I got zero money from my parents after I turned 17, and the bare minimum before that, and I would have felt inadequate as a young adult if I had taken money from them, which they did not have in any case. Exception exists (e.g. disabilities).
Most people won’t ever be able to do that, no matter how much they save of what they earn.
Also, cost of living is another huge factor here. Housing isn’t always as expensive as it is in the Bay Area, and some countries have good (even sometimes great) free education. Heck, in some, you are paid to attend the top schools.
FU money isn’t about being rich. It’s about being able to keep living the life you want even in the event you were to tell your boss or the world to fuck off.
So… in this… everyone’s goal would be different, and yours is not his?
If my kids wanted to go to a half-million dollars university, I’d just burst out laughing and ask them how they expect to pay for that. If they were to reply that they expected me to, I’d probably laugh them out of the room.
Almost nobody in the whole world can afford to send their children off to a $500k college.
Not even after saving up half of everything they’ve earned across their entire life. I don’t care much about holding myself up to such an unreasonable standard.
Noboxy in the world is entitled to expect anyone else to pony up such an amount of money for them either.
If I can
- put a roof over their head,
- clothes on their backs,
- feed them well every day,
- provide them a good health insurance,
- send them to school
- and afford one or two extra-curricular activities
- as well as one or two vacations, preferably abroad, a year,
I’ll have more and be able to provide them with more than most people ever had, have and expect to be able to in their entire lives.
If I can do so without ever needing to work again, it absolutely is enough for me to tell any employer to go find someone else to do the job and please don’t let the door hit them on their way out.
To me, anything more is an extra nice to have that I don’t owe to anybody.
You appear to have a different point of view. That’s fine. To hold yourself to a different standard. That’s okay too. It’s your life.
You also seem to have a hard time grasping that different people have different needs, and to consider that everybody else should abide by your standards.
This, well… is fine too, I guess.
Just to point out, there are some _really_ good college's in the EU that don't cost $$$. eg:
https://leverageedu.com/blog/free-universities-in-germany/ (random page about it)
Which I totally get, but find hilarious nonetheless.
To be honest, even your strategy there sounds tremendously flawed because you're assuming that you'll even want to live that life. What happens if you meet someone, get married, and have a couple of kids after you 'retire'? Suddenly your retirement fund is nowhere near enough. A simple example - how do you pay for your kids to go to college? You think you've got "FU money" so surely you can do something as straightforward as saving your kids from college debt. What if they're brilliant and get places at Stanford? Is your 'live on the interest from half the earnings of 11 years as an engineer' going to cover $500k in 20 years time? Of course not. You'd need to dip in to the capital, and then your whole retirement plan falls apart.
Having FU money, as opposed to just plain simple money, means you will be able to afford all those things and more besides because you are genuinely FU rich. You don't get there by having a normal job, even if it pays a lot and you can invest half your income. That just gets you a nice middle-class retirement, which is lovely, but you won't be rich.