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I regret selling my startup

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141–150 of 158 posts

Re: I regret selling my startup

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’d never put your whole nut into treasuries unless you wanted to get killed by inflation. You’re looking at a 50 year retirement if you’re in your 30s. “4%” (Trinity study style I mean) is the pop culture number that accommodates down markets and inflation over 50 years, to a first approximation.

Definitely not, though I was just demonstrating the kind of cashflow you can get from a (default) risk free bond. The days of buying an index and selling 4%/year being your best strategy are past. At least until/when yields decline again. If you're strategic and barbell your portfolio somewhat, you can generate around 10% with moderate risk (and this is 10% distributions/dividends, not including any capital gains). T…

Agreed, this is certainly reasonable. 4% isn’t and shouldn’t be taken as particularly good, it just works and it’s what a lucky retiree might know about.

Re: I regret selling my startup

#142
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you need substantially more than 80k to live if your house is paid down in cash? Earning 200k is usually about spending half of your net income on mortgages etc. Not that 80k is the lifestyle of a king, but it is plenty to get by with if all you are buying is insurance, food and entertainment.

We are talking early retirement here, so presumably young enough to still have a family. Daycare in my area is ~2400 a month (not the super fancy daycares either, they are over 3k a month). If you want to fully fund a 529 college fund, that is 30k a year for 15 years[1]. So right off the bat we have 50k a year in expenses for having a single kid, not counting feeding them and other activities. If you choose public sc…

Why are you funding over half a million just for college?

Re: I regret selling my startup

#143
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it takes 2 million to get you a “decent” house, you’re already playing the status games that will have you chasing money forever.

Not if you want to live in a good neighborhood in a major city.

If NYC and SF are the only cities you consider “major” then sure. Just speaking from my own experience, for less than 1M you can get a lovely home in a nice neighborhood in Dallas (actually in the city).

Re: I regret selling my startup

#144
Great post! I've gone through a similar experience after selling a business a few years ago. I especially liked your "offense vs defense" point on cash flows. I'd never thought of it that way but its a very apt description of the change in mindset. All that said, I can't say that I regret the decision. Best of luck

Re: I regret selling my startup

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't care about the grammatical mistake (and you didn't "learn" anything then, no knowledge was gained). What bothers me is the passive-aggressive way the other person pointed it out.

I didn't take it passively aggressively at all, as the OP of this thread. Only you're doing so.

It’s objectively obtuse, there’s simply no way he genuinely thought your mistake was an alternative way to use horde.

Re: I regret selling my startup

#146
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same thing was said by other famous philosophers, such as A. Grande who publicly declared: "whoever said money can't solve your problems, must not have had enough money to solve them". Yet there seem to be many other things playing a role in happiness. Besides the famous ones like love, I can cite Ikegai, Wanderlust, Ubuntu, Hygge, Wabi-Sabi (...), and it may be foolish to concentrate on just one of them.

Money doesn't bring happiness, but lack of money can bring hardship and lack of happiness. Money can alleviate hardship and stress, but happiness is more than absence of sadness, hardship, or stress.

> Money can alleviate hardship and stress, but happiness is more than absence of sadness, hardship, or stress.

Indeed: happiness seems to require a certain degree of introspection to realize other things, such as social status or Ikegai, are needed too - hence the (also) famous corollary "Ain't got enough money to pay me respect; Ain't no budget when I'm on the set; If I like it, then that's what I get, yeah"

My favorite philosopher indeed!

Re: I regret selling my startup

#147
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost all of my problems can be immediately solved with large amounts of money. Those that cannot will certainly be made more bearable by the simple fact that I have a lot less to worry about, and that I will have more mental and emotional resources available to deal with them. Money will _absolutely_ buy happiness. Whoever tells you otherwise is fooling you.

The same thing was said by other famous philosophers, such as A. Grande who publicly declared: "whoever said money can't solve your problems, must not have had enough money to solve them". Yet there seem to be many other things playing a role in happiness. Besides the famous ones like love, I can cite Ikegai, Wanderlust, Ubuntu, Hygge, Wabi-Sabi (...), and it may be foolish to concentrate on just one of them.

I think there's a difference between being sad/unhappy, and having a problem which causes unhappiness.

Other than mental health issues, 99% of the problems that might cause unhappiness can be solved with money (though money not be the only factor).

Problem: Your mother requires an expensive medical treatment to prevent her from dying.

Solution: $$$

Your mother being dead may cause sadness, but that's not from a problem because there is no solution to someone being dead. That type of sadness is a normal, human emotion. It's entirely different to feel sad because of unchangeable realities than because you don't have enough money to fix the thing that's making you sad.

Enough money can buy the health (up to a point) of yourself, your family, your friends, and even your acquaintances. It can give you the breathing room to develop meaningful connections, to go to therapy, to exercise.

You might not be happy with money, but it has the potential to solve all the problems that affect you directly, and affect everyone you know directly.

Re: I regret selling my startup

#148
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, index funds are boring, there's very little to tinker with, and I'd have so much money it doesn't matter whether the market is down for years at a time.

It’s true but it’s still depressing if the market has a bad week and you know that you are down by 6 figures. It bounces back in the end but it’s a source of background stress.

Taleb talks about this specifically, his advice is to only check stocks occasionally that way you don't get the negative feedback from the down cycles.

His argument is that since stock generally goes up, if you're not constantly checking, when you DO check it will be higher than it was before and you'll feel positive about it.

Re: I regret selling my startup

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad for environment. No friends around. Pluses and minuses so it’s not obvious.

The irony... I did this. I cashed out in my 20s, bought a $2m home in the middle of nowhere (that goes a long way out here), and live out my days in my workshop surrounded by singing birds, bees, wildlife, trees and gardens, with views across lakes and plains. And some cosmopolitan wants to tell me, as they cram another million people into gridlocked high-rises in their smoggy grey hellhole, that we in the country ar…

My favorite is when they claim rural areas means destitution and also that public transportation can replace vehicles.

There are a _lot_ of people on this site who have no idea what actual rural looks like.

Re: I regret selling my startup

#150
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not if you want to live in a good neighborhood in a major city.

If NYC and SF are the only cities you consider “major” then sure. Just speaking from my own experience, for less than 1M you can get a lovely home in a nice neighborhood in Dallas (actually in the city).

in this area 300k will get you a very nice, above average house and moving outside of the city will get you even more house for that price.

I'm all the time telling people who claim they can't afford housing because it's 1-2 million to move.

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