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My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

software.rajivprab.com

21–30 of 583 posts

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#21

To have 1 MM USD/EUR at the end of your thirties given an average 4 % yearly return on investment, you need to save around 4.000 USD/EUR per month starting at age 25. In Europe, if you earn around 100k EUR per year your free income will be around 5.000-6.000 EUR per month. Saving 4.000 EUR / month is doable with that but you'll have to live very frugally, not traveling much and you better not start a family unless yo…

European countries usually don't pay 100k for 15 year olds, also after tax it is (well depending on country) 4.5k in Germany. If you live frugally you can save 3k.

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#22
post #14

625k a year? Doing what exactly? Good for you, but I have never seen a spec with even a third of that salary. Or is it that it's only FAANG who's paying that big?

Stock options - it's mentioned in the article.

What proportion that must have been compared to the base! Even if it was 60% the base is still mind blowing.

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#23
post #20

To have 1 MM USD/EUR at the end of your thirties given an average 4 % yearly return on investment, you need to save around 4.000 USD/EUR per month starting at age 25. In Europe, if you earn around 100k EUR per year your free income will be around 5.000-6.000 EUR per month. Saving 4.000 EUR / month is doable with that but you'll have to live very frugally, not traveling much and you better not start a family unless yo…

I'd say the HN crowd is more likely to be in that top quintile than not

I'm not sure how true that is.

Poor people tend to hide or downplay their poverty online in an environment like this one.

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#24
post #7
post #3

Very well done. The best part is that a modest 4% return on net worth/investments will yield about 100k a year which is a very good amount for most people.

Living off 4% works in retirement because you can in part live off principle. In early retirement it’s not going to work out nearly as well because you get the reverse of dollar cost averaging, removing money in down markets is more expensive than in good ones. You need either dramatically reduce spending when your portfolio is down or to live well below the expected returns.

Agreed completely. I meant in the sense of having this 100k once you retire and to continue to work on this high paying job for a few more years assuming you do a proper asset allocation.

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#25
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a pipe dream. 100k€ a year is exceptional for an engineer in Europe. Outside of finance and some American company, it is an exceptional salary period, very rare for someone under 30. I know senior managers in some consulting company who don’t gain that in my country.

Not exceptional in Switzerland, Norway and UK

The UK has low software developer salaries. Especially when you take into consideration that it is a highly developed English-speaking country.

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#26
post #20

To have 1 MM USD/EUR at the end of your thirties given an average 4 % yearly return on investment, you need to save around 4.000 USD/EUR per month starting at age 25. In Europe, if you earn around 100k EUR per year your free income will be around 5.000-6.000 EUR per month. Saving 4.000 EUR / month is doable with that but you'll have to live very frugally, not traveling much and you better not start a family unless yo…

I'd say the HN crowd is more likely to be in that top quintile than not

(this is kind of pedantic)

Maybe HN is more likely to be in that quantile than the general population of developers; “more likely than not” implies that most people on HN are in that quantile which I kind of doubt but I don’t have data to support either way.

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#28
post #16

TLDR he rode the tech bubble, lived frugally and poured his savings into what happened to be a very favorable stock decade, which together with his tech stock options from employers made him a multimillionaire. Not to disrespect the effort that went into this, but let's make this very clear: this type of trajectory is only possible for a very limited few, in a particular moment in history. Everything seems to indicat…

Tech is not a bubble, software is transforming everything (/eating the world).

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#30

To have 1 MM USD/EUR at the end of your thirties given an average 4 % yearly return on investment, you need to save around 4.000 USD/EUR per month starting at age 25. In Europe, if you earn around 100k EUR per year your free income will be around 5.000-6.000 EUR per month. Saving 4.000 EUR / month is doable with that but you'll have to live very frugally, not traveling much and you better not start a family unless yo…

That's a big if, at least in Germany the pay seems to be capped below 100k for software engineers at least.
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