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Building a vision of life without work (2015)

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Re: Building a vision of life without work (2015)

#281

Post by awithrow »

dheera wrote: post #255
awithrow wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you had a 401k when leaving a job, you can roll that into your IRA. A 401k has much higher limits

so you can put upto 401K into an IRA when you leave?

no, the savings vehicle at many workplaces is called a 401(k) (named after the section of the tax code that describes it). When you leave a job that offered the 401(k) you can take the money that was in it and transfer it to your IRA. This process is called a "rollover". 401(k)s have much higher contribution limits, can have money added to it by the employer (usually via matching contributions) and sometimes have methods to add after tax money to them.

Re: Building a vision of life without work (2015)

#282

Post by jvanvleet »

CleverLikeAnOx wrote: post #201
codesternews wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you doing on HN?

As someone in a similar boat (6 months into not working at this point), I still love hacker news. I am driven by curiosity above most else and this is the best forum on the internet by that measure (as far as I am aware).

This is myself as well. HN is a kind of a National Geographic of technology to me.

Re: Building a vision of life without work (2015)

#283

Post by binkHN »

zamfi wrote: post #277

One thing we've lost in the transition to two-earner families with the expectation that everyone has a career is exactly what's coming up in this thread: 1) People derive a lot of meaning from their interactions with other people. 2) For most people (at least, most people reading blogs like this) today, that meaning comes from employment, from the exchange of time for money in the service of others. But pre-televisio…

> The rat in the race doesn't know what to do when the race is over, because all the other rats are still in the race, and he's never been outside before.

Enlightening. Thank you.

Re: Building a vision of life without work (2015)

#284

Post by phaemon »

dangus wrote: post #185
zoba wrote: post #67

I was 2nd employee at a unicorn startup and have been on a work-hiatus for almost a year. Now, I live amongst Amish people in the country. My biggest insight has been a mindset change. Previously my underlying approach to life looked like: "I will do X which will enable me to do Y so that I can finally do Z." I now approach my days with "What will make me happy?" This is an experiment I'm performing. A structured lif…

A comment like this is privilege in a nutshell. Money to a certain point essentially buys the ability to be free and happy, and that’s why most people are “in the grind” so-to-speak. Being able to even think about making the mindset shift you describe is impossible for most people in the country let alone the world. The lifestyle you describe is out of reach for the median American making $40-60k a year with a modest…

> the median American making $40-60k a year with a modest amount of credit card debt and kids to feed.

Ah, of course. Poor unfortunate Americans. How could you possibly feed your children on just $40k a year. No doubt that explains the emaciated appearance of the average American child.

> A comment like this is privilege in a nutshell.

Copy that out on the blackboard 100 times until the lesson sinks in.

Re: Building a vision of life without work (2015)

#285

Post by sidlls »

nradov wrote: post #232
balfirevic wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they might be better off scaling back to a sustainable 40hr/week job 40hr/week is the unsustainable part.

That's only 24% of your time most weeks, even less on weeks when you have holidays or vacation. What's unsustainable? In fact many people have done it their whole adult lives, which makes it sustainable by definition.

Factoring in activities in support of work (commute, dress), it's more than 50% of one's waking hours during the week.

Re: Building a vision of life without work (2015)

#286

Post by LesZedCB »

kebman wrote: post #46

"What will you do with your time?" How many of you really have a problem answering that? Am I the only lucky one who's got a gazillion projects I want to finish all at once???

if you got more than four paragraphs down you would read

> If you are one of these people, congratulations. You’ve already got the answers you need. Although you may be retiring FROM something, you’re also very clear on what you’re retiring TO. You can stop reading right now.

Re: Building a vision of life without work (2015)

#287

Post by UncleOxidant »

zoba wrote: post #67

I was 2nd employee at a unicorn startup and have been on a work-hiatus for almost a year. Now, I live amongst Amish people in the country. My biggest insight has been a mindset change. Previously my underlying approach to life looked like: "I will do X which will enable me to do Y so that I can finally do Z." I now approach my days with "What will make me happy?" This is an experiment I'm performing. A structured lif…

I think I'm semi-retired at this point. It's taken over a year to get to the "What will make me happy?" stage. Initially I kept thinking that I needed to spend my downtime learning new technologies that would be marketable. Now I'm starting to let go of that idea and it's feeling better, though I'm still a bit afraid that maybe I'll fall through the cracks and not be employable again - but that's probably fine at this point in my life. There are a lot of ways you have to change your thinking as you transition to a retired or just less-work-focused state. Our culture causes us to invest a lot of our identity in work and I'm finding that it's taking a while to shift my thinking.

Re: Building a vision of life without work (2015)

#288

Post by BayAreaEscapee »

qntty wrote: post #271
BayAreaEscapee wrote: post #210

I did it: I retired at age 40 with a net worth of about $5M. That was eight years ago. I diversified most of it, but I made two concentrated bets with a fraction and both of them were home runs. Now I'm above $5M. I have enough money to do whatever I want and my withdrawal rate is less than 1% annually. (I don't have expensive or flasy taste.) One of the things that I didn't expect (but that this article and some oth…

How did you acquire the initial $5M? Sell a start-up? Lucky investment? Or did you have a high salary?

I had employee stock options in two companies that had a high growth rate. I lived very simply and saved more than half my take-home pay. I did have a high salary.

Re: Building a vision of life without work (2015)

#289

Post by hiram112 »

danbruc wrote: post #184

This seems unethical to me, you essentially make other people work for you. All the returns from your investments are created by someone who probably does not have the luxury of retiring early, someone who now not only has to work for their life but also for yours.

That's not how the math works out, at least in theory. There are several principles going on:

1. You defer consumption today to instead spend it tomorrow. If you create $100K in value in a year, but only spend $50K of it, shouldn't you be able to instead spend most of that $50K in the future? Our whole retirement system is predicated on this.

2. If you take some of the wealth produced today, and instead of immediately consuming it, you "invest" it in something that enables more wealth produced tomorrow than otherwise would have been possible, you should be rewarded with some of that extra wealth produced.

3. Time value of money. Loaning your money or investing it carries a risk. If there is some chance that you may not get it all back, then there must be a premium charged to whomever wants to use your wealth today. Otherwise, you might as well spend it all as soon as you receive it.

Re: Building a vision of life without work (2015)

#290

Post by UncleOxidant »

zoba wrote: post #67

I was 2nd employee at a unicorn startup and have been on a work-hiatus for almost a year. Now, I live amongst Amish people in the country. My biggest insight has been a mindset change. Previously my underlying approach to life looked like: "I will do X which will enable me to do Y so that I can finally do Z." I now approach my days with "What will make me happy?" This is an experiment I'm performing. A structured lif…

> As an example, turns out I really enjoy building dams.

Sorry to go off on a tangent, but this really has me wondering. How big of a dam are we talking here? Is it actually legal to build a private dam?

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