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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 fo

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 really qualify for your question, but I'm having fun so I'll answer anyway. Step #1. Reduce my expenditures below what most people consider reasonable. I lived for more than 5 years on less than $10K a year. It was much easier than I thought. I discovered that spending more than this amount of money, I was no happier. Who knew? What really counted was having so much more income than outgo that money became completely irrelevant to me. After I did that, I stopped worrying about working. There isn't a job in the 1st world that pays less money than I'm comfortable with. I started taking jobs that interested me instead of jobs that paid me money. Then I got married. That threw a monkey wrench into the works! But I'm slowly working thought that ;-) Honestly, people tie themselves to a grindstone to make as much money as possible because they think it will remove stress and give them a nice life. I don't think that works most of the time.

tsaprailis 10y ago
Thanks for your reply. I was thinking about the same, while I make more than I spend, and for the time being I can save money, this indeed requires working. The "problem" would start when you have depended family members and you cannot calculate, or rather plan for all expenses in advance, what have you done to plan for this?
- mikekchar 10y ago
  Yes, this is a problem. I think the biggest thing I fear is poor health. I live in Japan which has a health care system, but it can still be quite expensive to be ill. Also, my wife and I won't have children probably, so while that saves money up front, I have nobody to look after me when I get old. Insurance is my main hedge against these risks. I try to follow a healthy lifestyle as well. I used to keep fish and it's amazing how much longer fish live when they aren't stressed. I try to replicate that. Finally I try to buy long term, low risk investments (like government bonds) with my excess cash. However, I keep a few years worth of money available in liquid assets for things like disability. Probably the biggest risk is getting a mental illness that isn't covered by long term disability insurance. I have no idea how to deal with that one :-( All of my skills to live simply may be useless if I lose the mental ability to use them.
mailshanx 10y ago
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 ridiculously low that my industry salary was a few integer multiples of my researcher pay.
- i336_ 10y ago
  Note: I think this comment was intended for this comment chain: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12274389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12274389 (Maybe a mod could move it over - if that works, this reply can be deleted)
  - mailshanx 10y ago
    Not really - I read that comment and realised he lives in Japan, but the comment you are referring to was in response to its parent.
    - i336_ 10y ago
      Ah, woops. Thanks for the clarification.
- mikekchar 10y ago
  It's hard to answer this without writing my life story :-) I live in Shizuoka prefecture, right on Suruga bay. We live in what I think is the most expensive apartment in town -- it costs $600 a month. It's a concession to my wife who put up with the $120 a month shack that I loved to death (but that she called a haunted house -- they tore it down after we moved out ;-) ). I work as a software developer on contract to an English company. We spent 2 years in London, before moving back to Japan. Before that I worked as an English teacher in the high school in this city. Before that I was a software developers for 20 years or so. I actually started in research labs too. I worked my way through school (or rather, I got free tuition because my father was a prof, and I paid for my other living expenses by working for various departments while I was in school). I didn't always have this idea of living cheaply... I had a house, a car, 2 dogs, the works... I've had a few times in my career where I absolutely hated my job. One day I just quit. I had no prospects and no idea what to do. I was just done with the place I was working at. The next day, not knowing what to do, I started fixing some bugs on free software projects. I just kept doing that every single day, 12 hours a day, 7 days a week for 8 months. It was at that point that I realised that I liked programming ;-) I've been very, very poor a couple of times in my life. Once in my early twenties I spent a few months in London. I had enough money for either meat or beer, so I became vegetarian (which lasted... until I got married ;-) ). I remember being happy every day despite being unbelievably poor. There were a couple of times that I ran out of money on a Thursday and was unable to eat until I got paid on a Monday. That taught me the importance of budgeting ;-) Other times have been like I described above. I got paid a good salary as a programmer, but was often unhappy. I decided to quit my job (or the companies I worked for decided to run out of money) and I took a sabbatical to write free software. One day I met a guy who suggested I go teach English in Japan. I only meant to go for a year in order to learn Japanese and improve my presentation skills. I stayed for 5 years. At that point, I asked my wife, "What should we do? Do you want me to make a lot of money? I'm sure I could as a programmer. Or we could open a brewery. Or I could become a tour guide. Or I could..." And then it dawned on me. I could do anything because we had learned over the years to live on tiny amounts of money. It's freedom more than anything else. These days we spend quite a bit more than we used to. My wife even has a car (bleh...). Getting the balance right is tricky ;-)
siscia 10y ago
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 month a little bit of money, after I explained her the why she need one she started to accumulate money pretty quickly and in a very disciplinate way, all those money however disappeared when she bought a new house (but I believe it is fair).
- maccard 10y ago
  you need to have some sort of compromise. It's unreasonable to expect her to cxhange and you not to.
  - csorrell 10y ago
    My wife wanted to buy a new car earlier this year but I didn't, so we compromised and bought a new car.
- stygiansonic 10y ago
  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.
- erikb 10y ago
  If you buy a house in a reasonable fashion the money is not gone though. Sure the prices go up and down and you may lose some of the money, but over a period of 30 years it may be less harmful than keeping the cash and letting inflation do its thing.
lucb1e 10y ago
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 $40k is about the minimum for a normal living. Doing the math though, counting food, rent and "service costs" (water, electricity, internet), I end up with a lower bound of about 6000 a year. This means zero other expenditures: you need to already own all furniture and appliances you want, and you can't have a method of transportation other than a bike and feet. There will probably be random other expenses like light bulbs, repairing a flat bike tire, etc., but it seems to be possible. Did I get the math right, or am I forgetting something (like an uncovered expense, or that you can totally have a car as long as it's electric or so)?
- guaka 10y ago
  You don't need any stuff if you detach yourself from any location. I spent <10k$/y for a quite a while. My approach was to travel, mainly by hitchhiking and staying with locals through couchsurfing. If you think "freeloading"... I've worked for NGOs on various continents, including couchsurfing (when it was still a non-profit) and in the meantime I built up Hitchwiki that is now the most visited resource about hitchhiking. 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.
  - erikb 10y ago
    The thing I don't like about all these spend-no-money approaches are exactly these things like not having an apartment. That's not how most people can live. Even if I spend 2 years travelling around I wouldn't feel well without having an actual home I can go back to. So these kinds of methods can only apply to small parts of the general population. Trying to achieve that state for normal joe me is just as hard as getting rich.
chaostheory 10y ago
> Then I got married. That threw a monkey wrench into the works! But I'm slowly working thought that ;-) When you have children, it gets even worse on that front. :( The bright side is that it's still possible to achieve if both of you have the discipline: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/ http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/
praptak 10y ago
For anybody interested, http://www.mrmoneymustache.com http://www.mrmoneymustache.com is very much aligned with OP's testimony and also contains a lot of practical advice.

tsaprailis 10y ago

Thanks for your reply. I was thinking about the same, while I make more than I spend, and for the time being I can save money, this indeed requires working. The "problem" would start when you have depended family members and you cannot calculate, or rather plan for all expenses in advance, what have you done to plan for this?

mikekchar 10y ago
Yes, this is a problem. I think the biggest thing I fear is poor health. I live in Japan which has a health care system, but it can still be quite expensive to be ill. Also, my wife and I won't have children probably, so while that saves money up front, I have nobody to look after me when I get old. Insurance is my main hedge against these risks. I try to follow a healthy lifestyle as well. I used to keep fish and it's amazing how much longer fish live when they aren't stressed. I try to replicate that. Finally I try to buy long term, low risk investments (like government bonds) with my excess cash. However, I keep a few years worth of money available in liquid assets for things like disability. Probably the biggest risk is getting a mental illness that isn't covered by long term disability insurance. I have no idea how to deal with that one :-( All of my skills to live simply may be useless if I lose the mental ability to use them.

mailshanx 10y ago

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 ridiculously low that my industry salary was a few integer multiples of my researcher pay.

i336_ 10y ago
Note: I think this comment was intended for this comment chain: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12274389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12274389 (Maybe a mod could move it over - if that works, this reply can be deleted)
- mailshanx 10y ago
  Not really - I read that comment and realised he lives in Japan, but the comment you are referring to was in response to its parent.
  - i336_ 10y ago
    Ah, woops. Thanks for the clarification.
mikekchar 10y ago
It's hard to answer this without writing my life story :-) I live in Shizuoka prefecture, right on Suruga bay. We live in what I think is the most expensive apartment in town -- it costs $600 a month. It's a concession to my wife who put up with the $120 a month shack that I loved to death (but that she called a haunted house -- they tore it down after we moved out ;-) ). I work as a software developer on contract to an English company. We spent 2 years in London, before moving back to Japan. Before that I worked as an English teacher in the high school in this city. Before that I was a software developers for 20 years or so. I actually started in research labs too. I worked my way through school (or rather, I got free tuition because my father was a prof, and I paid for my other living expenses by working for various departments while I was in school). I didn't always have this idea of living cheaply... I had a house, a car, 2 dogs, the works... I've had a few times in my career where I absolutely hated my job. One day I just quit. I had no prospects and no idea what to do. I was just done with the place I was working at. The next day, not knowing what to do, I started fixing some bugs on free software projects. I just kept doing that every single day, 12 hours a day, 7 days a week for 8 months. It was at that point that I realised that I liked programming ;-) I've been very, very poor a couple of times in my life. Once in my early twenties I spent a few months in London. I had enough money for either meat or beer, so I became vegetarian (which lasted... until I got married ;-) ). I remember being happy every day despite being unbelievably poor. There were a couple of times that I ran out of money on a Thursday and was unable to eat until I got paid on a Monday. That taught me the importance of budgeting ;-) Other times have been like I described above. I got paid a good salary as a programmer, but was often unhappy. I decided to quit my job (or the companies I worked for decided to run out of money) and I took a sabbatical to write free software. One day I met a guy who suggested I go teach English in Japan. I only meant to go for a year in order to learn Japanese and improve my presentation skills. I stayed for 5 years. At that point, I asked my wife, "What should we do? Do you want me to make a lot of money? I'm sure I could as a programmer. Or we could open a brewery. Or I could become a tour guide. Or I could..." And then it dawned on me. I could do anything because we had learned over the years to live on tiny amounts of money. It's freedom more than anything else. These days we spend quite a bit more than we used to. My wife even has a car (bleh...). Getting the balance right is tricky ;-)

siscia 10y ago

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 month a little bit of money, after I explained her the why she need one she started to accumulate money pretty quickly and in a very disciplinate way, all those money however disappeared when she bought a new house (but I believe it is fair).

maccard 10y ago
you need to have some sort of compromise. It's unreasonable to expect her to cxhange and you not to.
- csorrell 10y ago
  My wife wanted to buy a new car earlier this year but I didn't, so we compromised and bought a new car.
stygiansonic 10y ago
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.
erikb 10y ago
If you buy a house in a reasonable fashion the money is not gone though. Sure the prices go up and down and you may lose some of the money, but over a period of 30 years it may be less harmful than keeping the cash and letting inflation do its thing.

lucb1e 10y ago

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. This means zero other expenditures: you need to already own all furniture and appliances you want, and you can't have a method of transportation other than a bike and feet. There will probably be random other expenses like light bulbs, repairing a flat bike tire, etc., but it seems to be possible. Did I get the math right, or am I forgetting something (like an uncovered expense, or that you can totally have a car as long as it's electric or so)?

guaka 10y ago
You don't need any stuff if you detach yourself from any location. I spent <10k$/y for a quite a while. My approach was to travel, mainly by hitchhiking and staying with locals through couchsurfing. If you think "freeloading"... I've worked for NGOs on various continents, including couchsurfing (when it was still a non-profit) and in the meantime I built up Hitchwiki that is now the most visited resource about hitchhiking. 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.
- erikb 10y ago
  The thing I don't like about all these spend-no-money approaches are exactly these things like not having an apartment. That's not how most people can live. Even if I spend 2 years travelling around I wouldn't feel well without having an actual home I can go back to. So these kinds of methods can only apply to small parts of the general population. Trying to achieve that state for normal joe me is just as hard as getting rich.

chaostheory 10y ago

> Then I got married. That threw a monkey wrench into the works! But I'm slowly working thought that ;-) When you have children, it gets even worse on that front. :( The bright side is that it's still possible to achieve if both of you have the discipline: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/ http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/

praptak 10y ago

For anybody interested, http://www.mrmoneymustache.com http://www.mrmoneymustache.com is very much aligned with OP's testimony and also contains a lot of practical advice.