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My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

software.rajivprab.com

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Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#151

Post by cutler »

dogma1138 wrote: post #83
Sholmesy wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should reconsider your worth and attempt to re-negotiate pay. I started out 6-7 years ago at £30k and am now at £100k + options (worthless). Have only ever worked at startups. You can 1.5x that easily at a big tech (some FAANG jobs exist in London).

You then end up paying London rent… You won’t be able to afford to rent a luxury London flat on 100K or even 150K but a 2 bed in any decent area is £2-2.5K council tax and utilities would be another £200 p/m easily. You are probably better off making £80K in Manchester as a senior dev than £100-110K in London. Newcastle has also a decent tech ecosystem tho it is very much focused around Sage.

It's the other way round. The London wage differential is much higher than the rent differential outside London.

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#152

Post by xwdv »

jpatters wrote: post #84
yulaow wrote: post #47

The author of this blog post should change it adding "... in silicon valley and in a booming stock market" Most of what he said doesn't apply outside of that specific bubble

And with no kids.

How much should one expect kids to cost? Is an extra $1k in expenses a reasonable estimate?

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#153

Post by bjornsing »

dsomers wrote: post #121
sneak wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the biggest tragedies, in my view, is what a lovely place Europe is to live, and what utter lack (seemingly for no great underlying reason) of class mobility exists there.

What an absolute joke. The United States has terrible class mobility compared to the Netherlands or Germany for example. You don’t have anything to support what you said other than a skewed perspective created by American centric media. Edit: I guess the down voters here hate facts. The US scores lower on social mobility than the majority of European countries https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_In…

I don’t think that measurement of social mobility makes much sense in this context.

Sure, moving from lower working class to upper middle class is probably easier in Sweden than in many other countries. But the thing is: it doesn’t make much of a difference.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the Nordic welfare state kind of games the social mobility score in this way, by having such a compressed income distribution. If you go from $20k after taxes to $35k after taxes you’ve moved through more or less the whole income distribution, but your life is pretty much the same.

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#154

Post by dnate »

tiagobraw wrote: post #138

> but as someone without children this is a huge factor that influences almost every other decision he listed there: - living with roommates or renting a cheap apartment - not wanting to buy an apartment - having the time to do side hustles - even changing career paths is challenging when you have a family to take care of - saving the majority of his annual compensation I don’t want to say his advices are bad, just k…

I'm living with my son and girlfriend with a roommate. It's doable if you are open minded, know open minded people and don't care too much what society thinks a family should look like. An honestly, it's great to have a buddy right at home in these social isolation times.

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#155

Post by vjeux »

pyrale wrote: post #131
sneak wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your flip comment seems to belie the fact that he's only earned at least a half a million dollars for one year. Most of his years he earned substantially less than that. The majority of his NW comes from investment and savings, not income. The point of the article is that cutting expenses, saving, investing wisely, and aggressively pursuing pay raises can yield a few million well before retirement age. These sort of…

> Your flip comment seems to belie the fact that he's only earned at least a half a million dollars for one year. I would say $475k is close enough, in all honesty. > The majority of his NW comes from investment and savings, not income. Sum of (earnings - spent) over the career is $2,611,000. Net worth by the end is $2,400,000. In order for investment returns to be above savings on income, taxes would have to be 42.3…

Tech stock is taxed at around 50% when you get it and then 20% of the upswing. So $475k total comp is more like $250k in your bank account in practice.

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#156

Post by d_burfoot »

supernova87a wrote: post #109

Here's 2 questions for the "FIRE" crowd. 1) To stop working when you hit a certain number seems to me to be falling into the faulty logic illustrated in Freakonomics -- when a taxi driver works every day towards a certain $ figure, he suffers on crappy days (keeps on driving to little benefit) when fares are just not coming, and cuts off his earnings on great days where business is pouring in like crazy. Instead, you…

As someone who is considering the FIRE path, I appreciated your point about the taxi driver. I have a list of big projects I want to pursue after getting out of the corporate world, but I wouldn't recommend FIRE to someone who just wants to be lazy: I don't think laziness is good for mental health.

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#157

Post by yunohn »

dsomers wrote: post #121
sneak wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the biggest tragedies, in my view, is what a lovely place Europe is to live, and what utter lack (seemingly for no great underlying reason) of class mobility exists there.

What an absolute joke. The United States has terrible class mobility compared to the Netherlands or Germany for example. You don’t have anything to support what you said other than a skewed perspective created by American centric media. Edit: I guess the down voters here hate facts. The US scores lower on social mobility than the majority of European countries https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_In…

Given my experience in NL, I would disagree. I see a very clear class divide here, which is just mostly ignored by the middle/upper classes and government.

Most of the population spend the majority of their income on rent, commuting, and essentials. Students also have lots of debt over the past decade (15k on average). Owning a car is expensive, but so is public transport (esp. for a family). Renting is expensive, but so is buying a house.

Income tax brackets range from ~40-50%, while corporate and dividend taxes are minimal - 15-20%. VAT is regressive and applies on almost all goods incl. groceries, ranging from 5-21%. There is no capital gains taxes, so this obviously benefits the economically active upper/elite classes who have assets/savings to invest - while middle class families do not own much at all.

Since the Mobility Index rankings focus on lower -> middle class mobility, it shows the Netherlands in a positive light. However, the income divide between the two classes is actually not as pronounced as the USA, while the gap between middle to upper is incredibly massive (like most of the world).

I guess what I'm trying to say is that despite the expected policy differences and rankings, NL is quite strongly divided economically. In my experience, the average Dutch don't mix with the poor, nor show off their riches, nor think too deeply about the elite classes. This mindset is essentially ignorance - neglecting poorness, brushing off government corruption, and assisting the funneling of taxes & wealth.

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#158

Post by yunohn »

bjornsing wrote: post #153
dsomers wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What an absolute joke. The United States has terrible class mobility compared to the Netherlands or Germany for example. You don’t have anything to support what you said other than a skewed perspective created by American centric media. Edit: I guess the down voters here hate facts. The US scores lower on social mobility than the majority of European countries https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_In…

I don’t think that measurement of social mobility makes much sense in this context. Sure, moving from lower working class to upper middle class is probably easier in Sweden than in many other countries. But the thing is: it doesn’t make much of a difference. I have a sneaking suspicion that the Nordic welfare state kind of games the social mobility score in this way, by having such a compressed income distribution. I…

> If you go from $20k after taxes to $35k after taxes you’ve moved through more or less the whole income distribution, but your life is pretty much the same.

100% agreed - my sibling comment about NL also implies the same.

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#159

Post by mathgladiator »

supernova87a wrote: post #109

Here's 2 questions for the "FIRE" crowd. 1) To stop working when you hit a certain number seems to me to be falling into the faulty logic illustrated in Freakonomics -- when a taxi driver works every day towards a certain $ figure, he suffers on crappy days (keeps on driving to little benefit) when fares are just not coming, and cuts off his earnings on great days where business is pouring in like crazy. Instead, you…

So, I'll speak as a recently retired principal engineer from big tech.

(1) The number to reach is an inflection point where you can pivot and focus on things you don't like about work. For example, as much as I like architecting systems, I definitely don't like architecting through people which is what the job demands. A good question then is why do the climb at all, and there is a bit of disease of more in our culture.

(2) Whatever you want! One of the reasons I retired was so that I could better balance time with my wife and work on my open source project: http://www.adama-lang.org/blog/retirement-going-all-in

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#160

Post by vjeux »

xwdv wrote: post #152
jpatters wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And with no kids.

How much should one expect kids to cost? Is an extra $1k in expenses a reasonable estimate?

Child care in the bay area is $2-3k / month per child. Plus you need a bigger home with one more bedroom so an additional $1-2k/month. Then a bigger car. This is without all the expenses related to having a child such as healthcare, food, activities…

It goes up quickly!

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