3 ms·

I would still do a job, but it would be something that is important to me. And $10M would require some up-front management and ongoing maintenance to develop a

by rekabis 9mo ago

I would still do a job, but it would be something that is important to me. And $10M would require some up-front management and ongoing maintenance to develop an index-tracked revenue stream from it. I mean, aside from an initial disbursement meant to wipe out harmful debts and get a few small toys, the vast majority of that $10M would go towards being productive revenue-generating assets. No, not from the backs of other members of the working class like rental homes, but via stocks that generate dividends. For one, I would likely adopt one or more open-source projects that have people struggling to be maintainers, and to fund them in some manner via the dividend income. Kind of like a “you no longer have to worry about food and shelter needs anymore” type of support. It’s not like I would be able to support oodles of projects like this, but a choice project or three that is vital to the entire tech ecosystem and which desperately needs to remain independent of corporate influence… yeah. I already know of a few.

toast0 9mo ago
> And $10M would require some up-front management and ongoing maintenance to develop an index-tracked revenue stream from it. Buy $5M of VOO and $5M of VTEB or BND. Send dividends to your bank account. When your bank account is over the FDIC limit, buy more of whichever fund has less $. Dividend yield on VOO is about 1%, bond fund is about 3%, approximately $200k/year from dividends, but if that's not enough, sell from the fund with more $ as needed. If you go with VTEB (tax exempt bonds), you'll have a very low federal tax with $50k of mostly qualified dividends and $150k of mostly tax exempt interest; if you go with BND, you're still only looking at about 20% effective tax rate Single, or 15% married filing joint. Probably check with your insurer and get an umbrella policy for $5M+ cause they're cheap and you don't want to get a judgement and lose out on the easy life. Send me a check for about $10k a year as a reminder of how much work I did for you right here in the open :P (j/k, I'm not a financial advisor, I can't take compensation for this). You could do something fancier like optimizing the tax-exempt vs regular bonds or think about your preferred stock/bond ratio or exotic investment options to enrich the advisors, but $10M is enough that anything safe (80:20 to 20:80) will work unless you overspend, and it's not enough that getting a little more return is going to let you keep a private jet (better to charter anyway). On the OP's question. I kept working while I was having fun and then worked on cleanly transitioning things out so I could feel good about leaving without loose ends. I went back to work part time in order to insure domestic tranquility. :P You can do a lot with computers without a job/company/product, but IMHO, optimizing things is more fun when you have a lot of users and you can see the results, so that kind of leads towards working at least a bit, even if you don't have to.
raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
I always find it hilarious that people on HN think that there is something morally wrong with being a landlord like everyone should be a homeowner no matter what the circumstances are. Should college students buy homes? Someone who may not want to live some place for a long time?
- rekabis 9mo ago
  > there is something morally wrong with being a landlord In the traditional manner, by upgrading through houses over a lifetime and holding onto the prior homes as “mortgage helpers”? No, not in the least. In the modern context, by buying up 5, 10, 15, or even more homes in a neighbourhood just to rent them back out for their labour-free “investment income”? Oh YES, VERY MUCH SO. In the modern context - which is practically every rental these days - landlords do not provide housing. They HOARD it and ransom it back to the community for more than it’s worth. Landlords and other “investors” are why North America as a whole has a housing crisis, and by direct-causation proxy, a homeless crisis. When an individual or company can sweep into a neighbourhood and buy up most to all of the houses and then jack up rents to the maximum that the market will bear _just because,_ even when a third or more stand empty, that’s economic parasitism of the working class, plain and simple. So where I stand, if anyone is renting out any sort of a habitable structure that they themselves didn’t live in for the better part of a decade before they turned it into a rental, THEY ARE THE PARASITE.
  - raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
    As a former landlord - who would rather get a daily anal probe with a cactus than ever do it again - there is nothing “passive” about being a landlord. A quick Google search shows that only 1-3% of homes are owned by institutional investors and has almost nothing to do with the homes not being affordable. It’s a talking point that even the briefest Google search will contradict. Are you also against apartments?
    - rekabis 9mo ago
      IMO anyone holding more than 5 rentals is doing so for the purpose of investing; of having a revenue stream well above what is needed for mortgage purposes. Why? Because if you take the traditional route of living in a place, and do so for the average of 8 years that most jurisdictions see people doing before upgrading, and turning that prior home into a rental, it would take you into your 70s or 80s until you have 5 rental places. And having 5 or more rental units accounts for almost ⅓ of all landlords. This means that ⅓ of all landlords are economic parasites, being landlords purely for the income stream. I am not talking about “institutional investors” that hold 100+ homes by themselves (100+ being the industry definition of an institutional investor), they are just included in my concept of a parasitical population of housing “investors”. > there is nothing “passive” about being a landlord. You clearly are an old-school landlord. These days there are “property management” companies that - for a small fee - do all the work for you, and the only effort left to you is to cash the cheque. And many people with multiple properties leverage this system.

by rekabis 9mo ago

toast0 9mo ago

> And $10M would require some up-front management and ongoing maintenance to develop an index-tracked revenue stream from it. Buy $5M of VOO and $5M of VTEB or BND. Send dividends to your bank account. When your bank account is over the FDIC limit, buy more of whichever fund has less $. Dividend yield on VOO is about 1%, bond fund is about 3%, approximately $200k/year from dividends, but if that's not enough, sell from the fund with more $ as needed. If you go with VTEB (tax exempt bonds), you'll have a very low federal tax with $50k of mostly qualified dividends and $150k of mostly tax exempt interest; if you go with BND, you're still only looking at about 20% effective tax rate Single, or 15% married filing joint. Probably check with your insurer and get an umbrella policy for $5M+ cause they're cheap and you don't want to get a judgement and lose out on the easy life. Send me a check for about $10k a year as a reminder of how much work I did for you right here in the open :P (j/k, I'm not a financial advisor, I can't take compensation for this). You could do something fancier like optimizing the tax-exempt vs regular bonds or think about your preferred stock/bond ratio or exotic investment options to enrich the advisors, but $10M is enough that anything safe (80:20 to 20:80) will work unless you overspend, and it's not enough that getting a little more return is going to let you keep a private jet (better to charter anyway). On the OP's question. I kept working while I was having fun and then worked on cleanly transitioning things out so I could feel good about leaving without loose ends. I went back to work part time in order to insure domestic tranquility. :P You can do a lot with computers without a job/company/product, but IMHO, optimizing things is more fun when you have a lot of users and you can see the results, so that kind of leads towards working at least a bit, even if you don't have to.

raw_anon_1111 9mo ago

I always find it hilarious that people on HN think that there is something morally wrong with being a landlord like everyone should be a homeowner no matter what the circumstances are. Should college students buy homes? Someone who may not want to live some place for a long time?

rekabis 9mo ago
> there is something morally wrong with being a landlord In the traditional manner, by upgrading through houses over a lifetime and holding onto the prior homes as “mortgage helpers”? No, not in the least. In the modern context, by buying up 5, 10, 15, or even more homes in a neighbourhood just to rent them back out for their labour-free “investment income”? Oh YES, VERY MUCH SO. In the modern context - which is practically every rental these days - landlords do not provide housing. They HOARD it and ransom it back to the community for more than it’s worth. Landlords and other “investors” are why North America as a whole has a housing crisis, and by direct-causation proxy, a homeless crisis. When an individual or company can sweep into a neighbourhood and buy up most to all of the houses and then jack up rents to the maximum that the market will bear _just because,_ even when a third or more stand empty, that’s economic parasitism of the working class, plain and simple. So where I stand, if anyone is renting out any sort of a habitable structure that they themselves didn’t live in for the better part of a decade before they turned it into a rental, THEY ARE THE PARASITE.
- raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
  As a former landlord - who would rather get a daily anal probe with a cactus than ever do it again - there is nothing “passive” about being a landlord. A quick Google search shows that only 1-3% of homes are owned by institutional investors and has almost nothing to do with the homes not being affordable. It’s a talking point that even the briefest Google search will contradict. Are you also against apartments?
  - rekabis 9mo ago
    IMO anyone holding more than 5 rentals is doing so for the purpose of investing; of having a revenue stream well above what is needed for mortgage purposes. Why? Because if you take the traditional route of living in a place, and do so for the average of 8 years that most jurisdictions see people doing before upgrading, and turning that prior home into a rental, it would take you into your 70s or 80s until you have 5 rental places. And having 5 or more rental units accounts for almost ⅓ of all landlords. This means that ⅓ of all landlords are economic parasites, being landlords purely for the income stream. I am not talking about “institutional investors” that hold 100+ homes by themselves (100+ being the industry definition of an institutional investor), they are just included in my concept of a parasitical population of housing “investors”. > there is nothing “passive” about being a landlord. You clearly are an old-school landlord. These days there are “property management” companies that - for a small fee - do all the work for you, and the only effort left to you is to cash the cheque. And many people with multiple properties leverage this system.