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In theory, if I wished, I could retire right now. My wife is Russian, houses are very cheap in her area and I've managed to save a good portion of my bay area i
by Veratyr 9y ago
In theory, if I wished, I could retire right now. My wife is Russian, houses are very cheap in her area and I've managed to save a good portion of my bay area income over the past few years.
Realistically though, more like 40 (another 17 years). I generally save about half my income, which over the next 17 years should build to >$1M, which is enough to buy a house outright in a nice area with a few hundred thousand left over to spend on living expenses.
> What are some common mistakes software engineers make that prevent them from getting their sooner?
Living and working in the bay area, spending their money. If you work at MicroGoogleBookZon, you can usually transfer to a region with a lower cost of living without much of a salary hit and save that money. Even if you stay in the bay area, you can drastically reduce the cost of living by increasing your commute or living with others. It's less pleasant but you don't have to do it as long.
Also, you don't have to retire to the same place you save your money in. You can work and save in Seattle, then retire to say rural Minnesota. If you're happy with that, you can retire much earlier.
- noretire 9y agoYou’re only 23 and you want to retire?
- Veratyr 9y agoAs soon as I can! I think it's insane that I'm spending my most able-bodied years sitting behind a desk writing code all day instead of with my wife or (not yet conceived) children.
- monsieurbanana 9y agoMaybe in a hundred years it will be insane, once society catches up with technological progress. For now, what's insane is thinking that society can survive with people not working in their able-bodied years.
- Veratyr 9y agoIf I were working in a field that required an able body I might agree with you but I'm not performing manual labour, society would get just as much value from me overall if I had my retirement now and spent my 40s and 50s writing code instead. It's already silly that I'm spending my 20s and 30s writing code. Plus the code I write doesn't do anything for society's survival. We could just about switch the entire tech industry to maintenance mode, cut jobs by 90% and society would get along just fine, as long as we figure out a way to distribute necessities like food and housing without money. The same can be said about an enormous chunk of the workforce. We're forced to work for survival but the jobs we perform aren't truly necessary, they're ultimately derived from an illogical and unsustainable obsession with growth. Most of society doesn't _need_ to be working at all and society would get along just fine if it wanted. It just doesn't want to.