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No, You can't retire rich at 30 if you sell your startup

tonywright.com

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Re: No, You can't retire rich at 30 if you sell your startup

#211

Post by yummyfajitas »

jshen wrote: post #133
yummyfajitas wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't try to predict the future - I explicitly qualified that everything I wrote applied only under certain circumstances: " If the past 40 years are a guide to the future..." You even quoted my qualification. As for dodging your main point, let me address it more carefully now. You seem to believe that incomes (by which I assume you mean income adjusted for CPI) is decreasing. And yet, over a period in which CPI…

" why do you believe that decreasing CPI-adjusted incomes are worth worrying about?" I've said it at least three times already. Because it is highly probable that energy prices are going to increase significantly. Btw, how do you measure quality of life. I always find it funny when people throw around that term relating to economics.

You are concerned oil prices might increase by a factor of 8? Like in the 70's?

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article1375.html

In any case, I'm not sure what this has to do with CPI-adjusted incomes.

By quality of life, I'm only estimating the direction of change rather than the magnitude. I'm assuming that having more stuff is better - I'm happier with flush toilets/a washing machine/Bioshock than without.

Re: No, You can't retire rich at 30 if you sell your startup

#212

Post by pchristensen »

nl wrote: post #189
pchristensen wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"what items did the middle class of 1970 have that the poor of 2001 lack?" They're not items, but I'd say hope, stability, confidence, status, etc.

They're not items, but I'd say hope, stability, confidence, status, etc. Really? In the US? In the 70's? This was at the end of the Vietnam War, during the oil crisis, remember? As a random example consumer confidence at the lowest point during the financial crisis was still higher than it was in 1973 (during the Oil Crisis): http://useconomy.about.com/b/2008/04/01/consumer-pessimism-s...

I'm guessing the middle class had more than the poor had.

Re: No, You can't retire rich at 30 if you sell your startup

#213

Post by Unseelie »

fragmede wrote: post #136
joe_the_user wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, Biking through Oakland the other night, I saw a guy pushing a shopping cart with one hand and talking on his cellphone with the other. A good deal of your lifestyles of the no-longer-needed description might true except ... the 4000 sq ft house. For the now-permanently-unemployed, it would be a 40 sq ft "home" or perhaps a car or suped-up shopping cart. But still with lots of gadgets. Space (at the least) isn't…

Any city that's learned to grow vertically would disagree with you. If you thought real-estate was expensive in New York now....

NYC is expensive because its more expensive to build skyscrapers than houses. Its not cheaper because of mass production, there's just enough incentive to spend more money than it takes to build houses because of the local population density.

Re: No, You can't retire rich at 30 if you sell your startup

#214

Post by Unseelie »

jshen wrote: post #187
nostrademons wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious - do you live in a way smaller space than your parents did when you grew up , or when they were your age ? When I compare my current living space with the house I grew up in, it's significantly smaller. However, my parents were over 40 years old by the time I have my first memories. They'd been saving for close to 20 years to afford that place, while I've been saving for maybe 5 years. When my mom was my…

I'm not a 20-something.

We're still safe to assume your parents are around 20 years older than you.

Re: No, You can't retire rich at 30 if you sell your startup

#215

Post by Unseelie »

noodle wrote: post #90
yummyfajitas wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How the hell are all of our parents going to fare when you need 500,000 to maintain an upper-middle class lifestyle? If the past 40 years are a guide to the future, then the lifestyle we currently define as "upper-middle class" will be redefined as "poverty" and will be available to virtually everyone, including people who can't even be bothered to find a job. People will continue to complain about the declining midd…

it seems to me that predicting the distant (20+ years) future based on the past never really works out.

That's because you're assuming the wrong frame of reference on your singularity. http://www.kmeme.com/2010/07/singularity-is-always-steep.htm...

If you were to drop back to 1970 and estimate the next 20 years by the 2010 scale, things are almost identical. If you measure 2000-2010 on the 1970 scale, things are a hard takeoff.

Re: No, You can't retire rich at 30 if you sell your startup

#216

Post by sabat »

gamble wrote: post #186
sabat wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The odds are nowhere near the same. Besides the raw odds -- obviously much better than the zillion-to-one odds on the lottery -- you can actually affect the outcome of your startup to some degree.

As an employee, you start out with such a small grant and have so little control over vesting conditions and dilution that participating in a liquidity event to that degree is essentially an act of charity on the part of the investors.

It depends on the company, your timing, and what terms you agree to (number of options, vesting period, ISO vs. Non-qual). If you're actually interested in doing well, you may need multiple startups, and the earlier the stage, the better. I know multiple people, including myself to some degree, who have done well as employees in startups.

And of course, you could always try to start your own -- multiple times as needed.

Re: No, You can't retire rich at 30 if you sell your startup

#217

Post by brianobush »

jimbokun wrote: post #179
brianobush wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I wasn't saying it was impossible, just expensive. Also, I don't know where you live, but one child's extracurricular activities for me is ~400 (100 piano+100 TKD+100 kumon+100 math) and during the summer it is higher since they have camps to attend (since there are no crops to harvest). Once your daughter gets older, I guarantee your clothing costs will increase.

You say this as if there is a law requiring you to provide all of these services for your daughter, or Children and Youth Services will come and take her from you.

Did I say law? No, I want my children to have the same gift I was given - an education. I would hope most parents would want that for their children.

Re: No, You can't retire rich at 30 if you sell your startup

#218

Post by noname123 »

olalonde wrote: post #150
thailandstartup wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About $35000 here in Thailand gives me a lifestyle that I think of as lavish and decadent, but I guess the OP would consider frugal and cautious. 120sqm condo beside the sea, eat out every night, tennis and language lessons. I could probably cut the budget down to around $20000 in a pinch and still live comfortably. The major downside is that there aren't many hackers about.

Doing the same in Shenzhen, China. In my opinion, with a 25,000$ salary here, you can live more comfortably than you can in the US on a 50,000+$ salary. For instance, at 500$/month, you can get a spacious 2br apartment that comes with a nice inner courtyard, tennis courts and a swimming pool. You can go to nice restaurants for under 6$ and take the taxi for ridiculously cheap (less than 5$ for a 15 minutes ride). And…

Hmm. Interesting, I'd like to point out though 50K isn't a really comfortable salary in a major US metro anymore after federal/state tax, social security, healthcare/misc. deduction. Add on top of 401(k) contribution and also monthly rent of 1K+ for rent in downtown (actually on the cheaper end of a 1BR apartment in NYC/Boston), you are down to literally peanuts. Boozing and eating out will literally have you living from month to month.

I heard that this is the case in China nowadays too. Boozing and going out to bars in China is dollar-by-dollar as expensive as the States. Real estate is sky-rocketing.

I looked into moving to China as well, your salary range looks comparable to the numbers I was told. But I'm not sure it 25K is even sustainable in Shenzhen. Perhaps cost of living there is lower than Shanghai, but my guess is that it's not that much lower as it's located in the Pearl River Delta.

Re: No, You can't retire rich at 30 if you sell your startup

#219

Post by achompas »

tokenadult wrote: post #188
jerf wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, one of my (many) issues with political discourse today is that thanks to inflations, "the rich" has been defined down brutally over the past 30 to 40 years. Anyone currently making $250/year, yeah, if they're hurting it's their own damn fault for overreaching, but that is very rapidly becoming merely upper middle class. Meanwhile, neither our legal/tax nor our social definitions of "rich" are being updated…

And yet many of the things that average people enjoy today could not be obtained with any amount of money when my grandfather was alive. Where I live, today, an annual income of U.S.$250,000 is very comfortable indeed (and rather rare).

Right, this is a common economic discussion. People under the poverty line today can afford a roof, TV, and a home phone; 70 years ago they would stand in bread lines. Quality of life has definitely improved.

Re: No, You can't retire rich at 30 if you sell your startup

#220

Post by olalonde »

noname123 wrote: post #218
olalonde wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doing the same in Shenzhen, China. In my opinion, with a 25,000$ salary here, you can live more comfortably than you can in the US on a 50,000+$ salary. For instance, at 500$/month, you can get a spacious 2br apartment that comes with a nice inner courtyard, tennis courts and a swimming pool. You can go to nice restaurants for under 6$ and take the taxi for ridiculously cheap (less than 5$ for a 15 minutes ride). And…

Hmm. Interesting, I'd like to point out though 50K isn't a really comfortable salary in a major US metro anymore after federal/state tax, social security, healthcare/misc. deduction. Add on top of 401(k) contribution and also monthly rent of 1K+ for rent in downtown (actually on the cheaper end of a 1BR apartment in NYC/Boston), you are down to literally peanuts. Boozing and eating out will literally have you living…

There are actually two things that I found surprisingly expensive in Shenzhen: bars (1 beer = ~7$) and movie theaters (1 ticket = ~15$). But that's about it. Clothing (except Italian brands), food, beer, transportation, rent (although Shenzhen is a bit expensive for China), massage, Internet, mobile phone, hairdressers... are very cheap. 25K isn't my actual salary but I know some people here who live very comfortably on that salary. Anecdote: I just go a nice haircut for 1.50$.
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