121–130 of 349 posts
> looking at the sea from an hammock and drinking too much beer with friends three times a week
I get the point he's trying to make but "relaxing" is not for everyone, some people find meaning in bettering themselves.
From a personal point of view, sitting on a beach and drinking beer for more than a weekend sounds boring to say the least.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I absolutely can and will call $1M wealthy. Anyone who thinks it isn't is absolutely living in a bubble.
I once shared this outlook, but when one considers their own ideas about the lifestyle "wealthy" entails, and run some numbers, specifically determine the annual spend for that lifestyle, one will quickly realize the truth. A million can be blown in a year, or SWR'd (safe withdrawal rate) at $40k a year indefinitely. Can you retire on $40k a year? Would you want that level of income and lifestyle? Of course this depe…
In other words, at some point you underwent lifestyle inflation and didn't realize it. And now you're unwilling to give it up.
> Of course this depends on location and cost of living. I am referring to someone in the US.
Millions of people raise families on 40k/year in the United States. These are your fellow citizens. Perhaps you can ask them how they do it and whether they are "satisfied" with that level of income and lifestyle.
Being a contractor would require me to spend about $10,000 more for health insurance above what my workplace premiums are. US, obvi. When I was a contractor fifteen years ago, I billed at $1,000 a day ($125/hr) in the US, not remote. Seems like wage stagnation has hit the software market as well. Really enjoyed the story. I love seeing the personal histories of people in my profession.
i have the impression the max contracting rate is 175/hr. when you ask for more, “HR says they never seen such high rates”… that doesn’t leave you with much in california. and i think that once you move to a cheaper place you cannot demand that rate. so how can you increase your rate as a software engineering contractor?
The company isn't desperate enough! When SHTF, other concerns take precedence. Like if they have a deadline they can't hold, or a problem that has been messed up before.
> so how can you increase your rate as a software engineering contractor?
Increase steadily every year, to select companies that value your rare skillset. If you are asked at inconvenient times, practice surge pricing like Uber. It will also help you realize how acceptable such prices here.
In finance, rates >$1000/hr do exist. If I'm on vacation, there's an automatic multiplier to that, minimum of *2 in the US, more if I'm abroad.
But competent people that deliver on time (and are always available when you need them) are so rare that it isn't much of a problem.
And to protect regular clients from sticker price shock, I have a "full refund no question asked clause". But I can (and will) fire them if I think they abuse it.
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I can relate, I have three and I feel it does give my life more meaning. But I still feel like pointing something out: Know that phenomenon where users that paid for software are typically more satisfied with it and give better ratings than users who didn't? Whish I knew what the proper name for it is, but having kids is kind of the ultimate version of that :D (Update: Thanks so much for helping me figure out what to…
Sounds very close to Stockholm Syndrome.
As far as I can tell, the suggested way of working would be incredibly stressful for someone like me. First, I have to learn stuff I hate just because the market currently demands it. I can't really bring myself to do that. With everyone jumping on AWS and the latest JS frameworks, I stick to programming in Go and deploying static binaries to a single/cheap VPS. I basically only have one library in my 'npm' depdenden…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> would easily bring you 1M total investments. I think this is the disconnect with GP, $1M isn't what anyone can really call "wealthy" nowadays. Yes, it's a lot of money, but does not allow one to live what most people consider to be a rich lifestyle.
You could get up to 10% on 1M investment annually (that is what my friend has). Sure he does not have private yacht but one can live quite comfy on 100K without lifting a finger and that is what he does.
> Take a $ 500-1000 / day, full-remote job > Take 2 months for holidays in-between contracts > Do this for 7 years while investing most of your salary in a diversified portfolio. Working $1000/day contracts for 5 days per week, 10 months per year is equivalent to $217K of contractor income per year. But contractor income is not comparable to normal career income because you have to handle additional taxes and health…
> So there’s a lot missing from this blog post. I suspect maybe the author got lucky with some outlier investments, but that’s not something that can be conveyed in a “how to” blog post. Why do you think that? All the numbers work out. Even in your hypothetical scenario, investing 100k for 7 years, especially in the last 7 years, would easily bring you 1M total investments. > FIRE type wealth trajectories are possibl…
My point was that to show that the only way to get this to work out was to make everything work out perfectly, from getting the authors highest quoted day rate of $1000/day on every single day of every single contract from the start. You’d also have to live an aggressively non-wealthy lifestyle without any room for things like travel, hobbies, or luxuries.
So yes, technically it can work out if the stars align, you can always get those high-paying contracts without fail, and you’re willing to live an aggressively frugal lifestyle taken to an extreme.
> Take a $ 500-1000 / day, full-remote job > Take 2 months for holidays in-between contracts > Do this for 7 years while investing most of your salary in a diversified portfolio. Working $1000/day contracts for 5 days per week, 10 months per year is equivalent to $217K of contractor income per year. But contractor income is not comparable to normal career income because you have to handle additional taxes and health…
There is no "secret" like saving or investing the right way.