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Ask HN: 5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Advice?

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Re: Ask HN: 5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Advice?

#71

Post by Flemlord »

vaksel wrote: post #10

cut your living expenses...have a car? sell it for a beater. Have high rent? Move to Bronx or Brooklyn or Queens or Jersey City(if your work is close to penn station). Or if your parents live locally, move in with them(I did this). Switch to a ramen diet....stop going out, stop buying shit. Stretch every penny. You won't believe how little you can live on, if you cut out all the bullshit. Start working on your contac…

> You won't believe how little you can live on, if you cut out all the bullshit.

No kidding. With my first startup I was living on hot dogs and hadn't left the house for months. I had literally reduced my expenses to mortgage, utilities, food. I stretched 3 months of living expenses into a year, although I ended up not needing it as we got funded after 6 months.

My one splurge was a good suit the first time we went on a fund raising interview.

Re: Ask HN: 5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Advice?

#72

Post by tphyahoo »

_b8r0 wrote: post #55

There's a lot of good advice here from other posters on living frugally which is all good stuff and I highly recommend you take what people have said on board about living cheaper. I'd like to make a comment about your situation as a whole. You left your job in April, that's May through to January where you've had no salary. 8 months. You're looking at 'another 5-7 months' before funding in a recession. In effect, wh…

Yeah, I moved to poland for four months for basically this reasons.

It seemed kind of bizarre, but it did make my money last a lot longer, even with the travel cost of getting there and back.

However, I had a friend to move in with so I wouldn't get lonely in an environment where I didn't know the language or culture. Without this, it probably would have been impossible. (I would likely have gotten depressed and unable to get any work done.)

Re: Ask HN: 5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Advice?

#74

Post by akronim »

critic wrote: post #61
asnyder wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's likely he doesn't have a car, most New Yorkers don't. I'd also recommend switching to a fruits and vegetables diet, instead of ramen. There are enough dedicated fruit stores in New York that make fruits and vegetables cheaper and healthier than ramen. In New York, an example of this kind of store would be "Three Guys From Brooklyn", or "Circus Fruits". With these sorts of stores you can easily bring your food ex…

If you are paying $1000 (with roommates) to $2000 (1BR or studio) in rent, saving a few bucks by changing your diet won't make much difference. By the way, aren't programmers in hedge funds supposed to make $200k-$500k a year after bonuses and before taxes?

Sample bias - you only hear about the ones making loads because they're the only ones with noteworthy income.

Re: Ask HN: 5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Advice?

#75

Post by hk »

iamelgringo wrote: post #57
cperciva wrote: post #13

I'm worried about that 1-in-20 (?) chance that we don't manage to line up funding in time You should be worried -- and if I were you I'd re-evaluate your odds. My guess is that a startup which would print money would still have more than a 1-in-20 chance of failing to get funding at the moment. Assuming you definitely want to continue with this startup (and think about that carefully -- sometimes there's a reason why…

A serial entrepreneur friend who's looking for funding on his 5th startup right now: """You pretty much have to have a working product, thrilled customers and a revenue stream right now for VC's to look at you.""" Getting funding has gotten pretty tough here in the Valley. I can only imagine that the funding scene is going to be a lot worse in New York.

Huh? If you have a product that works, is growing, and revenue coming in, you don't need a VC, you need a normal business loan from a bank. If you actually have money coming in and a business plan that's demonstrably working, but just need money to expand (that's the word regular businesses use to mean "scale"), then you need to 1. get an accountant to write it up in the correct manner and 2. make an appointment with the business section of a good bank.

You still might have trouble with that right now, it's really not a good time for any kind of loans, and you can forget these multi-million dollar speculative paydays with little obligation or timeline, but if you have a proper business then you have proper business options and hopefully don't have to sell your businesses' soul to get the cash you need to grow.

Re: Ask HN: 5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Advice?

#76

Post by Eliezer »

mattmaroon wrote: post #32
Eliezer wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realize this is a cheap shot... but... 95% probability of a startup being funded? You didn't work on the software that rated mortgage default probabilities, did you?

creditdefaultswap.com baby. Web 2.0 mortgage derivatives. Elevator pitch: It's like Flickr for collateralized debt obligations.

I think you should have just kept that idea quietly to yourself. Forever.

Re: Ask HN: 5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Advice?

#77

Post by recession »

Tichy wrote: post #54

Finding contract work is not so much work, especially if you are willing to code in Java. Personally I dread the day when I will have to do so again, but it is better as starving. Plus, 3 to 4 months can pay for the whole year. Just check the typical sites, I had good experiences with jobserve.co.uk (they don't only cover the UK - but I am in Europe/Germany). iPhone contracting seems to be quite popular atm, too. If…

Can you use Clojure for the Java work? I'd only do Java projects if I could use Clojure as often as humanly possible.

Re: Ask HN: 5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Advice?

#78

Post by recession »

_b8r0 wrote: post #55

There's a lot of good advice here from other posters on living frugally which is all good stuff and I highly recommend you take what people have said on board about living cheaper. I'd like to make a comment about your situation as a whole. You left your job in April, that's May through to January where you've had no salary. 8 months. You're looking at 'another 5-7 months' before funding in a recession. In effect, wh…

I didn't mean to imply that I'm 5-7 months from a funding event. I have 5-7 months left of savings. I keep hearing that funding prospects look good, but I don't know for sure because I'm not directly involved in the fundraising, which is good, because I'd probably have an aneurysm if I had to deal with that. I'd rather work on Wall Street than be trying to raise money.

Re: Ask HN: 5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Advice?

#80

Post by xiaoma »

tortilla wrote: post #64
mhb wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if you're eating ramen, try to find some without the MSG that most brands have in abundance. Blech.

I'll also chop up some broccoli and add it to the ramen. Along with some shredded pork (MSG-free) and chili, it's a pretty tasty dish: http://www.piermall.com/Chinese-Shredded-Pork-Sung-No-MSG-p/... http://chowtimes.com/2006/05/21/shredded-dried-pork-aka-meat...

I for one think MSG is a good thing but for someone so concerned with it, I'm surprised you're recommending broccoli. Other than cheese, soy and tomato, broccoli is about as high in glutamate as a food gets.

http://www.swivel.com/data_columns/spreadsheet/2486462

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