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Yes, I saved a lot. About $1M in liquid assets. But I meant that I'll start with no income, no product, no business. I'll write another post about how I set up

Yes, I saved a lot. About $1M in liquid assets. But I meant that I'll start with no income, no product, no business. I'll write another post about how I set up my safety net.

Dayshine 8y ago
You don't need income with $1M. If you chuck that into an index tracker you can safely withdraw $40k a year...
- ataturk 8y ago
  Which isn't enough for a family of four, especially with health insurance. Ask me how I know. I'm hoping $2M will do it for me.
- cm2012 8y ago
  Someone used to spending ~500k a year is not going to want the quality of life change of moving to 40k a year income. Their family would also not appreciate it.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - hinkley 8y ago
    The best thing I ever did for the family budget is work out a plan ahead of time for windfall money. Odds are OP will never make this much money again. Spending like this is the new normal is how rock stars and athletes end up broke at 40. You have to get out ahead of it. Since OP has a million saved I’m going to assume they had a similar plan in place. But. $150k a year with young kids (they haven’t begun to get expensive yet) in Seattle is pretty high. Getting that down is a good deal of effort that will distract from running the business.
    - kamaal 8y ago
      >>Odds are OP will never make this much money again. I hope these kind of things are taught to people early. Somewhere in school, or may be at a level of a social value system. The default every day mode for most people is to work very hard and fail. In fact you are lucky to achieve mediocre success even after working insanely hard. >>The best thing I ever did for the family budget is work out a plan ahead of time for windfall money. Yes the best thing to do in case of a windfall period is to take all the money and put it into some kind of an investment. So that when the gravy train stops, you have something to fall back on. >>Spending like this is the new normal is how rock stars and athletes end up broke at 40. You have to get out ahead of it. It isn't just rock stars and athletes, its your every day cousins and uncles, who have some career run, spend like no tomorrow, when the gravy train stops, they realize they have their best years behind them, all their money is gone, and nothing that they can do will help them even get by, let alone take them back to their past glory. >>$150k a year with young kids (they haven’t begun to get expensive yet) in Seattle is pretty high. Getting that down is a good deal of effort that will distract from running the business. A lot of people will be willing to show sympathy to you if you met with an accident and bad things happened to you beyond you control. But if you threw away a perfectly fine opportunity and asked them to settle for less, they would be asking why should they even be doing it at all.
  - DVassallo 8y ago
    True. It's hard to regress on the standard of living, especially with a family. I wasn't spending $500K/year though :) I still made sure I abundantly lived within my means.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - wherehere 8y ago
    Perhaps, he was earning 500k but not spending that much. 500k would give you around 300k after tax. Half of 300k can easily be spent in order to have normal life.
- mixmastamyk 8y ago
  And have to live like a normal person, no high-rolling.
- DVassallo 8y ago
  Author here. My expenses are more like $150K a year, so my runway is only a few years. I have a family, two small kids (4 and 2), and live a comfortable life in Seattle. I could obviously adjust my standard of living, move somewhere cheaper, etc, but I didn't want my family to have to change anything from this experiment I'm doing with my life.
  - Existenceblinks 8y ago
    I understand you here. I just quit a financial startup. My runway is more than 10 years because I only have to take care my mother (Yeah, Single forever!). The real issue is mental health, that would lead to physical health if not aware!
  - pkaye 8y ago
    I hope you still have good health/life insurance. Maybe you are young but life changing events can happen to anyone as it did to me.
    - DVassallo 8y ago
      I do. Got a $5M life insurance, and disability insurance that pays $10K/month if I can't do my work anymore. Got a high deductible health insurance through the ACA exchange. Life and disability insurance were quite cheap actually: about $3K/year in total (age 35 and good health). Health insurance is obviously expensive. The cheapest is about $14K/year here in WA for a family of four (which is what I got). Deductible is about $7/$14K IIRC.
      - j4kp07 8y ago
        > The cheapest is about $14K/year here in WA for a family of four (which is what I got). Deductible is about $7/$14K IIRC. Just think, you need to have $21k in medical receipts before you can even break even. ACA is such a joke and yet many people in our society believe MORE "free" healthcare will drive prices (ie. taxes) lower.
  - pxue 8y ago
tyler- 8y ago
What kind of skill sets do you have to warrant Amazon paying you that much? What kind of skill sets do developers have at this level that differentiates them from everyone else?
- todd3834 8y ago
  Amazon’s stock has gone up a lot. Likely that has a lot to do with it but if this is all base salary that’s awesome. Usually big stock grants go out to those who have shown themselves to be force multipliers. If you can make everyone around you more productive than you’re contributing in ways that make companies like to put golden handcuffs on you.
  - DVassallo 8y ago
    My base was $160K, and the rest stock. If the stock didn't increase so much since 2016 I would have made around $380K each year in the last 3 years.
todd3834 8y ago
Good for you! Honestly I don’t understand the criticism on one sentence of your post and it made sense to me. “Now that I have some runway I’m going to build something from scratch”? Probably wouldn’t satisfy those that could only dream to make $500k and are frustrated you don’t appreciate it I guess. I’m not making that much but your post makes sense and resonated with me.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
  The problem is the wording. Author makes it sound like they'll be pulling themselves up by their bootstraps when they're really just standing on a giant pile of money (which they earned rather than inherited, to be fair). People have a very negative reaction to this because they see it way too often in the rhetoric of certain political groups.
DSingularity 8y ago
You probably don’t want to post this stuff so directly on net..
- icedchai 8y ago
  This is true. But how do you know he's not using a fake name / pseudonym?
TheShrug 8y ago
I know you're looking for attention or validation, but I have a feeling you'll probably get more negative attention than positive when you seem to be equating having $1M in liquid assets to "starting with no income, no product, no business".
- AimForTheBushes 8y ago
  One small loan of a million dollars!
- DVassallo 8y ago
  Those two things are not equivalent to me. Yes I have savings, but I also have no income right now.
  - TheShrug 8y ago
    You are correct! But the way you phrased it makes it sound like you are experiencing a hardship, which I think most would disagree with. Don't get me wrong, I think you should be proud, you clearly did a lot to earn your savings, but you're trying to make it sound like retiring young with $1M in liquid assets part is the difficult part when its probably the easy part. You don't have to work for a very long time, or at all!
    - DVassallo 8y ago
      Not at all. I live a very comfortable life and I don't expect it to change. Wasn't my intention to make it sound like hardship. But I don't have infinite runway, so I do have to make something.
  - lowercased 8y ago
    Unless that $1M is stuffed under your mattress, you likely have some income from is. Even sitting in a CD at 2% you'll be pulling in $20k/year - that's not "no income". What I think you mean is you don't have steady W2 income from an employer.
DougN7 8y ago
Good luck. Cautionary tale: I have a buddy that was in a similar situation (more than $1M actually). He started a business, was careful, and after a few years went bankrupt because the business never gained traction. He sure wishes he hadn’t gone down that path. He’ll probably never get back to where he was. Just a regular developer now. If you ask him if the experience was worth it, he’d tell you no. So be careful.
- olavgg 8y ago
  I did something similar 4 years ago. It was the best decision I have ever made. I did consultancy, sold myself cheap compared to the big consulting companies and helped several startups becoming real businesses. I loved it, every day was awesome! Even though I sold myself cheap, I still made more money that the salary I would get if I had worked for the big consulting companies. The biggest challenge is selling yourself, and I am not very good at it. Still it worked out great for 2 years until I joined a startup as the first employee which has gone from 3 to 100 employees in just 2 years. If I was employed at a regular company, I would never have gotten the chance to join that startup.
  - DougN7 8y ago
    That’s awesome - congratulations! I’m glad it worked for you.
xiphias2 8y ago
$1M is nothing when you could double it in a few years. Anyways good luck with your startup, and you can always go back, and take your quitting just as a vacation (many of my friends and I were doing the same thing, it's totally normal).

Yes, I saved a lot. About $1M in liquid assets. But I meant that I'll start with no income, no product, no business. I'll write another post about how I set up my safety net.

Dayshine 8y ago

You don't need income with $1M. If you chuck that into an index tracker you can safely withdraw $40k a year...

ataturk 8y ago
Which isn't enough for a family of four, especially with health insurance. Ask me how I know. I'm hoping $2M will do it for me.
cm2012 8y ago
Someone used to spending ~500k a year is not going to want the quality of life change of moving to 40k a year income. Their family would also not appreciate it.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- hinkley 8y ago
  The best thing I ever did for the family budget is work out a plan ahead of time for windfall money. Odds are OP will never make this much money again. Spending like this is the new normal is how rock stars and athletes end up broke at 40. You have to get out ahead of it. Since OP has a million saved I’m going to assume they had a similar plan in place. But. $150k a year with young kids (they haven’t begun to get expensive yet) in Seattle is pretty high. Getting that down is a good deal of effort that will distract from running the business.
  - kamaal 8y ago
    >>Odds are OP will never make this much money again. I hope these kind of things are taught to people early. Somewhere in school, or may be at a level of a social value system. The default every day mode for most people is to work very hard and fail. In fact you are lucky to achieve mediocre success even after working insanely hard. >>The best thing I ever did for the family budget is work out a plan ahead of time for windfall money. Yes the best thing to do in case of a windfall period is to take all the money and put it into some kind of an investment. So that when the gravy train stops, you have something to fall back on. >>Spending like this is the new normal is how rock stars and athletes end up broke at 40. You have to get out ahead of it. It isn't just rock stars and athletes, its your every day cousins and uncles, who have some career run, spend like no tomorrow, when the gravy train stops, they realize they have their best years behind them, all their money is gone, and nothing that they can do will help them even get by, let alone take them back to their past glory. >>$150k a year with young kids (they haven’t begun to get expensive yet) in Seattle is pretty high. Getting that down is a good deal of effort that will distract from running the business. A lot of people will be willing to show sympathy to you if you met with an accident and bad things happened to you beyond you control. But if you threw away a perfectly fine opportunity and asked them to settle for less, they would be asking why should they even be doing it at all.
- DVassallo 8y ago
  True. It's hard to regress on the standard of living, especially with a family. I wasn't spending $500K/year though :) I still made sure I abundantly lived within my means.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- wherehere 8y ago
  Perhaps, he was earning 500k but not spending that much. 500k would give you around 300k after tax. Half of 300k can easily be spent in order to have normal life.
mixmastamyk 8y ago
And have to live like a normal person, no high-rolling.
DVassallo 8y ago
Author here. My expenses are more like $150K a year, so my runway is only a few years. I have a family, two small kids (4 and 2), and live a comfortable life in Seattle. I could obviously adjust my standard of living, move somewhere cheaper, etc, but I didn't want my family to have to change anything from this experiment I'm doing with my life.
- Existenceblinks 8y ago
  I understand you here. I just quit a financial startup. My runway is more than 10 years because I only have to take care my mother (Yeah, Single forever!). The real issue is mental health, that would lead to physical health if not aware!
- pkaye 8y ago
  I hope you still have good health/life insurance. Maybe you are young but life changing events can happen to anyone as it did to me.
  - DVassallo 8y ago
    I do. Got a $5M life insurance, and disability insurance that pays $10K/month if I can't do my work anymore. Got a high deductible health insurance through the ACA exchange. Life and disability insurance were quite cheap actually: about $3K/year in total (age 35 and good health). Health insurance is obviously expensive. The cheapest is about $14K/year here in WA for a family of four (which is what I got). Deductible is about $7/$14K IIRC.
    - j4kp07 8y ago
      > The cheapest is about $14K/year here in WA for a family of four (which is what I got). Deductible is about $7/$14K IIRC. Just think, you need to have $21k in medical receipts before you can even break even. ACA is such a joke and yet many people in our society believe MORE "free" healthcare will drive prices (ie. taxes) lower.
- pxue 8y ago

tyler- 8y ago

What kind of skill sets do you have to warrant Amazon paying you that much? What kind of skill sets do developers have at this level that differentiates them from everyone else?

todd3834 8y ago
Amazon’s stock has gone up a lot. Likely that has a lot to do with it but if this is all base salary that’s awesome. Usually big stock grants go out to those who have shown themselves to be force multipliers. If you can make everyone around you more productive than you’re contributing in ways that make companies like to put golden handcuffs on you.
- DVassallo 8y ago
  My base was $160K, and the rest stock. If the stock didn't increase so much since 2016 I would have made around $380K each year in the last 3 years.

todd3834 8y ago

Good for you! Honestly I don’t understand the criticism on one sentence of your post and it made sense to me. “Now that I have some runway I’m going to build something from scratch”? Probably wouldn’t satisfy those that could only dream to make $500k and are frustrated you don’t appreciate it I guess. I’m not making that much but your post makes sense and resonated with me.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
The problem is the wording. Author makes it sound like they'll be pulling themselves up by their bootstraps when they're really just standing on a giant pile of money (which they earned rather than inherited, to be fair). People have a very negative reaction to this because they see it way too often in the rhetoric of certain political groups.

DSingularity 8y ago

You probably don’t want to post this stuff so directly on net..

icedchai 8y ago
This is true. But how do you know he's not using a fake name / pseudonym?

TheShrug 8y ago

I know you're looking for attention or validation, but I have a feeling you'll probably get more negative attention than positive when you seem to be equating having $1M in liquid assets to "starting with no income, no product, no business".

AimForTheBushes 8y ago
One small loan of a million dollars!
DVassallo 8y ago
Those two things are not equivalent to me. Yes I have savings, but I also have no income right now.
- TheShrug 8y ago
  You are correct! But the way you phrased it makes it sound like you are experiencing a hardship, which I think most would disagree with. Don't get me wrong, I think you should be proud, you clearly did a lot to earn your savings, but you're trying to make it sound like retiring young with $1M in liquid assets part is the difficult part when its probably the easy part. You don't have to work for a very long time, or at all!
  - DVassallo 8y ago
    Not at all. I live a very comfortable life and I don't expect it to change. Wasn't my intention to make it sound like hardship. But I don't have infinite runway, so I do have to make something.
- lowercased 8y ago
  Unless that $1M is stuffed under your mattress, you likely have some income from is. Even sitting in a CD at 2% you'll be pulling in $20k/year - that's not "no income". What I think you mean is you don't have steady W2 income from an employer.

DougN7 8y ago

Good luck. Cautionary tale: I have a buddy that was in a similar situation (more than $1M actually). He started a business, was careful, and after a few years went bankrupt because the business never gained traction. He sure wishes he hadn’t gone down that path. He’ll probably never get back to where he was. Just a regular developer now. If you ask him if the experience was worth it, he’d tell you no. So be careful.

olavgg 8y ago
I did something similar 4 years ago. It was the best decision I have ever made. I did consultancy, sold myself cheap compared to the big consulting companies and helped several startups becoming real businesses. I loved it, every day was awesome! Even though I sold myself cheap, I still made more money that the salary I would get if I had worked for the big consulting companies. The biggest challenge is selling yourself, and I am not very good at it. Still it worked out great for 2 years until I joined a startup as the first employee which has gone from 3 to 100 employees in just 2 years. If I was employed at a regular company, I would never have gotten the chance to join that startup.
- DougN7 8y ago
  That’s awesome - congratulations! I’m glad it worked for you.

xiphias2 8y ago

$1M is nothing when you could double it in a few years. Anyways good luck with your startup, and you can always go back, and take your quitting just as a vacation (many of my friends and I were doing the same thing, it's totally normal).