[astura]

There's a gigantic difference between $200,000 a year and "I don't need to work again."

The "money doesn't make you happy" camp compares $70,000/year and $200,000/year; not $200,000/year and "I have enough money to never work again if I don't feel like it."

[SeanAppleby]

Those two goals are only separated by about a decade of normal work, which is not even much more time than it takes to bring a startup to an exit.

If you can put 1-2.5M dollars into investments you can pull safe returns of enough to live on indefinitely and never need to work again.

Making >$200k a year and being frugal it is not that hard to put together 1-2.5 million dollars in capital.

At 10 years of 250k with a 40% tax rate and 30k in annual expenses with 7% average returns, you pull down about 70k in capital gains at 5% returns in year 10 (so you can keep 2% extra nominal in to keep up with the fed's inflation target and maintain that purchasing power forever). $70k is less than you made, but is more than enough to live on without working for the rest of your life.

[astura]

You're completely missing the point.

> being frugal ... 30k in annual expenses

Requires budgeting and is a bit of a standard of living lower than most people would prefer. Especially if they got kids.

Plus how you going to live in SV on $30,000 a year when rent alone is that much?

> 7% average returns

So requiring those 10 years are during a bull market.

There's a big difference between "work at a startup for a good salary living an average life for 10 years" and "live in a shoebox with 10 other guys, eat nothing but lentils and beans, and own no possessions for 10 years"

[sobani]

> > 7% average returns

> So requiring those 10 years are during a bull market.

If your bull market includes the 2008 crash, then yes.

"The last decade provided an average return of 6.88% in the stock market. The lower return takes into account the tremendous loss the market took in 2008." https://www.creditdonkey.com/average-stock-market-return.htm... (question 2)