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Early Retirement (2006)

philip.greenspun.com

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Re: Early Retirement (2006)

#121

Post by nabla9 »

Famous for Greenspun's tenth rule of programming:

"Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspun's_tenth_rule

>The rule expresses the opinion that the argued flexibility and extensibility designed into the programming language Lisp includes all functionality that is theoretically needed to write any complex computer program, and that the features required to develop and manage such complexity in other programming languages are equivalent to some subset of the methods used in Lisp.

>Other programming languages, while claiming to be simpler, require programmers to reinvent in a haphazard way a significant amount of needed functionality that is present in Lisp as a standard, time-proven base.

Re: Early Retirement (2006)

#122

Post by 101008 »

gfiorav wrote: post #12

I had a version of this realization early in my life. I wanted to be a musician. I thought that school and other things in life were a burden and that once I was devoted to music, I'd be happy and full. I got my dream by 18 years old. When music became my work I hated it. Made me think differently about life.

As soon as something becomes work, there is a contract (expicit or implicit) that comes with rules and conditions. After a while, any activity under contraints, rules and conditions imposed by others stop being fun, unless you are very powerful / famous / popular and you can put the rules / conditions (and even in that case, sometimes it is not possible).

Re: Early Retirement (2006)

#123

Post by burntsushi »

isthis129283 wrote: post #38
flowerlad wrote: post #2

How much money can a Silicon Valley software engineer expect to have at retirement? This article says $7 million: https://www.wealthmeta.com/blog/being-a-doctor-vs-being-a-so... Here's the back-of-the-envelope calculation: Annual salary: $250K (it is much higher at FAANG). Assume 25% tax (effective, not marginal), which leaves us with $187.5K, which is about $15K per month. Assume $5000 in monthly expenses, which lea…

You should subtract capital gains. Unless you know of a way to put $84k/year into a roth account.

If your retirement income comes entirely from long term capital gains, then the first $80K you sell per year is tax free.

Re: Early Retirement (2006)

#124

Post by neogodless »

cyberlurker wrote: post #56
flowerlad wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The greatest expense for me in retirement is now health insurance Obamacare changes that. If you don't have much income you get ACA federal tax credits.

If you withdraw from a 401k, doesn’t that become taxable income? I’m assuming if someone takes enough out per year to hit $50k+ they will reduce their federal credits to zero.

To avoid this, you want to have a multifaceted approach.

Figure out how low your expenses can be while still being quite happy with your qualify of life. Some expensive things don't provide the happiness you think they will.

Diversify the kinds of investment accounts you have. Maximize your tax-advantaged accounts like a 401k, but then contribute to a Roth IRA if available, and then plow money into a taxable brokerage account. When you approach retirement, plan to have some time period of expenses covered by cash on hand.

Then use cash, brokerage and Roth funds to cover expenses, while converting what you can from 401k or traditional IRA into Roth funds, and minimizing the income/taxation that results so you can still qualify for credits. Funds converted to Roth will be available for tax-free withdraw after 5 years, so continue to convert over time, while using the post-tax accounts to cover expenses.

Re: Early Retirement (2006)

#126

Post by brianwawok »

underseacables wrote: post #96

I’m terrified of retirement. I’ve got about 30 years to go, and I’m only just now seriously thinking about saving for retirement. My two greatest fears are that I will retire and have to take a part-time job to make ends meet, or worse, there’s a health crisis that completely wiped us out financially. Our plan is to slowly develop a small real estate portfolio of rental properties to bring in secondary streams of inc…

> there’s a health crisis that completely wiped us out financially

Do you have at least catastrophic health insurance? This is a fear you can solve for not that much money.

Re: Early Retirement (2006)

#127

Post by spacedcowboy »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #58
cyberlurker wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do people in countries with universal healthcare not have this problem? What are the types of products and services that are so significant? Surely we aren’t talking about things like Netflix and utilities?

It's a lesser problem, but there are also less opportunities to accumulate wealth rapidly. Lots of folks I know get FatFIRE (>=$5MM assets, $200k/year in income at 4% SWR) in the US and then retire to Portugal [1] (which has universal healthcare, and gets you access to the EU). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portugal_Golden_Visa

I'm a Brit, been living in the US for a decade or so now. I came here for the money and the weather, but the weather is going to shit these days...

The long term plan was always to make sufficient money to retire early, then go home. Complicating this easy straightforward idea was that I got married (!) and now have a kid who I don't want to uproot. So now I wait for college-days, and then sod off back to the UK :)

The cost of my (paid off) house in the Bay Area will fund a small mansion by the sea in the UK. Long walks on the beach with the dog seem appropriate, and will even be good for my old age :)

Re: Early Retirement (2006)

#128

Post by throwaway894345 »

ok2938 wrote: post #81
2sk21 wrote: post #75

I retired early recently - I am in my mid 50s. It's not anywhere as hard as people seem to think. With a disciplined approach to investing, I think that it's very much possible to reach financial independence with a typical tech salary in the US. I achieved FI without an extraordinarily high salary, stock grants or participating in an IPO. There is a treasure trove of information in the Bogleheads wiki: https://www.b…

My problem is, I'm kind of anti-capitalist, to make it short. Labor and capital and not just production factors, but they constitute a power relationship (and often a quite asymmetric one). I cannot bring myself to "invest" in something or believe that "my money works for me" - that's delusional. Money does not "work". People get all upset about the stance, but all I am saying is that everyone wants to profit off som…

Your investment pays someone's wage, and in exchange for your investment you get interest. This doesn't seem exploitative at all, and moreover I don't know of any economic system that has the ability to minimize poverty and maximize human rights than capitalism.

Re: Early Retirement (2006)

#129

Post by aidenn0 »

awb wrote: post #70
Domenic_S wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to believe the statement -- I don't know about the "happiness" aspect per se but regarding doing all those things you told yourself you'd do, yeah for sure. During COVID lockdown I saw hundreds of instances of a meme something along the lines of: "I used to think I just didn't have the time for all the things I wanted to accomplish; lockdown proved that isn't true!" Not exactly scientific, but I can relate to…

I read some interesting advice somewhere that said: "Sit still until you're compelled to move." I think the idea is that a lot of our wants / desires are urges that come and go, but our dreams and needs are deeper than that and we have to let those urges pass before we can find out what our true desires are.

I've tried that. Things that compel me to move: Food, water, bathroom, pain.

Perhaps I lack dreams.

Re: Early Retirement (2006)

#130

Post by bboylen »

justinram11 wrote: post #105

Perhaps I'm a bit naive in my mid-20's, but I actually don't think that I'd hate working 15-20 hours a week (at a low-stress company) for the rest of my life. Or at least until I was physically unable. I've recently been wondering if I should instead be trying to view life as a "sustainable marathon" rather than trying to cash out quickly (FIRE).

How easy is it to find these positions though
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