[nugget]

Consider four different people:

1. a lawyer who works 100 hours/week flirting with a heart attack and earns $480,930

2. a small business owner who sells their plumbing co after 4 decades and earns $480,930 from the sale, but never broke six figures before

3. a retiree who sits on the couch 24/7 and earns $480,930 in passive dividends

4. a professional of some kind who works 20 hours/week in a low stress job and earns $480,930

The press likes to talk about these data points, and it's valuable information, but ultimately income tells a very small piece of the story. Source of income, job security, cost of living, and quality of life all matter a lot too.

[jpatokal]

Pray tell, what kind of low stress job lets you earn $500k/year with 20 hours/week? (Actual job, please, not "4-hour workweek" style passive investment income.)

[powvans]

There are many such jobs available. We discuss this in detail at my weekend seminars, which you may attend for the low low price of $20k.

Seriously though, I think I might know of some semi-retired lawyers who make that sort of money, but that only happens after a lifetime of option #1.

Edit: you could make this kind of money with very little work as a board member of a large corporation. Once again, see option #1 for how to get to that point in your life.

[refurb]

Radiologists? I've heard they can work remote from home working nowhere close to 40 hours a week and pull in well into six figures.

Of course one could argue making a determination if someone has cancer is not low stress.

[jedberg]

I know a few people in category 4.

They were all owners of lifestyle businesses that had been running for a while. They either hired a full time manager to manage the business, or everything basically ran on autopilot and required less attention.

Some of them got their by working their butt off, some got there by inheriting the business and never really having to work all that hard.

[nbsd4lyfe]

I've been reading stories about a corruption case and apparently there's a lot of easy money to be had doing that.

[charlesdm]

Investing $5m of your own capital.

[jpatokal]

A) That's passive income, and B) I'd like to know where you're getting those steady 10% rates of return.

[abhinavkulkarni]

> I'd like to know where you're getting those steady 10% rates of return.

Index funds?

[bob_theslob646]

The funny thing about that is like the press, the IRS does not care about anything you said either

[loeg]

Sure they do. Retiree dividends are mostly taxed at a lower rate than W-2 income. A business sale may be a capital gain instead of income (I'm not sure).

For better or worse, taxes are applied differently to different kinds of income in the US.

[tanderson92]

With passthrough entities they do now...

[forapurpose]

> ultimately income tells a very small piece of the story

There may be other pieces but income is a very large one. Change the incomes of those people to $15,000 and we would see very large differences in their lives.