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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

#161

Post by jsnell »

nostrademons wrote: post #141
cynicalkane wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of today's middle class is descended from the kings and nobility of the high middle ages. The peasantry just mostly died out, leaving no descendants. Source?

My Google-fu is failing me at the moment. It was from an absolutely fascinating article that suggested that the middle-class arose because of downward social mobility in post-Plague Europe. With the serfs mostly killed off by Black Death, the 3rds and 4th sons of the nobility typically couldn't support a feudal household, and so they had to take jobs as merchants or artisans in the emerging market economies. Along th…

Sounds like _A Farewell to Alms_ by Clark. Though as far as I can remember the data showed the "merchant class" crowding out the lower classes, not the nobility. Nobles only had about an average amount of surviving children while rich merchants had an above average one. Makes more sense that way: medieval nobility doesn't sound like a great base for middle-class values...

I'm not totally convinced about the theory, but the book was a surprisingly good read.

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

#162

Post by [deleted] »

petercooper wrote: post #102
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 (…

Whoa, that 40->50k over 40 years stat seemed ridiculous to me so I looked it up and you're right. This strikes me as bizarre because in the UK, both prices and wages have blown through the roof over the same period. I wonder what the deal is here (though the USD-GBP rate was significantly different decades ago).

[deleted]

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

#163

Post by zmmmmm »

thailandstartup wrote: post #72
wallflower wrote: post #6

I think I could get by on $30,000 a year and working on my own ISV in a nice Latin American country. Is anyone doing that here?

About $35000 here in Thailand gives me a lifestyle that I think of as lavish and decadent, but I guess the OP would consider frugal and cautious. 120sqm condo beside the sea, eat out every night, tennis and language lessons. I could probably cut the budget down to around $20000 in a pinch and still live comfortably. The major downside is that there aren't many hackers about.

Aren't you concerned that there seems to be a coup every second week blockading the airport and then every other week someone is arrested for accidentally insulting the King? I'd feel a little edgy living their as a foreigner!

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

#164

Post by zmmmmm »

I can't imagine needing $200k / year to live comfortably. I'd like to see this analysis performed with a $100k / year income. That is still very comfortable, especially if it means you can afford to live somewhere cheaper and cut a lot of your other expenses.

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

#165

Post by dedward »

jdc wrote: post #2

...where retiring rich is defined as spending $300,000 annually. I'd personally move somewhere cheaper once my income no longer depended on my location.

Defining "rich" as a fixed amount is silly - define "Rich" as "all your time is your own, and the passive income you make on the side is enough to cover your expenses, whatever they are".

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

#167

Post by elai »

cageface wrote: post #147
joe_the_user wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exponential curves indeed can't continue indefinitely. At the same, most of the reasoning about the future by even intelligent people still tends to involve linear extrapolation rather than exponential extrapolation - that's what makes sense to us. Thus it's more likely for a standard prediction is go wrong in the direction of the exponential trends continuing rather than in the direction of the trends stopping. More…

That's exactly why I think trying to predict what the world is going to be like in 40 years is just about impossible. The only thing you can say with much confidence is that it's likely to be very different from the way it is today.

It will also stay very similar. The outline of life in the 1970s vs 2010 is still fairly similar. Drive around in cars, live in a house, take the subway, read the newspaper, watch tv, go to the movie theatre, buy food at a grocery store, call people on a landline, plug stuff into the wall, use your fridge and hair drier, drive around in your RV, fly an airplane at supersonic speeds, rent an apartment, have a family reunion, go to the doctor, get surgery, take drugs, read a book, go to the public library, go to school, flush a toliet, use an AC, open the windows. The dragon ball Z live action movie, although pretty horrible has a pretty accurate deception how high school will look like in 20 to 40 years. Pretty much the same with more flat screens and computers.

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

#168

Post by jimbokun »

cageface wrote: post #147
joe_the_user wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exponential curves indeed can't continue indefinitely. At the same, most of the reasoning about the future by even intelligent people still tends to involve linear extrapolation rather than exponential extrapolation - that's what makes sense to us. Thus it's more likely for a standard prediction is go wrong in the direction of the exponential trends continuing rather than in the direction of the trends stopping. More…

That's exactly why I think trying to predict what the world is going to be like in 40 years is just about impossible. The only thing you can say with much confidence is that it's likely to be very different from the way it is today.

"That's exactly why I think trying to predict what the world is going to be like in 40 years is just about impossible."

Douglas Englebart had a pretty good approximation of what much of our information technology would be like today over 40 years ago.

http://sloan.stanford.edu/mousesite/1968Demo.html

Of course, this was because he put together all of the necessary underlying technology. I remember reading an interview with him in the 90s, asking him if he was surprised how fast technology was moving. He replied, no, he was shocked how long it took for the things he had working in the lab decades ago to reach the main stream.

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

#169

Post by jhpriestley »

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?

Why is any of that relevant? If we're discussing poverty rates, then we need to come up with a reasonably objective metric for poverty, not just throw together some cherry-picked indicators. Economists have put a lot of thought into a few metrics, like inflation-adjusted median wage, which you simply ignore in favor of your own 'tv-size index'.

For example, those larger houses may be on cheaper land (further from cities), or people may be spending more of their income on housing (at the cost of, say, food quality, or education). There are a million ways for an individual statistic to be misleading. This is the whole reason that we use aggregated statistics like real median wage.

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

#170

Post by jerf »

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?

My approach is to live in Michigan and have half my family work as engineers for car companies.

This approach may not scale, and may carry certain other disadvantages. (I like the Michigan part, honestly, but your mileage most assuredly may vary.)

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