[vidarh]

First of all, unless you are a co-founder of a bootstrapped startup, you should ask yourself some very hard questions if you are asked to do without pay or take a pay cut unless your pay is extremely high to begin with.

Having done half a dozen plus startups, I've had to deal with low pay once, and that was a startup I did at 19, four of us co-founded an ISP and got about $50k funding from a guy almost as clueless as we were. Since then I've been able to demand, and get, market rate salaries on top of options or outright shares past initial periods of working on the project evenings etc. The startups I've been part of have in fact been more stable when it comes to paying on time.

There are cases where taking salary cuts are ok and justified to make a startup work, but there better be a lot of equity in there.

As for being able to reduce burn, I spend about 50% of my after tax income normally. Less at the moment due to some consulting. This is with a child and a mortgage. While i's true I spend more than I did at 20 (I'm 39 now), inflation adjusted the difference is small, and my income also allows me to build up a buffer which means I'm far better able to deal with loss of income today than I was then. It also means that I can live off 4-5 days of consulting a month in a crisis.

While I'm sure you're right for a lot of people, there are plenty of us for whom our 30's or 40's have brought a huge increase in financial flexibility.