5 ms·

Retiring with kids still at home would really be something.

ndriscoll 2y ago
I'm 35 and am thinking about doing that or at least seeing if I can transition to part-time before my kids are school age (and, depending on what they want, maybe homeschooling or hybrid schooling. Maybe lead a homeschool pod/do something more community oriented). We could pay off our current mortgage if we wanted. Right now we're saving so we can move somewhere a little nicer though. Wife's always been a homemaker and I didn't hit an IPO jackpot or anything. Just worked at 2 BigCos (not FAANG) and a startup that will probably not one day be a jackpot. I know there are people I've worked with who must be multi-millionaires (at least one has told me they are); I don't know what keeps them working corporate jobs.
- silverquiet 2y ago
  I'm older than you with no kids and I couldn't do it. Living with some disability means always needing health insurance and still paying quite a bit for medical care; it's hard to imagine retirement.
  - ndriscoll 2y ago
    Yeah, we've been quite fortunate with our health. One possibility if you were so inclined is that the Obamacare plans only have an income test, not an asset one, so if you've still been able to build assets and plan for your retirement income to be just above 138% of federal poverty level (so you don't qualify for normal medicaid), then you get the full ACA subsidy (so a free silver plan).
    - silverquiet 2y ago
      My plans are more around layoff than retirement (it's happened to me before) and do feature some assets such that I can probably manipulate my income as needed, but given the Republican urge to get rid of Obamacare[0] and the likelihood of them winning control next year is pretty worrying. I guess there's always Mexico. [0]https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/01/trump-obamacare-repeal-replace/677067/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/01/trump-o...
- swatcoder 2y ago
  > I've worked with who must be multi-millionaires (at least one has told me they are); I don't know what keeps them working corporate jobs. What many people discover is that they actually have a desire to work in some way or another, which makes sense in the big picture of being human: feeling like you're making some kind of contribution to a communal end seems like a pretty innate since that's how communities and cultures sustain. If you've matured a career and gotten sufficiently comfortable with its processes, many people can find satisfaction in it even when they become aware that the "communal end" is bullshit. You just do your part, complain to friends at dinner parties, bank the paycheck, and justify your indulgences in luxury to how much you put up with to earn them. Many find that once you take that away, you find yourself staring at a blank slate where you're not really prepared to make comparably significant contributions to anything else and are reluctant to start grinding from the bottom in a new field/skill. Retirement is harder than many assume, and especially early retirement. And not just because of the financials involved.
  - ndriscoll 2y ago
    I get the desire to keep oneself productive and make contributions to the world, but it seems like standups and sprint planning aren't that, and for the most part, corporate work involves doing a satisfactory job, but realizing that doing a particularly good job at anything isn't worth it for various reasons (i.e. the idea of "craftsmanship" is generally inappropriate in a corporate context). Surely there's communal satisfaction to be found making improvements to e.g. digikam. Or we've seen bright college kids try to make things like diaspora or mastodon over the years, but they don't know what they're doing, so it always ends up being something that barely runs and costs way too much to be able to scale. Someone that actually knew what they were doing could easily write something 100x more efficient. It's not so much "why do you do stuff", but "why do you work at a corporation and worry about OKRs and sprints and 360 peer reviews instead of doing stuff?"

I'm 35 and am thinking about doing that or at least seeing if I can transition to part-time before my kids are school age (and, depending on what they want, maybe homeschooling or hybrid schooling. Maybe lead a homeschool pod/do something more community oriented). We could pay off our current mortgage if we wanted. Right now we're saving so we can move somewhere a little nicer though. Wife's always been a homemaker and I didn't hit an IPO jackpot or anything. Just worked at 2 BigCos (not FAANG) and a startup that will probably not one day be a jackpot. I know there are people I've worked with who must be multi-millionaires (at least one has told me they are); I don't know what keeps them working corporate jobs.

silverquiet 2y ago
I'm older than you with no kids and I couldn't do it. Living with some disability means always needing health insurance and still paying quite a bit for medical care; it's hard to imagine retirement.
- ndriscoll 2y ago
  Yeah, we've been quite fortunate with our health. One possibility if you were so inclined is that the Obamacare plans only have an income test, not an asset one, so if you've still been able to build assets and plan for your retirement income to be just above 138% of federal poverty level (so you don't qualify for normal medicaid), then you get the full ACA subsidy (so a free silver plan).
  - silverquiet 2y ago
    My plans are more around layoff than retirement (it's happened to me before) and do feature some assets such that I can probably manipulate my income as needed, but given the Republican urge to get rid of Obamacare[0] and the likelihood of them winning control next year is pretty worrying. I guess there's always Mexico. [0]https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/01/trump-obamacare-repeal-replace/677067/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/01/trump-o...
swatcoder 2y ago
> I've worked with who must be multi-millionaires (at least one has told me they are); I don't know what keeps them working corporate jobs. What many people discover is that they actually have a desire to work in some way or another, which makes sense in the big picture of being human: feeling like you're making some kind of contribution to a communal end seems like a pretty innate since that's how communities and cultures sustain. If you've matured a career and gotten sufficiently comfortable with its processes, many people can find satisfaction in it even when they become aware that the "communal end" is bullshit. You just do your part, complain to friends at dinner parties, bank the paycheck, and justify your indulgences in luxury to how much you put up with to earn them. Many find that once you take that away, you find yourself staring at a blank slate where you're not really prepared to make comparably significant contributions to anything else and are reluctant to start grinding from the bottom in a new field/skill. Retirement is harder than many assume, and especially early retirement. And not just because of the financials involved.
- ndriscoll 2y ago
  I get the desire to keep oneself productive and make contributions to the world, but it seems like standups and sprint planning aren't that, and for the most part, corporate work involves doing a satisfactory job, but realizing that doing a particularly good job at anything isn't worth it for various reasons (i.e. the idea of "craftsmanship" is generally inappropriate in a corporate context). Surely there's communal satisfaction to be found making improvements to e.g. digikam. Or we've seen bright college kids try to make things like diaspora or mastodon over the years, but they don't know what they're doing, so it always ends up being something that barely runs and costs way too much to be able to scale. Someone that actually knew what they were doing could easily write something 100x more efficient. It's not so much "why do you do stuff", but "why do you work at a corporation and worry about OKRs and sprints and 360 peer reviews instead of doing stuff?"