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Ask HN: How have you achieved financial independence?

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Re: Ask HN: How have you achieved financial independence?

#2
I can pay my rent and bills from investment income and capital gain on investments. This is, of course, not remotely guaranteed, but over the last few years it's worked out. I do still work, though.

I did it by putting large amounts of my income into low cost index funds focussing on various sectors, and some specific shares that I thought would do well.

Re: Ask HN: How have you achieved financial independence?

#3
I'm only responding because nobody else has replied to your thread. Feel free to ignore me if you think it is irrelevant.

My favourite Dr. Who quote: "Work for? I don't work for anyone. I'm just having fun."

Describes me, even though I receive money every month. My expenditures are considerably less than the money I receive every month by having fun. If I didn't receive money, then I would be in trouble, so I don't really qualify for your question, but I'm having fun so I'll answer anyway.

Step #1. Reduce my expenditures below what most people consider reasonable. I lived for more than 5 years on less than $10K a year. It was much easier than I thought. I discovered that spending more than this amount of money, I was no happier. Who knew? What really counted was having so much more income than outgo that money became completely irrelevant to me.

After I did that, I stopped worrying about working. There isn't a job in the 1st world that pays less money than I'm comfortable with. I started taking jobs that interested me instead of jobs that paid me money.

Then I got married. That threw a monkey wrench into the works! But I'm slowly working thought that ;-)

Honestly, people tie themselves to a grindstone to make as much money as possible because they think it will remove stress and give them a nice life. I don't think that works most of the time.

Re: Ask HN: How have you achieved financial independence?

#5
I described this in pretty great detail over on IndieHackers (https://indiehackers.com/businesses/complice) and also answered a bunch of related questions on this HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12269425

TL;DR = spent 20h/week for 2 years building a product that people wanted. But there are a lot of juicy insights etc in those links.

Re: Ask HN: How have you achieved financial independence?

#6

I'm only responding because nobody else has replied to your thread. Feel free to ignore me if you think it is irrelevant. My favourite Dr. Who quote: "Work for? I don't work for anyone. I'm just having fun." Describes me, even though I receive money every month. My expenditures are considerably less than the money I receive every month by having fun. If I didn't receive money, then I would be in trouble, so I don't r…

Thanks for your reply. I was thinking about the same, while I make more than I spend, and for the time being I can save money, this indeed requires working. The "problem" would start when you have depended family members and you cannot calculate, or rather plan for all expenses in advance, what have you done to plan for this?

Re: Ask HN: How have you achieved financial independence?

#7

I described this in pretty great detail over on IndieHackers ( https://indiehackers.com/businesses/complice ) and also answered a bunch of related questions on this HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12269425 TL;DR = spent 20h/week for 2 years building a product that people wanted. But there are a lot of juicy insights etc in those links.

Thanks for the links, I will take a look. Your story seems like what I have in mind trying to replicate.

Re: Ask HN: How have you achieved financial independence?

#8

I can pay my rent and bills from investment income and capital gain on investments. This is, of course, not remotely guaranteed, but over the last few years it's worked out. I do still work, though. I did it by putting large amounts of my income into low cost index funds focussing on various sectors, and some specific shares that I thought would do well.

Thanks for the feedback. Could you clarify if you only use the capital gains? I have read that dividend stocks are also a good way to have a passive income. Additionally have you thought about what you would do in case of a market downturn?

Re: Ask HN: How have you achieved financial independence?

#10
Just turned 30. Invested most of my savings (20k€) into Bitcoin several years ago, and then converted everything to Ethereum in the pre-sale. Those 20k€ are worth roughly 1M€ pre-tax at the current rates.

Started a fintech startup three years ago and we are close to a liquidation event that would net ~1.5M€ pre-tax.

Right now, though, I have less than 10k€ in my bank account. Would be also really curious to hear how to convert that money into sustainable passive income.

Spending 3k€ per month for the next 30 years would be about 1M€. Seems like having Achieving ~4% annualized ROI after tax and inflation seems plausible in the long term: https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/wiki/faq

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