[xivzgrev]

"In the next 10 years, Colley’s goal is to earn enough to go back to making Roblox games as a hobby."

Kid is making $400k PER MONTH...and he wants to do this for 10 YEARS before he is comfortable retiring. Apparently his FIRE number is $40M.

Everyone's threshold is different and personal. But I think it can reflect a level of anxiety about the cost of living. You aren't OK having $1M or even $10M - you need something far beyond before you feel OK to quit. It's not his fault, more of something the young generations are facing as their parents struggle with the relentless cost of living vs stagnated wages for most except the "laptop class".

[harrall]

If you’re planning to not work at all, $1 million is approx. $35,000 per year in salary.

At $5 million, we’re talking more $200k per year. I’d likely still work.

At $10 million, we’re seeing more like $400k.

At $40 million, you can can early at least $1 million/year. This kind of puts you in a new bracket for things you can blow money on.

If you quit working entirely, you will become not very employable so you need to consider that.

[hooloovoo_zoo]

Traffic for his game has declined by 90% from its peak already though.

[Swizec]

> Apparently his FIRE number is $40M

> it can reflect a level of anxiety about the cost of living

I think a lot of people (especially young) just haven't done the actual math. Or have lifestyle desires beyond basic not-working.

You can FIRE living in SF for $4M. This gives you $160,000/year basically in perpetuity. If you do it right, there's little to no income tax on that money so 160k should be plenty enough for a 1-person income. 4-person families survive (in SF) on less household income than that.

But yeah a 4M exit is definitely not classic ferrari or even flashy lambo levels of wealth.

[tverbeure]

FWIW, the 4% rule is for safe withdrawals for around 30 years of retirement, as in, you retire at 65 and you hope to live until 95, and even then it has a non-zero chance of running out of money. It's not a percentage you should use if you want to retire at 40.

[3eb7988a1663]

At $4 million, GP might have been hand-waving a 4% annual rate of return and keep the principle intact.

[tverbeure]

4% is the standard number that's quoted by pretty much any financial planner. It's based on backtesting and assume that there's be large downswings along the way.

[Swizec]

You have a lot more flexibility around those downswings at 40 than you do at 80. For example you could retire but continue doing work that brings you joy and also happens to make money. A lot of people in this situation start lifestyle businesses or do consulting work, for example.

At $4mm in a market account (not 401k), you also have the option to take out margin loans at shockingly low interest. This gives you untaxed cashflow without touching your principal. 160k untaxed is a lot more cashflow than the same number in salary or retirement distributions.

[sdwr]

It's very rational to overshoot in that situation. If you build your lifestyle and then FIRE, you are derisking your budget while you still have income.

But wanting to change your lifestyle when you retire is incredibly risky, especially if you're young without life experience.

Any misstep costs you a fraction of lifetime earnings, and there's no way to recover it.

[semitones]

well you certainly could get the lambo, it would just be 10% of your net worth, which is already far less (ratio) than what most Americans pay for their car...

[mikkupikku]

If he thinks he can get that with a ten year grind, why would he stop short? 10 years isn't long compared to most careers so maybe he should go longer and get a bigger house or something. Of course roblox will probably fall out of fashion and stop being so profitable by then.

Milk that cow for all it's worth.

[3eb7988a1663]

We all die in the end. At some point, an additional dollar is not improving your life.

[mikkupikku]

A ten year grind, starting as a teen no less, leaves you with a lot of life left to live. And it's not like he won't be able to live a little while in the middle of that grind.

Honestly the people criticizing the kid for this are probably just jealous of his self-made opportunity.

[Imustaskforhelp]

> Everyone's threshold is different and personal. But I think it can reflect a level of anxiety about the cost of living. You aren't OK having $1M or even $10M - you need something far beyond before you feel OK to quit. It's not his fault, more of something the young generations are facing as their parents struggle with the relentless cost of living vs stagnated wages for most except the "laptop class".

I am teen and I think that FIRE has many terms but This still is like a really really FAT fire.

At some point though, I think that what my generation might forget is that even with Fire, you still live a normal life or you would need tremendously more money if your lifestyle is lavish, something which we see in social media (sometimes even on paid money)

If you want to buy 100k$ watches and 1 Million dollar or more lamborghinis, probably even this money would not be enough for you.

But if you want to live a normal life like you do. even 2-3 years of sustained could be MORE than enough even for some slightly expensive side hobbies say horse riding or minor watch collecting even. But if you are online and you see people flexing their 1 million dollar watch, you are gonna add 12 more years of life on a project to get to that level

I'd say its more of an expectation/comparison issue and I am not even sure if 10 years can satisfy that

My personal Fat Fire number is more like ~2 million and I don't even want Fat Fire particularly because I would be happy doing a job that I might like so more of a lean FAT which can be around 300-500k even.

maybe this changes into what is affordable or not within the more western hemisphere though as things feel even more (unaffordable?) but even that doesn't really explain why he might need 40M from my perspective.

To be honest, it can very well be ambition. Might as well make 10 years of money if possible because then the number feels so absurdly large that I can do anything that I want and then I will make my own game. Not realizing that you would only need a fraction of 40M to realisticly achieve that same goal and we are discounting the fact that 400k is even sustainable in a such long period of time.

[ekropotin]

As someone who been a teen long time ago, I can’t imaging someone in this age responsibly planning their retirement.

I’d 100% blow out all money on some useless crap.

If you are really a teen, who can think so clearly and far-sightedly, you are going to have a really bright future as an adult. I wish you luck and please do something good for this world, instead of chasing high paying job in FAANG.

[GJim]

> you are going to have a really bright future as an adult

Or waste their most fun years slaving for the man.

Signed: Gen-X

[Imustaskforhelp]

> Or waste their most fun years slaving for the man.

For what its worth, even I don't know my future so it's a real possibility. But one of the quotes I really like from Witold Pilecki is that, "In the hour of death, I feel joy rather than death" so although there is no such thing as no-regret life but I would hope to try to have less regrets overall in life in this context.

At some point, it boils down to having a job or not. Maybe my first job's gonna be really slaving as you mention. It's hard to know but I pray for a decent job/college hopefully that's got some good work-life balance hopefully.

[Imustaskforhelp]

> If you are really a teen, who can think so clearly and far-sightedly, you are going to have a really bright future as an adult. I wish you luck and please do something good for this world, instead of chasing high paying job in FAANG.

Thank you for your kind words!

I think that chasing a high paying job in FAANG and if I am dissatisfied with the work there or my impact on the world through that and I am still doing it for money, then, its to a degree similar problem to the roblox kid that we talked about.

Wishing for large amounts of retirement money through FAANG to then go what I would wish to do in life with Tech would be weird going through decades of my life into something when I can try to find what I wish to do in life in general and I had thought about it and the answer was tech-related as I felt like an individual can really make some impact through tech (And later I discovered hackernews)

I am frugal as well. Although I don't want to limit myself by saying I will never pick FAANG because maybe situations change and I can change too but money only motivated me in prospects of retirements to then do what I wish to do, so when I had the idea that I can actually do what I want to do (Now-ish) and not have to have a decade or two of my life doing something I might not enjoy/like in agreggate.

(and I have written about it and I will link it here as well on why I picked Tech and not finance)

One of the passion projects I want to take a deeper look during college hopefully if I don't take drop/go to college this year is into creating a small consultancy firm where I can suggest people which infra is nice and cheaper (Hetzner/OVH) and migrate people from either closed solutions like slack or whatever their company might use to an open standard while being cheaper and my idea is that I might charge them just enough even with consultancy fees and helping them migrate over and managing it for them that its more profitable for them

I even bought the domain for this (Actually it was I stumbled on domain accidentally which gave me this idea) https://use.expert [Nothing is in here]

I even made a logo of it myself within paint basically (https://files.catbox.moe/9t5hgw.png) with the tagline just use.expert but I think that quite frankly, I am not an expert right now as in I got to learn way more about all of this too.

So I think that I am motivated by these things more than FAANG company. Right now, I have to work within finding a decent college and that's rough for me because to get a CS college, you have to give an exam that got nothing to do with CS and also which includes chemistry and chem is something that I struggle with (quite a lot) and there are days where I procastinate about it too so I myself don't know what's my future gonna turn out and how I get into decent college.I envy not having too worry about college and my friends who didn't really care about other things and get excellent marks as I used to be quite good too. It's just one of the things I struggle with and I think that I definitely get frustrated by my brain at times too. I think I just hope that I am able to somehow bump it and just get into college somehow wheter by taking drop year again or similar this time solely focused within studies primarily. I just hope that I can make it really. Another thing I wish is for me to be more humble in life as I do feel like Sometimes, I drink too much of my own cool-aid or self-importance and that's not really good. It has to be careful balance and something I wish to improve in my life hopefully. I think I just write in HN because I have forgotten how I used to act with only some memories of my life7-8 years ago and so I don't wish to forget how I am now, a decade later too so most of comments I write are usually for self-preservation sort-of.

I actually got an english exam tomorrow, so wish me luck as I need it :)

[pear01]

Someone thinking they need 40M to escape the "anxiety about the cost of living" is not just a personal decision. It is either extreme greed or delusional. He makes money doing Roblox he is the "laptop class". If you make 400k per month and can't afford to live something is wrong with you. Let's not conflate parents struggling to support their families with whatever this kid is doing.

For reference a worth of $40M puts you well within the top fraction of one percent of all Americans, nevermind the world. If anything given his age it is probably more likely his wealth will become a liability for him rather than an asset. The trope about people who come into that much wealth that young and it creates problems for them exists for a reason. Staying at his desk cranking out more Roblox products might be the best way to keep him away from becoming the victim of his own success.

Anyway good for him. You're right there is a lot of anxiety out there. On some level he should rightly get as much as he can. But let's not pretend you need millions and millions to be safe. We should be working to change that anyway, not merely celebrating massive outliers. I assume since you care about struggling families so much you support his taxation so some of that money can go to people or communities that are struggling? Or since you seem open the idea he needs 40M to survive perhaps you think the government should keep their hands off?