You need a lot less than a few million dollars if you're willing to live at a more reasonable retirement income. I mean, you won't have to commute anymore, or buy all those services that did things you never had time for, or pay for daycare, or live in an overpriced city, etc. Hell if you move to a country with a lower cost of living, as you suggested, you'll need even less.
You would be surprised how little of what you consider "necessities" of your lifestyle you actually need, or miss when they are gone.
I'm living in Thailand, and $40k goes a long way. Many people would be happy with this lifestyle, but it's not quite enough for me, and I wouldn't want to spend the rest of my life here. I'd much rather have $80-100k and live somewhere like Toronto. But to each their own.
It took me a while to build this frugal-yet-fulfilling lifestyle, but it was so worth it.
By spending that 3.5% on living, you are actually losing a portion of your wealth each year.
In order to remain "flat", you need to be earning 7%, in order to spend 3.5%.
...but of course, this also completely ignores the risk. Assets don't give 7% for free. The investor is accepting the risk - that's the whole point. So in reality, you need to be earning closer to 10% in order to mitigate the risk of a default on those assets.
Living off of investment income is almost never really winning battle.
It's also very important to decrease your expenses during a market crash, and to never panic sell. You could also have some other income streams like rental properties, or software businesses.
If you just want to hold cash and bonds, retire at 30, and expect to live until you're 100, then you need to save up 70 * 100000 = $7 million, and spend $100k per year until you die. (Although $100k in 2089 will be worth a lot less than 2019.)
And who knows, maybe longevity treatments and gene therapies will become widely available in the next 70 years, and people might live until they are 200. Or even indefinitely. If you think that might be a possibility, then you should definitely invest in the stock market instead of keeping everything in cash. There is such a thing as "too little risk" when it comes to investing.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/wiki/faq
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/wiki/faq#wiki...
2 people can easily live lavish life in India (something like Goa or a nice hill station) for ~$2000 a month.
Healthcare is not as bad, especially in urban locations. People speak English well, and it isn't that far, given that people drive ~10 hours across states to meet family anyways.
If no one else steals this 'idea' , I might just think of implementing it 20 years down the line.
$2000/month here is about the salary of a senior PHP engineer with 15 years experience, so it'll take you far.
No amount of personal wealth makes a Texas suburb walkable. No amount of personal wealth makes it possible to skateboard on Tokyo sidewalks. No amount of personal wealth makes the downtown park you live next to actually be nice.
Beyond that, most places in SEA have caught on and if you have money, the society around you will figure out how to charge you enough to get it from you, especially if you're used to a pretty high standard of living
How would a few million be possible? What is your contextual salary for this position, and their expected expenses?
If you're dual income for part of that 15 years, you'll have far more money, or you can retire a few years earlier.
Not at all. I joined a FAANG company less than a year ago, am not a software engineer, and I'm at about $250k. Senior software engineers are closer to $400k-$500k. See levels.fyi.
EDIT: You mentioned salary, but I think you're referring to total comp. Base salary at these companies is indeed lower than $200k except for non-senior positions.
Total comp is great and all, but unless you're liquidating immediately after you receive a grant then you're adding another variable into the mix of things that need to go right.
And the stock portion of your comp being valuable is dependent on the company doing well. True for FAANG, but that's only because by definition that group is the companies that are doing well!
A $200K equivalent RSU grant spread over four years could end up being worth 20K a year or 200K a year, depending on whether you get lucky or not. Remember that the biggest tech companies 15 years ago included Dell, Delphi, Cisco and Yahoo.
Why aren't you liquidating immediately after you receive a grant? Why would you choose to doubly leverage on your primary source of income, and, as you accurately point out, add another source of risk?
- The company tanks. You maybe retained some of the value of your stock, but you're still on a sinking ship.
- The company takes off. Thanks to loss aversion you feel like you lost money that is rightfully yours. And your idiot co-worker who held just turned up for work in a supercar.
Who knows what the future holds, but if you started at FAANG in 2004 you would have far more than a couple million by now. The financial crisis is a fantastic time to invest in index funds.
That’s a bit on the high end, but I guess not SV/FAANG impossible.
I dream about a 30-hour work week for all of the reasons listed in the parent article... I would take a 25% paycut for one without second thought
1) Ask for a 30 hour work week, or find a company that can offer this. Your salary should still be high enough to aim for a comfortable retirement at 65.
2) Adopt a more frugal lifestyle and increase your savings rate.
You need to save a few million dollars to retire with $40-$80k in investment income. It should be very possible to do this with a backend developer's salary over a period of 10-15 years, and then you should be able to retire in your 30s or 40s. You should also aim to increase your salary by changing jobs every few years (or get a job at a FAANG.)
3) Build side projects or a startup and try to get some passive income (or an exit)
Write all your startup ideas down and keep looking for opportunities. It can be hard to build products in the evenings or weekends, especially if you're already burnt out from your normal job. So this option works best when combined with part-time freelance work:
4) Become a freelancer and work part-time while you work on your own projects
Bonus: Move to a place with a very low cost of living.
Working 10-20 hours per week gives you a lot of free time and much longer weekends. But it also gives you a lot of time and energy to work on your own ideas.
Note that working 10 hours per week is a terrible idea if you just spend the rest of your time working on hobbies that don't make any money. If you do that, then you won't even be able to retire at 65, and you probably won't be able to save money for emergencies. Only do this if you spend the rest of your time trying to build a business.
If you can't get anything to work after ~10 years of trying, then you should still have plenty of time to go back to a full-time job and save for retirement.