My path to financial independent: be lucky.
My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer
431–440 of 583 posts
Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer
#432> Disclaimer: I acknowledge that I’ve been very privileged, especially in the educational opportunities I’ve had. This might sound reasonable from a US-centric perspective, but to me it reads like utter nonsense. The main privilege here is access to the US labor market and tax policy. There are no stories like this one where I live (in Sweden). Absolutely none.
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I think you should consider this view in the context of various country's immigration policies. Privilege definitely comes into play.
Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer
#433Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are equating guilt with acknowledging privilege, and those aren’t the same. I feel privileged for having gone to MIT, and acknowledge that privilege. I feel privileged for having grown up Jewish and white-appearing, and acknowledge that. I feel guilty for neither, and acknowledging that particular privilege takes nothing away from how hard I worked anyway. The son of two very poor Russian Jewish immigrants, I wor…
> You are equating guilt with acknowledging privilege, and those aren’t the same. When someone says "check your privilege", they're saying that you've done something wrong and should feel guilty.
No, they aren’t. They are saying you should consider if and how your privilege helped you out, because sometimes that isn’t transferable to other people; someone black in a job interview may not have the same experience someone white does, and that’s okay, but it’s important to recognize if and how being white helped so that someone who isn’t white can account for that and adjust.
It has nothing at all to do with guilt.
Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer
#434> Disclaimer: I acknowledge that I’ve been very privileged, especially in the educational opportunities I’ve had. This might sound reasonable from a US-centric perspective, but to me it reads like utter nonsense. The main privilege here is access to the US labor market and tax policy. There are no stories like this one where I live (in Sweden). Absolutely none.
Markus Persson?
Of course you can always start up a successful company, but that's not really relevant in this thread.
Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer
#435Earlier 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…
My own experiences disagree.
I have friends who started out in middle-class families and sunk lower. I also have friends who started out middle-class and rose.
IMHO, the biggest factors seem to be raw intellingence, willingness to move & chase money, and some 'luck' factors. But I can't imagine a world where nobody could change fortunes given reasonably common circumstances.
Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer
#436Earlier quoted context omitted.
Better: Just don’t get legally married and don’t live in a common law state. Prenups aren’t enforceable. Judges can throw them out and ignore them whenever they feel. I don’t plan to ever get married due to these factors. Another option for the drugs thing is to never do drugs or drink alcohol. I haven’t ever done any and I’ve managed to avoid addiction my entire life. I still have fun - I am actually considered the…
I don't disagree with you because I've gone through a divorce that halved my net worth but I don't think "don’t live in a common law state" is decent advice. If you ignore all of California, you miss out on higher compensation and interesting work opportunities. Should you live your life such that you limit your opportunities? I don't think so. I don't think ignoring serious relationships altogether or avoiding child…
California is not a common law state.
I am not purposing avoiding serious relationships either. I’m proposing avoiding the legal contracts that will not do you any good.
Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer
#437Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s nice to bring someone into existence so they can serve you. And if your kid is disabled? Your retirement plan should work regardless of requiring you breed live-in caretakers.
"caring about" != "caretakers"
Right, I didn't say caretakers. You can hire those to come in daily. Another nice option money buys is a great luxury senior living home. A good one starts at $3500 a month but typically costs more (while the average cost for a senior living community in Santa Cruz, CA is $5,595)
https://www.merrillgardens.com/senior-living/ca/santa-cruz/s...
Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer
#438This is very interesting, but should be taken with a grain of salt even inside the US. This is likely not to be very sustainable for much longer, and it significantly skews the perspective of making your "own money" long term. The OP took advantage of a couple of cities in a country where tech is hyper-valuated at the moment. The solution is not to "move to the US", and change your lifestyle chasing abnormal salaries. The US has its own problems, and prices are very inflated here in general. Salaries are already catching up in the UK, and the tendency is that this becomes more common outside the US. Earning 100k pounds in the UK is not the same as earning 100k USD.
Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer
#439Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree with everything you've said. The only difference between myself and my other friends (who also have advanced degrees from top universities in the bay area) is that I abandoned my field of study and jumped into tech. After 10 years, we have vastly different financial outcomes now. A lot of hard working, well educated, dedicated people struggle financially around here, because they happened to not choose tec…
Part of working smart rather than working hard is seeing the salary signals the market is sending and responding to them strategically. This is worth more than mastering a skill that is saturated with competition relative to demand. It took me a long time to accept this as I was wedded to the idea that hard work and skill alone should be well compensated. But that hard work and skill needs to be pointed in a good dir…
> This is worth more than mastering a skill that is saturated with competition relative to demand.
The job market is not an efficient market. It doesn’t respond to offer and demand signals.
Nurses have been in short supply in most of the developed world for the past three decades yet are still paid peanuts. It’s all about your proximity to the handling of money and historical trend. That’s why even people doing menial jobs in banking are well compensated while people working in heavy industries are paid relatively little compared to the complexity of their jobs.
Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer
#440Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it’s a reference to US leaders with European heritage use Swedish immigrants as exemplary prospects versus people from non-white nations.
The US doesn't have explicitly racist immigration laws. Being white might give you some kind of an advantage (even though it obviously shouldn't), but you'll still have to go through the same process as anyone else.
Not directly racist, but there's a huge difference in effective waiting times for employment based green cards by country, mainly due to the per-country cap.
Roughly speaking, for similarly qualified folks applying in the EB2 category in 2021, Indian immigrants (worst case), approval can take 15+ years, while immigrants from Sweden will take 2-3 years at most (was less than a year pre-COVID).