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My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

software.rajivprab.com

51–60 of 583 posts

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#51
> Disclaimer: I acknowledge that I’ve been very privileged, especially in the educational opportunities I’ve had.

This might sound reasonable from a US-centric perspective, but to me it reads like utter nonsense. The main privilege here is access to the US labor market and tax policy. There are no stories like this one where I live (in Sweden). Absolutely none.

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#53
post #42

What can we European devs do to boost tech salaries in Europe? I love my five weeks of paid holiday, 14 weeks of paid paternity leave, and free healthcare. but I would still prefer early retirement instead of working till 65.

Create more European tech companies

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#55

> Disclaimer: I acknowledge that I’ve been very privileged, especially in the educational opportunities I’ve had. This might sound reasonable from a US-centric perspective, but to me it reads like utter nonsense. The main privilege here is access to the US labor market and tax policy. There are no stories like this one where I live (in Sweden). Absolutely none.

Yeah I d say he s been dealt very bad cards, had no problem being independent growing up in Normandy, France. I think we're priviledged by not being in the US and that guy is at the top of a turd pile...

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#56
post #42

What can we European devs do to boost tech salaries in Europe? I love my five weeks of paid holiday, 14 weeks of paid paternity leave, and free healthcare. but I would still prefer early retirement instead of working till 65.

Independent contractor or entering management. Employment salaries go high currently only in Switzerland, though they have definitely been rising in recent years also in Central Europe.

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#57

So rough calculation here.. $100K first job which is around £74K in the UK… you aren’t likely to get anywhere near that as a grad masters or not here but after taxes and student loan payments (which are deducted from your income in the UK) and all other deductions you’ll end up with £42,908.26 per year, that’s $56K. And this is where this breaks down for people in tech outside of the US at least. In the UK the path w…

Tax in the UK is absurd (for what most actually get out of it)

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#59
post #41

The author was lucky to earn a huge amount of money. 99% of the people can't do anything with this advice because they don't have any savings to begin with. I wonder if the author even understands how lucky he is.

This is why people don’t want to talk about money

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#60
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.

I’m not sure I understand. Is it really true that you can’t extract 4% cash money per year off of a million dollars, even in a down market, without shrinking the principal?

$100k should be enough to live comfortably off of in the Midwest.

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