[the_gastropod]

Lol. This cynical attitude cracks me up so much. I lived in NYC for over 10 years. I never in my life made anywhere near $200k. I just retired this year at the ripe old age of 38. How? By following this apparently obvious "wisdom" of living simply, within my means, for ~15 years, and saving the excess. No trust funds, no Bitcoin-esque investment wins. Just saving money in boring index funds over 15 years, and living within my means.

[pdimitar]

How much did you make per year? How many jobs did you have? How many jobs did you hop?

[the_gastropod]

In my most recent job, I earned $160k. During my ~15 year software development career, I worked for a total of 4 companies, none overlapping, none that required more than 40 hours per week. I saved ~60% of my take-home pay every year, and invested it in a 60/40 mix of VTSAX / VTIAX. I'm married, and my wife made $8,000 last year. I had to save enough to cover our collective expenses, otherwise this timeline would've been even faster!

If you're unfamiliar, this is an excellent introduction to this concept: https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-si...

It's extremely simple. It's boring. It's slow (but much faster than the alternative!). And it works.

[pdimitar]

I never made even $100k a year. Locality matters a lot.

Privileged people being blind to their privilege. Nothing new. My original point still stands then.

Keep finding stuff hilarious I guess, though.

[the_gastropod]

I agree! Making > $100k is an absolute privilege. I am privileged as all hell finding myself interested in and decent enough at computer programming at a point in time where it was a relatively lucrative field to be in. That's serious luck!

But if you're making < $100k and suggesting you need $200k in passive income to go to a farmer's market, cook pasta for dinner, read library books, grow some plants, and drink the occasional wine? That doesn't inspire confidence that you have a great understanding of the value of a dollar.

[pdimitar]

Good thing I don't do any of those things.

I'd like to draw your attention to the fact that you came here to be snarky and tear down a straw man... one that doesn't exist.

I'm not going to bore you with my life story. But it has been an extremely bumpy ride and it's still not going well. Make what that info what you like. You'll probably say it's all my fault and I deserve it.

[the_gastropod]

You said:

> The author frames it as if you can just semi-retire and still have $200K a year

I was just responding to that.

I am as bleeding heart a liberal as they come. I recognize most people have much harder lives than I've had. I made some assumptions based just on your $200k comment above, and the fact that—let's face it—most HNers are making ridiculously large sums of money, and there is no end to these similar "this is impossible!" style comments on this page.

Truly, I'm sorry to hear you've had to deal with so much strife. Nobody deserves that. If you'd like to share more, my email is in my profile.

[c0redump]

Sounds like you did, in fact, enjoy significant investment gains just by being in the market for a long time. This is by no means guaranteed to be true in the future.

[the_gastropod]

For sure, it's been a pretty above-average time to be in US market. Very much feels like a bubble ready to burst at any moment. But 40% of my investments are in non-US funds, which have gone sideways for the entire time I've invested. All the modest gains are just dividends there.

This strategy doesn't depend on amazing returns. If you save 65% of your income, and you currently have $0, you can retire in about 10.5 years (assuming fairly modest 5% return on investments). A 50% savings rate puts you at a 17 year career. It's the traditional "save 10%" retirement plan that really relies so heavily on the market going up long-term. The "live cheaply" strategy is infinitely more resilient.

For context, since 1900, the DOW Jones has returned, on average, 7.5% after inflation. And the S&P500 has returned ~6.5% adjusted for inflation. And in Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century, he shows that throughout history, capital has generally returned around 5% (which, itself is kind of a problem).

But yes. The future is unknowable. There are countless things that could dramatically change these types of financial forecasts.

[antisthenes]

> I never in my life made anywhere near $200k

> In my most recent job, I earned $160k.

Yeah, ok dude. At least you were honest, I guess.

[4iuvosvjf23]

No kids right?

[the_gastropod]

Everyone's circumstances are different. There are plenty of early retirees with similar backgrounds to my own that have kids (Mr. Money Mustache himself has a kid, for example, and retired at 30!) We currently have no kids. But I find the "kids are expensive!" thing is usually pretty overblown / not very creative about solving any problems. Kid spending is similar to the emotional and socialized high-spending expectations that plague the wedding industry. If one applies the same creative simple living strategies outlined in this article, there's no reason kids should increase one's expenses _that_ much. Saving up an extra $100k per kid is probably more than enough, and wouldn't delay an early retirement by more than ~6 months to a year in most cases.