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I wonder how much you'd need to save and to own in order to conduct this experiment on yourself? I've wondered about what I would do day to day if I didn't 'hav

I wonder how much you'd need to save and to own in order to conduct this experiment on yourself? I've wondered about what I would do day to day if I didn't 'have to work to live'. I honestly think I'd be doing very similar things. I'd still be programming, and I'd be wanting to make things that'd help people do their jobs better, but I wouldn't feel like I 'had to'. That alone would improve my sanity immensely (I think), and yet it's only a small conceptual jump between what I'm already doing day-to-day.

NhanH 11y ago
The number I've heard is 20x your annual expenses. I don't think there are any meaningful sources to cite here, but I remember reading that from the Mr Money Mustache crowd.
- davty 11y ago
  The number is actually 25. It is based on a withdrawal of 4 %: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/05/29/how-much-do-i-need-for-retirement/ http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/05/29/how-much-do-i-need....
adrianN 11y ago
You need to save about 30 times what you spend in a year. Invested in index funds, you can withdraw 3-4% per year basically indefinitely.
mtsr 11y ago
The problem is that if you're at an income level where you could comfortably save up for something like this, you're also likely to have much higher fixed costs (bigger house, car, etc) and more expensive habits (food, subscriptions, etc). That said, without living particularly frugally I'm currently able to save up to a third of my monthly income. This means that without cutting costs I could spend one month jobless for each two months of saving. Truth be told there's still plenty of spending I could cut back on, although that would mean a change in lifestyle. Time to start saving too?
jlarocco 11y ago
The problem there is that you have a cushy programming job. The bigger question is what about the gas station clerks? Or cleaning people? Or wait staff? Or any of the people working the millions of other jobs that just totally suck. Having done it in the past, I'm 100% sure nobody wakes up totally stoked to go bus tables or wash dishes. So, maybe people who have awesome jobs will just keep doing what they're doing, but for people with shitty jobs, why not say, "F* it, I can get by with the guaranteed minimum, so why bother?"
- mtsr 11y ago
  Depends. If every euro you earn there adds to your unconditional minimum income, instead of replacing a euro from welfare, the motivation to work for that new car, or whatever, becomes pretty tangible. Note that €900 (or €1300 for a family) is pretty barebones. You won't be putting much more than bread and potatoes on the table using that. And you'll probably live in a rather small house too.
  - Cthulhu_ 11y ago
    Yeah but at the same time, it would allow people to be more picky about where they work. "I need money so I'll take any job" is a different mindset than "I am financially independent and I'm looking to make more monies in a job I like"
    - mtsr 11y ago
      The I'll-take-any-job crowd might not be very motivated in their work anyway. At worst this will force us to pay better salaries for ALL jobs that have fewer applicants, instead of only the ones that require a higher education or lots of experience. Seems fair to me.
  - moonchrome 11y ago
    Income has a diminishing return, once you're out of "minimum income" the ammount requred to take the shit job is not linear. You can either lowball the minimum income to the point where you can't realistically live on it for long or a lot of services get more expensive + tax hike to support it = lower standard of living for normal people (unaffected by minimum income but not rich enouh to ignore the costs)
antome 11y ago
Assuming you average 7% each year on the S&P 500, inflation averages 3%, and 50K per year is your target, you would want at least 1.25 million USD in the bank. Taking into account volatility, you'd probably want at least 1.8M.
maehwasu 11y ago
I sort of ran this experiment on myself this year. The answer is that I have actually probably learned more about coding than I had in the 3-4 previous years when I was working a lot, since I had more time to delve in to topics in depth, rather than rush to ship. It feels great, and I've come out the other side much more productive in the projects I have kept working on.
- perfunctory 11y ago
  That sounds like the case in favour of basic income
lucaspiller 11y ago
I am kind of in this situation so I'll chime in: I quit my full time job nearly two years ago and since then have been freelancing and contracting remotely. I'm now taking a 'sabbatical' for a couple of months over the summer to recharge and hopefully start my own business. I've had a lot of people asking me when I'm getting a job again, as I assume they aren't in a financial position to be able to do this so wonder how on earth I could afford it. Although I have been lucky to have some jobs that reimburse me well, I also don't have a car, house, wife (that's happening next month!) or go out drinking. The amount I have in savings is equivalent to what friends who own houses have in equity - which is about enough for me to live off for two years, so I'm definitely not retiring yet. The plan for the business is to build something (I'm not 100% sure what yet, but I've been following the bootstrapped community for a good few years) that will bring me in a couple of thousand dollars a month with a lot less stress than a full time job, so it's pretty equivalent to a basic income. I will probably end up moving to somewhere where the cost of living is cheaper (bonus: the cheaper parts of Europe also have much better weather than the UK), and then 'work' on whatever interests me - to start with I'll probably take a break from tech and do something more creative and hands on.
- perfunctory 11y ago
  I am afraid a couple of months doesn't really count as a sabbatical. In any case wish you all the best with your experiment.
- ghgr 11y ago
  > Although I have been lucky to have some jobs that reimburse me well, I also don't have a car, house, wife (that's happening next month!) or go out drinking. I find amusing that you include "wife" with all the other expenses. You'll become DINKYs ("Dual Income, No Kids Yet") and thus you will have even more financial independence :-). By the way, congratulations! > [..] but I've been following the bootstrapped community for a good few years) Could you please share the name of the community?
  - lucaspiller 11y ago
    > You'll become DINKYs ("Dual Income, No Kids Yet") and thus you will have even more financial independence Haha, thanks! She is currently studying, and we will probably have kids in the next coupe of years - when we do she wants to take care of them rather than working, so unfortunately not! At least being Europeans we have good social welfare. > Could you please share the name of the community? There isn't a HackerNews-for-bootstrappers, at least I've found nothing worthwhile. There are a lot of disparate communities depending on what area you want to get into (e.g. creating a consulting agency, building a SaaS, internet marketing, brick-and-mortar business, etc). Most of what I follow revolves around Microconf, here are a few notable podcasts: http://bootstrapped.fm/ http://bootstrapped.fm/ http://www.bootstrappedwithkids.com/ http://www.bootstrappedwithkids.com/ http://nightsandweekendspodcast.com/ http://nightsandweekendspodcast.com/ http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/ http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/
jackpirate 11y ago
Sounds more-or-less like grad school to me :)

NhanH 11y ago

The number I've heard is 20x your annual expenses. I don't think there are any meaningful sources to cite here, but I remember reading that from the Mr Money Mustache crowd.

davty 11y ago
The number is actually 25. It is based on a withdrawal of 4 %: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/05/29/how-much-do-i-need-for-retirement/ http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/05/29/how-much-do-i-need....

adrianN 11y ago

You need to save about 30 times what you spend in a year. Invested in index funds, you can withdraw 3-4% per year basically indefinitely.

mtsr 11y ago

The problem is that if you're at an income level where you could comfortably save up for something like this, you're also likely to have much higher fixed costs (bigger house, car, etc) and more expensive habits (food, subscriptions, etc). That said, without living particularly frugally I'm currently able to save up to a third of my monthly income. This means that without cutting costs I could spend one month jobless for each two months of saving. Truth be told there's still plenty of spending I could cut back on, although that would mean a change in lifestyle. Time to start saving too?

jlarocco 11y ago

The problem there is that you have a cushy programming job. The bigger question is what about the gas station clerks? Or cleaning people? Or wait staff? Or any of the people working the millions of other jobs that just totally suck. Having done it in the past, I'm 100% sure nobody wakes up totally stoked to go bus tables or wash dishes. So, maybe people who have awesome jobs will just keep doing what they're doing, but for people with shitty jobs, why not say, "F* it, I can get by with the guaranteed minimum, so why bother?"

mtsr 11y ago
Depends. If every euro you earn there adds to your unconditional minimum income, instead of replacing a euro from welfare, the motivation to work for that new car, or whatever, becomes pretty tangible. Note that €900 (or €1300 for a family) is pretty barebones. You won't be putting much more than bread and potatoes on the table using that. And you'll probably live in a rather small house too.
- Cthulhu_ 11y ago
  Yeah but at the same time, it would allow people to be more picky about where they work. "I need money so I'll take any job" is a different mindset than "I am financially independent and I'm looking to make more monies in a job I like"
  - mtsr 11y ago
    The I'll-take-any-job crowd might not be very motivated in their work anyway. At worst this will force us to pay better salaries for ALL jobs that have fewer applicants, instead of only the ones that require a higher education or lots of experience. Seems fair to me.
- moonchrome 11y ago
  Income has a diminishing return, once you're out of "minimum income" the ammount requred to take the shit job is not linear. You can either lowball the minimum income to the point where you can't realistically live on it for long or a lot of services get more expensive + tax hike to support it = lower standard of living for normal people (unaffected by minimum income but not rich enouh to ignore the costs)

antome 11y ago

Assuming you average 7% each year on the S&P 500, inflation averages 3%, and 50K per year is your target, you would want at least 1.25 million USD in the bank. Taking into account volatility, you'd probably want at least 1.8M.

maehwasu 11y ago

I sort of ran this experiment on myself this year. The answer is that I have actually probably learned more about coding than I had in the 3-4 previous years when I was working a lot, since I had more time to delve in to topics in depth, rather than rush to ship. It feels great, and I've come out the other side much more productive in the projects I have kept working on.

perfunctory 11y ago
That sounds like the case in favour of basic income

lucaspiller 11y ago

I am kind of in this situation so I'll chime in: I quit my full time job nearly two years ago and since then have been freelancing and contracting remotely. I'm now taking a 'sabbatical' for a couple of months over the summer to recharge and hopefully start my own business. I've had a lot of people asking me when I'm getting a job again, as I assume they aren't in a financial position to be able to do this so wonder how on earth I could afford it. Although I have been lucky to have some jobs that reimburse me well, I also don't have a car, house, wife (that's happening next month!) or go out drinking. The amount I have in savings is equivalent to what friends who own houses have in equity - which is about enough for me to live off for two years, so I'm definitely not retiring yet. The plan for the business is to build something (I'm not 100% sure what yet, but I've been following the bootstrapped community for a good few years) that will bring me in a couple of thousand dollars a month with a lot less stress than a full time job, so it's pretty equivalent to a basic income. I will probably end up moving to somewhere where the cost of living is cheaper (bonus: the cheaper parts of Europe also have much better weather than the UK), and then 'work' on whatever interests me - to start with I'll probably take a break from tech and do something more creative and hands on.

perfunctory 11y ago
I am afraid a couple of months doesn't really count as a sabbatical. In any case wish you all the best with your experiment.
ghgr 11y ago
> Although I have been lucky to have some jobs that reimburse me well, I also don't have a car, house, wife (that's happening next month!) or go out drinking. I find amusing that you include "wife" with all the other expenses. You'll become DINKYs ("Dual Income, No Kids Yet") and thus you will have even more financial independence :-). By the way, congratulations! > [..] but I've been following the bootstrapped community for a good few years) Could you please share the name of the community?
- lucaspiller 11y ago
  > You'll become DINKYs ("Dual Income, No Kids Yet") and thus you will have even more financial independence Haha, thanks! She is currently studying, and we will probably have kids in the next coupe of years - when we do she wants to take care of them rather than working, so unfortunately not! At least being Europeans we have good social welfare. > Could you please share the name of the community? There isn't a HackerNews-for-bootstrappers, at least I've found nothing worthwhile. There are a lot of disparate communities depending on what area you want to get into (e.g. creating a consulting agency, building a SaaS, internet marketing, brick-and-mortar business, etc). Most of what I follow revolves around Microconf, here are a few notable podcasts: http://bootstrapped.fm/ http://bootstrapped.fm/ http://www.bootstrappedwithkids.com/ http://www.bootstrappedwithkids.com/ http://nightsandweekendspodcast.com/ http://nightsandweekendspodcast.com/ http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/ http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/

jackpirate 11y ago

Sounds more-or-less like grad school to me :)