I aim to earn about 50K a year. That's my treading-water level. Does that sound doable? My wife and I have discovered that it is possible to lead a rich life wi

I aim to earn about 50K a year. That's my treading-water level. Does that sound doable? My wife and I have discovered that it is possible to lead a rich life within that income in the Bay Area -- international travel, more books than we have time for, eating well with friends and so on. Insurance comes out of this amount as well. A young person with desired skills could easily be making more than twice this amount in the Bay Area. Owning a house is strictly optional (and a bit mad, to own a house in earthquake country, esp at those prices!) Point is, many people vastly overestimate how much they need to enjoy a rich life. There's plenty of room at the bottom :) Now, 50K is huge for the vast majority of the population, so this is all still rich talk. But the HN community is probably in the top 2 percentile of the world's population, so I feel little freer in saying so.