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Ask HN: How have you achieved financial independence?

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Re: Ask HN: How have you achieved financial independence?

#31

Post by scheff »

zen_boy wrote: post #10

Just turned 30. Invested most of my savings (20k€) into Bitcoin several years ago, and then converted everything to Ethereum in the pre-sale. Those 20k€ are worth roughly 1M€ pre-tax at the current rates. Started a fintech startup three years ago and we are close to a liquidation event that would net ~1.5M€ pre-tax. Right now, though, I have less than 10k€ in my bank account. Would be also really curious to hear how…

Hi there, can you explain to us why you chose to invest so heavily in Bitcoin and Ethereum? What gave you the certainty that they would go so well?

Re: Ask HN: How have you achieved financial independence?

#32

Post by timwaagh »

I'm trying to get closer to this goal by renting out rooms in my house. It's not something that a lot of people do and there are legal issues. however it does get me a nice amount of passive income. this is about 1k EUR per month. I'm hoping to get it up to the level of my salary (1700 EUR) within the next year.

Re: Ask HN: How have you achieved financial independence?

#33

Post by stygiansonic »

siscia wrote: post #20
mikekchar wrote: post #3

I'm only responding because nobody else has replied to your thread. Feel free to ignore me if you think it is irrelevant. My favourite Dr. Who quote: "Work for? I don't work for anyone. I'm just having fun." Describes me, even though I receive money every month. My expenditures are considerably less than the money I receive every month by having fun. If I didn't receive money, then I would be in trouble, so I don't r…

The married part is the one I am more interested in. I too live extremely cheaply, but my girlfriend has way more expense than me (still reasonable, but too high in my book). We are not married, but we spend a lot of time together and I am a little afraid that this difference in how we spend money will be a problem. How did you manage it? My very first step was to have her create a save account where she deposit each…

Disclaimer first that I am not a relationship expert.

I was lucky/fortunate in that my wife and I both have a similar outlook when it comes to financial planning. We both want to achieve financial independence before the traditional retirement age and as such, we keep track of our expenses to ensure we're saving enough each month.

Before we got married, we sat down and talked about these things, a lot. Each relationship is different, but in my opinion, if you're in a serious relationship, openness and honesty are pretty important. Talking about future goals, plans, etc. can go a long way.

Re: Ask HN: How have you achieved financial independence?

#34

Post by doc_holliday »

Related, I am wondering if any of you have any tips on securing financial independence / passive income that will hopefully be Tech recession proof.

I.e, best way to see yourself through a Tech downturn without taking a severe hit to your wealth.

I say this because I've had recent experience with people losing huge amounts of their wealth, and almost going bankrupt during the Oil price crash.

For instance I know Oil workers who had most of their wealth in oil company shares, a house in an oil related city and lose their oil industry job.

I'd imagine their are lots in tech that are the same, large amount of Tech shares, a house in the Bay area and a job in Tech.

Anyone got any tips on diversifying for a downturn? What shares (if any???) are likely to do well if Tech has a bad patch.

Re: Ask HN: How have you achieved financial independence?

#35

Post by zen_boy »

MarkCole wrote: post #26
zen_boy wrote: post #10

Just turned 30. Invested most of my savings (20k€) into Bitcoin several years ago, and then converted everything to Ethereum in the pre-sale. Those 20k€ are worth roughly 1M€ pre-tax at the current rates. Started a fintech startup three years ago and we are close to a liquidation event that would net ~1.5M€ pre-tax. Right now, though, I have less than 10k€ in my bank account. Would be also really curious to hear how…

Is there a specific reason you're keeping so much of your wealth tied up in Ethereum? (Not that clued up on it, perhaps there isn't a big enough market there to sell it yet?) It seems to me like having all of your eggs in one basket. Wouldn't it be better to convert a decent portion of it to cash and invest that in a nice mixture of stock and bonds?

Ethereum seems to have great potential to multiply its value in the next 12-24 months. I think the probability of ETH going from 1B$ -> 2-5B$ market cap is far greater than BTC going from 10B$ to 20-50B$ due to several factors.

My line of thinking has been that in order for the 4% to be meaningful, you need to start with at least a million. Saving a portion from the salary and getting 4% annualized growth just wouldn't have ever achieved the type of financial wealth I had in mind. YMMV.

But now I feel like the time has come to diversify and start reducing the risks. Going from 20$ to 10$ per ETH definitely hurt.

Re: Ask HN: How have you achieved financial independence?

#36

Post by i336_ »

mailshanx wrote: post #19
mikekchar wrote: post #3

I'm only responding because nobody else has replied to your thread. Feel free to ignore me if you think it is irrelevant. My favourite Dr. Who quote: "Work for? I don't work for anyone. I'm just having fun." Describes me, even though I receive money every month. My expenditures are considerably less than the money I receive every month by having fun. If I didn't receive money, then I would be in trouble, so I don't r…

10K is indeed unreasonably low. Could you describe where in Japan you live, what kind of work you do now, and the transformation you possibly experienced when you decided to work for curiosity / interest rather than money? I have had a reverse path - I spent my early career working for a research lab, where the the work was immensely intellectually satisfying and fun for the most part. However, the pay was so ridicul…

Note: I think this comment was intended for this comment chain: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12274389

(Maybe a mod could move it over - if that works, this reply can be deleted)

Re: Ask HN: How have you achieved financial independence?

#37

Post by adventured »

barrkel wrote: post #23
javitury wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Spending 3k€ per month for the next 30 years would be about 1M€ That is only withdrawing the principal without taking into account the real interest/yield rate you can make off the investment. That money would probably last longer or yield more for the same time period. In fact, as you point out it can last indefinitely with an after inflation and tax ROI(real yield) of 4% which converts to ~3k/mo. You would have t…

The real interest rate is usually negative in today's environment; I'd love to know where you're getting a risk-free 4% after inflation and tax.

Muni bonds are the best way to go for that. You can still nail 4% plus after inflation and taxes there. You're not going to get risk-free anywhere, there's no such thing.

Re: Ask HN: How have you achieved financial independence?

#38

Post by guaka »

lucb1e wrote: post #24
mikekchar wrote: post #3

I'm only responding because nobody else has replied to your thread. Feel free to ignore me if you think it is irrelevant. My favourite Dr. Who quote: "Work for? I don't work for anyone. I'm just having fun." Describes me, even though I receive money every month. My expenditures are considerably less than the money I receive every month by having fun. If I didn't receive money, then I would be in trouble, so I don't r…

I would like to hear more about living on less than $10k a year. I'm still a student and my parents pay a lot, so I don't actually know how much I'd spend if I paid for everything myself currently. I just always assumed that $40k is about the minimum for a normal living. Doing the math though, counting food, rent and "service costs" (water, electricity, internet), I end up with a lower bound of about 6000 a year. Thi…

You don't need any stuff if you detach yourself from any location. I spent I think I spent around 500€ per month like this on average. But I have some friends with a more radical approach, which inspired me translate a Dutch website about living with money into English: moneyless.org.

As a side effect, I'm making some money with this specific site (but not with Hitchwiki or other community oriented projects). Together with a few more websites this is making me enough money from adsense and affiliate marketing to do whatever I want without caring too much about spending.

These days that is building up my fintech startup B2B Pay (Techstars Barclays TLV 2016) and spending time with my family.

Re: Ask HN: How have you achieved financial independence?

#39

Post by zen_boy »

scheff wrote: post #31
zen_boy wrote: post #10

Just turned 30. Invested most of my savings (20k€) into Bitcoin several years ago, and then converted everything to Ethereum in the pre-sale. Those 20k€ are worth roughly 1M€ pre-tax at the current rates. Started a fintech startup three years ago and we are close to a liquidation event that would net ~1.5M€ pre-tax. Right now, though, I have less than 10k€ in my bank account. Would be also really curious to hear how…

Hi there, can you explain to us why you chose to invest so heavily in Bitcoin and Ethereum? What gave you the certainty that they would go so well?

I didn't have any magical crystal ball, like no one else did. The key transition point was moving the Bitcoins into the Ethereum. For me, Vitalik's early posts convinced me that Ethereum wasn't just another altcoin and it had great potential.

I didn't have any debt at that point and the traditional model of saving portion of salary and getting 4% annualized growth wasn't going to achieve the wealth I had in mind. So cryptocurrencies seemed like it had the huge upside potential I wanted and the worst-case scenario would have been that I'd lose the initial 20k€. I'm fairly opportunistic and risk-seeking. YMMV.

Hard to say what the probability of failure (ie. Bitcoin collapsing or the value of Ethereum being far less than the pre-sale price) has been.

Re: Ask HN: How have you achieved financial independence?

#40

Post by samsonradu »

Doing pretty well from consulting these days, however I can't manage to generate any passive income. Having saved about 30k in the past years doesn't seem to help either, interest rates are ridiculously low. Stocks and bonds are not really my area of expertise so I decided to stick to cash. Investment funds might be an option in the nearby future.
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