531–540 of 573 posts
In my opinion the high cost of living kills everything else on that list. I'd much rather have a comfortable living, travel the world and be optimistic that i will have no problems buying a nice house for me and my spouse/family if i need to/should i want to. I don't really see this possible based on what i hear from a couple of friends living and working there. Both consumed by their tech jobs, some cool things to d…
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For me, SF and NYC have a huge advantage over Chicago and that is mild winters. New York gets cold, but not that cold and you can wait inside for the subway. I spent two years in Minneapolis insisting I could take it, but the simple fact is that long, bitterly cold winters mean you end up inactive, indoors, cooped up at home more often than not. At least I did. It felt like wasted time, and Chicago is only marginally…
I lived in Chicago for 6 years; being cooped up inside meant more time sipping hot beverages in front of my computer, which may be called sedentary but certainly not 'lost time' for a programmer.
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Try http://networthify.com/calculator/earlyretirement for a fairly straightforward, income-independent answer to that question. Tell it your annual income and expenses, and it'll tell you when you can retire. Adjust the numbers and your retirement date changes. (The defaults for "return on investment" and "withdrawal rate" work pretty well.)
Just don't put in zero for annual savings or the savings rate, because what I'm guessing is a divide by zero somewhere can hang your browser.
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Be sure you're counting both sides of that. If you can get work in a lucrative field, higher cost of living is offset by higher income, and you actually get ahead on aggregate since some expenses are the same nationwide.
But you will pay higher income taxes even though your buying power is the same as someone earning much less in Alabama.
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Try http://networthify.com/calculator/earlyretirement for a fairly straightforward, income-independent answer to that question. Tell it your annual income and expenses, and it'll tell you when you can retire. Adjust the numbers and your retirement date changes. (The defaults for "return on investment" and "withdrawal rate" work pretty well.)
Whenever I see one of these retirement calculators I don't understand how people save enough to actually retire. Are most people really socking away 25%+ of their gross income every year?? I certainly enjoy motorcycles and exotic travel far too much for that to ever become a reality (not to mention pay rent in the Bay Area and try to maintain an organic/local-sourced diet which costs about double a typical grocery st…
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math-behind-early-retirement/
http://blog.networthify.com
Disclaimer: Networthify is my side project and my savings rate is not 80% but its a lot higher than 25%.
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I considered moving to SF but chose Austin instead. I refuse to live in a state with such a dysfunctional government ... You do realize you live in Texas, right?
Have you been to Austin? Or Dallas? (I'd personally stay away from Houston and San Antonio). It sounds like you're passing judgement without really experiencing the area. Texas is a fairly reasonable state when it comes to most of their laws. There has been some controversy around the human-origin that will be taught in schools, but this issue isn't isolated to just Texas. And beyond that, if you really dislike the p…
It sounds like you did the same to California. The parts of the government being reacted to are probably the laws about when you can kill people (e.g. if they rob your neighbor), express lane to the death penalty, etc., etc.
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As a non-Texan, I'd be interested if could you share some of the dysfunctions of their government? I haven't heard many people claim that before, so I'm curious as to what I'm missing.
TX has had massive shortfalls in the last two biennial budgets. As big as CA's annual one: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/04/us-usa-deficits-st... So imagine an already very low service state having to cut budgets even more. Am sure that will work out well for the kids long-term. The State is tossing welfare/health/service issues down to the counties now, so expect your property taxes to skyrocket in the next…
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Honest question: do you actually know what fascist means? If so, do you not understand that it is vastly different than "leftist" or "socialist"?
Yeah, I know that leftist groupthink doesn't comprehend that fascism is a leftist political ideology. Hint, you know what NAZI means?
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I still don't get why folks don't consider living in places just outside of SF that are much more affordable. Places such as South San Francisco, Daly City, Brisbane, Oakland, etc. The proximity to the city is very close (5-10 mins).
None of those places are, in practice, 5-10 minutes from a place you want to be. You can see that in the BART schedules: http://www.bart.gov/schedules/bylineresults.aspx?route=7&... And that doesn't include walking or waiting time. Driving might seem like a plausible option, but that's generally worse. Oakland City Center to Embarcadero is 25 minutes by car, not counting parking. Daly City to the Mission is 20 min…
I live/work in soma and as long as I avoid commute traffic, Daly City really is only ~10 minutes away. A coworker lives in Brisbane and his commute averages 11 minutes. I frequently visit parts of Oakland far further from City Center (say Mills College area), and it is just under 20 minutes.
If you lack a car, well, the numbers look terrible as well in San Francisco. This is most obvious when you note that you can bike from most A to most B faster than Muni can take you. As another example, downtown Oakland is closer to Embarcadero or even Union Square by BART than Inner Sunset is by Muni Metro.
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You can conservatively spend 3% of a lump sum each year and the earnings will keep up with inflation. So if you had $1m in savings, you could spend $30k/year in today's dollars forever (and still have $1m at the end). If you want to spend down the principal, the calculation becomes more complex and you need to use software rather than a rule of thumb.
I thought the typical withdraw rate is 4% to maintain a portfolio indefinitely.
The 4% number comes from a study that discovered that a portfolio with a constant 4% rate would survive any period in US stock market history -- even the Great Depression. But past performance doesn't guarantee the future performance. Try to do this with European markets and there are periods where a nest egg won't survive a 0% withdrawal rate. But yeah 4% is the guess people use when planning retirement.
Thats fine, but in real life you have to be flexible as you approach retirement and keep an eye on the math. The first 10 years of retirement are the critical ones. After that you hopefully built up a buffer and don't have to worry due to the nature of compound interest.
More info:
http://blog.networthify.com/withdrawal-rates/
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/05/29/how-much-do-i-need-for-retirement/
http://financialmentor.com/free-articles/retirement-planning/how-much-to-retire/are-safe-withdrawal-rates-really-safe
http://firecalc.com/