[TheShrug]

I know you're looking for attention or validation, but I have a feeling you'll probably get more negative attention than positive when you seem to be equating having $1M in liquid assets to "starting with no income, no product, no business".

[hinkley]

$20k a year in interest after taxes if he’s not a complete moron. I could survive on around $45k a year (including health insurance) so I could putter for a long time before I had to deliver something.

But domain knowledge and contacts will probably be the biggest assets OP turns out to possess. Don’t undersell those.

[smileysteve]

~$100k/year if returns are based on 10%. Aka, what some people use for expected S&P returns to beat

[DVassallo]

I have 80%+ in short term US treasuries and CDs (the rest in some stocks that I've held for a long time). I have no interest in the upside of the stock market right now. I'm already doing something speculative myself.

[hinkley]

If you're working out a budget to allow you to quit your day job you'd better have all of the numbers in post-tax dollars or you're gonna have a bad time.

[smileysteve]

We're taking about a pre-tax salary at 500k. Capital gains means no payroll taxes and discounted long term taxes too.

And 80k is still well over the average household income

[spyspy]

That's mostly capital gains. He won't earn that in steady dividends to live off of.

[smileysteve]

These are fungible. (We're already averaging out volatility)

[jpeg_hero]

> "starting with no income, no product, no business".

Getting a sustainable business is not easy. Lots of groups don’t get there with $10’s of millions in venture capital. So from a business prospective he is starting with nothing but does have a personal safety cushion.

[AimForTheBushes]

One small loan of a million dollars!

[DVassallo]

Those two things are not equivalent to me. Yes I have savings, but I also have no income right now.

[TheShrug]

You are correct! But the way you phrased it makes it sound like you are experiencing a hardship, which I think most would disagree with. Don't get me wrong, I think you should be proud, you clearly did a lot to earn your savings, but you're trying to make it sound like retiring young with $1M in liquid assets part is the difficult part when its probably the easy part. You don't have to work for a very long time, or at all!

[DVassallo]

Not at all. I live a very comfortable life and I don't expect it to change. Wasn't my intention to make it sound like hardship. But I don't have infinite runway, so I do have to make something.

[lowercased]

Unless that $1M is stuffed under your mattress, you likely have some income from is. Even sitting in a CD at 2% you'll be pulling in $20k/year - that's not "no income".

What I think you mean is you don't have steady W2 income from an employer.

[DVassallo]

True. I've put most of it in short-term US treasuries at ~2.5%, so making about that much after taxes.

[pvinis]

I would much prefer reading a post about quitting to do something off your own, or just about setting up your own thing, without the money angle.

A different post would inspire me to try too. A post like this one makes me sad to be less privileged.

And I'm not saying that to make you feel bad or anything. People have different circumstances and make different choices for themselves, some biased by the circumstances and some not. I'm just saying it as a consumer of a text. Just throwing my opinion with no expectations of anyone catching it.

[jldugger]

I mean, savings accts are paying 2.2 percent right now, and while it's a drop in the bucket compared to senior developer wages at AMZN, you're looking at 20k in interest accrued annually, which is basically what each of my parents live on in middle America.

Depending on where you live, who you support (or are supported by), and how capital intensive your independent business is, that could be plenty. Plus, you've already got a book deal worked into the business plan it seems.

[ryanSrich]

I get your point, but if you’re not making any income from $1m in liquid assets you’re doing something wrong.

[EpicEng]

You can easily make in interest what many people make in salary. Please just drop the "starting with nothing" part of your story. No one ever has viewed $1M as "starting with nothing".