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Comment by optimusclimb | Hacker News Reader

Woah what am I doing wrong? Incoming 5 years ago (at age 24) was 45k a year, and at 29:

$330k liquid split over checking and savings. 400k in "retirement accounts" - bearing in mind that 18k (current max 401k contribution in 2015, so this would be higher than years ago) times 8 years (assuming starting work at age 21) would be ~144K in contributions, so pretty damned good returns there...

then on top of that 8.4 Million in illiquid assets?

I seriously feel sometimes that there's things that have gone WAY over my head despite living around here for 8+ years and working in tech.

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Well, it did say "example entry" — not actual entry. (Though, it could be real and just extracted for demo... it's not specified.)

Startups in and around SF generate between 500 and 1,000 new millionaires per year on average over the past 5 years. The big dump of Twitter (~1,000) and FB millionaires (~3,000?) all at once during some years skew the averages.

All the excess liquid wealth adds up after a while (and now you can't afford a one bedroom apartment unless you make over $200k per year because everybody else is so individually wealthy and practically insensitive to prices.)

You clearly didn't start a company with a $15 million exit. I'm sure all the advice/numbers here will have a MASSIVE MASSIVE amount of selection bias and probably don't apply unless you're guaranteed to be making millions.

We want the one person company all the way to the 1000 person company to fill out the info. Please, we'd love to here your story, regardless if it was a hit or not...just as long as you were or are doing it fulltime.

If you own a business with no employees (therefore not beholden to the safe harbor rules) your 401k contributions can be up to $53k (for 2015), including the $18k personal contribution and an additional $35k of profit sharing. These numbers are scaled up each year, but I can absolutely see $400k spread across 401(k) and IRAs for a successful business owner.

Any other perks like this (business owner with no employees) I can take advantage of?

If you are taxed as an S-corp you can deduct 100% of your health insurance premiums, at least through 2015. The IRS is still trying to figure out how the ACA applies, so this may be different in 2016.

That's the only other one I can think of.

Unless I am confused this is just an example of what filling in the form would look like.

It's interesting to think about what that kind of money actually does for you. First and foremost, you can retire comfortably. But then, between splurging on luxuries (like an expensive home or two) and investing (particularly indulging in a personal interest, like space), it's not clear what that kind of wealth really does for you. Perhaps it is a social function of giving access to people with similar levels of wealth, and, one would hope, similar levels of talent/intelligence/wisdom. (Or maybe the world sucks and most rich people are just lucky and cunning.) Certainly it puts you in a potent position of advocacy - imagine being able to tell Glen Greenwald, "I love what you're doing so here's $5M to start a media company that supports and expands that."

Idle thoughts.

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