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No, You can't retire rich at 30 if you sell your startup

tonywright.com

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Re: No, You can't retire rich at 30 if you sell your startup

#151

Post by nl »

alister wrote: post #108
muhfuhkuh wrote: post #11

Can we conclude that this is the wistful daydream equivalent of the "Maserati Problem"[1]? I can definitely say that if 30 years we're looking at half a million dollars as a "cost of living adjustment", that world will for the people who don't make that kind of money be Thunderdome. I mean wages have barely kept up with inflation. In the last 40 years (between 1967 and 2007), median wages have only gone up US$10000 (…

Can we conclude that this is the wistful daydream equivalent of the "Maserati Problem" I'll go out on a limb and say that even normal retirement planning (50 years into the future) is a Maserati Problem. Everybody that makes very long-term projections about money -- whether it's the gloomy "interest on $4m won't last 40 years" variety to the rosy "save $300 a month and the compound interest will make you a millionair…

There should be some trillionaires walking around whose ancestors started saving in the Renaissance when modern banking began -- but there aren't.

The reason for that isn't financial but usually due to wealth dissipating though marriage. Some wealthy families relied on arranged marriages to keep the wealth in the family, but this kind of arrangement had it's own problems (first cousins marrying each other for multiple generations has clear genetic issues).

Nevertheless, some examples still exist: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rothschild_family (often claimed to have controlled the largest private fortune in history) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Medici (although the Medici's lost most of their fortune in the 18th century)

Many rich European families were ennobled at some point, which makes their history more confusing. For example, the Duke of Westminster (6th richest man in the UK) is rich mostly because of his London land holdings. There are numerous other examples like that.

Re: No, You can't retire rich at 30 if you sell your startup

#152

Post by bconway »

tocomment wrote: post #134
jerf wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Living frugally" isn't what it used to be in the pain department. I have a Netflix subscription for one DVD and unlimited streaming instead of a $70 cable subscription (or an expensive antenna for my area), and while I made this choice to be "frugal" in the end I've actually been happier than I was with the cable. Do you need a smartphone with unlimited Internet? I can't speak for you, but I'm almost always within r…

Any tips on finding a reliable, inexpensive car?

Used Japanese. Any of them.

Re: No, You can't retire rich at 30 if you sell your startup

#153

Post by kgo »

rick888 wrote: post #97
jacquesm wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case anybody wonders if that's for real, yes, Patrick has made all his expenses/profits/turnover figures public.

he has. He makes ~$30,000/year (before taxes). Not only is this not "rich", most people couldn't survive on it. It's even worse if you have a family.

I'd agree that's not rich, but plenty of people can and do survive on that.

Obviously it varies from area to area, but 35% of households in the US make under 30,000 a year. And that's not all just twenty-two year-olds fresh out of school.

The thing is, whenever this comes up on a tech site, software engineers don't realize how much money they really do make. If you look at the median household income anywhere, it's shockingly low. ( $38,000 in NYC? $60,000 in San Fran proper? )

I guarantee that if most people here looked at the median income in their region, their jaws would drop at the thought of families getting by on that. But somehow they are.

(Not that this has anything to do with FU money. It's just a pet peeve of mine whenever 'money needed to live' comes up in a group of highly-skilled highly-paid people, and they don't realize how good they have it.)

Re: No, You can't retire rich at 30 if you sell your startup

#154

Post by portman »

muhfuhkuh wrote: post #11

Can we conclude that this is the wistful daydream equivalent of the "Maserati Problem"[1]? I can definitely say that if 30 years we're looking at half a million dollars as a "cost of living adjustment", that world will for the people who don't make that kind of money be Thunderdome. I mean wages have barely kept up with inflation. In the last 40 years (between 1967 and 2007), median wages have only gone up US$10000 (…

"In the last 40 years (between 1967 and 2007), median wages have only gone up US$10000 (from 40k to 50k)."

That figure that you're citing is IN CONSTANT 2003 DOLLARS.

The nominal median household income in 1967, without adjusting for inflation, was $7,260.87. [1] So a "middle class" income has increased from $7,260 to $50,000 in 40 years.

Hopefully this clarification will make the author's nicey-nice spreadsheet make sense now.

[1] http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/househ...

Re: No, You can't retire rich at 30 if you sell your startup

#155

Post by sliverstorm »

noodle wrote: post #13

most people can live quite richly on around $50k/year, depending on where they live and what they're doing. especially if you're willing to pony up some cash up front to buy your house/car if you want to own one. but, if your idea of richly is tainted by popular culture, and you want to buy some yachts and collect expensive cars, then yeah, you're going to go broke.

It depends on your idea of yachts and fancy cars.

My dream boat is one of these: http://yachtpals.com/files/userimages/laserworlds.jpg

Re: No, You can't retire rich at 30 if you sell your startup

#156

Post by sigstoat »

webwright wrote: post #96
_pius wrote: post #15

I think it was Jadakiss who said "Entrepreneurs don't retire, they just get chubby and become angel investors." I don't know of many people in this business who actually plan on being utterly retired while they blow hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Most just want to not be obligated to work on things that don't interest them.

But you ARE. Or at least you are obligated to work on things that throw off meaningful amounts of money. What if what interests you is poetry? Raising foster kids? Working on open source projects? If what interests you is not an income source, then you're going to need to avoid "living rich". Which, IMO, is fine and dandy. I get very little joy out of huge houses, expensive wines, and 1st class travel.

all kinds of things can be turned into income sources if you're serious about them and any good. making money off of poetry and open source is obvious. (not at the sports car level, but below that, sure.)

i'll admit it isn't not immediately obvious to me how you could profit from raising foster kids in a moral fashion, though that does not mean there isn't one.

Re: No, You can't retire rich at 30 if you sell your startup

#157

Post by kscaldef »

brianobush wrote: post #148
kscaldef wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For my daughter, I spend about $100/mo on extracurricular activites, $25/mo (averaged over the year) on clothes, $50 once a year on school supplies, a $100 bike will last her for a couple years. Yeah, how do those plebes manage to raise kids with their pathetic 5-figure salaries...

Well, I wasn't saying it was impossible, just expensive. Also, I don't know where you live, but one child's extracurricular activities for me is ~400 (100 piano+100 TKD+100 kumon+100 math) and during the summer it is higher since they have camps to attend (since there are no crops to harvest). Once your daughter gets older, I guarantee your clothing costs will increase.

Well, yes, it's true. My daughter doesn't have 4 extracurricular activities going at once, she has one or two... or sometimes even none at all! The rest of the time, she and her friends just have unstructured play.

And, yes, her clothes will get a bit more expensive as she gets older, but I don't expect my spending there will ever more than double. If she feels that she needs more or fancier clothes, she can get a job to pay for them.

Re: No, You can't retire rich at 30 if you sell your startup

#158

Post by sedachv »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #73
jshen wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is a libertarian fantasy and nothing more. Wages for most people have been stagnant or declining while energy prices are steadily rising. This is a huge problem

Please tell me which point I'm wrong on. Do most people not live in larger houses, enjoy greater automation of housework, enjoy larger and better entertainment technologies, and benefit from medical procedures which did not exist in 1967?

Not outside of the United States, Western Europe, and some parts of Asia and South America. What makes you think the same thing (over 50% reduction in GDP and almost ten million excess deaths) that happened following the bankruptcy of the USSR can not happen once the US is unable service its debt any longer?

Re: No, You can't retire rich at 30 if you sell your startup

#159

Post by huhtenberg »

pg wrote: post #66

There's little that's specific to startups here. What he's arguing is that being independently wealthy doesn't work the way one might naively think. But few things do work the way one might naively think. Certainly his title is false though. Obviously it depends how much you clear.

> But few things do work the way one might naively think.

A bit cryptic. Can you elaborate?

Re: No, You can't retire rich at 30 if you sell your startup

#160

Post by Luc »

sigstoat wrote: post #156
webwright wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you ARE. Or at least you are obligated to work on things that throw off meaningful amounts of money. What if what interests you is poetry? Raising foster kids? Working on open source projects? If what interests you is not an income source, then you're going to need to avoid "living rich". Which, IMO, is fine and dandy. I get very little joy out of huge houses, expensive wines, and 1st class travel.

all kinds of things can be turned into income sources if you're serious about them and any good. making money off of poetry and open source is obvious. (not at the sports car level, but below that, sure.) i'll admit it isn't not immediately obvious to me how you could profit from raising foster kids in a moral fashion, though that does not mean there isn't one.

Easy. Set up a non-profit dedicated to the foster kids' well being. Accept donations and funding from other organisations. Pay yourself a wage as an administrator. Sell the movie rights and retire rich!
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