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How many years of work do you have in the tech industry? It seems in the current market (not even assuming SF salaries), and without kids/other dependents, it's

How many years of work do you have in the tech industry? It seems in the current market (not even assuming SF salaries), and without kids/other dependents, it's fairly easy to reach that point. Just curious, because a lot of people have this mentality that they need to work forever and ever, but it often is just a mindset. You can easily amass 500k-1M and just coast on 40k/year in expenses for a long time. If it's something you want... a lot of people want kids, or to live in high cost areas, or to accumulate wealth to pass on, or have dependents such as elderly parents, or enjoy money a lot.

deleted 7y ago
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gwbas1c 7y ago
Or get used to the money and comfort and camaraderie of a salaried job
tempsy 7y ago
Right...making $40K in dividends from $1M is very easy. Harder if you're in a higher cost location but you can definitely live off $60K even in SF if you're single.
twic 7y ago
> You can easily With the usual caveat, "if you are working for a big tech company in the bay area". In London, starting on 30k and rising to 80k after ten years, not so easily.
yibg 7y ago
I wonder if this is a good or bad position to be in to start a life style business. I’m fortunate enough to be in this situation, where if I go somewhere cheap and keep my expenses down I can sustain myself financially for a long time, maybe indefinitely. And I’ve though about leaving my salaried job to do my own thing many times. I do worry though that the lack of financial pressure will just leave me lazy and “playing around” instead of focusing on building a financially viable business. Anyone else have experience with this?
- adventured 7y ago
  I've seen a broad mixture of those scenarios over time, people of various personality types doing it (myself included). The one thing I'd say, is that it's critical to know whether you have a strong internal drive / self-motivation. If you don't, it can be a dangerous context to put yourself into (dangerous in the financial or time waste sense). If you don't have that internal always-on motivation, it's super important to have a firm plan and object/thing/business idea that you're going to be pursuing before you quit. Start at least drawing up some sort of minimum framework before you quit, laying out what you're going to do, how you'll spend your time, what type of lifestyle businesses you're interested in, plot everything out financially as much as possible and so on. Good advanced planning will save the day and help prevent catastrophy as the road gets challenging. It's a new type of 9 to 5 job, although it's more likely to be a 50-80 hour job getting started. Without financial pressures, you have to either naturally self-motivate strongly so you don't constantly veer off (get lazy, get distracted, get bored, and such), or follow a fairly strict plan that you've laid out for yourself ahead of time to keep yourself sane, productive and making progress.

deleted 7y ago

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gwbas1c 7y ago

Or get used to the money and comfort and camaraderie of a salaried job

tempsy 7y ago

Right...making $40K in dividends from $1M is very easy. Harder if you're in a higher cost location but you can definitely live off $60K even in SF if you're single.

twic 7y ago

> You can easily With the usual caveat, "if you are working for a big tech company in the bay area". In London, starting on 30k and rising to 80k after ten years, not so easily.

yibg 7y ago

I wonder if this is a good or bad position to be in to start a life style business. I’m fortunate enough to be in this situation, where if I go somewhere cheap and keep my expenses down I can sustain myself financially for a long time, maybe indefinitely. And I’ve though about leaving my salaried job to do my own thing many times. I do worry though that the lack of financial pressure will just leave me lazy and “playing around” instead of focusing on building a financially viable business. Anyone else have experience with this?

adventured 7y ago
I've seen a broad mixture of those scenarios over time, people of various personality types doing it (myself included). The one thing I'd say, is that it's critical to know whether you have a strong internal drive / self-motivation. If you don't, it can be a dangerous context to put yourself into (dangerous in the financial or time waste sense). If you don't have that internal always-on motivation, it's super important to have a firm plan and object/thing/business idea that you're going to be pursuing before you quit. Start at least drawing up some sort of minimum framework before you quit, laying out what you're going to do, how you'll spend your time, what type of lifestyle businesses you're interested in, plot everything out financially as much as possible and so on. Good advanced planning will save the day and help prevent catastrophy as the road gets challenging. It's a new type of 9 to 5 job, although it's more likely to be a 50-80 hour job getting started. Without financial pressures, you have to either naturally self-motivate strongly so you don't constantly veer off (get lazy, get distracted, get bored, and such), or follow a fairly strict plan that you've laid out for yourself ahead of time to keep yourself sane, productive and making progress.