Suddenly your $300k house/apartment is too small, and you aim for one that's 5-10 times more expensive.

Then your cars get more expensive.

You start looking at a summer home.

You get a couple of kids...and they turn out to be extremely expensive: - Daycare - Prep-schools - Private tutors - Prestigious Universities

Because you want to maximize their chances of success, and have planned their academic life for the next 15-20 years.

It all adds up. And since you're surrounded with peers that live the same lifestyle, you get conditioned that this is all normal.

Here's a personal example, and one that I never, EVER, thought I'd fall for:

I bought my first "real" suit after graduation, and paid $1000 for it. I felt like a real baller, but was also anxious about wearing it. What if I got stains on it, what if some douchebag with a cig bumped into me, what if, etc. I could afford it, sure, but it felt like A LOT of money for a piece of clothing.

Years later, and I'm buying suits 5-6-7 times more expensive. The old $1.5k ones don't feel right - the fabric isn't nice enough, the fit isn't as good, the small details are lacking.

Internally, I rationalize and convince myself that all these small differences are truly making the price (premium) worth it. And since I make good money, it doesn't mater.

But, what if I lost my income? Or had to settle with a "normal" job, making $45k a year? There's no way in hell I could afford spending 10% of my income on one thing. But at the same time, downgrading from luxury like that, and all the way down - it's not even like going from 3-ply to 1-ply TP, it's like going from 3-ply to newspaper.

And that's just for something as trivial as a men's suit. When I was a student, I didn't even own a suit - and had absolutely zero interest or care about wearing one. But then you get put in an environment, and ridiculous things start to get normalized.

I know people that swore to the shittiest of shit lite-beers, but now obsessively shop wine bottles worth tens of thousands. It doesn't happen overnight - but is rather a very gradual process.

I used to think of myself as a very minimalist no-frivolous-spending kind of guy. I would do meticulous research on products to maximize the quality to price ratio (with strict upper bounds on price of course). Nowadays I just don't bother. I think you're right that the process is gradual. When a culture built around consumerism surrounds you, there is no choice but to become more consumerist.

At one extreme I know people who save every penny, even though they make a fortune. One person I know spends maybe 10-20 dollars a week on food by never drinking, receiving farm deliveries of vegetables, etc. and etc. At the other extreme, as per this article, you have Real Housewives-types scoffing at making less than a million, perhaps living extravagant lifestyles.

Maybe this should be called "lifestyle inflation." Through social pressure, greed, trendiness, or perhaps stupidity, people piss all their money away and need more.

There's a balance there, but yes, at the end of the day the goal is to have free time, right?

In my mind, this is key. My parents barely saved for retirement, mostly because they didn't make much money. The net effect of that is that I've maxed my 401k since day one of my professional life.

In contrast, my father also died at 46 (I'm 42, going on 43), so all of the life experiences he'd deferred to a more financially prudent time never happened.

I work hard to try to find the balance so that I'm not left without an emergency fund or a paid-for retirement, but I also don't fret over every penny and "waste" money from time to time. My motto is to plan for tomorrow, but minimize any regrets that could arise if tomorrow never comes.

It is: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/lifestyle-inflation.asp

There's also a lack of education teaching people to value and strive for something beyond material goods, fashion, and whatever the mainstream media happen to be hyping at the moment.

I can appreciate that you might need a wardrobe with nice suits, a respectable looking car, and a few stories about places you've been and things you've done. It doesn't seem like it would super hard to craft that image without spending a lot of money.

How'd you get into the management consulting world? Is there a 500k/yr salary just waiting for me if I fake like I'm a Wall St guy from the 80s?

That probably sounds slightly crazy but how many people actually do end up leaving and doing something else? Not many. They end up in those jobs because they want the lifestyle, the status, and being "the guy" is critical to their self-image. Faking it would be pointless (it would probably lead to severe unhappiness).

And if you are an employer, your job is to feed into that. I don't think it happens consciously but most of these places have working environments where the stick and carrot are used quite heavily. If you "win", the rewards in status are huge. If you "lose", you will be crucified. And most people who do exit, exit because they lose. Not because they win and decide they have had enough...no-one does that.

I was lucky in that I had my CS qualifications. I left 6 months in, and got a better paying job. Only gave them a weeks notice.

Straight from undergrad. I went to a tech-focused school, majored in math and CS, and did a financial course series as a requirement for a scholarship. That, and I guess I'm a good interviewer / have people skills?

> I can appreciate that you might need a wardrobe with nice suits, a respectable looking car, and a few stories about places you've been and things you've done. It doesn't seem like it would super hard to craft that image without spending a lot of money.

This is not difficult. I wore mostly hand me downs I had tailored. Worked in a big city, so lack of car was not a problem. I also had my fair share of 'stories' (mainly because being student body president at my college exposed me to a world of very rich people).

The difficult part is that you enter in 'classes'. You and thirty other people who just graduated start at the same time, and you are put through the grinder together. There is an expectation you do all your socializing in this group. For me, part of the problem was that I was engaged and planning our wedding, so I had to take time off to do that and not partake. The group would collectively decide to do things every single weekend. If you did not attend, you were ostracized. These were not things like playing board games together or even clubbing (although there was a lot of clubbing). These were things like, 'so and so has a birthday, let's go to Cabo!' or 'let's rent a boat' or 'let's rent a mansion'. These things cost a lot of money, and the company does not pay. However, if you do not invest in maintaining these relationships, you will face issues later on.

The company encourages this by throwing extravagant parties every few months. And I really mean extravagant.

For example, before we accepted the offer, we were all flown out for a weekend filled with free booze, clubs, etc. We were all 'beautiful people' so to speak (although, I personally think I was the ugliest person there). The company provides enough of an exposure to a lifestyle that it whets the appetites of status-seeking 22 year olds, who then seek to accomplish the same 'epicness' on the non-company-sponsored weekends.

> Is there a 500k/yr salary just waiting for me if I fake like I'm a Wall St guy from the 80s?

No. The salary is piss poor. Starting undergrads in 2014 made $75k/year in San Francisco at my firm. The big bucks only roll in after you've been there for many years (and thus have that large debt hanging on your neck).

As my first manager said, "you can wait until you're 30 to have a family and free time." She told me that the week before I quit.

I wonder if there's an alternate track for someone already established in another field. Could an established software developer somehow transition to getting a "big bucks" management position? Or does it all flow through that class system, and if you didn't enter at the bottom, you're not able to get to the top?

There are also career changers who start out as something else (like a software developer) and go to the best MBA school they can get into, in order to try to "sneak in to the back door of the club" that way. I actually tried (and failed) to walk this path. My jaded view, after blowing more $ than I care to admit on B-school and literally dozens of interviews that went nowhere, is that these employers are looking for people already in the in-crowd, pre-blessed as elite, and are in general not welcoming to working class career changers. Investment banks are primarily looking for pedigreed former bankers, and management consulting firms are primarily looking for pedigreed former management consultants, and good luck if you're not already in one of those clubs.

Unless you are bringing in substantial expertise in the strategy side of technology (and most importantly, have a rolodex full of rich potential clients), it is unlikely that you would be hired. Outside of the traditional hiring rounds from undergrad and biz school, it is exceedingly rare to be given an employment offer.

And a clarification, I'm not thinking it'd be because you're around wealthier people which would make you want to spend more to compare to them, but rather having more security, if your passion requires more money.

I'd also rather be outside again all day, working with and alongside people, physically and towards goals we can visualize, doing tasks that we all understand well and can articulate in an accurate way, and cultivating a genuine sense of camaraderie. Not the sort of weird brogrammer nonsense that is frequently encountered in our industry and which is oftentimes confused with camaraderie.

I pull a lot of my previous lives experience in to my work today and I spend a lot of time working very closely with my colleagues, but it's not the same. I don't end a day with the same sense of purpose or belonging that I experienced with physically demanding jobs. I got close, once, but it was a shared experience between myself and one colleague, as opposed to a team, and it was because of circumstances that aren't exactly repeatable in a meaningful way.

edit/ Of course, the above is making some assumptions that probably don't hold. There is genuinely something that I miss from physically demanding work that can't be found or replicated with the work that I do today (or, perhaps it's just that I have failed to find or replicate it). But, I'm also dramatically better compensated and live a nearly fully autonomous life today, too. These are just the trade-offs that we make, I suppose.

I think there is a market for a large, physically demanding computer keyboard. The keyboard 'keys' would require pressure from a full hand to activate, and the return and backspace keys could have a different type of lever action (pull to the side maybe). The operator would have to stand, which seems like a trend these days, and the PRO-version could come with a large inverted water bottle. Not joking about the keyboard, only half-joking about the bottle.

I suspect that years of meaningless work just shuffling money around for wealthy people and institutions has a similar effect on the psyche, even if it is obscenely compensated.

Also, sitting all day does breaks your body.

- Longshoreman (manually unloading 45 - 120 lbs of frozen boxes, non-stop, for up to 20 hours a day)

- Worked on construction sites, carrying cement/concrete bags up and down - for hours and hours - often in sweltering heat during the summer.

- Dug ditches all day long .

- Manually emptied trailers for appliances (fridges, ovens, dryers, washing machines, etc.) all through the night.

and some more.

Either way, they all sucked. Some were absolutely terrible, and made fresh workers quit only an hour or two into it (longshoreman), while others were more bearable (emptying trailers).

But all these jobs share a couple of things:

- The majority of workers lack formal education, and take the jobs because they have to. - They are all in it because of the cash - Almost no one over 40. 90% of the guys are in their 20's. - Injuries are extremely common. In fact, that's why I took those jobs: There "regular" crews were always short of people because of injuries or recovery, and would let anyone (with a fitting physique/strength) try for the spots. And on larger jobs, they would call in extras.

A lot of office workers seem to romanticize these types of jobs - like some kind of honest "manly" work where you get to be outside and enjoy the nature, while staying in shape.

Yeah, no, most of these jobs just suck.

Doing it for 1 hour might be OK, but when you're 12 hours into the shift, sore from the previous days, and know it'll be the same tomorrow, next week, next year, etc. you really start to question your life choices.

The only thing you look forward to is to lie down and rest - but even then, you're getting anxious because you know it's only X hours 'til your alarm goes off, and another day of grueling work. It gets to the point where you have actual nightmares, and will wake up depressed.

Of course, YMMV, and not all of these hard labors jobs are the same - people are different. But the above is based on my own experience, and what the other guys would say.

I'd still do it for a million a year though.

Brutal and back breaking. I couldn't get enough to eat, my body was always sore and tired.

I would do it if I had to, I suppose, but even though my cushy desk job coding pays a lot less--a very much lot less--than a million a year, I would take it every time.

I enjoy what I do, but I'd go back to it in a heart beat if there was even a chance for comparable earning potential. Hard work feels really really good at the end of the week. I think the one reason I enjoy software is because it gives you that similar high of being able to see something you've built with your own hands, that didn't exist before.

It was a much more creative & rewarding job in many respects.

My hypothesis is that most very high paying roles are incentive-based, and incentives can be addicting: meet a goal, get a million dollar dopamine hit. I don’t think these people hate their jobs as much as they might say they do.

That's why things like UBI are a pipe-dream. Any Fortune-500 executive could live a life of leisure with 2-3 years of planning. They tend to not make that choice.

If the problem is that people need purpose, what better than a system that allows people to find purpose, rather than one that keeps them trapped doing work they hate?

The point I'm making here is that we shouldn't play the naive game twice. Give people free money and an extra ~10 hours a day with no obligations to anybody. This isn't going to bring in some utopia of people pursuing wonderful new interests and ideas they always really wanted to, but were just held back by socioeconomic obstacles.

So let's think about realistic predictions. I mean I do agree with you people would be looking for purpose. Companies would be quick to try to provide this purpose by providing the most addictive, immersive, and life destroying games ever -- even the most hardcore WoW player would blush at what we'd have in store there. We'd also probably see people finding purpose similar to how we already do online. Imagine Twitter outrage mobs. Except now since people have no obligations and really nothing to do, there's a very good chance this would spill into the streets and likely in quite high numbers. 'Hey let's come protest against [xyz] in LA on the 17th!' 'Whoa, sounds like fun. Btw, no idea what [xyz] is, fill me in then?' 'Sure, not so clear myself tbh!'

Ooo and then the inevitable happens. There'd be another group, also looking for purpose, that now decides to counter protest. And these 'meetings' would be immense. There'd suddenly be thousands to millions of people with nothing to do and no obligations showing up to face off against each other to try to find some sort of purpose and meaning in life. No worries. I'm sure they'll just come together, spread and share ideas, and bring knowledge and information to one another.

Well at least everybody could come together in nonstop protests demanding that the basic income should be increased.

[1] - http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/gene...

TL;DR with the good comes the bad.

It's politics all the way down.

Do you have any evidence of that? All the studies I have seen, imply or play out the opposite. The poor stay poor and disinclined to achieve. Survival is hard enough at the bottom rung.

People need support to thrive. Throwing a few bucks at people doesn’t nurture them by itself.

Would you rather be the worst lover in the world but everyone think you are the best? Or the best lover in the world but everyone think you are the worst?

For most people, work is their identity, it is status, it is the ability to abuse underlings terribly with no consequences. Constructing your self-image this way leads to, imo, a great deal of emotional vulnerability. If I leave my job, what will other people think? I am not the boss anymore. I am just another normal person.

And btw, if you feel that you are doing whatever you are doing until you reach $X in the bank. Then that is the same.

The point of the article is that you can be happy working a shitty job for no money. But you have to understand what makes you happy, what is fulfilling to you, etc. Although it is true that some jobs/working environments are just shitty.

[1] https://smartasset.com/taxes/new-york-tax-calculator#aYosnz0...

[2] https://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/longevity.cgi

[3]https://www.bankrate.com/calculators/investing/annuity-calcu...

https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-p...

But yes, saving a couple million and moving somewhere in expensive, buying a house cash and living off of interest is totally doable if you're into that kind of thing.

Still absolutely doable.

This means that as long as you're willing to cut back on expenses if the market dips soon after you retire, 4% is fine, and it's probably not worth the extra X years of your life to try to get that number lower.

Add medical, and you need a hell of a lot more than 2.5M$ . Remember, it's the US. We don't care about your health.

That’s a great number for retiring at 65. But this thread is talking about working hard for 5 years and retiring super early.

Yes inflation will eat away at the value of that 100k over time, but that's less of a problem if you own your home and have something left over each year to reinvest.

Right. So my question is how much can you withdraw to indefinitely draw the same inflation adjusted value?

Despite all the skepticism above, the 4% claims are true. Not 100% chance of indefinite success, but close enough to be actionable. You can also google the "trinity study" for more info.

So pretty likely. But not guaranteed. And for sure not indefinite. Not if you pull the same 4% during down years.

My dream is 5,000,000 and a paid off house. I can live off 3% of that for sure.

It’s my only question.

Continue this to break thoroughly break him down. This is done without giving him any particular reason why he is doing it for...

Boss Paul: That ditch is Boss Kean's ditch. And I told him that dirt in it's your dirt. What's your dirt doin' in his ditch? Luke: I don't know, Boss. Boss Paul: You better get in there and get it out, boy.

If you dislike the current job a lot why not change it? For example, some people might only consider programming in functional programming languages. The number of job openings might be smaller but they are really passionate about the technology and they can be much happier on the job.

I think a lot of people marry someone who did so with an understanding that the gravy train continues indefinitely.

Also, I like how people bring up gardening sometimes when passion is discussed. To me, passion is coupled with expression and allows you to take on an identity in some other "world". You can be passionate about music, you can have your musical identity. You can be passionate about mathematics, you can have your way of reasoning about problems. But gardening? Is there a difference between things you really like to do and a passion?

Almost anything can be approached in an artistic manner and therefore considered art.

'High status' jobs in many ways entail a 'high status' lifestyle.

Example: they got the jobs in the first place as the result of their parents ability to pay for private school, and Ivy League. So in that lifestyle context, you're going to be doing the same thing, it's part of the cycle. Very expensive.

Partners in law firms or consultancies are really in sales. They are using their business relationships to position themselves as thoughtful, successful, excellent pedigree etc..

For the same reason that real estate salespeople who drive people around a lot tend to drive nice cars, many folks in high end careers have no choice but to live that lifestyle.

When you go out for dinner with business associates, you're not going to talk about the deal you got at the dollar store, rather, your golf game, the new club you got, your trip to Pebble beach. If there is any chance anyone will see you in your car, it cannot be jalopi. Telling people about your trip to Davos would be more than ideal.

There are very few fields where high end folks can get away with not quite living that lifestyle. Some doctors, dentists, business owners can do that. People in tech, of course can life alt-lifestyles.

It's not to say that a Director of trading at some big bank couldn't really skimp in stuff either, but it's hard to avoid the expectations of lifestyle.

'Career progress' in may of these fields entails a lot of signalling, and such signalling can be expensive. "I have three kids, so proud they all made it into Ivy League". That's a very powerful signalling statement, and a massively expensive one!

Taxes on regular income are high, and expenses add up - and having a 'fairly comfortable retirement' is not cheap.

I'm not entirely sympathetic to these people, because they do make choices - my point is that they are not living a 'regular lifestyle', their careers often have expensive lifestyles 'baked in' to the process.

Also: "They talked about missed promotions, disaffected children and billable hours in divorce court. They complained about jobs that were unfulfilling, tedious or just plain bad."

I think maybe we all have this, and when the numbers, cars and suits get nicer, those problems don't go away. In many ways, the risks are bigger.

If your company falls flat it can ruin you. A carpenter can usually get work, as can most decent devs.

That has happened before certainly throughout history as "gentry" have had their delusions of superiority and even relevance shattered in spite of their abundantly privileged start.