Climbing the Wealth Ladder • Hacker News Board

Re: Climbing the Wealth Ladder

#271

Post by teekert » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 8:58 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #269

hultner wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same in Sweden, about 10k pre tax to take home 5k. I looked up median salaries for CEOs in Sweden last year which was $7600 pre-tax where only service and the industrial sector is over that, industrial is the highest with $9150 pre-tax, that is at the CEO level, putting your take home salary with tax bracket 34 at about 5k/month, so it's probably a bit high for a high level executive at a mid-sized company.

Where is the incentive then? The difference in skill, responsibility, stress, workplace demands, etc between a cashier and a CEO are nuts. How do people do that for a few grand every month?

The incentive is in living in a country where you have 0 bills to pay when you get cancer. Where homeless people always have a place to sleep, where you generally will get help when you need it and where you can finish university debt free (and your children as well). Both the cashier and the CEO wouldn't be happy in each others jobs anyway. In such a country you don't need as much as in the US for the same standard of living as well. That said, CEOs of large companies also make millions here in the Netherlands (think dutch companies as Unilever, DSM, Philips).

Re: Climbing the Wealth Ladder

#272

Post by baud147258 » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 9:06 PM UTC

bko wrote: post #126

baud147258 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "not everyone can afford to take a week off work" Being in a country where vacation time is paid by the company (currently 7 weeks / year, even if I usually don't use up all of it), the idea that taking a day off work means less money at the end of the month is mind boggling.

Being in a country where I can negotiate with my employer as to vacation time in respect to my salary, the idea that someone has to have accept minimum of 7 weeks regardless of circumstances is mind boggling.

Well, the legal minimum is 5 weeks (congés payés), but I got also 2 more weeks, called RTT because the maximum number of weekly worked hours is 35h and it's expected that I work more than the 35h maximum per week, so the additional days off are to compensate for this (and since we're not paid by the hour, we can't just get overtime).

Re: Climbing the Wealth Ladder

#273

Post by shantly » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 9:07 PM UTC

blaser-waffle wrote: post #248

yellowstuff wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's a really good idea to live within your means and start saving early for retirement. No, most people who are young today will not be able to save anything like $8M doing that. Some things that are exceptional about the woman in this story: * She worked 67 years at the same job. * She invested in individual stocks, mostly during a period when index funds weren't available. This lack of diversification is almo…

Aside from working the same job for decades, it wasn't just any job; she wasn't a secretary at a dentist's office: > In 1947, she joined Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, a Wall Street law firm, where she worked as a legal secretary for 67 years and observed the investment strategies of the lawyers. > “She was a secretary in an era when they ran their boss’ lives, including their personal investments,” Lockshin tells…

> Also, as far as I can tell from the article, she was married but didn't have any kids.

That's huge. Kids are expensive (and the risk they expose you to, economically, is truly enormous) and that money tends to come out at the younger end of one's years, and when you're earning less, just to compound the pain (and maximize the opportunity cost).

Re: Climbing the Wealth Ladder

#274

Post by omgwtfbyobbq » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 9:16 PM UTC

ip26 wrote: post #176

pathseeker wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Having enough money to retire early is having wealth. Sort of. There's two pieces to FIRE. Saving aggressively, yes. But also by learning to live modestly, you need less wealth to retire. So half of FIRE is accumulating wealth, but the other half is needing less wealth.

Exactly. At some point the decrease in annual spending converges with the increase in annual income, and that's FIRE.

It's not like people have to retire at that point either. The general idea is that they can do what they want and aren't tied to a specific field, career, job, and so on...

Re: Climbing the Wealth Ladder

#275

Post by BeetleB » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 9:17 PM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #254

BeetleB wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you buy one share of Toyota Motor Company, you are now a part-owner of a car company, including all the factories and equipment and supply contracts and whatnot that such a thing entails. Assuming this is not specific to Toyota, what does "owning" mean? If I own one share of a company, it's incredibly rare that I have any say on any of the things you listed above. I usually do not get to vote on those. I also do…

> I mean, if I'm part of a joint venture with others to own a 100 unit apartment complex, I would expect to get some of the profit, at least. Likely about as much as my ownership stake. You might want to look into REITs.

Yes, REITs actually are required to distribute income to shareholders - unlike company stocks.

Re: Climbing the Wealth Ladder

#276

Post by BeetleB » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 9:17 PM UTC

icedchai wrote: post #255

BeetleB wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am having trouble connecting your comment to mine. Perhaps you replied to the wrong comment?

No, I replied to the correct one. I am pointing out some of the benefits of stock ownership and "no decision making power."

I suppose if you want to point it out to others. I'm well aware of them and own plenty of stocks.

Re: Climbing the Wealth Ladder

#277

Post by shantly » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 9:18 PM UTC

hultner wrote: post #231

rootusrootus wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that depends on who you ask. People in their 20s still think people in their 50s are old.

In my world 50 isn't that old in this day and age. Most people I know at an age around 50 are healthy, active and enjoy life often even more then people in their 30s with young kids and everything else around that.

Professional (Fussell's Upper-Middle) class or higher? That's wildly different from the more Middle-and-under sorts of 50-year-olds I'm familiar with. That's the decade when they tend to start to look tired all the time (more so, I mean—that kind of "oh they're finally permanently broken" tired) and start having health issues & surgeries that seriously damage quality-of-life.

Re: Climbing the Wealth Ladder

#278

Post by pwinnski » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 9:24 PM UTC

auiya wrote: post #220

wonderwonder wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that this overlooks the factor of time and compound interest. Lets say I make 60k a year and am 25 years old. If I am living paycheck to paycheck due to bad choices (partying, eating out, etc.) and then I switch my spending habits and can now live comfortably on that 60k and I can save / invest. Lets say my take home after taxes and health insurance (32% reduction) is $3,400 a month. If I can invest $1,…

42 years in the future your $4 million has deflated in value to the equivalent ~$1.4 million worth of buying power today assuming 2.5% inflation rate. Which isn't really worth much in the U.S., certainly not enough to recover from a major medical disaster.

GP was talking about saving $1200 out of $3400 take-home, which means living expenses are $2200/mo, or $26,400/year.

Let's leave things in "today's dollar" terms for simplicity: A 4% annual withdrawal from $1.4M would be $56,000, or a big upgrade over $26,4000.

A 4% annual withdrawal from $4M is $160k. But as you say, it's the equivalent of $56k today.

Re: Climbing the Wealth Ladder

#279

Post by shantly » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 9:48 PM UTC

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #114

lazyguy2 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's entirely possible for a wage earner to become a millionaire in the USA. Anybody with a middle class income can do it. It's not even complicated or hard to figure out. The problem is that it requires discipline and living under your means. The first step is to eliminate debt and don't make stupid purchases. Debt includes credit card, personal loans, car loans, and mortgages. Stupid purchases are things like expen…

> Anybody with a middle class income can do it Median income in the US per person in 2018 is 35000$. 500$ a month is 6000 a month, or 17% of that before tax. At that income level you probably don't have any income to spare after housing + food + car + health care.

If you (have to) have a car and you've got more than one person in the household I'd say any margin over expenses (savings) under $1000 is just rainy-day money, not retirement savings. It will be eaten by copays, deductibles, new tires, and so on. Just a matter of time. Might go a few months "saving" then bam, kid breaks an arm and you're in it for whatever your annual out-of-pocket max is (may be really high, but bad news, if anything more than the sniffles happens, you're hitting it)

Re: Climbing the Wealth Ladder

#280

Post by OnlineGladiator » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 9:50 PM UTC

departure wrote: post #122

OnlineGladiator wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> like notable entertainer or cardiac surgeon Google says cardiac surgeons make $400-800k, assuming that's true a very talented engineer at FAANG can easily match this (staff or senior staff level) without being mired by an additional 10 years of school. I personally know engineers making 7 digits in liquid compensation. Obviously these are not your average engineers, but it's doable if you're the 1% (to be good enou…

You also need to consider that the median tenure at these type of companies are 2-3yrs[0][1][2] (1.1 at google!). In my experience that's not enough to get the full stock grants. So even from those that could make it very few stay long enough to make these great riches your imagining. [0] https://www.payscale.com/data-packages/employee-loyalty/full... [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/average-employee-tenure-rete..…

I'm not imagining these numbers - I've seen offers from Google and I also know what I make (as well as what many of my peers make). Standard procedure is for vesting to start pro-rata after 1 year, so even the short-term Googlers you mention would hit their $500k+ annual targets. As another commenter pointed out, I am talking about annual stock, not total.

The most accurate source for compensation I currently know of is https://www.levels.fyi/