161–170 of 349 posts
Meanwhile, I got wealthy by living in big cities, showing up in person, and being pretty good at many things. There are multiple paths.
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Thats just being humble. Most successful people think its that way because they are special and worked hard. Wrong. Most people work hard, its the LUCK many underestimate. Being aware of this is healthy in so many ways, especially socially.
> Being aware of this is healthy in so many ways, especially socially. On the flip side, ascribing success entirely to luck is not at all healthy. I see lots of people who complain about their lot in life but then do nothing to change the trajectory.
> 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…
It would still mean you should not spend more than you earn, be moderately frugal, and sock away and invest what you can. But being able to put away $50k-$100k for a few years in a row is a gigantic leg up for most people in most areas.
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.
> 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…
Yes, when you dig a bit these kind of posts they usually got extremely lucky by being at the right company at the right time (enter when it's a startup then make $$$ with stock options or RSU when the company IPO or gets acquired) or at some point worked at a big tech with a total comp between 300k or 400k. There is no "secret" like saving or investing the right way.
A friend of mine is on the FIRE path. The first million took him 15 years (this covered the dot-com boom, bust, great recession, and the recovery that followed.) The 2nd, 6 years. The third, less than 2 years (thanks QE / money printing.)
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> Take a $ 500-1000 / day, full-remote job How common is this as contractor pay outside the US? I'd find it hard to hit the lower end of that (i.e. 440 eur per day) in fully-remote jobs, despite the pandemic making remote jobs more common. For context, I'm a Python dev, in finance. I used to do Java, which I note still seems to offer higher salaries, but I wouldn't be tempted to return. Maybe the AWS route could work…
Very common, worked Netherlands, Belgium and Germany for ~10 years, doing 200k eur annually on average, contracting, Python, Java, senior dev, devops, etc. My immediate contracting colleagues, about 20 guys and gals are doing comparatively (I.e., ~90 to 120 eur rates, ~2000 hours a year). Edit: apparently very common for my bubble at least, no idea if this is “normal” In Netherlands, Belgium and Germany..
I spent a lot of my career leveling up my situation so that it was more of doing those things I loved and less meetings and other BS. But overall, I didn't optimize for speed to retirement. In our financial planning what we have is an earnings cliff where for "safety" reasons we assume we are still working but that our max earning potential went away.
I've done most of this. 10+ years ago I started working for a company in a city with good salaries (for Europe, not so much for the US), London. After a while I decided to go back to my home country, and the company offered me to work remotely. I've lived in my hometown for most of the past 9 years or so, a small town in southern Europe, much cheaper than London and any other big city, including the ones in my countr…
That's because it's a pretty easy way to get a significant raise. If staying at one job, the raises are likely to be less significant due to them only being able to raise it a certain percent a year due to policy (unless there is a significant title or role change).
Now if you get another job for a higher rate and then ask your current employer to match it, and you are valuable enough that they agree, that is another way.
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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…
>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, Possibly these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere_ownership_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endowment_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choice-supportive_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA_effect
The more costly it is to make the wrong choice, the more is invested into rationalising the decision, the stronger the bias.
>Do this for 7 years while investing most of your salary in a diversified portfolio. Don’t go too crazy with Crypto. Easy to do in a massive bull market.
That’s what people are forgetting. There are plenty of 7 year periods where the stock market will return nothing or almost nothing.
There are plenty of people that lived through this bull market and didn’t come out of it as millionaires