6 ms·
For a big part of the population, savings of 5000 to 10000 are not meagre.
by konschubert 10y ago
For a big part of the population, savings of 5000 to 10000 are not meagre.
- stuff4ben 10y agoif you're a decent programmer, shouldn't be hard.
- gabrielcsapo 10y agoWork at a valley company, live in a shoebox, bank maybe $500 a month, if you are lucky. Please explain to me your equation for making a lot of money.
- shigawire 10y agoStep 1: don't live in the valley.
- gabrielcsapo 10y agoapparently this is where all the stuff happens, It has been a year and I have realized how backwards life is here.
- shogun21 10y agoSave that $500 a month, and you'll have enough within a year. It's not a LOT of money, but enough to travel if that is what you want to do.
- gabrielcsapo 10y agoI travel, I just think that saving money is difficult to do for 80% of America. The gap widens as you expand to different countries worldwide.
- unethical_ban 10y agoMove out of the most expensive real estate in the country. Remote work is a thing in many organizations.
- gabrielcsapo 10y agoI have been begging my management to let me work remotely, but they have been pretty negative towards the idea. "We would like to keep our team close" -- Management "Half of our team is in India" -- me ":shrug: go back to work" -- Management
- clevernickname 10y agoInvest wisely and the equation will be "the exponential function."
- stuff4ben 10y ago> Please explain to me your equation for making a lot of money It's easy, "live beneath your means". Move away from the valley and give up that lifestyle. If you're a decent-ish programmer, you can make a bunch of money in any of the other medium sized cities in the US with a reasonable cost of living.
- TulliusCicero 10y agoIf you can only bank $500/month working as a programmer in the bay area, something is very wrong (or you're just not living frugally at all). I bank way more than that as a mid level developer, granted I work at the big G, but I also support a non-working wife and kid.
- Cerium 10y agoI work in Santa Clara, live in rental townhouse in San Jose. I have a 20 minute commute and reliably save 15% of my take home income. I have a wife who works part time and goes to school. She saves all her money. Its about budgeting. We each keep a budget for our hobbies of about $100 per month. We spend about $200 at restaurants (eating out less than once per week). Most important is keeping a tab on your spending. UsBank has a download spreadsheet function that keeps track of your last export so it is very easy to download one month at a time.
- Kluny 10y agoI feel like this line should be in the article.
- gabrielcsapo 10y agodecent programmer? you must not really know how tech works, shitty programmers make over 100k..
- squidfood 10y agoBut neither is it trust fund territory - someone with a median income could aspire to this and accomplish it without too much struggle.
- SomeCollegeBro 10y agoExactly what I was thinking. Especially when you have monthly obligations to pay bills that don't go away when you quit your job.
- graeme 10y agoThe comments are on an article about someone with "a dream job". Not hard to get to 5000-10000 in that situation if you're highly motivated to leave. More generally, saying (or implying) "your advice is useless because many people couldn't do it" invalidates a sizeable chunk of useful advice. Yes, many people don't have 5000-10000 and couldn't. But many do or could, and yet they imagine they couldn't possibly travel/leave job, etc.
- coldtea 10y agoThat part of the population can take the other route proposed -- like thousands of "hippie travellers" each year: go at it with just the ticket and the kindness of strangers. Having some skill you can use to make some small money here and there (like playing music on a street corner) helps. For the rest, those making $50.000 a year or more, $5000 to $10000 is very doable to save in 1-4 years -- if you actually want to visit the world that is, and not just want it to fall on you lap while you enjoy everything else at the same time. Rent a smaller house, don't buy a new car, spend less on bars, restaurants and other BS, dont buy that iPhone, etc.
- nhangen 10y agoSo let me get this right... Don't spend my money on anything nice, having fun, or treating myself to something special in the hopes that I can travel the world as a beggar or poor person (5k-10k as is a substantially small travel budget)?
- CompelTechnic 10y agoNot everything is a dichotomy. Adjust the sliding scale of your combined travel budget/ rest-of-your-life budget as you need/want.
- nhangen 10y agoThat I can most certainly agree with.
- sockgrant 10y agoSome people live to travel and to constantly have exciting new experiences and care more about that than having enough money to buy the latest iphone, enjoy artesian bread for breakfast, or have a nice apartment with a view and plush furniture. There's nothing wrong or right with either way of life, it's just different personalities. Travelers may call your lifestyle fake or meaningless, you may call their lifestyle fake or meaningless, but the lifestyles are as real and valid as the person wants them to be. It's ok to not want what other people want :)
- gabrielcsapo 10y agoamen.
- gostars 10y agoI have a friend who saved $15,000 in 1 year selling cars and low quality marijuana (he made $1000/month from it). He traveled to 50+ countries and slept outside everywhere except poor countries where it was cheap to get a bed. When he returned to the US, he sold cars and was homeless. Literally he slept outside but still worked out and ate well. When he got a car, he still slept outside. He recently just made $60,000 driving for Lyft/Uber in 6 months and saved $30,000 (assuming a lot went to taxes). He then moved and slept in hus car for 1+ month while having 30k and perfect credit, and still driving. Now he's taken a month off to pursue creative and side projects. If you don't have a family, then anything is possible.
- sillysaurus3 10y agoHow is it possible to make $60,000 driving for Lyft/Uber in 6 months? Can someone do a rundown on the numbers for this? Can you really earn $120k/yr driving?
- brixon 10y agoHe might have found a lot of new weed customers.
- beachstartup 10y agoi could believe it if he slept in his car and drove 18h/7d for 6 months. nobody would do that for more than a few months but i'm sure it's possible if you're really dedicated to raising some money in an unsustainable way.
- gostars 10y agoHe worked 80 hours a week. In SF, you can make up to $3000 in one week driving for Lyft.
- angrydev 10y agoI don't understand how you're glossing over the fact that your buddy was homeless for 1+ years or however long it was. Even if you don't have a family, people don't want to sleep outside.