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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

#131

Post by pyrale »

sneak wrote: post #95
pyrale wrote: post #58

Turns out, earning half a million dollars every year makes it easy to be a millionaire after a few years.

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% of lifetime earnings, which would be a bit surprising.

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#132

Post by solveit »

darkwater wrote: post #122
CodeGlitch wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The modern "progressive" thought-process is to feel guilty about having a good education. I went to private school in the UK and the only thing I feel is infinite gratitude to my parents for forking-out the money to send me there (they were not rich, they were both teachers).

Quoted post unavailable.

Yes yes, in the end everyone's success can be distilled down to luck or environment (which we were born into so also luck) or inborn qualities (which are also luck). Merit does not exist and everything is luck.

Or we could notice that merit is still a useful concept, that good decisionmaking is a skill regardless of whether everyone is in a position to use it, and that the previous poster's parents made decisions that were highly beneficial to their child, above and beyond what other parents in comparable situations might have, and that the poster is quite right to be thankful for that. Which funnily enough is the only opinion they voiced, so it's rather a mystery what your needlessly nasty comment is replying to.

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#133

Post by whimsicalism »

marcellus23 wrote: post #128
darkwater wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

It’s also not his fault at all.

Nobody said it was "his fault" and that is obviously not the point of the acknowledgement starting the post.

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#135

Post by xwdv »

jacknews wrote: post #48

How to be a millionaire: Earn over $1/2 million a year. Work for 2+ years. The only lesson seems to be don't spend your money.

It’s more like 3 or 4 years due to taxes, even if you don’t spend your money. Feels like government is hellbent on making sure you don’t become a millionaire.

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#136

Post by whimsicalism »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #110
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…

> 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 Most people will have nowhere near the same results as the author by implementing these things. The biggest factors here are: 1) Earn a lot of money 2) Don't spend it all I don't think this post has much educational value at all because I think most peo…

I would never make assumptions banking on "most people understanding" anything.

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#137

Post by thesimon »

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…

Using a different metric the Netherlands are slightly better than the US, but Germany is slightly worse.

https://www.oecd.org/els/soc/1-5%20generations.png

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#138

Post by tiagobraw »

> 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 keep in mind that it’s not applicable to everyone

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#139

Post by whimsicalism »

lordnacho wrote: post #64
tdrdt wrote: post #41

The author was lucky to earn a huge amount of money. 99% of the people can't do anything with this advice because they don't have any savings to begin with. I wonder if the author even understands how lucky he is.

I think the real luck is getting on the ladder in the first place, where you have a prestigious job that is a natural step to even more prestigious jobs, ie you are always a likely candidate for the job above. Most hedge funds and FAANG employers get a lot of resumes that will never even be read. Also you really don't know what you're actually applying for when you're a graduate. You think you know but only those who…

> For instance, I've interviewed a lot of financial ops people who think they're on the ladder to becoming a trader

I think it is definitely possible to know. My college friends with parents in tech certainly knew.

When I was in college, I looked over H1B data to get a sense of what was really going on. The conclusion: finance, consulting, law, all vastly overrated in compensation unless you are doing quantitative finance or have a very rare job.

Medicine and tech, appropriately rated for comp.

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#140

Post by whimsicalism »

comprev wrote: post #29

The fresh graduate salary for 100k is higher than the majority of US workers will peak during their entire career of 50 years (adjusted for inflation). Think about that for a second.

Yes, the majority of American (and global) workers will not be able to retire in their 30s.
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