Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: How have you achieved financial independence?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 184 posts

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

#141

Post by zen_boy »

chillydawg wrote: post #124
zen_boy wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is always a good reminder. Then again, had I not done that investment or cashed out earlier, that 20k€ would be nowhere near 1M€. There simply doesn't exist many ways to achieve 50x ROI in Hard to say what I would be saying had I lost everything though. It's easy for me to rationalise the decision now that it paid off. And yes, we have to remember to look at the graveyard too. The non-linear utility of money put…

You could probably say that about playing roulette if you happened to win your first spin. Doesn't mean it's a good bet, though.

Comparing an educated crypto investment with a negative EV gambling game seems a bit too farfetched. I'm quite considerate and picky investor, and did extensive research beforehand.

I do get what you are saying, but I think this is over-simplifying things. There were a lot of interesting facts and conclusions available to be made early on about the possibilities.

Again, extremely hard to say what the odds of failure still are and were in the past. And hard to say what my stance would be had I lost the initial investment. It's easy to rationalize the investment in hindsight.

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

#142

Post by zen_boy »

charlesdm wrote: post #118
zen_boy wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, this advice is very valuable. I'll definitely investigate. Thank you. Another interesting discussion is the ethical side of things. I do feel some obligation to pay back to my home country for things it has provided (free education, healthcare, etc.), many of which were financed with tax income. But paying the whole amount from current and future gains would be tad too much. Also, would it be possible to achieve…

1. If you intend to move back at some point, it doesn’t matter. Say you generate €75-100k a year from that million in the future, you’ll be paying 25k a year in taxes anyway. The more capital you have, the more you can generate, hence the more tax you can pay in the future. Pay 333k now vs 25k a year over the next 50 years. But building that first €500k-1m is hard, imo. 2. Always give back. For example, I gift €X,000…

Great points. Ultimately, it seems to boil down to deferring tax to the future instead of the present resulting in higher gains for everybody, and having the freedom to choose on how to give back. Both of which seem like the obvious after further consideration.

I'm really curious about your story. Would you be interested in continuing this discussion over email?

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

#143

Post by coverclock »

1. Started working full time at 19. 2. Still alive at 60. 3. Worked hard in every job. 4. Maximized retirement contributions. 5. Only owned two houses. 6. Paid off current home as quickly as possible. 7. No debt other than credit card paid off monthly. 8. Only married once (and still) 32 years ago. 9. Spousal unit has same fiscal strategy as me. 10. We never had kids. We can both afford not to work, although we both choose to. I can't say we're especially frugal. I own four Swiss mechanical watches, a brand new Subaru WRX Limited, and lots of other toys, and have traveled all over the world, all of which I paid cash for (or paid card off each month).

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

#144

Post by canada_dry »

mikekchar wrote: post #68
mailshanx wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10K is indeed unreasonably low. Could you describe where in Japan you live, what kind of work you do now, and the transformation you possibly experienced when you decided to work for curiosity / interest rather than money? I have had a reverse path - I spent my early career working for a research lab, where the the work was immensely intellectually satisfying and fun for the most part. However, the pay was so ridicul…

It's hard to answer this without writing my life story :-) I live in Shizuoka prefecture, right on Suruga bay. We live in what I think is the most expensive apartment in town -- it costs $600 a month. It's a concession to my wife who put up with the $120 a month shack that I loved to death (but that she called a haunted house -- they tore it down after we moved out ;-) ). I work as a software developer on contract to…

"I had enough money for either meat or beer, so I became vegetarian"

LOL!!

So... now that you're back in the black are you enjoying beef and beer again - just as god intended??

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

#145

Post by canada_dry »

rwallace wrote: post #129
jobigoud wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Invested most of my savings (20k€) into Bitcoin several years ago, and then converted everything to Ethereum in the pre-sale Haha. I did the same except with only 30€ worth of BTC, now worth ~15K€ in ETH. If only I had had slightly more balls at the time…

Hey, I bought zero bitcoin because by the time I looked at it - when the price was still in two digits - I thought the bubble had come and gone and there were rumors of an impending government crackdown. So you did 15k better than I did!

+1 ditto. :(

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

#146

Post by desdiv »

charlesdm wrote: post #107
zen_boy wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Finland, the capital gains on cryptos are realised once you sell them for floating currencies (ie. USD or EUR). We pay 34% tax on the profit. For example, I'd pay (1M€ - 20k€) x 34% = 333k€ of taxes on capital gains. I'm not sure how the taxation works if you try to dodge it by relocating to a more tax friendly zone. I've heard some horror stories about Finnish companies moving to Estonia for tax benefits only to…

In Belgium (where I live), these gains are tax free. So that is one country you could potentially move to to avoid the tax. The same applies for the UK, Malta, Cyprus (non dom regime) and Monaco. If I were you, I'd consider doing the perpetual traveler thing for a while (i.e. while having a base in Malta, which is cheap) and cash out + reinvest in stocks. After a few years, move back, and then pay capital gains tax o…

>This is why certain people move to a country without capital gains tax to sell their company.

Do you happen to have an example of this?

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

#147

Post by samsonradu »

maaaats wrote: post #51
samsonradu wrote: post #40

Doing pretty well from consulting these days, however I can't manage to generate any passive income. Having saved about 30k in the past years doesn't seem to help either, interest rates are ridiculously low. Stocks and bonds are not really my area of expertise so I decided to stick to cash. Investment funds might be an option in the nearby future.

Just buy index funds. They have low fees, and beat most (if not all) managed funds long term anyway. Find a fond tracking S&P 500, one global and maybe some other markets, and you should be set.

Thanks, any brokers you'd recommend?

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

#148

Post by samsonradu »

erikb wrote: post #53
samsonradu wrote: post #40

Doing pretty well from consulting these days, however I can't manage to generate any passive income. Having saved about 30k in the past years doesn't seem to help either, interest rates are ridiculously low. Stocks and bonds are not really my area of expertise so I decided to stick to cash. Investment funds might be an option in the nearby future.

Have you tried to automate some of the tasks of your business? Meaning you structure them in a repeatable fashion and find people who want to work on the steps of your defined process. That way you can also achieve passive income.

My business is writing code, so basically automating processes for other businesses. Not sure how I can turn that into a passive income. My tasks are hardly automate-able. What I started doing is teaching programming to others and partially outsourcing tasks to them but it's not going so fast :)

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

#149

Post by ensignavenger »

lucb1e wrote: post #24
mikekchar wrote: post #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 r…

I would like to hear more about living on less than $10k a year. I'm still a student and my parents pay a lot, so I don't actually know how much I'd spend if I paid for everything myself currently. I just always assumed that $40k is about the minimum for a normal living. Doing the math though, counting food, rent and "service costs" (water, electricity, internet), I end up with a lower bound of about 6000 a year. Thi…

Depending on where you live (and how healthy you are), medical care/insurance may be your biggest single expense.

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

#150

Post by pauljaworski »

rufius wrote: post #115
pauljaworski wrote: post #43

Not me, but the last time I talked to the CTO of my last company, he was making ~$120k/year passively via LendingClub with ~$1M invested (which he acquired via our exit).

Has he reevaluated his investment at all with them since some of their sketchy business? I've been trying to decide with the chunk of money I have invested there.

I don't know the full details of how they inflated the creditworthiness of their lendees, but I do know that he wrote his own software to determine that and offer loans based on his own criteria. I'm not sure if he was actually affected by what they did.
Post reply on HN