231–240 of 323 posts
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> Except that the most interesting part of life is over What makes life beyond 55 uninteresting?
I think that depends on who you ask. People in their 20s still think people in their 50s are old.
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I agree, what’s useful about this mentality is not about becoming a multimillionaire, it’s about having your wealth match your income. A doctor making 250k is often living pay check to pay check while spending crazy money. Even with a steady paycheck their not accumulating wealth. Even worse, a football player with a 20million dollar contract is likely to end up broke if they instantly maximize their spending. Howeve…
It bothers me when people use the phrase living paycheck to paycheck to describe both someone who literally doesn’t make enough money to cover the essential bills of living as well as someone making $200k+. These people are not in the same boat whatsoever. The doctor, or any professional making that much, simply needs to turn in the lease on the luxury car, or downsize their house, or cancel their vacation to materia…
There is already a separate terms to describe people who live paycheck to paycheck to cover essential living expenses, it is called poverty.
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>Outside of real outlier status where you're paid really, really large amounts of money for your services (like notable entertainer or cardiac surgeon) the way to wealth is to own the means of production. Period. This is a lazy view, or a really privileged one at least. I know a couple of people in their fifties who have retired from putting as much money into the market as possible (post-tax and pre-tax) while livin…
Are you aware of the fact that your anecdotal evidence from the fifties may no longer be pertinent? Have you seen what happened to wages since then? To the cost of living? To the cost of homes?
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I think that's the point of the article. If you have 4 weeks' worth of spending saved then it's difficult. If you have 40, then it's fairly easy. If you have 400, it's trivial.
well.. I was getting at, it still can be mentally difficult to pry yourself away from it, even if you financially can 'afford' it.
I understand this isn't the point of the article, but it seems like a roundabout way of saying "don't overspend". This part in particular bothers me : > More importantly though, the best way to climb the wealth ladder is to spend money according to your level. As far as I (a non-economist) can personally tell, any notion of climbing up some abstract wealth ladder is synonym with a salary increase for the vast majorit…
I don't know what feeds into the other. Is my taste for recklessness a result of my implicit knowledge that I can generate a good sum of money when I need. Or am I waking up everyday and putting in the work in order to satisfy my reckless side? What I know for sure is that one can deliberately climb the ladder. And the undisputed "best way" to climb the wealth ladder is to generate (not receive) income. There are many ways to do that. Usually employment isn't one.
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Even if you don't need it, you really probably do. A lot of people talking about entrepreneurship and whatnot have some kind of blindness to the idea that one can fail at these things, and once you've eaten up your savings you're back at square 0 and back to the soul-crushing reality of job. Objectively it is wiser to simply keep the job in the first place.
50% of small businesses fail. 20% fail in their first year. The real cost of failure isn't just loss of savings. It's potential homelessness, bankruptcy or death through less of health cover, or bankrupcty through student loan payments. In a functional culture the cost of entry for small businesses is much lower, as is the Total Cost of Failure. For a country that claims to be business friendly, the US makes it unbel…
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So only if I buy direct? Not index funds?
(assuming you're asking in good faith) It's the same thing, just on a different scale. If you own, say, one share of VTSAX (Vanguard Total Market Index) you now own, by proxy, 1.8% of one share of Microsoft stock. You don't have any direct voting or economic rights but because of the way a mutual fund is structured you get most of the economic benefit of that fraction of a share. I.e. you get the benefit of most of t…
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does a swedish exec really make just $5000/month post tax? that's not much more than I net at my first software gig out of college (and not in SF or NYC).
Where I live (the Netherlands) that means bout 10.000 pre-tax. And that is quite a lot, it is like a group manager (i.e. 50 people to manage) in a medium to large size company. Executive level is probably more. But not a lot.
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I think the labels are not very helpful, but tying each level to 0.01% of an individuals net worth is. For example, I still don't flinch at paying 1 or 2 dollars more for items at the grocery store, but I do for paying 10-20 dollars more for items at a restaurant. "Travel" can mean grey hounds and motels, or first-class flights and luxury hotels. Philanthropy can be donating $100,000 or giving a buck to a guy on the…
I agree with the concept of the levels, I disagree with the ordering - particularly the final one, because philanthropy is something that almost everyone can practice, it's an individual choice. The idea that you must first have your entire life laid out with a massive house and first class flights and stuff before you start helping others is deeply wrong IMO.
Kind of like the old saw about only the poor are "crazy", with enough money you become "eccentric".
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does a swedish exec really make just $5000/month post tax? that's not much more than I net at my first software gig out of college (and not in SF or NYC).
According to wikipedia, average salary in Sweden is $2700 post tax ($3500 pre tax)