4 ms·

Reading this, it feels much more like "using coding skills to make income". It's a great description of one person's journey, but "work hard for a decade, conti

Reading this, it feels much more like "using coding skills to make income". It's a great description of one person's journey, but "work hard for a decade, continue to work at a healthy lighter pace after" isn't really passive income in my mind. And I'm not sure it beats, e.g., work hard and save hard at tech company for a decade, then use the invested surplus as passive income to work lightly thereafter. At least, not in the general case.

oldandboring 2y ago
> work hard and save hard at tech company for a decade, then use the invested surplus as passive income to work lightly thereafter I used an LLM to help me do the math but it appears you would have to make $1.5 million/year at "tech company" if you were to save 20% of your income and have $4 million saved after 10 years. That $4mm saved would allow you to appreciate to $5mm to retire on after 20 years while simultaneously withdrawing $150,000/year in passive income to live on. Of course you can adjust this based on how aggressively you save, how much you need to withdraw each year, and how much runway you have until retirement and how much retirement you need to be comfortable. Regardless, what you're suggesting is available only to the privileged few who can get extremely high-paying jobs early in their careers and hold onto them while having low enough expenses and high enough discipline to save aggressively. OP's approach is a very doable path for folks who aren't so fortunate and/or young, but can code, have some life experience, and don't want to go get another job.
- Jabbles 2y ago
  Your choice of numbers is very odd - even though you mention that you can adjust them for your own circumstances, the starting point is unrealistic. - Very few people earn $1.5M/year - Saving 20% implies that you're spending ~$1M/year while working, so $150k/year in retirement would not be appealing Did the LLM pick the numbers for you?
  - oldandboring 2y ago
    Whoosh. You missed the point completely. Of course very few people earn $1.5M/year. That's my point -- the poster I was replying to was naively thinking they could just work hard for a tech company and save for 10 years and then live off the passive income of the saved investment, which is silly. The rest of the numbers were conservative figures I chose. $5mm to retire, 20% saved while working, $150k/year passive income. The whole point is that what he's describing is pretty unrealistic.
    - poikniok 2y ago
      Whoosh. You missed the point completely. How did you choose "20% saved while working" as a number? Why not 80%?
      - none4methx 2y ago
        You’re both utterly thoughtless since you’d consider withdrawing money rather than taking taking relatively low interest loans out against that equity, leaving the bulk of your millions to appreciate longer I mean, you’d be terrorizing the economy, but that’s also what you do when you eat food grown and prepared by people with inadequate labor protections, so why not take the red pill and double down on being a true slave-supported neo-Athenian?
        poikniok 2y ago
        Interactive Brokers (one of the best) has margin rates that are 5.17-5.83% at the moment depending on the size of the loan. Whether or not you want to pay rates like that and be potentially leveraged in the market, is a personal question. Not sure what any of this has to do with terrorizing the economy though ...
- potatoman22 2y ago
  How do you spend 80% of a 1.5 million (lets say 800,000 post-tax) salary each year? That'd be an incredibly lavish lifestyle. If you cut your spending down to a cool $200,000/year then you could retire in 5 years and have $150,000/year for the rest of your life. Let's run a different scenario: your post-tax income is $200k and you save half of that. In 11 years, you can retire and get $100k per year at a 4% withdrawal rate. People in either of these scenarios are obviously privileged, but the latter isn't unrealistic for a single FAANG dev. engaging-data.com has cool fire calculators. Highly recommend checking them out
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- markvdb 2y ago
  Throw the following at your LLM's passive income calculation: - income: tech sector salary median - spending: median spending + 25% - passive income target: median net income Now add some indie project income as a topping. If you're not very close to passive income after ten years, you're doing it wrong. If you're not financially responsible for lots of people, that is.
- ternnoburn 2y ago
  You could work a $500k/year job and safe $350k a year. Or a $400k and save $250k. A $1.5M/year job is a wild overestimate of what's required.

oldandboring 2y ago

> work hard and save hard at tech company for a decade, then use the invested surplus as passive income to work lightly thereafter I used an LLM to help me do the math but it appears you would have to make $1.5 million/year at "tech company" if you were to save 20% of your income and have $4 million saved after 10 years. That $4mm saved would allow you to appreciate to $5mm to retire on after 20 years while simultaneously withdrawing $150,000/year in passive income to live on. Of course you can adjust this based on how aggressively you save, how much you need to withdraw each year, and how much runway you have until retirement and how much retirement you need to be comfortable. Regardless, what you're suggesting is available only to the privileged few who can get extremely high-paying jobs early in their careers and hold onto them while having low enough expenses and high enough discipline to save aggressively. OP's approach is a very doable path for folks who aren't so fortunate and/or young, but can code, have some life experience, and don't want to go get another job.

Jabbles 2y ago
Your choice of numbers is very odd - even though you mention that you can adjust them for your own circumstances, the starting point is unrealistic. - Very few people earn $1.5M/year - Saving 20% implies that you're spending ~$1M/year while working, so $150k/year in retirement would not be appealing Did the LLM pick the numbers for you?
- oldandboring 2y ago
  Whoosh. You missed the point completely. Of course very few people earn $1.5M/year. That's my point -- the poster I was replying to was naively thinking they could just work hard for a tech company and save for 10 years and then live off the passive income of the saved investment, which is silly. The rest of the numbers were conservative figures I chose. $5mm to retire, 20% saved while working, $150k/year passive income. The whole point is that what he's describing is pretty unrealistic.
  - poikniok 2y ago
    Whoosh. You missed the point completely. How did you choose "20% saved while working" as a number? Why not 80%?
    - none4methx 2y ago
      You’re both utterly thoughtless since you’d consider withdrawing money rather than taking taking relatively low interest loans out against that equity, leaving the bulk of your millions to appreciate longer I mean, you’d be terrorizing the economy, but that’s also what you do when you eat food grown and prepared by people with inadequate labor protections, so why not take the red pill and double down on being a true slave-supported neo-Athenian?
      - poikniok 2y ago
        Interactive Brokers (one of the best) has margin rates that are 5.17-5.83% at the moment depending on the size of the loan. Whether or not you want to pay rates like that and be potentially leveraged in the market, is a personal question. Not sure what any of this has to do with terrorizing the economy though ...
potatoman22 2y ago
How do you spend 80% of a 1.5 million (lets say 800,000 post-tax) salary each year? That'd be an incredibly lavish lifestyle. If you cut your spending down to a cool $200,000/year then you could retire in 5 years and have $150,000/year for the rest of your life. Let's run a different scenario: your post-tax income is $200k and you save half of that. In 11 years, you can retire and get $100k per year at a 4% withdrawal rate. People in either of these scenarios are obviously privileged, but the latter isn't unrealistic for a single FAANG dev. engaging-data.com has cool fire calculators. Highly recommend checking them out
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
markvdb 2y ago
Throw the following at your LLM's passive income calculation: - income: tech sector salary median - spending: median spending + 25% - passive income target: median net income Now add some indie project income as a topping. If you're not very close to passive income after ten years, you're doing it wrong. If you're not financially responsible for lots of people, that is.
ternnoburn 2y ago
You could work a $500k/year job and safe $350k a year. Or a $400k and save $250k. A $1.5M/year job is a wild overestimate of what's required.