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

Rethinking 'Fuck You' money

tonywright.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 172 posts

Re: Rethinking 'Fuck You' money

#121

Post by davidw »

apphacker wrote: post #25
Super_Jambo wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are not fucking terrified at the moment you're not paying attention.

There's nothing to be terrified of. Just live your life and do your best. If you're going to live your entire life with fear about retirement or debt, then by the time you reach retirement age you'll have lived most of your life in fear. Which is worse? Working during retirement age or living the vast majority of your life in fear? If things get really really bad you can always put a hole in your head or jump off a b…

I'm certainly not the only one to remember all the survivalist BS from the 80ies. Maybe that'd be a good business to be in these days. "Survive in the woods with only your wits and a loin cloth!" "Bob and Doug's guide to finding beer after the apocalypse!" and so on...

Re: Rethinking 'Fuck You' money

#122

Post by Vivtek »

jacquesm wrote: post #75
SamAtt wrote: post #5

His premise seems flawed to me. He says people should forget about F@#$ You Money because you can't depend on it to grow in this bad economy. That's reasonable. But then he suggests you aim for “f@#$ you influence and credibility” because it "allows you to charge $30k+ for a 1 hour speaking engagement". But I know people who used to make $10k per speaking engagement and they aren't getting much work lately. In my exp…

I agree with you fully, the first thing to go when the economy isn't all that great is the stuff that you can do without. So, no more lavish all employee trips to tropical islands and no more expensive speakers. Time to get up and do some more work instead of talking about your previous successes. And about dying penniless, who cares, you can't take it with you anyway. If you plan on passing your wealth to your kids…

I think it's not about dying penniless quite so much as messing up your calculation by a year or two and living penniless at the age of 87.

Re: Rethinking 'Fuck You' money

#123

Post by Vivtek »

hugh3 wrote: post #62

If you ask me, the best way to invest the $2 million mentioned in the article in order to retire comfortably would be rental property. Take your $2 million and buy four $500K houses (or eight $250K houses, or whatever's appropriate). Pay an agent to take care of them, or do it yourself, depending on how much involvement you want. That should yield maybe $8,000 a month in rent, which after you've taken care of all the…

In my experience as a landlord "any area where you're likely to get undesirables" includes the entire land mass of the planet.

Unless you're a hands-on people person, I recommend running away from rentals as fast as possible.

Re: Rethinking 'Fuck You' money

#125

Post by tkhoven »

nileshtrivedi wrote: post #98
nostrademons wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which country? Europe is worse-off than America, China likely has their own bubble. Japan has been in a funk for 20 years. Russia has recently been cracking down on political freedoms in a worrisome way, there's no guarantee that you'll be able to take your money out once you put it in. Same for many Latin American countries.

How about India? Indian economy has bounced back some time ago. Here is sensex over last 5 years. http://in.finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=^BSESN&t=5y&l=on&... Risk-free return rate is still at around 8%: http://www.bajajcapital.com/gss/nsc.html

If I'm reading it correctly, that risk-free return rate is only available to resident Indians. In addition, even if international investors would be able to access it they'd be adding currency risk to the equation.

Re: Rethinking 'Fuck You' money

#126

Post by notahacker »

SamAtt wrote: post #5

His premise seems flawed to me. He says people should forget about F@#$ You Money because you can't depend on it to grow in this bad economy. That's reasonable. But then he suggests you aim for “f@#$ you influence and credibility” because it "allows you to charge $30k+ for a 1 hour speaking engagement". But I know people who used to make $10k per speaking engagement and they aren't getting much work lately. In my exp…

Isn't the general point more along the lines of not earning much on savings now quite possibily implies a need to do some work at some stage in future (even if its really easy lucrative engagements), and therefore staying in touch with the industry is probably a good idea unless you hit really big.

Personally I'd like to see influence and credibility more as an end than a means to speaking engagements and high-billing consulting though...

Re: Rethinking 'Fuck You' money

#127

Post by rmc »

brc wrote: post #103
hugh3 wrote: post #62

If you ask me, the best way to invest the $2 million mentioned in the article in order to retire comfortably would be rental property. Take your $2 million and buy four $500K houses (or eight $250K houses, or whatever's appropriate). Pay an agent to take care of them, or do it yourself, depending on how much involvement you want. That should yield maybe $8,000 a month in rent, which after you've taken care of all the…

Improvement on that is avoid family housing and go for industrial/commercial. You can get a quality property with minimal leverage for your $2million. You will get a blue chip tenant like a national retailer or even a government department, and they'll sign a 10 year lease with mandated, upwards only, CPI-indexed increases each year. You won't even have to fork over 8-10% on a property manager because the tenant will…

> And at the end of it, you'll have a property worth much, much more than what you paid for it.

Unless there was a property bubble. Ireland recently had a massive property crash. Properties that were sold for €200million are now worth €20mil or less. Lots of people are stuck owning empty hotels and business centres with no tenants.

Re: Rethinking 'Fuck You' money

#128

Post by GFischer »

marvin wrote: post #45
Super_Jambo wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are not fucking terrified at the moment you're not paying attention.

Why don't you just put your money in a global index fund instead? No one forces you Americans to invest your savings in your own country..in fact, that seems like a pretty bad idea in the first place, since this means that when the economy is bad and it is hard to find jobs is the same time it is a very bad idea to take money out of your investments. Seems pretty obvious to me that the American economy as a whole has…

Indeed. There are investments here in South America that pay off so much better than what is described in the article.

The trouble is, you have to really fear the kleptocracies in charge, and even in the more sensible countries (like Chile, Costa Rica or my own, Uruguay) you have to be on your feet.

As usual, higher returns means higher risk (real or perceived - I suspect the risk difference between here in Uruguay and the US is more perceived than real).

By the way, if you want an investment that is mostly risk free, I'd look at finite commodities: steel, oil, uranium, copper, etc... (my uncle actually buys physical steel plate as a hedge - it can be used as input to his business but it's also a savings account).

Re: Rethinking 'Fuck You' money

#129

Post by billybob »

astrofinch wrote: post #100
Eliezer wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I think "top money manager at a major Wall Street firm" and otherwise unattributed actually is random people.

Do you mean to imply that the post's author was lying, the person he was talking to was lying, or that a top money manager at a major Wall Street firm's opinion is just as good as that of a random person? If the last one, I'm inclined to think that someone who thinks about something full-time is statistically more likely to guess correctly about it than someone who doesn't.

"I'm inclined to think that someone who thinks about something full-time is statistically more likely to guess correctly about it than someone who doesn't."

If the system they're thinking about is a system defined by other people also thinking about it, and they're all trying to outsmart each other, and the system itself is too large and complex for any one mind to grasp, maybe not. And in fact, I've heard (no citation) that you'll as well on average throwing darts at stocks as hiring a stockbroker, and you'll save the fees. Which is why I'm inclined to invest in an index fund and forget about it.

Re: Rethinking 'Fuck You' money

#130

Post by GFischer »

rortian wrote: post #18
startuprules wrote: post #8

A very easy solution to this: Go live in a cheaper country. Go now, before the heavily debted countries lock down money transfers (In which case, buy gold/silver)

How does crazy paranoid stuff get up-voted here? Very Sad. Cheaper countries can be fun, but there's lots of downsides as well. If you are asocial, it could be your dream to live there. I'll always want a vacation there, but not to live there.

It is a bit paranoid, but then again, you've never been in a country that locks down money transfers, right? You still believe you can emigrate anywhere.

It's currently unlikely, but I suspect the U.S. could implement that much faster than you think if it keeps going downhill. It already implemented a ban on holding gold in the past, for example ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102 in place until 1974 ). It's not the scenario I envision, but thinking "The U.S. would never do that!" is naive.

By the way, I believe the original post had a reasonable suggestion... you could live like a king for your lifetime in, say, Uruguay or Costa Rica with 5 million (and those are reasonably safe countries). Yes, emigrating is a quite hard decision, but it is a possibility.

Post reply on HN