for taking the time to respond, it's helpful.
I do tend to self-deprecate. I'm really working on not doing that anymore. I've come a long way but the past few weeks have been really discouraging. I interviewed for some jobs and got turned down. The sad thing is, after talking to the devs that interviewed me, I was pretty certain that I'm more competent than they are. I was turned away because I'm "obviously not passionate about front-end", whatever that means... Interview process was long and I wasted a lot of time.
Then I came to this place where I realized I'm writing lots of framework code, and not really understanding Javascript as well as I thought. Heck, I've forgotten more about Javascript than I can remember.
Anyway the most discouraging thing is that I can become as competent as I have, and still have a very difficult time getting work. The people I am contracting for are very, very happy with my work (probably because they're getting a good deal).
EDIT: I'm really good at cranking out work. I'm a workhorse. Some days I can put in 8 - 10 hours of solid coding if I need to, and my bug count is pretty low...really low. But I'm terrible at remembering specific technical knowledge. A lot of things, I internalize and practice intuitively. I get in interviews and they start asking "gotcha" language questions and I just choke. Then I leave and kick myself because I knew the answer all along, but I couldn't remember it during the conversation. So I need to get better at interviewing, build a better portfolio, learn new frameworks, keep working so I can eat... Sorry for the sob story, it's just rather daunting at the moment.
Lots of job interviews don't involve gotcha language questions. So it's worth spending some time filtering companies based on how they interview, if there are some interview styles you don't like.
Also, you may be underselling yourself by focusing too much on specific technical knowledge.
I'm happy to do a resume review (which is often a how-do-you-pitch-yourself review) - been doing a bunch and people seem to find them helpful. Email me at itamar@codewithoutrules.com. May answer with delay, but will answer.
Thanks for the offer. I'll likely take advantage of it. I've been submitting my resume a lot, and making tweaks here and there.
When I have saved and invested around 500k in euros, this will generate about 20k euros per year. My mortgage will be paid as well, so it will be enough to live on. I'll be 55 by then.
You've forgotten about inflation.
4% real gains includes inflation
Here in the UK inflation was 18% in 1980. It's been over 10% several times since then. 4% assumes things will carry on as they have been for the past couple of decades. There's no reason to believe that.
But if you don't hold too much cash/fixed income securities and actually hold equity investments (e.g. real estate, stocks), then why would inflation be a concern? All those investments should easily keep up with inflation by their very nature, or am I wrong?
Just work on your passive income generation, few hundred thousands per year would be enough for most people....
Once you have your FY money, you'll see that retirement is overrated... and I have a lot of hobbies + plans to travel with my wife when the kids are out of the house (hopefully in the next few years), but besides all that, every year I am postponing my retirement, because I just cannot leave the team I am managing... so maybe next year :-)