6 ms·

I just applied for a regular job. Because to be honest, it’s gonna be pretty sweet having a fat bank account, even if it’ll take till I’m 50 to have FU money.

I just applied for a regular job. Because to be honest, it’s gonna be pretty sweet having a fat bank account, even if it’ll take till I’m 50 to have FU money. You will never have FU money working a regular job.

xapata 5y ago
Compounding growth does fine.
- kebman 5y ago
  Assuming the Fed keeps printing more.
  - xapata 5y ago
    Yeah, yeah, I'm assuming the US government stays solvent.
    - atatatat 5y ago
      The 50%-300% increase in market values of tangible assets in that country this year is assuming the opposite.
PaulRobinson 5y ago
That's just nonsense advice. The entire point of retirement savings is that at some point you can stop working. FU money is just about timing. You can change that timing. 1. Reduce outgoings. It's easier to have FU money if the amount you need to be able to say "FU" is smaller, because you've perfected the art of living on a little less than most. Most people's outgoings grow to meet their incomes: resist that. You don't need to recycle everything you touch and grow your own food to make good headway here. 2. Take your age, halve it. That number is the percentage of your gross income you should be putting away each month into retirement and savings if you haven't started already. Yes, it's hard at the beginning, so have it happen automatically through employer deductions (common in the UK for pensions, not sure about elsewhere), or on payday move a %age automatically into a savings or investment account so you get used to living without it. I still struggle to do this but am getting better. 3. Learn about compound returns a little more. $500 a month at 8% (typical market returns recently), and over 10 years gives you back $92k - a $32k profit on the $60k you put in. Whether that's FU money is dependent on whether your outgoings are $50k/year or $150k/year. Keep going for another 10 years, and you're not far off $300k which isn't bad for the $120k it cost you. Think you can keep going into your fifties and do another decade? $750k off the back of a $180k investment. Is this not FU money yet? You're the problem, not the regular job. Your chances of having FU money working a regular job are far, far higher than having it any other way. It's just too many people are trying to retire in their 20s and not getting it: that's not a very likely outcome, no matter how hard you work or how smart you are.
- onion2k 5y ago
  Is this not FU money yet? You're the problem, not the regular job. I think we have very different ideas of what "FU money" means. FU money is literally enough to be able to do what you want. It's being able to stop asking "Can I afford this?" because you definitely can. It's being able to stop making a choice between two sports cars because you can afford both. It's being able to buy the exact house you want because you can approach the current owner and make an offer they'd be stupid to turn down. FU money is literally the ability to say FU and do something anyway when someone says you can't. Having enough money to retire a bit earlier if you live a relatively simple life and save a lot is not FU money. $750k off the back of a $180k investment. Is this not FU money yet? $750k is barely the down payment on a nice Bay Area family house. Of course it isn't FU money. You're not saying "FU" to anyone if you're also saying "I can't afford the house I want so I'll choose a more reasonable one."
  - solveit 5y ago
    > FU money is literally the ability to say FU and do something anyway when someone says you can't. I always thought FU money was enough money that you can say FU and not do something when someone says you have to. That is, enough money to retire (get fired) on a whim. Of course, even by that definition, 750k isn't FU money unless you're single in a LCOL area (or fairly close to a predictable death, I guess). My personal criterion for FU money is 3mm. This is fairly achievable, market willing, if you have make six figures.
    - inglor_cz 5y ago
      If you are willing to move to another country ... 750k would be FU money in Czechia. Even for a family of four.
  - gizmondo 5y ago
    > FU money is literally the ability to say FU and do something anyway when someone says you can't. So how much does it cost to travel to Alpha Centauri and back? There are always things you can't afford, no matter how rich you are. So that's a bad definition.
SpaghettiX 5y ago
I believe FU money is not about how much you earn, it’s about how much you save vs. spend. I can afford to stop working for more than a year, even though I’m not 25 yet, I would gladly say I have FU money. It’s because I don’t spend much.
- borroka 5y ago
  That's not FU money, that's enough money not to work for one year. At the end of the year, you cannot, in this context, say FU to anybody.
  - icandoit 5y ago
    He can say FU some fraction of his time. The recipe is simple. If you spend 50% of what you make, then you only have to work 50% of your life. If you spend 10% of what you make, then you only have to work 10% of your life. Turn off all sources of marketing and watch your free time and savings swell.
    - borroka 5y ago
      I wasn't discussing lifestyles, I was discussing the meaning of the term "FU money". Otherwise, I could say that with a good 17 seconds flat in the 100 meter dash I'm well on my way to the Olympics.
indigochill 5y ago
You can, if circumstances allow. Have no debt, make a software engineer's salary, and live on half of it. Put the rest in mutual funds. Repeat for some number of years and your investments' passive income eventually surpasses your budget, at which point you're free from the rat race. The part people find unpalatable (and sometimes impossible, depending on circumstances) is the "live on half of it" part (but even if half is impossible, it's still worth investing what you can). I'm not even making US software money and my budget says I can reach FU money (which, to be clear, means matching my current low-budget lifestyle, which is why it's achievable) in 5 years if no other major expenses come up. I did decide to prioritize charitable giving because of the reasons elsewhere discussed about service being its own reward, but that only pushed it out to ~11, which is still a couple decades earlier than the typical retirement age. Plus, when I'm gone, I can pass that income generator on to someone else and free them from the rat race, giving the next generation an even better headstart than I had.
- onion2k 5y ago
  That's a great goal, but you're confusing simply having money with having FU money. They're not the same. The "FU" bit is important. It means something. To be honest, even your strategy there sounds tremendously flawed because you're assuming that you'll even want to live that life. What happens if you meet someone, get married, and have a couple of kids after you 'retire'? Suddenly your retirement fund is nowhere near enough. A simple example - how do you pay for your kids to go to college? You think you've got "FU money" so surely you can do something as straightforward as saving your kids from college debt. What if they're brilliant and get places at Stanford? Is your 'live on the interest from half the earnings of 11 years as an engineer' going to cover $500k in 20 years time? Of course not. You'd need to dip in to the capital, and then your whole retirement plan falls apart. Having FU money, as opposed to just plain simple money, means you will be able to afford all those things and more besides because you are genuinely FU rich. You don't get there by having a normal job, even if it pays a lot and you can invest half your income. That just gets you a nice middle-class retirement, which is lovely, but you won't be rich.
  - ElFitz 5y ago
bkirkby 5y ago
15 years ago a young engineer i worked with overheard me say "getting rich is a pretty easy formula if you are patient." he came to me later and asked me to expound. i told him "the formula is: spend less than you make and invest the left over. you do that long enough and you'll become wealthy." i also told him "from what i can tell, it will happen so gradually that you'll barely notice a difference in your lifestyle. you will just realize one day that you are part of the maligned upper-crust but noone around you will know that." he called me 2 years ago to let me know that he took my observation to heart and he's now in the millionaire club. he also said "the books say i'm a millionaire, but i certainly don't feel like it." his next million will be much easier to get now and he just turned 40.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  I’m not a Mustachian by any means, but this post resonated pretty strongly with me when it first came out: https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math-behind-early-retirement/ https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-si...
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  What is the point of this story? This will objectively never happen for anyone with a ”regular” job, I.e. anywhere within 1 standard deviation or less of the median income. Also, counting a home’s net worth in assets does not make sense to me unless you can afford to greatly downsize at anytime and the market is liquid.
  - beckingz 5y ago
    If you invest $500 per month for 40 years and get 6% interest, you'll end up with almost a million dollars. $6,000 per year is a significant portion of your take-home income if you're making the median income in the US, but it's possible.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      Having $1M (or even $2M or $3M) 40 years in the future is not FU money. Not to mention that if you are unemployable anyway due to old age, you do not need to say FU to anyone in the first place.
ikiris 5y ago
you can totally have FU money working a regular job if the job pays well enough. There are plenty of them out there.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
That depends entirely on your salary and your lifestyle. If I made some of the numbers that HNers throw around I'd have FU money in less than a decade.
sillysaurusx 5y ago
One key difference is that my wife is a badass React engineer. She's a more capable dev than I am in many respects -- perhaps most of them. With her salary covering life expenses, my salary will be going straight into the bank. That means I can aim as high as I want; the higher, the quicker we'll hit that $1M mark. I estimate somewhere in the 10 to 15 year range, which also happens to coincide nicely with the (unfortunate) transition toward management as you get older, since that tends to come with yet more pay boost. $1M isn't a lot. But it's FU money for us, because we have simple tastes. Fooling around with electronics, traveling wherever we want, having a multi-floor house; these things are doable on much less than a mil. So you're right. I won't be buying a Tesla on a whim. But I won't want to. We're immensely privileged as software engineers to have this kind of leverage. Most people -- the vast, vast majority of the world -- don't lead such comfortable lives. I intend to exploit that privilege to the fullest, in order to build the best life possible for my kiddos. Then watch as they screw it all up, ha. But I'm fine with that too.

xapata 5y ago

Compounding growth does fine.

kebman 5y ago
Assuming the Fed keeps printing more.
- xapata 5y ago
  Yeah, yeah, I'm assuming the US government stays solvent.
  - atatatat 5y ago
    The 50%-300% increase in market values of tangible assets in that country this year is assuming the opposite.

PaulRobinson 5y ago

That's just nonsense advice. The entire point of retirement savings is that at some point you can stop working. FU money is just about timing. You can change that timing. 1. Reduce outgoings. It's easier to have FU money if the amount you need to be able to say "FU" is smaller, because you've perfected the art of living on a little less than most. Most people's outgoings grow to meet their incomes: resist that. You don't need to recycle everything you touch and grow your own food to make good headway here. 2. Take your age, halve it. That number is the percentage of your gross income you should be putting away each month into retirement and savings if you haven't started already. Yes, it's hard at the beginning, so have it happen automatically through employer deductions (common in the UK for pensions, not sure about elsewhere), or on payday move a %age automatically into a savings or investment account so you get used to living without it. I still struggle to do this but am getting better. 3. Learn about compound returns a little more. $500 a month at 8% (typical market returns recently), and over 10 years gives you back $92k - a $32k profit on the $60k you put in. Whether that's FU money is dependent on whether your outgoings are $50k/year or $150k/year. Keep going for another 10 years, and you're not far off $300k which isn't bad for the $120k it cost you. Think you can keep going into your fifties and do another decade? $750k off the back of a $180k investment. Is this not FU money yet? You're the problem, not the regular job. Your chances of having FU money working a regular job are far, far higher than having it any other way. It's just too many people are trying to retire in their 20s and not getting it: that's not a very likely outcome, no matter how hard you work or how smart you are.

onion2k 5y ago
Is this not FU money yet? You're the problem, not the regular job. I think we have very different ideas of what "FU money" means. FU money is literally enough to be able to do what you want. It's being able to stop asking "Can I afford this?" because you definitely can. It's being able to stop making a choice between two sports cars because you can afford both. It's being able to buy the exact house you want because you can approach the current owner and make an offer they'd be stupid to turn down. FU money is literally the ability to say FU and do something anyway when someone says you can't. Having enough money to retire a bit earlier if you live a relatively simple life and save a lot is not FU money. $750k off the back of a $180k investment. Is this not FU money yet? $750k is barely the down payment on a nice Bay Area family house. Of course it isn't FU money. You're not saying "FU" to anyone if you're also saying "I can't afford the house I want so I'll choose a more reasonable one."
- solveit 5y ago
  > FU money is literally the ability to say FU and do something anyway when someone says you can't. I always thought FU money was enough money that you can say FU and not do something when someone says you have to. That is, enough money to retire (get fired) on a whim. Of course, even by that definition, 750k isn't FU money unless you're single in a LCOL area (or fairly close to a predictable death, I guess). My personal criterion for FU money is 3mm. This is fairly achievable, market willing, if you have make six figures.
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    If you are willing to move to another country ... 750k would be FU money in Czechia. Even for a family of four.
- gizmondo 5y ago
  > FU money is literally the ability to say FU and do something anyway when someone says you can't. So how much does it cost to travel to Alpha Centauri and back? There are always things you can't afford, no matter how rich you are. So that's a bad definition.

SpaghettiX 5y ago

I believe FU money is not about how much you earn, it’s about how much you save vs. spend. I can afford to stop working for more than a year, even though I’m not 25 yet, I would gladly say I have FU money. It’s because I don’t spend much.

borroka 5y ago
That's not FU money, that's enough money not to work for one year. At the end of the year, you cannot, in this context, say FU to anybody.
- icandoit 5y ago
  He can say FU some fraction of his time. The recipe is simple. If you spend 50% of what you make, then you only have to work 50% of your life. If you spend 10% of what you make, then you only have to work 10% of your life. Turn off all sources of marketing and watch your free time and savings swell.
  - borroka 5y ago
    I wasn't discussing lifestyles, I was discussing the meaning of the term "FU money". Otherwise, I could say that with a good 17 seconds flat in the 100 meter dash I'm well on my way to the Olympics.

indigochill 5y ago

You can, if circumstances allow. Have no debt, make a software engineer's salary, and live on half of it. Put the rest in mutual funds. Repeat for some number of years and your investments' passive income eventually surpasses your budget, at which point you're free from the rat race. The part people find unpalatable (and sometimes impossible, depending on circumstances) is the "live on half of it" part (but even if half is impossible, it's still worth investing what you can). I'm not even making US software money and my budget says I can reach FU money (which, to be clear, means matching my current low-budget lifestyle, which is why it's achievable) in 5 years if no other major expenses come up. I did decide to prioritize charitable giving because of the reasons elsewhere discussed about service being its own reward, but that only pushed it out to ~11, which is still a couple decades earlier than the typical retirement age. Plus, when I'm gone, I can pass that income generator on to someone else and free them from the rat race, giving the next generation an even better headstart than I had.

onion2k 5y ago
That's a great goal, but you're confusing simply having money with having FU money. They're not the same. The "FU" bit is important. It means something. To be honest, even your strategy there sounds tremendously flawed because you're assuming that you'll even want to live that life. What happens if you meet someone, get married, and have a couple of kids after you 'retire'? Suddenly your retirement fund is nowhere near enough. A simple example - how do you pay for your kids to go to college? You think you've got "FU money" so surely you can do something as straightforward as saving your kids from college debt. What if they're brilliant and get places at Stanford? Is your 'live on the interest from half the earnings of 11 years as an engineer' going to cover $500k in 20 years time? Of course not. You'd need to dip in to the capital, and then your whole retirement plan falls apart. Having FU money, as opposed to just plain simple money, means you will be able to afford all those things and more besides because you are genuinely FU rich. You don't get there by having a normal job, even if it pays a lot and you can invest half your income. That just gets you a nice middle-class retirement, which is lovely, but you won't be rich.
- ElFitz 5y ago

bkirkby 5y ago

15 years ago a young engineer i worked with overheard me say "getting rich is a pretty easy formula if you are patient." he came to me later and asked me to expound. i told him "the formula is: spend less than you make and invest the left over. you do that long enough and you'll become wealthy." i also told him "from what i can tell, it will happen so gradually that you'll barely notice a difference in your lifestyle. you will just realize one day that you are part of the maligned upper-crust but noone around you will know that." he called me 2 years ago to let me know that he took my observation to heart and he's now in the millionaire club. he also said "the books say i'm a millionaire, but i certainly don't feel like it." his next million will be much easier to get now and he just turned 40.

sokoloff 5y ago
I’m not a Mustachian by any means, but this post resonated pretty strongly with me when it first came out: https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math-behind-early-retirement/ https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-si...
lotsofpulp 5y ago
What is the point of this story? This will objectively never happen for anyone with a ”regular” job, I.e. anywhere within 1 standard deviation or less of the median income. Also, counting a home’s net worth in assets does not make sense to me unless you can afford to greatly downsize at anytime and the market is liquid.
- beckingz 5y ago
  If you invest $500 per month for 40 years and get 6% interest, you'll end up with almost a million dollars. $6,000 per year is a significant portion of your take-home income if you're making the median income in the US, but it's possible.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    Having $1M (or even $2M or $3M) 40 years in the future is not FU money. Not to mention that if you are unemployable anyway due to old age, you do not need to say FU to anyone in the first place.

ikiris 5y ago

you can totally have FU money working a regular job if the job pays well enough. There are plenty of them out there.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

That depends entirely on your salary and your lifestyle. If I made some of the numbers that HNers throw around I'd have FU money in less than a decade.

sillysaurusx 5y ago

One key difference is that my wife is a badass React engineer. She's a more capable dev than I am in many respects -- perhaps most of them. With her salary covering life expenses, my salary will be going straight into the bank. That means I can aim as high as I want; the higher, the quicker we'll hit that $1M mark. I estimate somewhere in the 10 to 15 year range, which also happens to coincide nicely with the (unfortunate) transition toward management as you get older, since that tends to come with yet more pay boost. $1M isn't a lot. But it's FU money for us, because we have simple tastes. Fooling around with electronics, traveling wherever we want, having a multi-floor house; these things are doable on much less than a mil. So you're right. I won't be buying a Tesla on a whim. But I won't want to. We're immensely privileged as software engineers to have this kind of leverage. Most people -- the vast, vast majority of the world -- don't lead such comfortable lives. I intend to exploit that privilege to the fullest, in order to build the best life possible for my kiddos. Then watch as they screw it all up, ha. But I'm fine with that too.