21 ms·

How I got wealthy without working too hard

226 points by youhavetosayit 5y ago

jcroll 5y ago
> Work and self-actualisation can be rewarding and meaningful, but looking at the sea from an hammock and drinking too much beer with friends three times a week is also a completely respectable way of waiting for the gravitational swallowing of the planet. Part of wants to accept this from the author and the other part of me is wary. I didn't have a child because I wanted to be happy, I did it because I wanted a more meaningful life. It was the greatest decision I ever made.
- jokethrowaway 5y ago
  Completely agree on the kids part. I also agree with the author on work though: it's just a way to pay the bills and I don't value that kind of self actualisation. Most jobs are not about changing the world in a meaningful way (and that's ok). I do more creative and research work for my toy projects than I ever did for all my professional career.
- fhd2 5y ago
  I can relate, I have three and I feel it does give my life more meaning. But I still feel like pointing something out: Know that phenomenon where users that paid for software are typically more satisfied with it and give better ratings than users who didn't? Whish I knew what the proper name for it is, but having kids is kind of the ultimate version of that :D (Update: Thanks so much for helping me figure out what to call it!)
  - wastedhours 5y ago
    It's akin to post-purchase rationalization and sunk cost bias rolled into one - likewise I think it's a specific bias in its own right, but a search hasn't turned up anything yet!
  - jasode 5y ago
    >Know that phenomenon where users that paid for software are typically more satisfied with it and give better ratings than users who didn't? >Whish I knew what the proper name for it is, Possibly these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere_ownership_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere_ownership_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endowment_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endowment_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choice-supportive_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choice-supportive_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA_effect
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - fhd2 5y ago
      I think it's pretty much choice-supportive bias, thanks! The more costly it is to make the wrong choice, the more is invested into rationalising the decision, the stronger the bias.
      - Sammi 5y ago
        The best part of it is that just like the placebo effect it actually works. Speaking from experience. I mean, how can you look at your little child and not feel like you are looking at the face of god? It truly is a profound experience.
  - javert 5y ago
    Sounds very close to Stockholm Syndrome.
    - dr_kiszonka 5y ago
      My favorite comment of the day! And I say this as a loving father.
  - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
    it's called cognitive dissonance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance (sortof anyway).
  - mdavis6890 5y ago
    It's called "knowing yourself" People who think "I think I will likely be happier with children" will be positively correlated with people who have children and are happy about it. People who think "Having kids will probably make me less happy, so I won't have any." will be negatively correlated with having children, or being happy about them if they do. This isn't irrational. It's just knowing yourself and choosing wisely.
- shiftpgdn 5y ago
  The biggest reality check in my life was working at an engineering firm with a bunch of near retirement baby boomers with no children. They all came across ass listless, unhappy, and living a life with no greater purpose. It was unquestionably one of the ugliest things I have ever seen. As you get older and friends drift and pass away family is one of the most important things in life. I know anti-natalism is hip right now but it makes me sad to think of all the millennials and gen-z who will reach their 50s and 60s when it is too late and be stuck in a life without purpose.
  - yoyohello13 5y ago
    I think this is dependent on the people. I’ve also seen many couples who couldn’t have kids that have very fulfilling lives. They volunteer, are active in and well liked by the community. I think meaning can come from many places. Kids are an almost guaranteed source but you can find meaning without children if you look for it. This might just be wishful thinking on my part since I’m unable to have kids, but I’d like to think I’m not destined for a lonely meaningless future.
    - joeberon 5y ago
      I've also seen many people who have had kids who have flown the nest who now do not have fulfilling lives.
    - TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
      I had a great uncle and aunt who could not have children. They lived to their mid/late 80s. They were definitely not living a life without meaning. It definitely is possible. I saw it.
  - wavefunction 5y ago
    Life has whatever purpose you give to it. That's it.
    - abfan1127 5y ago
      while true, I think many people struggle to give as deep a purpose to (hiking, being a foodie, knitting) as investing in another person. Not that it isn't possible. Its just a challenge. Not that being a parent isn't a challenge either.
- good8675309 5y ago
  I wasn't going to have kids for the same reasons. My son wasn't planned but he and his siblings are the best thing that ever happened to me and not having kids would have been the greatest mistake I would have ever made. Guess you never know until you know.
hiddencost 5y ago
Million dollars ain't what it once was.
- marban 5y ago
  That checks #4, "Don't live in big cities"
  - tluyben2 5y ago
    Yep, where I enjoy living, 1m takes you comfortably to a ripe old age. I can see that if you want to live in the center of some popular city (or any city?), this won't really move the dial. Luckily, for me, that would be hell on earth.
- danielvaughn 5y ago
  Yep. It'll buy you a house, a nice start on your retirement, and maybe the ability to fund your kids education. But no more than that.
  - abswest 5y ago
    well if you prefer to live in the city like SF/NYC, it won't even buy you a house. a solid mortgage down payment and reserve fund - that's it.
- WORMS_EAT_WORMS 5y ago
  Depends on your age. $1M in 30s? Congrats you won the game. $1M in 40s? Congrats you are doing well.
- handrous 5y ago
  Receive a $1m windfall at age 35 in 1990: "Hot damn, I'll never work again!" Receive a $1m windfall at age 35 in 2021: "Hot damn, I'll actually be able to retire at 65!"
- european321 5y ago
  Yeah that's true, but still (of course depending on your age and location) it's enough to live in many many places without having to work again
ericmcer 5y ago
Anyone who has been making software engineer level money, but living frugally and dumping it all in stocks and crypto for the last 7 years is probably close to retirement. I guess his hack? is that he contracts and doesn't work very hard. I always found contracting more difficult due to the huge amount of hustle and bookkeeping you take on in addition to the actual work.
- jamil7 5y ago
  I’ve contracted full-time off and on throughout my career and am in an ‘on’ period at the moment. It gets easier with time, you get better at it like anything else and learn to outsource and delegate to other small businesses and freelancers as well as build up steady recurring work.
yayitswei 5y ago
Lots of posts saying $1M isn't much. What amount would you consider truly wealthy?
- willio58 5y ago
  It’s all perspective. In some parts of the Bay Area 1M buys you little more than a shack to live in. 1M where I live would buy me a great quality home on an adequate plot of land.
- hendersoon 5y ago
  Truly wealthy would be >$100M in a major US city. I know plenty of people with $3-$6M and they live very normal lives, not ostentatious, just without much stress over money.
dymk 5y ago
What’s the purpose of an article like this if the author starts with a list of decisions which lead to his success, but then immediately follows with “my journey was 99% luck and 1% planets alignment”? The article is clearly supposed to be a “how-to” of sorts, but then goes and muddies it’s messaging with that second part. The list of things to do isn’t really useful then, is it?
- picture 5y ago
  > I was born in a developed country in the 80s (Italy), with access to fresh water, very good carbohydrates and a decent education system. This seem like a pretty hard to follow "how-to"
  - unpolloloco 5y ago
    Given that 80% of the world doesn't have that, yeah. But for that 20%, the author's path isn't entirely unreasonable (if a bit quick). Make $$$, spend $, invest $$. it requires living somewhere other than CA and probably not having kids, but if you can make those sacrifices and can play the software engineer game, it's more a matter of math working out than it is an unreasonable path.
    - jaclaz 5y ago
      JFYI, an old Italian proverb/saying: Fare i conti spesso, moderar le voglie, spender men di quel che si raccoglie. That roughly translates to: Do the (financial) math often, limit your cravings, spend less than you can gather.
- 4g 5y ago
  The feeling I get from reading the article is that the author felt the need to apologize because of the current social climate, and not for some real reason. He wasn't born into a rich family and inherited wealth, he simply studied, worked, spent less than he made and invested the difference. The apology basically boils down to being born in a relatively okay country and being smart.
cheeze 5y ago
> Don't go too hard on crypto > 11.2% of NW is tied up in crypto
- echelon 5y ago
  If it was stocks, you would diversify more by sector according to your risk, but in general ~10% in a broad asset class seems fine. I don't think we would question 10% of net worth in real estate.
  - UncleMeat 5y ago
    But crypto doesn't function like a broad asset class, at least not for very long. Is there are future where there are 10,000 different cryptocurrencies? I don't see it. I think even crypto bulls believe that most coins will go to zero at some point. You don't get the same benefits of diversification in crypto as you do with equities.
    - hackingforfun 5y ago
      I don't think most coins will go to zero at some point, some will, but most is too broad. I also don't see any reason why new coins wouldn't keep getting created. Basically, what's been happening will continue. This is what I see. You can diversify in crypto, but you have to educate yourself and pick and choose. For example, you could diversify into payment systems, metaverse tokens, smart contract platforms, oracles, prediction markets, cross-chain interoperability, DeFi, NFTs, etc. There aren't as well defined categories as in equities, but there are some ways to categorize them. Are there equivalent protections like in equities? No. Is crypto as mature of a market? No. Is crypto high risk? Yes. However, cryptocurriences, or at least specific ones, like Bitcoin, are increasingly being considered an asset class [1]. [1] https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/jp-morgan-wealth-ceo-says-clients-see-bitcoin-as-asset-class-to-invest-in-2021-07-20 https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/jp-morgan-wealth-ceo-says-cl...
  - mikeyouse 5y ago
    > I don't think we would question 10% of net worth in real estate. No, but there's no chance of real estate going to zero. The global financial crisis housing bust saw US house prices decreases by something like 20%. There's a non-insignificant chance of most Crypto 'investments' losing 99% of their value. I think it's very dangerous to start talking about crypto as an "asset class". People are going to lose their shirts and hardly anyone understands where the value is supposed to come from.
jjulius 5y ago
>Preamble: I'm extremely lucky. ... So what you're going to read is 99% luck and 1% planets alignment. I mean, that's pretty much it and he states it up front. If that's the crux, then why write about this other than to brag?
- WithinReason 5y ago
  "I was born in a developed country in the 80s (Italy), with access to fresh water, very good carbohydrates and a decent education system." If you grew up in a developed country, you're extremely lucky too.
- amelius 5y ago
  Next up: how I won the lottery
  - deleted 5y ago
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- youhavetosayit 5y ago
  Account for luck bias, but then read the recipe.
- mikestew 5y ago
  So I read your point to be that as long as one rolls a good base character, like being born in a developed country with a good education system and fresh water, the rest just takes care of itself? You know that's not right.
- go_elmo 5y ago
  Thats just being humble. Most successful people think its that way because they are special and worked hard. Wrong. Most people work hard, its the LUCK many underestimate. Being aware of this is healthy in so many ways, especially socially.
  - ed25519FUUU 5y ago
    Luck and hard work aren't exclusive attributes for success.
jagger27 5y ago
> Preamble: I'm extremely lucky. Good for the author, but this really says it all. Specialization as a software developer seems like good advice though.
- WithinReason 5y ago
  He says he's lucky for growing up in Italy. If you grew up in a developed country, you're extremely lucky too.
- jawns 5y ago
  Specialization can accelerate your career during the first decade (or maybe first two decades) of working. But I've found that people who are generalists end up doing better further into their careers, particularly if their job includes a leadership/management component. I'm not saying that if you're in the top 0.1% on one very specific technology, you won't be in demand throughout your career. But should you choose a leadership/management path later in your career, you're often going to need to be able to do a bunch of things reasonably well, and that's a generalist's sweet spot.
demygale 5y ago
Being a contractor would require me to spend about $10,000 more for health insurance above what my workplace premiums are. US, obvi. When I was a contractor fifteen years ago, I billed at $1,000 a day ($125/hr) in the US, not remote. Seems like wage stagnation has hit the software market as well. Really enjoyed the story. I love seeing the personal histories of people in my profession.
- b20000 5y ago
  i have the impression the max contracting rate is 175/hr. when you ask for more, “HR says they never seen such high rates”… that doesn’t leave you with much in california. and i think that once you move to a cheaper place you cannot demand that rate. so how can you increase your rate as a software engineering contractor?
  - dbrueck 5y ago
    $175 is definitely not the ceiling for the US. "HR says they never seen such high rates" is a negotiating tactic - you have to counter. Of course, you also have to be worth it by establishing a track record of being a subject matter expert, delivering the results, and being great to work with. Another way to get exceptionally high hourly rates is to do per-project or per-phase bidding, but that has its own pitfalls, so a good in-between can be to have some of both.
    - b20000 5y ago
      per project, as in "fixed price"? you say you will do the job for 50K, then hope you can actually pull it off. seems very risky unless there is a provision in the contract to renegotiate without any consequences when it turns out it will take longer? I don't even understand why they involve HR since it's none of their business. After all, you are a professional service provider. How would you counter?
      - dbrueck 5y ago
        Yes, the risk is one of the main pitfalls I was alluding to, and the best way I know of it mitigate that are the 2 I mentioned - per-phase and having some hourly rate in there too. A renegotiate-with-zero-consequences provision is unrealistic - that's too lopsided in your favor - but some provision to reassess if things are just completely out of whack is reasonable. But yes, there is always risk in this model, so it pays to start conservative and to really get good at it. But to some degree you want that risk, as the risk and reward are related to each other of course - if it's uncomfortably risky, then maybe a more stable 9-5 salaried job is a better route. As an example of what mixed billing might look like, you might scope out the work for a basic website and then your proposal would boil down to $20k for the initial phase of the site, and that includes 5 hr of customizations not covered in the requirements doc, and then $200/hr for additional customization beyond that, and then already have a rough breakdown of what will be included in phases 2 and 3. The 5 hours you've built in to the bid is your way of recognizing that no requirements doc is going to be 100% comprehensive (nor is your client going to know with 100% certainty up front exactly how they want everything). The hourly rate beyond that shows that you're willing to let some stuff be added, so they don't have to totally stress about getting the requirements doc 100% right. And then the rough sketches of future phases helps prevent you from getting stuck in just hourly mode for everything after the first phase - if they start asking for a really big chunk of work you can say, "yes, we can definitely do that, but that's a big enough chunk of work that it'll really delay the initial launch of the site - let's talk about putting that in phase 2". One huge advantage of milestone- or phase-based billing (assuming you do it right) is that you are rewarded for efficiency and optimization - improving your skills, creating reusable libraries/templates, finding trusted people you can outsource un-fun work to, etc. - because you are billing on value provided, so over time you hopefully reduce your costs while the value you provide stays the same or increases. If you are always billing at an hourly rate, you have limited incentive to improve in those ways because you end up passing all of those gains on to your client. > I don't even understand why they involve HR since it's none of their business. After all, you are a professional service provider. How would you counter? Exactly right, and I think you counter by essentially saying that (in a nice way). But really you want to make the conversation about value you're providing and that if you really get down to the nitty gritty, it's a good deal for them. Don't forget that they aren't paying employment taxes for you, or paying you benefits like medical and paid vacation - those are big numbers. Also, part of the appeal of a contractor/consultant is that it doesn't have to be a long-term commitment, and they don't have to invest in finding or creating the skills you bring to the table. All of these really matter, so it's ok to make them part of the discussion. There are more subtle things too - in talking with them, you can usually get a sense for the level of dysfunction in their org and, if it's not so much that you want nothing to do with them, you can really play up things like your ability to deliver quickly. There are some cases where you have to stand firm and be willing to walk away. If it's a client you really want to land long-term, then occasionally you might decide to do a smaller introductory project at a lower rate with them as a way to build the relationship and prove out your services, with a clear understanding that this is a good-faith concession you're making and not a permanent reduction of your rates. And then in that intro project you do your best to absolutely kill it and be a great person to work with such that when it is done, they are more convinced than ever that they want to keep working with you and that your services are worth it.
raldi 5y ago
Meanwhile, I got wealthy by living in big cities, showing up in person, and being pretty good at many things. There are multiple paths.
- youhavetosayit 5y ago
  Agree! I should have mentioned the multiple paths.
- mtoner23 5y ago
  Same here. His point of not fighting the market is true though. For me, by being a good people person, who can convince people and beging good at many things better than others gives me value no one else has. Dont be in the rat race i think is the key point to me.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> Take a $ 500-1000 / day, full-remote job > Take 2 months for holidays in-between contracts > Do this for 7 years while investing most of your salary in a diversified portfolio. Working $1000/day contracts for 5 days per week, 10 months per year is equivalent to $217K of contractor income per year. But contractor income is not comparable to normal career income because you have to handle additional taxes and health insurance, so this is more like a $150K (plus or minus) full time job once you subtract self-employment taxes and pay for health insurance. But that’s also assuming that the author stated out making $1000/day, always made $1000/day, and always had availability of these easy, low-effort, $1000/day contracts whenever they wanted. Most people don’t start out contracting with an unlimited supply of contracts that pay exactly what they want. Working a $150K job for 7 years isn’t really a recipe for getting “wealthy”. Even if you could reduce your expenses to below $25K per year (eg $1K/month rent, $1K/month for everything else) you might be able to save $100K of that annually after taxes. But that’s best case and you really have to compromise a lot to get there unless you really enjoy living in the middle of nowhere, never traveling, and none of your hobbies or interests cost any money. So there’s a lot missing from this blog post. I suspect maybe the author got lucky with some outlier investments, but that’s not something that can be conveyed in a “how to” blog post. FIRE type wealth trajectories are possible, but this isn’t what it looks like. Working normally-paid jobs for 7 years and just living your normal life doesn’t get you there (unless you luck into some 1000X investment somewhere or get a huge inheritance boost, but those are rarely mentioned).
- rootsudo 5y ago
  So, the idea is that you save and invest, you don't have free standing cash - you put a majority of your liquidity into investment vehicles.
- yig 5y ago
  This is essentially Mr. Money Mustache's formula: https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/02/22/getting-rich-from-zero-to-hero-in-one-blog-post/ https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/02/22/getting-rich-from...
  - AutumnCurtain 5y ago
Xenoamorphous 5y ago
I've done most of this. 10+ years ago I started working for a company in a city with good salaries (for Europe, not so much for the US), London. After a while I decided to go back to my home country, and the company offered me to work remotely. I've lived in my hometown for most of the past 9 years or so, a small town in southern Europe, much cheaper than London and any other big city, including the ones in my country. Main differences vs. what the article says are: I've been working for the same company all these years, rather than chaining months-long contracts. Also (sadly?) I didn't invest most of my money, I simply saved it and bought a nice place this year almost upfront (had to get a mortgage for the taxes, basically). Also I've worked hard, very hard. This strategy is good to make good money, I think. Often here in HN I see comments saying that you must hop from job to job in order to get raises, but if you stick long enough so that your knowledge is very valuable, the raises will keep coming. Word of warning though: unless the company is remote-first you can forget about promotions, at least in my experience. It kinda hurts seeing how you've worked your ass off for a long time and despite making good money other people get promoted while you stick to the same role as when you joined.
- nzach 5y ago
  >if you stick long enough so that your knowledge is very valuable, the raises will keep coming AKA golden handcuffs. I don't think this is something inherently bad but we should always be aware of it.
  - Xenoamorphous 5y ago
    Indeed. I'm in a golden cage right now. No one would pay me as much, which makes switching jobs hard to swallow.
- spaetzleesser 5y ago
  “Word of warning though: unless the company is remote-first you can forget about promotions, at least in my experience. It kinda hurts seeing how you've worked your ass off for a long time and despite making good money other people get promoted while you stick to the same role as when you joined.” Agreed. This is often a bargain you have to accept. I went remote only after I had reached a point where future promotions were very unlikely anyway.
giantg2 5y ago
I'm doing it all wrong...
nojito 5y ago
>Do this for 7 years while investing most of your salary in a diversified portfolio. Don’t go too crazy with Crypto. Easy to do in a massive bull market.
- spaetzleesser 5y ago
  That’s what people are forgetting. There are plenty of 7 year periods where the stock market will return nothing or almost nothing.
  - foogazi 5y ago
    How would we know ? Should we stop investing because of uncertainty ? There are plenty of people that lived through this bull market and didn’t come out of it as millionaires
    - spaetzleesser 5y ago
      You can't know. But people should stop talking about 7% per year ROI like it's a natural law you can rely on. For some people it works out, some do way better and a significant number do worse. And for most part it's just luck.
- wara23arish 5y ago
  Isn’t it better to invest when its a bear market? Everything’s basically on sale. Why would you want to buy stuff at a premium? At least that’s how I see.
  - foogazi 5y ago
    > Isn’t it better to invest when its a bear market? Everyone says that when they are in a bull market
gab007 5y ago
> "Meetings are the mind-killer" Could not agree more. They're big-corp specific and if you can avoid them - that would be a big plus for you. I can't. They lack value while being a complete waste of time. You may think it's no biggie - "but I'm getting paid for the meetig time". True, however - they can wear you down in time, if three-four times a day... and you are still expected to deliver, regardless the time spent in meetings. That's only my oppinion, I know some folks are fine with long meetings. My view on this is - I am not an entertainer (aka meetings "super-star"), I would like to keep it short & to the point. Regarding the article, there is some good stuff in there, that may or may not apply to everyone (especially if you have kids).
- icedchai 5y ago
  There are also hidden costs to meetings in terms of lost time / productivity. If I have a half hour meeting at 1:30 then another one at 2:30, I can't do much with that half hour in between (except surf HN, of course.) If this happens a few times a day, most of the day is gone. "Agile" and its "rituals" makes this even worse: standups, sprint planning, retros, on top of miscellaneous team status meetings. It's sickening how much time is wasted with this garbage.
- dbrueck 5y ago
  Too many stupid meetings is the #1 reasons why I left and started something on my own. At my current company we have one official meeting per week, and it's unusual if it lasts more than 20 minutes. It's wonderful.
cvhashim 5y ago
So…high income, low expenses, invest smart. Got it.
guico 5y ago
TL;DR: Be a parasite and use the economic opportunity others create. Works well if only a few of us do it. But someone needs to start and run the companies where you get those contracts. Or?
- novok 5y ago
  Those people make significantly more too. 2x-10000x
- deleted 5y ago
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amackera 5y ago
I guess this article isn't for me, since I have no problem with working hard. I enjoy it, and derive meaning from doing good work. In "Man's Search for Meaning", Viktor Frankl identifies three areas of focus to find meaning in life: doing good work, loving someone unconditionally, and the experience of suffering. I've never had any trauma remotely like living through the holocaust, so I can't really related to Frankl's journey, but those three things have always have resonated with me as source of true meaning in life. When I meet other people who really seem to be profoundly happy with their life journey, they always have derived that from: doing great work, loving someone deeply, or experiencing true suffering.
revskill 5y ago
Meeting is not bad, there's only bad meeting and good meeting. In case you don't mind, daily meeting actually help you in the long run, as it forced what you're procastinating into habit without your notice. And building a good habit is hard, good daily meeting/standup could help.
hsn915 5y ago
As far as I can tell, the suggested way of working would be incredibly stressful for someone like me. First, I have to learn stuff I hate just because the market currently demands it. I can't really bring myself to do that. With everyone jumping on AWS and the latest JS frameworks, I stick to programming in Go and deploying static binaries to a single/cheap VPS. I basically only have one library in my 'npm' depdendencies (a virtual dom library). Second, You have to keep advertising yourself online to keep getting more contracts. I don't really know how to do that. I tried it in the past and didn't really get anywhere. I don't know how people get contracts with > $500/day rates. But still, even if I knew how to do it, it would probably still be stressful to some degree. Third, You have to be content living in a small town. It's great if that kind of life suits you, but it doesn't really suit me. Now, being at the center of a big city is not for me either, but I like to be close to the center. I want to live in a place with lots of amenities and shopping nearby. Where a car is an optional luxary, not a necessity. The point of money is to enjoy life. If you live in the middle of no where, what does it matter that you have a million dollars in the bank? Or even that you have a house? I think for someone like me, going the independent product development route seems much saner/healthier. Anyway, here's a side remark as well: > We are all going to die, and Earth will explode in the Sun in a few billion years: please, enjoy some now. What's up with people bothering with what will happen in a million years from now? And then concluding since it all goes away then only right now is important? Like, why not, you know: now is important, but a 1000 years from now is important too.
- lawkwok 5y ago
  This is what I think whenever someone tells me to sell something on Amazon or create an NFT. “Technically” I could figure it out and have the time to do it, but I wouldn’t because of the soul sucking nature or the pursuit.
  - hsn915 5y ago
    Yea. I remember right around college all the grownups around me were telling me to go to medicine and not computer science. A friend of my father even told me "IT is in great decline, it has no future". When I was still a student, a number of other adults were giving me advice to get into the oil business. It might have been a bad decision financially, but I just could never bring myself to care about these things.
WheelsAtLarge 5y ago
7 years to become a millionaire is probably unrealistic for most but this post gives a lot of good advice. If not 7 maybe 14 but that's better than never. It definitely gives a good roadmap to getting to work independence. Definitely worth considering.
arthur_sav 5y ago
> Really, don't spend your life getting fitter, healthier, ?more productive. We are all going to die > looking at the sea from an hammock and drinking too much beer with friends three times a week I get the point he's trying to make but "relaxing" is not for everyone, some people find meaning in bettering themselves. From a personal point of view, sitting on a beach and drinking beer for more than a weekend sounds boring to say the least.
ukoki 5y ago
To add another data point: I'm a contractor in the London charging day rates from 300 GBP (in the beginning) to 1100 GBP (today) over the past eight years. Net worth has just crept into the seven-figure GBP range with profits being mostly invested in global equities ETFs.
turtlebits 5y ago
To me, "wealthy" means you can stop working at any time and maintain your desired lifestyle without worrying about money. Doesn't mean that you have to, but having that freedom of choice is huge.
- alistairSH 5y ago
  Yeah, rich vs wealthy. Rich = have a lot of money. Wealthy = have enough money to live off the interest/earnings, pay somebody else to manage it, etc. All wealthy people are rich. Most rich people are not wealthy. Does having a few million tied up in a 401k make somebody rich? Yes. Does it make them wealthy? No. It makes them a successful, but not exceptional, middle-aged professional.
skeeter2020 5y ago
While I know contractors who have worked the same job for many years, this is not the standard, they're not making $1000/day and they have huge risk exposure. For the rest of us you don't work 10 months a year and vacation for 2. You spend a lot of non-billable time lining up work and selling. Then when you get that work it's (a) gross income, (b) temporary and (c) rarely remote at the start. Add to this giant pile of preconditions that a guaranteed 5% return doesn't exist in the world today and this "advice" is essentially: "My single data point => ??? => PROFIT!"
danans 5y ago
> I was born in a developed country in the 80s (Italy), with access to fresh water, very good carbohydrates and a decent education system. I'm going to go out on a limb and posit that most of those early benefits were paid for or subsidized by highly progressive taxes. I can only hope that wealthy people like the author understand this and don't pull up the ladder behind them.
- jokethrowaway 5y ago
  Water and pasta are not subsidised by highly progressive taxes. I can't speak highly of the education system in Italy, it didn't change since the fascist era and it's still mostly a bunch of rote memorisation and teachers with sadist tendencies. I had to study Latin in a computer science focused high school, for **'s sake. I found the education in Finland or in the UK to be way more reasonable in terms of load. Italy is not overrepresented in the number of people in tech, as far as I can tell; the way in which the author was lucky, was that he had access to tech and was in a stable (familiar and societal) environment that allowed him to focus on computer science, which happened to be a good move, given the value of tech nowadays. Besides "highly progressive taxes" just means that wealthy middle class are footing the bill with half their salary while millionaires use company loopholes to pay 0. Taxes are never going to be fair, because the richest people in society will always have the greatest incentive (aka: a large potential tax bill) and the greatest skills (aka: a lot of bribes and lobbying) in changing the laws so that they're somehow exempt.
tonystubblebine 5y ago
Do people here like working? That's a thing that often seems missing from these wealth optimization conversations. I love working. I don't love working all day. But I got into programming because I love programming and then I found that I also love what I can build through programming and what people do with the things I build. I spent a lot of my career leveling up my situation so that it was more of doing those things I loved and less meetings and other BS. But overall, I didn't optimize for speed to retirement. In our financial planning what we have is an earnings cliff where for "safety" reasons we assume we are still working but that our max earning potential went away.
- xboxnolifes 5y ago
  I enjoy programming. I do not enjoy working. I do not need a scheduled, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week time block where I am mostly doing things I do not like in order to get what I enjoy out of programming. I am absolutely optimizing for getting out of the cycle.
- philipswood 5y ago
  I love working. If I was wealthy enough to not to have to work I'd maybe even pay for the privilege. But, I would love the luxury of having total freedom in choosing what work I'm doing. If I account for my time over the years corporations have paid me, but ultimately wasted a significant amount of my time. If I wanted to design an alternative CPU architecture or fiddle with an approach to 3D printing metal, I'd love to have the freedom to do so - even if the expected ROI is maybe 0.
- dlisboa 5y ago
  That's indeed what's missing: I enjoy what I do. Not sure if "work" is what I enjoy, but the challenges I face in software development. If I was a millionaire I'd still find time to program. I'd do Open Source and just learn new things for the hell of it, without pressure or deadline, but I wouldn't sit on my ass on the beach all day. And I love the beach. Honestly, I'm kinda good at this, at least more so than I am at anything else in my life. That alone gives me some sense of purpose. "Being a millionaire" is not a purpose.
- 5y ago
padobson 5y ago
"Yes, but big cities have more opportunities and more connections". True. Probably they are more bearable at a young age, when grappling with the existential urge to mate. Hey! Wait! "The existential urge to mate" is kind of a big deal! Should we be hand waving away that entire bedrock motivation of human nature? Social institutions designed for turning children into adults i.e. family units, day cares, public schools, youth sports, universities, studio apartments in big cities (a kind of halfway house between childhood and adulthood) have been continually stretching out adolescence, and this article takes that long adolescence for granted. But it's fraught with all kinds of outcomes that will sabotage the very financial independence the article is advocating for. That pesky urge to mate starts to hit hard around 11-13 years of age. So we're resigning young adults to unfulfilling, casual sexual relationships until they get established and they can truly explore their sexuality, including making new humans of their own, in their mid-thirties. That's 20+ years of avoiding unwanted pregnancy, venereal disease, various kinds of sexual violence (from harassment to assault), and a host of psychological issues that can crop up in that casual environment. And, oh, BTW! Bad outcomes in sexual relationships are the ones most likely to inhibit financial success [0]. So all of those "loner" self help articles about getting rich young and retiring early simply do not apply to the vast majority of the population. What we should be helping young adults to do is become competent early (as the author suggests), but also to find a competent mate early as well. Then you can increase your household income, continue living in that studio apartment, and sidestep the most dangerous obstacles to financial independence before they ever have a chance to strike. [0]https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/three-simple-rules-poor-teens-should-follow-to-join-the-middle-class/ https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/three-simple-rules-poor-t...
CountDrewku 5y ago
Wow try this one easy trick! Lame....
dqpb 5y ago
> Don’t do a startup Someday your kids might ask you "Why did you spend your whole life letting other people tell you what to do?"
verganileonardo 5y ago
This article is reposted every 2 weeks with a different title
cosmolev 5y ago
The most important part is missing: How did he managed to work 2 hours a day while being paid 1000 a day?
weystrom 5y ago
Sooo, the article skips the biggest question: How the hell do you find a $1000/day contracts?
momirlan 5y ago
Key is financial discipline. Always contribute to your savings before you start spending. This will get you far, regardless of your salary. The rest is speculation.
hintymad 5y ago
I don't get the suggestion of not going to startups. I can't predict the future, but how many people got financially free by joining the right startups/blow-out small companies in the past 10 years? There are tens of thousands of opportunities there, and one can further maximize their chance by decisively leaving bad startups. A bonus to one's career is they get to build cool technologies in the successful startups too. Google, Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, AWS, Airbnb, Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Pinterest, Databricks, Snowflake, Arista, a slew of PLG SaaS companies. That's just the companies that are on top of my mind. Think about the first 500 - 1000 engineers of each company, or hundreds of those who joined the company when the stock price was low. A simple math: say the chance of failing at a top startup is 80% (top companies have lower chance of failures than the average startups), and one stays at a startup for an average of 2 years before landing on a successful one. The chance of failing everyone of them in a 20-year career is 0.8^10 = 10%! And you don't want to take a risk of 10% of failure to be financially free?
etergri 5y ago
Yeah well two more points that the author followed but actually didn't realize: 4. Flee Italy, the most corrupt of 1st world countries 5. Do not even attempt at reproducing in a healthy family in first world countries ESPECIALLY IN ITALY (https://interessesuperioredelminore.wordpress.com/2020/11/01/the-business-of-divorce/ https://interessesuperioredelminore.wordpress.com/2020/11/01...). It's a russian roulette pointed to your head and whatever you do, it's out of your control if your life will be completely ruined for corruption. By keeping these additional two rules in mind, you can live a decent life, albeit a quite meaningless one if you, like me, was born with the idea that forming a happy family is the best thing you can do within your lifetime. Drop that pal, it's no longer the right period of time (if it ever has been).
bob331 5y ago
Yep im doing this right now. It’s not even required to save too much. Just salary sacrifice everything into your pension
ThinkBeat 5y ago
Here are a few things that should be inscribed on the foreheads of people ""THERE IS NO QUICK FIX (AT SCALE)"" ""THERE IS NO GET RICH QUICK SCHEME THAT WORKS (AT SCALE)"" ""YOU WILL NEVER BECOME AN EXPERT IN 24h/7d/30d"" (You may convince some people that you did) It is all a scam, and it will leave you poorer, dumber, more resentful and less fulfilled. ) : Some people do win the lottery. Chances that you will win even if you buy a ticket every single week for the rest of your life? Infinitesimal.
GoodJokes 5y ago
[dead]

> Work and self-actualisation can be rewarding and meaningful, but looking at the sea from an hammock and drinking too much beer with friends three times a week is also a completely respectable way of waiting for the gravitational swallowing of the planet. Part of wants to accept this from the author and the other part of me is wary. I didn't have a child because I wanted to be happy, I did it because I wanted a more meaningful life. It was the greatest decision I ever made.

jokethrowaway 5y ago
Completely agree on the kids part. I also agree with the author on work though: it's just a way to pay the bills and I don't value that kind of self actualisation. Most jobs are not about changing the world in a meaningful way (and that's ok). I do more creative and research work for my toy projects than I ever did for all my professional career.
fhd2 5y ago
I can relate, I have three and I feel it does give my life more meaning. But I still feel like pointing something out: Know that phenomenon where users that paid for software are typically more satisfied with it and give better ratings than users who didn't? Whish I knew what the proper name for it is, but having kids is kind of the ultimate version of that :D (Update: Thanks so much for helping me figure out what to call it!)
- wastedhours 5y ago
  It's akin to post-purchase rationalization and sunk cost bias rolled into one - likewise I think it's a specific bias in its own right, but a search hasn't turned up anything yet!
- jasode 5y ago
  >Know that phenomenon where users that paid for software are typically more satisfied with it and give better ratings than users who didn't? >Whish I knew what the proper name for it is, Possibly these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere_ownership_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere_ownership_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endowment_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endowment_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choice-supportive_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choice-supportive_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA_effect
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - fhd2 5y ago
    I think it's pretty much choice-supportive bias, thanks! The more costly it is to make the wrong choice, the more is invested into rationalising the decision, the stronger the bias.
    - Sammi 5y ago
      The best part of it is that just like the placebo effect it actually works. Speaking from experience. I mean, how can you look at your little child and not feel like you are looking at the face of god? It truly is a profound experience.
- javert 5y ago
  Sounds very close to Stockholm Syndrome.
  - dr_kiszonka 5y ago
    My favorite comment of the day! And I say this as a loving father.
- disgruntledphd2 5y ago
  it's called cognitive dissonance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance (sortof anyway).
- mdavis6890 5y ago
  It's called "knowing yourself" People who think "I think I will likely be happier with children" will be positively correlated with people who have children and are happy about it. People who think "Having kids will probably make me less happy, so I won't have any." will be negatively correlated with having children, or being happy about them if they do. This isn't irrational. It's just knowing yourself and choosing wisely.
shiftpgdn 5y ago
The biggest reality check in my life was working at an engineering firm with a bunch of near retirement baby boomers with no children. They all came across ass listless, unhappy, and living a life with no greater purpose. It was unquestionably one of the ugliest things I have ever seen. As you get older and friends drift and pass away family is one of the most important things in life. I know anti-natalism is hip right now but it makes me sad to think of all the millennials and gen-z who will reach their 50s and 60s when it is too late and be stuck in a life without purpose.
- yoyohello13 5y ago
  I think this is dependent on the people. I’ve also seen many couples who couldn’t have kids that have very fulfilling lives. They volunteer, are active in and well liked by the community. I think meaning can come from many places. Kids are an almost guaranteed source but you can find meaning without children if you look for it. This might just be wishful thinking on my part since I’m unable to have kids, but I’d like to think I’m not destined for a lonely meaningless future.
  - joeberon 5y ago
    I've also seen many people who have had kids who have flown the nest who now do not have fulfilling lives.
  - TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
    I had a great uncle and aunt who could not have children. They lived to their mid/late 80s. They were definitely not living a life without meaning. It definitely is possible. I saw it.
- wavefunction 5y ago
  Life has whatever purpose you give to it. That's it.
  - abfan1127 5y ago
    while true, I think many people struggle to give as deep a purpose to (hiking, being a foodie, knitting) as investing in another person. Not that it isn't possible. Its just a challenge. Not that being a parent isn't a challenge either.
good8675309 5y ago
I wasn't going to have kids for the same reasons. My son wasn't planned but he and his siblings are the best thing that ever happened to me and not having kids would have been the greatest mistake I would have ever made. Guess you never know until you know.

hiddencost 5y ago

Million dollars ain't what it once was.

marban 5y ago
That checks #4, "Don't live in big cities"
- tluyben2 5y ago
  Yep, where I enjoy living, 1m takes you comfortably to a ripe old age. I can see that if you want to live in the center of some popular city (or any city?), this won't really move the dial. Luckily, for me, that would be hell on earth.
danielvaughn 5y ago
Yep. It'll buy you a house, a nice start on your retirement, and maybe the ability to fund your kids education. But no more than that.
- abswest 5y ago
  well if you prefer to live in the city like SF/NYC, it won't even buy you a house. a solid mortgage down payment and reserve fund - that's it.
WORMS_EAT_WORMS 5y ago
Depends on your age. $1M in 30s? Congrats you won the game. $1M in 40s? Congrats you are doing well.
handrous 5y ago
Receive a $1m windfall at age 35 in 1990: "Hot damn, I'll never work again!" Receive a $1m windfall at age 35 in 2021: "Hot damn, I'll actually be able to retire at 65!"
european321 5y ago
Yeah that's true, but still (of course depending on your age and location) it's enough to live in many many places without having to work again

ericmcer 5y ago

Anyone who has been making software engineer level money, but living frugally and dumping it all in stocks and crypto for the last 7 years is probably close to retirement. I guess his hack? is that he contracts and doesn't work very hard. I always found contracting more difficult due to the huge amount of hustle and bookkeeping you take on in addition to the actual work.

jamil7 5y ago
I’ve contracted full-time off and on throughout my career and am in an ‘on’ period at the moment. It gets easier with time, you get better at it like anything else and learn to outsource and delegate to other small businesses and freelancers as well as build up steady recurring work.

yayitswei 5y ago

Lots of posts saying $1M isn't much. What amount would you consider truly wealthy?

willio58 5y ago
It’s all perspective. In some parts of the Bay Area 1M buys you little more than a shack to live in. 1M where I live would buy me a great quality home on an adequate plot of land.
hendersoon 5y ago
Truly wealthy would be >$100M in a major US city. I know plenty of people with $3-$6M and they live very normal lives, not ostentatious, just without much stress over money.

dymk 5y ago

What’s the purpose of an article like this if the author starts with a list of decisions which lead to his success, but then immediately follows with “my journey was 99% luck and 1% planets alignment”? The article is clearly supposed to be a “how-to” of sorts, but then goes and muddies it’s messaging with that second part. The list of things to do isn’t really useful then, is it?

picture 5y ago
> I was born in a developed country in the 80s (Italy), with access to fresh water, very good carbohydrates and a decent education system. This seem like a pretty hard to follow "how-to"
- unpolloloco 5y ago
  Given that 80% of the world doesn't have that, yeah. But for that 20%, the author's path isn't entirely unreasonable (if a bit quick). Make $$$, spend $, invest $$. it requires living somewhere other than CA and probably not having kids, but if you can make those sacrifices and can play the software engineer game, it's more a matter of math working out than it is an unreasonable path.
  - jaclaz 5y ago
    JFYI, an old Italian proverb/saying: Fare i conti spesso, moderar le voglie, spender men di quel che si raccoglie. That roughly translates to: Do the (financial) math often, limit your cravings, spend less than you can gather.
4g 5y ago
The feeling I get from reading the article is that the author felt the need to apologize because of the current social climate, and not for some real reason. He wasn't born into a rich family and inherited wealth, he simply studied, worked, spent less than he made and invested the difference. The apology basically boils down to being born in a relatively okay country and being smart.

cheeze 5y ago

> Don't go too hard on crypto > 11.2% of NW is tied up in crypto

echelon 5y ago
If it was stocks, you would diversify more by sector according to your risk, but in general ~10% in a broad asset class seems fine. I don't think we would question 10% of net worth in real estate.
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  But crypto doesn't function like a broad asset class, at least not for very long. Is there are future where there are 10,000 different cryptocurrencies? I don't see it. I think even crypto bulls believe that most coins will go to zero at some point. You don't get the same benefits of diversification in crypto as you do with equities.
  - hackingforfun 5y ago
    I don't think most coins will go to zero at some point, some will, but most is too broad. I also don't see any reason why new coins wouldn't keep getting created. Basically, what's been happening will continue. This is what I see. You can diversify in crypto, but you have to educate yourself and pick and choose. For example, you could diversify into payment systems, metaverse tokens, smart contract platforms, oracles, prediction markets, cross-chain interoperability, DeFi, NFTs, etc. There aren't as well defined categories as in equities, but there are some ways to categorize them. Are there equivalent protections like in equities? No. Is crypto as mature of a market? No. Is crypto high risk? Yes. However, cryptocurriences, or at least specific ones, like Bitcoin, are increasingly being considered an asset class [1]. [1] https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/jp-morgan-wealth-ceo-says-clients-see-bitcoin-as-asset-class-to-invest-in-2021-07-20 https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/jp-morgan-wealth-ceo-says-cl...
- mikeyouse 5y ago
  > I don't think we would question 10% of net worth in real estate. No, but there's no chance of real estate going to zero. The global financial crisis housing bust saw US house prices decreases by something like 20%. There's a non-insignificant chance of most Crypto 'investments' losing 99% of their value. I think it's very dangerous to start talking about crypto as an "asset class". People are going to lose their shirts and hardly anyone understands where the value is supposed to come from.

jjulius 5y ago

>Preamble: I'm extremely lucky. ... So what you're going to read is 99% luck and 1% planets alignment. I mean, that's pretty much it and he states it up front. If that's the crux, then why write about this other than to brag?

WithinReason 5y ago
"I was born in a developed country in the 80s (Italy), with access to fresh water, very good carbohydrates and a decent education system." If you grew up in a developed country, you're extremely lucky too.
amelius 5y ago
Next up: how I won the lottery
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
youhavetosayit 5y ago
Account for luck bias, but then read the recipe.
mikestew 5y ago
So I read your point to be that as long as one rolls a good base character, like being born in a developed country with a good education system and fresh water, the rest just takes care of itself? You know that's not right.
go_elmo 5y ago
Thats just being humble. Most successful people think its that way because they are special and worked hard. Wrong. Most people work hard, its the LUCK many underestimate. Being aware of this is healthy in so many ways, especially socially.
- ed25519FUUU 5y ago
  Luck and hard work aren't exclusive attributes for success.

jagger27 5y ago

> Preamble: I'm extremely lucky. Good for the author, but this really says it all. Specialization as a software developer seems like good advice though.

WithinReason 5y ago
He says he's lucky for growing up in Italy. If you grew up in a developed country, you're extremely lucky too.
jawns 5y ago
Specialization can accelerate your career during the first decade (or maybe first two decades) of working. But I've found that people who are generalists end up doing better further into their careers, particularly if their job includes a leadership/management component. I'm not saying that if you're in the top 0.1% on one very specific technology, you won't be in demand throughout your career. But should you choose a leadership/management path later in your career, you're often going to need to be able to do a bunch of things reasonably well, and that's a generalist's sweet spot.

demygale 5y ago

Being a contractor would require me to spend about $10,000 more for health insurance above what my workplace premiums are. US, obvi. When I was a contractor fifteen years ago, I billed at $1,000 a day ($125/hr) in the US, not remote. Seems like wage stagnation has hit the software market as well. Really enjoyed the story. I love seeing the personal histories of people in my profession.

b20000 5y ago
i have the impression the max contracting rate is 175/hr. when you ask for more, “HR says they never seen such high rates”… that doesn’t leave you with much in california. and i think that once you move to a cheaper place you cannot demand that rate. so how can you increase your rate as a software engineering contractor?
- dbrueck 5y ago
  $175 is definitely not the ceiling for the US. "HR says they never seen such high rates" is a negotiating tactic - you have to counter. Of course, you also have to be worth it by establishing a track record of being a subject matter expert, delivering the results, and being great to work with. Another way to get exceptionally high hourly rates is to do per-project or per-phase bidding, but that has its own pitfalls, so a good in-between can be to have some of both.
  - b20000 5y ago
    per project, as in "fixed price"? you say you will do the job for 50K, then hope you can actually pull it off. seems very risky unless there is a provision in the contract to renegotiate without any consequences when it turns out it will take longer? I don't even understand why they involve HR since it's none of their business. After all, you are a professional service provider. How would you counter?
    - dbrueck 5y ago
      Yes, the risk is one of the main pitfalls I was alluding to, and the best way I know of it mitigate that are the 2 I mentioned - per-phase and having some hourly rate in there too. A renegotiate-with-zero-consequences provision is unrealistic - that's too lopsided in your favor - but some provision to reassess if things are just completely out of whack is reasonable. But yes, there is always risk in this model, so it pays to start conservative and to really get good at it. But to some degree you want that risk, as the risk and reward are related to each other of course - if it's uncomfortably risky, then maybe a more stable 9-5 salaried job is a better route. As an example of what mixed billing might look like, you might scope out the work for a basic website and then your proposal would boil down to $20k for the initial phase of the site, and that includes 5 hr of customizations not covered in the requirements doc, and then $200/hr for additional customization beyond that, and then already have a rough breakdown of what will be included in phases 2 and 3. The 5 hours you've built in to the bid is your way of recognizing that no requirements doc is going to be 100% comprehensive (nor is your client going to know with 100% certainty up front exactly how they want everything). The hourly rate beyond that shows that you're willing to let some stuff be added, so they don't have to totally stress about getting the requirements doc 100% right. And then the rough sketches of future phases helps prevent you from getting stuck in just hourly mode for everything after the first phase - if they start asking for a really big chunk of work you can say, "yes, we can definitely do that, but that's a big enough chunk of work that it'll really delay the initial launch of the site - let's talk about putting that in phase 2". One huge advantage of milestone- or phase-based billing (assuming you do it right) is that you are rewarded for efficiency and optimization - improving your skills, creating reusable libraries/templates, finding trusted people you can outsource un-fun work to, etc. - because you are billing on value provided, so over time you hopefully reduce your costs while the value you provide stays the same or increases. If you are always billing at an hourly rate, you have limited incentive to improve in those ways because you end up passing all of those gains on to your client. > I don't even understand why they involve HR since it's none of their business. After all, you are a professional service provider. How would you counter? Exactly right, and I think you counter by essentially saying that (in a nice way). But really you want to make the conversation about value you're providing and that if you really get down to the nitty gritty, it's a good deal for them. Don't forget that they aren't paying employment taxes for you, or paying you benefits like medical and paid vacation - those are big numbers. Also, part of the appeal of a contractor/consultant is that it doesn't have to be a long-term commitment, and they don't have to invest in finding or creating the skills you bring to the table. All of these really matter, so it's ok to make them part of the discussion. There are more subtle things too - in talking with them, you can usually get a sense for the level of dysfunction in their org and, if it's not so much that you want nothing to do with them, you can really play up things like your ability to deliver quickly. There are some cases where you have to stand firm and be willing to walk away. If it's a client you really want to land long-term, then occasionally you might decide to do a smaller introductory project at a lower rate with them as a way to build the relationship and prove out your services, with a clear understanding that this is a good-faith concession you're making and not a permanent reduction of your rates. And then in that intro project you do your best to absolutely kill it and be a great person to work with such that when it is done, they are more convinced than ever that they want to keep working with you and that your services are worth it.

raldi 5y ago

Meanwhile, I got wealthy by living in big cities, showing up in person, and being pretty good at many things. There are multiple paths.

youhavetosayit 5y ago
Agree! I should have mentioned the multiple paths.
mtoner23 5y ago
Same here. His point of not fighting the market is true though. For me, by being a good people person, who can convince people and beging good at many things better than others gives me value no one else has. Dont be in the rat race i think is the key point to me.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

> Take a $ 500-1000 / day, full-remote job > Take 2 months for holidays in-between contracts > Do this for 7 years while investing most of your salary in a diversified portfolio. Working $1000/day contracts for 5 days per week, 10 months per year is equivalent to $217K of contractor income per year. But contractor income is not comparable to normal career income because you have to handle additional taxes and health insurance, so this is more like a $150K (plus or minus) full time job once you subtract self-employment taxes and pay for health insurance. But that’s also assuming that the author stated out making $1000/day, always made $1000/day, and always had availability of these easy, low-effort, $1000/day contracts whenever they wanted. Most people don’t start out contracting with an unlimited supply of contracts that pay exactly what they want. Working a $150K job for 7 years isn’t really a recipe for getting “wealthy”. Even if you could reduce your expenses to below $25K per year (eg $1K/month rent, $1K/month for everything else) you might be able to save $100K of that annually after taxes. But that’s best case and you really have to compromise a lot to get there unless you really enjoy living in the middle of nowhere, never traveling, and none of your hobbies or interests cost any money. So there’s a lot missing from this blog post. I suspect maybe the author got lucky with some outlier investments, but that’s not something that can be conveyed in a “how to” blog post. FIRE type wealth trajectories are possible, but this isn’t what it looks like. Working normally-paid jobs for 7 years and just living your normal life doesn’t get you there (unless you luck into some 1000X investment somewhere or get a huge inheritance boost, but those are rarely mentioned).

rootsudo 5y ago
So, the idea is that you save and invest, you don't have free standing cash - you put a majority of your liquidity into investment vehicles.
yig 5y ago
This is essentially Mr. Money Mustache's formula: https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/02/22/getting-rich-from-zero-to-hero-in-one-blog-post/ https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/02/22/getting-rich-from...
- AutumnCurtain 5y ago

Xenoamorphous 5y ago

I've done most of this. 10+ years ago I started working for a company in a city with good salaries (for Europe, not so much for the US), London. After a while I decided to go back to my home country, and the company offered me to work remotely. I've lived in my hometown for most of the past 9 years or so, a small town in southern Europe, much cheaper than London and any other big city, including the ones in my country. Main differences vs. what the article says are: I've been working for the same company all these years, rather than chaining months-long contracts. Also (sadly?) I didn't invest most of my money, I simply saved it and bought a nice place this year almost upfront (had to get a mortgage for the taxes, basically). Also I've worked hard, very hard. This strategy is good to make good money, I think. Often here in HN I see comments saying that you must hop from job to job in order to get raises, but if you stick long enough so that your knowledge is very valuable, the raises will keep coming. Word of warning though: unless the company is remote-first you can forget about promotions, at least in my experience. It kinda hurts seeing how you've worked your ass off for a long time and despite making good money other people get promoted while you stick to the same role as when you joined.

nzach 5y ago
>if you stick long enough so that your knowledge is very valuable, the raises will keep coming AKA golden handcuffs. I don't think this is something inherently bad but we should always be aware of it.
- Xenoamorphous 5y ago
  Indeed. I'm in a golden cage right now. No one would pay me as much, which makes switching jobs hard to swallow.
spaetzleesser 5y ago
“Word of warning though: unless the company is remote-first you can forget about promotions, at least in my experience. It kinda hurts seeing how you've worked your ass off for a long time and despite making good money other people get promoted while you stick to the same role as when you joined.” Agreed. This is often a bargain you have to accept. I went remote only after I had reached a point where future promotions were very unlikely anyway.

giantg2 5y ago

I'm doing it all wrong...

nojito 5y ago

>Do this for 7 years while investing most of your salary in a diversified portfolio. Don’t go too crazy with Crypto. Easy to do in a massive bull market.

spaetzleesser 5y ago
That’s what people are forgetting. There are plenty of 7 year periods where the stock market will return nothing or almost nothing.
- foogazi 5y ago
  How would we know ? Should we stop investing because of uncertainty ? There are plenty of people that lived through this bull market and didn’t come out of it as millionaires
  - spaetzleesser 5y ago
    You can't know. But people should stop talking about 7% per year ROI like it's a natural law you can rely on. For some people it works out, some do way better and a significant number do worse. And for most part it's just luck.
wara23arish 5y ago
Isn’t it better to invest when its a bear market? Everything’s basically on sale. Why would you want to buy stuff at a premium? At least that’s how I see.
- foogazi 5y ago
  > Isn’t it better to invest when its a bear market? Everyone says that when they are in a bull market

gab007 5y ago

> "Meetings are the mind-killer" Could not agree more. They're big-corp specific and if you can avoid them - that would be a big plus for you. I can't. They lack value while being a complete waste of time. You may think it's no biggie - "but I'm getting paid for the meetig time". True, however - they can wear you down in time, if three-four times a day... and you are still expected to deliver, regardless the time spent in meetings. That's only my oppinion, I know some folks are fine with long meetings. My view on this is - I am not an entertainer (aka meetings "super-star"), I would like to keep it short & to the point. Regarding the article, there is some good stuff in there, that may or may not apply to everyone (especially if you have kids).

icedchai 5y ago
There are also hidden costs to meetings in terms of lost time / productivity. If I have a half hour meeting at 1:30 then another one at 2:30, I can't do much with that half hour in between (except surf HN, of course.) If this happens a few times a day, most of the day is gone. "Agile" and its "rituals" makes this even worse: standups, sprint planning, retros, on top of miscellaneous team status meetings. It's sickening how much time is wasted with this garbage.
dbrueck 5y ago
Too many stupid meetings is the #1 reasons why I left and started something on my own. At my current company we have one official meeting per week, and it's unusual if it lasts more than 20 minutes. It's wonderful.

cvhashim 5y ago

So…high income, low expenses, invest smart. Got it.

guico 5y ago

TL;DR: Be a parasite and use the economic opportunity others create. Works well if only a few of us do it. But someone needs to start and run the companies where you get those contracts. Or?

novok 5y ago
Those people make significantly more too. 2x-10000x
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amackera 5y ago

I guess this article isn't for me, since I have no problem with working hard. I enjoy it, and derive meaning from doing good work. In "Man's Search for Meaning", Viktor Frankl identifies three areas of focus to find meaning in life: doing good work, loving someone unconditionally, and the experience of suffering. I've never had any trauma remotely like living through the holocaust, so I can't really related to Frankl's journey, but those three things have always have resonated with me as source of true meaning in life. When I meet other people who really seem to be profoundly happy with their life journey, they always have derived that from: doing great work, loving someone deeply, or experiencing true suffering.

revskill 5y ago

Meeting is not bad, there's only bad meeting and good meeting. In case you don't mind, daily meeting actually help you in the long run, as it forced what you're procastinating into habit without your notice. And building a good habit is hard, good daily meeting/standup could help.

hsn915 5y ago

As far as I can tell, the suggested way of working would be incredibly stressful for someone like me. First, I have to learn stuff I hate just because the market currently demands it. I can't really bring myself to do that. With everyone jumping on AWS and the latest JS frameworks, I stick to programming in Go and deploying static binaries to a single/cheap VPS. I basically only have one library in my 'npm' depdendencies (a virtual dom library). Second, You have to keep advertising yourself online to keep getting more contracts. I don't really know how to do that. I tried it in the past and didn't really get anywhere. I don't know how people get contracts with > $500/day rates. But still, even if I knew how to do it, it would probably still be stressful to some degree. Third, You have to be content living in a small town. It's great if that kind of life suits you, but it doesn't really suit me. Now, being at the center of a big city is not for me either, but I like to be close to the center. I want to live in a place with lots of amenities and shopping nearby. Where a car is an optional luxary, not a necessity. The point of money is to enjoy life. If you live in the middle of no where, what does it matter that you have a million dollars in the bank? Or even that you have a house? I think for someone like me, going the independent product development route seems much saner/healthier. Anyway, here's a side remark as well: > We are all going to die, and Earth will explode in the Sun in a few billion years: please, enjoy some now. What's up with people bothering with what will happen in a million years from now? And then concluding since it all goes away then only right now is important? Like, why not, you know: now is important, but a 1000 years from now is important too.

lawkwok 5y ago
This is what I think whenever someone tells me to sell something on Amazon or create an NFT. “Technically” I could figure it out and have the time to do it, but I wouldn’t because of the soul sucking nature or the pursuit.
- hsn915 5y ago
  Yea. I remember right around college all the grownups around me were telling me to go to medicine and not computer science. A friend of my father even told me "IT is in great decline, it has no future". When I was still a student, a number of other adults were giving me advice to get into the oil business. It might have been a bad decision financially, but I just could never bring myself to care about these things.

WheelsAtLarge 5y ago

7 years to become a millionaire is probably unrealistic for most but this post gives a lot of good advice. If not 7 maybe 14 but that's better than never. It definitely gives a good roadmap to getting to work independence. Definitely worth considering.

arthur_sav 5y ago

> Really, don't spend your life getting fitter, healthier, ?more productive. We are all going to die > looking at the sea from an hammock and drinking too much beer with friends three times a week I get the point he's trying to make but "relaxing" is not for everyone, some people find meaning in bettering themselves. From a personal point of view, sitting on a beach and drinking beer for more than a weekend sounds boring to say the least.

ukoki 5y ago

To add another data point: I'm a contractor in the London charging day rates from 300 GBP (in the beginning) to 1100 GBP (today) over the past eight years. Net worth has just crept into the seven-figure GBP range with profits being mostly invested in global equities ETFs.

turtlebits 5y ago

To me, "wealthy" means you can stop working at any time and maintain your desired lifestyle without worrying about money. Doesn't mean that you have to, but having that freedom of choice is huge.

alistairSH 5y ago
Yeah, rich vs wealthy. Rich = have a lot of money. Wealthy = have enough money to live off the interest/earnings, pay somebody else to manage it, etc. All wealthy people are rich. Most rich people are not wealthy. Does having a few million tied up in a 401k make somebody rich? Yes. Does it make them wealthy? No. It makes them a successful, but not exceptional, middle-aged professional.

skeeter2020 5y ago

While I know contractors who have worked the same job for many years, this is not the standard, they're not making $1000/day and they have huge risk exposure. For the rest of us you don't work 10 months a year and vacation for 2. You spend a lot of non-billable time lining up work and selling. Then when you get that work it's (a) gross income, (b) temporary and (c) rarely remote at the start. Add to this giant pile of preconditions that a guaranteed 5% return doesn't exist in the world today and this "advice" is essentially: "My single data point => ??? => PROFIT!"

danans 5y ago

> I was born in a developed country in the 80s (Italy), with access to fresh water, very good carbohydrates and a decent education system. I'm going to go out on a limb and posit that most of those early benefits were paid for or subsidized by highly progressive taxes. I can only hope that wealthy people like the author understand this and don't pull up the ladder behind them.

jokethrowaway 5y ago
Water and pasta are not subsidised by highly progressive taxes. I can't speak highly of the education system in Italy, it didn't change since the fascist era and it's still mostly a bunch of rote memorisation and teachers with sadist tendencies. I had to study Latin in a computer science focused high school, for **'s sake. I found the education in Finland or in the UK to be way more reasonable in terms of load. Italy is not overrepresented in the number of people in tech, as far as I can tell; the way in which the author was lucky, was that he had access to tech and was in a stable (familiar and societal) environment that allowed him to focus on computer science, which happened to be a good move, given the value of tech nowadays. Besides "highly progressive taxes" just means that wealthy middle class are footing the bill with half their salary while millionaires use company loopholes to pay 0. Taxes are never going to be fair, because the richest people in society will always have the greatest incentive (aka: a large potential tax bill) and the greatest skills (aka: a lot of bribes and lobbying) in changing the laws so that they're somehow exempt.

tonystubblebine 5y ago

Do people here like working? That's a thing that often seems missing from these wealth optimization conversations. I love working. I don't love working all day. But I got into programming because I love programming and then I found that I also love what I can build through programming and what people do with the things I build. I spent a lot of my career leveling up my situation so that it was more of doing those things I loved and less meetings and other BS. But overall, I didn't optimize for speed to retirement. In our financial planning what we have is an earnings cliff where for "safety" reasons we assume we are still working but that our max earning potential went away.

xboxnolifes 5y ago
I enjoy programming. I do not enjoy working. I do not need a scheduled, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week time block where I am mostly doing things I do not like in order to get what I enjoy out of programming. I am absolutely optimizing for getting out of the cycle.
philipswood 5y ago
I love working. If I was wealthy enough to not to have to work I'd maybe even pay for the privilege. But, I would love the luxury of having total freedom in choosing what work I'm doing. If I account for my time over the years corporations have paid me, but ultimately wasted a significant amount of my time. If I wanted to design an alternative CPU architecture or fiddle with an approach to 3D printing metal, I'd love to have the freedom to do so - even if the expected ROI is maybe 0.
dlisboa 5y ago
That's indeed what's missing: I enjoy what I do. Not sure if "work" is what I enjoy, but the challenges I face in software development. If I was a millionaire I'd still find time to program. I'd do Open Source and just learn new things for the hell of it, without pressure or deadline, but I wouldn't sit on my ass on the beach all day. And I love the beach. Honestly, I'm kinda good at this, at least more so than I am at anything else in my life. That alone gives me some sense of purpose. "Being a millionaire" is not a purpose.
5y ago

padobson 5y ago

"Yes, but big cities have more opportunities and more connections". True. Probably they are more bearable at a young age, when grappling with the existential urge to mate. Hey! Wait! "The existential urge to mate" is kind of a big deal! Should we be hand waving away that entire bedrock motivation of human nature? Social institutions designed for turning children into adults i.e. family units, day cares, public schools, youth sports, universities, studio apartments in big cities (a kind of halfway house between childhood and adulthood) have been continually stretching out adolescence, and this article takes that long adolescence for granted. But it's fraught with all kinds of outcomes that will sabotage the very financial independence the article is advocating for. That pesky urge to mate starts to hit hard around 11-13 years of age. So we're resigning young adults to unfulfilling, casual sexual relationships until they get established and they can truly explore their sexuality, including making new humans of their own, in their mid-thirties. That's 20+ years of avoiding unwanted pregnancy, venereal disease, various kinds of sexual violence (from harassment to assault), and a host of psychological issues that can crop up in that casual environment. And, oh, BTW! Bad outcomes in sexual relationships are the ones most likely to inhibit financial success [0]. So all of those "loner" self help articles about getting rich young and retiring early simply do not apply to the vast majority of the population. What we should be helping young adults to do is become competent early (as the author suggests), but also to find a competent mate early as well. Then you can increase your household income, continue living in that studio apartment, and sidestep the most dangerous obstacles to financial independence before they ever have a chance to strike. [0]https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/three-simple-rules-poor-teens-should-follow-to-join-the-middle-class/ https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/three-simple-rules-poor-t...

CountDrewku 5y ago

Wow try this one easy trick! Lame....

dqpb 5y ago

> Don’t do a startup Someday your kids might ask you "Why did you spend your whole life letting other people tell you what to do?"

verganileonardo 5y ago

This article is reposted every 2 weeks with a different title

cosmolev 5y ago

The most important part is missing: How did he managed to work 2 hours a day while being paid 1000 a day?

weystrom 5y ago

Sooo, the article skips the biggest question: How the hell do you find a $1000/day contracts?

momirlan 5y ago

Key is financial discipline. Always contribute to your savings before you start spending. This will get you far, regardless of your salary. The rest is speculation.

hintymad 5y ago

I don't get the suggestion of not going to startups. I can't predict the future, but how many people got financially free by joining the right startups/blow-out small companies in the past 10 years? There are tens of thousands of opportunities there, and one can further maximize their chance by decisively leaving bad startups. A bonus to one's career is they get to build cool technologies in the successful startups too. Google, Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, AWS, Airbnb, Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Pinterest, Databricks, Snowflake, Arista, a slew of PLG SaaS companies. That's just the companies that are on top of my mind. Think about the first 500 - 1000 engineers of each company, or hundreds of those who joined the company when the stock price was low. A simple math: say the chance of failing at a top startup is 80% (top companies have lower chance of failures than the average startups), and one stays at a startup for an average of 2 years before landing on a successful one. The chance of failing everyone of them in a 20-year career is 0.8^10 = 10%! And you don't want to take a risk of 10% of failure to be financially free?

etergri 5y ago

Yeah well two more points that the author followed but actually didn't realize: 4. Flee Italy, the most corrupt of 1st world countries 5. Do not even attempt at reproducing in a healthy family in first world countries ESPECIALLY IN ITALY (https://interessesuperioredelminore.wordpress.com/2020/11/01/the-business-of-divorce/ https://interessesuperioredelminore.wordpress.com/2020/11/01...). It's a russian roulette pointed to your head and whatever you do, it's out of your control if your life will be completely ruined for corruption. By keeping these additional two rules in mind, you can live a decent life, albeit a quite meaningless one if you, like me, was born with the idea that forming a happy family is the best thing you can do within your lifetime. Drop that pal, it's no longer the right period of time (if it ever has been).

bob331 5y ago

Yep im doing this right now. It’s not even required to save too much. Just salary sacrifice everything into your pension

ThinkBeat 5y ago

Here are a few things that should be inscribed on the foreheads of people ""THERE IS NO QUICK FIX (AT SCALE)"" ""THERE IS NO GET RICH QUICK SCHEME THAT WORKS (AT SCALE)"" ""YOU WILL NEVER BECOME AN EXPERT IN 24h/7d/30d"" (You may convince some people that you did) It is all a scam, and it will leave you poorer, dumber, more resentful and less fulfilled. ) : Some people do win the lottery. Chances that you will win even if you buy a ticket every single week for the rest of your life? Infinitesimal.

GoodJokes 5y ago

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