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Comment by s3nnyy | Hacker News Reader

That might sound crazy but on a software engineering salary, you can retire before 50 if you get used to spending little on food, transportation and shelter. My most favorite online resource on how to live frugally is this: http://earlyretirementextreme.com/how-i-became-financially-i....

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I've never understood the logic of giving up the things you enjoy in life to gain time in the future to enjoy life.

I'm all for frugal but life isn't a dress rehearsal.

It makes more sense if you buy into the concept of hedonic adaptation [0], which I do. The gist is that your happiness is not influenced as much as you think by your standard of living, but rather by changes in that standard. Absent of changes, your happiness will return to around its baseline level, and this is true for both positive and negative changes. So if that is actually true, it's possible to have a significantly lower cost of living and the same level of happiness. Thinking long term, why wouldn't someone want that? In terms of life satisfaction, you lose almost nothing in exchange for a long period of increased freedom.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill

I could not agree more. However, I will make the distinction between perceived happiness and experience.

Put very simply: over a 10 year period I could invest in a BMW or flights back to Europe to visit family. I will spare no expense giving our parents time with their grandchildren before it's too late.

I'm more than happy to drive my POS '04 Mazda 6.

When I read 'to live frugally so as to retire at 50' I see a lot of lost experiences that can enrich both now and later.

Find the right job and enjoy life now.

It's "retire at 30", not 50.

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/09/15/a-brief-history-of...

You slip that word "time" in there like it's secondary to the expenses that apparently are required to "enjoy life", but being able to buy time to spend how you like is pretty damn valuable to a lot of people.

I live a modest life by US standards. My point is that both Quality and Experience of life change over time. Backloading time to the second half comes at an irrecoverable cost.

There's a great moment in the documentary about Joan Rivers[1] before she died (was killed, basically). Sitting in her opulent, probably immensely expensive Manhattan penthouse apartment, in the middle of a discussion about how much money she has to make to stay afloat, she said something to the effect of: "Sure I could live carefully and it would be easy, but who wants to live carefully?".

The point being, if you enjoy your lifestyle, and you really enjoy working hard (she defined herself by her work, so there was no other option to her), what is the point of frugality? Why amass a huge bank account just to die and leave it to someone else[2]?

1. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1568150/

2. Some might argue that one ought to save so one's children can get a nice inheritance. I'm not convinced that it's helpful for offspring to get (or expect) a big windfall that they don't have to work for. I suspect some people have an ulterior motive: they use a large inheritance as a way of blackmailing children into taking care of them in their old age. I find that distasteful.

> I'm not convinced that it's helpful for offspring to get (or expect) a big windfall that they don't have to work for.

I hope your offspring never have any surprise medical issues or special needs, don't want to go to college, don't have surprise twins when they thought they were done having kids, etc. It is absolutely helpful to e.g. free your grandkids from student debt, and this does not conflict with instilling in them a work ethic.

>>Some might argue that one ought to save so one's children can get a nice inheritance.

Why would you not do that if you can. Having money gives your kids access to good education and freedom to stay away from a lot of crap poor kids have to deal with every day. Plus there is no advantage greater in life than getting a good head start over other people. A lot of people spend a big part of their lives just to get a decent start. Look up to this phenomenon called red queens race.

>>I'm not convinced that it's helpful for offspring to get (or expect) a big windfall that they don't have to work for.

That's a wrong way of looking at inheritance. Imagine what you could do in your free time if you had all the money in the world. Sure you could spend it away on wrong things. But you can also work on whatever you want and make a more meaningful difference through your work.

>>I suspect some people have an ulterior motive: they use a large inheritance as a way of blackmailing children into taking care of them in their old age. I find that distasteful.

Without money, you won't be able to take care of yourself. Also you would largely become a burden on your already financially stressed children. At least by having money you are saving them the financial struggle to see you through your old age.

But why is your kid more deserving than anyone elses'? They didn't do anything to earn the money, just won the genetic lottery.

(Not saying I won't want to help out my kids, but I think it's worth questioning / considering these things.)

People get an unfair advantage for all sorts of reasons. That's not just restricted at the level of having good/rich parents, it exists at every level of human existence. People are born in rich family, raised in good neighborhoods, go to a better school, get employed in better companies and even to the extent are born in better countries.

One can't deny their children the right to a better life, simply because other children don't have it.

This isn't about an unfair award, but about an unfair punishment.

> I'm not convinced that it's helpful for offspring to get (or expect) a big windfall that they don't have to work for

You just wait until you have your own "offspring". Inheriting money won't mean they'll grow up without work ethic -- that only happens when a parent fails to teach their child that skill.

You WILL be giving your child the freedom to explore his or her passion to the absolute fullest, and to arrive at his or her greatest potential.

Most people are not so lucky.

Except that she worked for herself, she loved what she did and did not really have much of a life outside of the spotlight.

Can't compare her to some poor schmuck slaving away for Amazon (or some such), who most likely is NOT enjoying his lifestyle/work.

security.

If you get run over by a bus and can no longer work, it's nice knowing you can still live decently.

I followed this advice as well. Squirrelled away as much as possible, became financially independent. I'm 54 and I was laid off in November 2014 after 26 years at one company.

I would like to go back work, but the engineering job market in San Diego is awful. I can afford to be picky on who I want to work for. Needless to say this will extend your job search time with the current market conditions.

It could be that I might just have to retire if conditions remain the same for a long period of time. So be it, I'll just direct my energies to my open source hardware and software projects.

what open source projects are you working on?

I think that retiring before 50 is not the solution to unemployment after 50, although the idea of living frugally so you can retire early seems great until you try it.

I think this is very subjective. I am living on less than a thousand Swiss-Francs per month in one of the most expensive cities in the world (Zurich) and I do not feel that I am missing anything. I know, things will be very different when I have kids, but still.

You can achieve financial independence in:

33 * Cost of Living / (Salary - Cost of Living)

Assuming for simplicity 3% real interest on investments once you stop working (which is close enough if you're trying to get out of the rat race quickly), and potentially infinite lifespan.

So if your cost of living is $10k and you earn $100k you get:

330,000 / 90,000 -> less than four years.

Great theory.

I don't want to live on oatmeal and tuna for the rest of my life. (I actually don't think we should be eating tuna at all and have stopped eating it although I love it.)

Now aside from obvious (e.g. kids, as you state) there's also:

* At some point you'll get a $500 optical bill or a $5000 dental bill (or a $50,000 medical bill if you live in the US) -- and let's not even get into chronic conditions.

* You may want to travel.

* At some point there will probably be a major economic shock and you may be utterly screwed. (But hey, so will a lot of people, and you'll be used to it.)

Finally -- you may enjoy working. I do.

Check out /r/financialindependence on Reddit one day.

While some people go the route of eating oatmeal and tuna every day, there are plenty of routes to financial independence that don't involve living a life devoid of nice things. It's less about never working again and more about having the freedom to choose what you want to do -- whether that's work for yourself without worrying about paying rent or working full time for someone else.

I wouldn't even call my life as a grad student "devoid of nice things."

How on earth is this possible? I live in Zug, and everything in this part of the world costs a fortune. How do you even get a place to live for less than 1500? You realise when you have a kid the krippe is 2500CHF each month? Have you ever eaten at a restaurant for under 50CHF a head (even a McDonalds meal costs 15CHF)?

I rent a room for 620 CHF, I pay 220 CHF for the obligatory insurance, 200 CHF for food (if I am socially forced to eat out I tell that I had food before and get a beer) and around 90 CHF for transportation. That amounts to more or less 1100 CHF.

200 CHF for food might sound little but I actually eat way healthier than most of my colleagues. (The last thing you can afford in Switzerland is getting sick.)

Think of it from another angle, then. Would you rather be unemployed after 50 with or without enough money to retire?

I think the point is that being employable (even for your own projects) is preferable to the alternative. Indeed having valuable skills is generally better than having money.

Another option is to retire early in a country with a much lower cost of living. You don't need to cut your costs to the bone for 20 years if you go to a place with a cost of living that costs one-third (or more) of what it costs where you currently live.

Retirement is mainly appealing to those who don't like what they do for a living.

That's a wrong way of looking at retirement. You having a job is dependent on many reasons beyond your own interest. Age related discrimination is quite common in our industry, recessions happen every 8 years or so, companies shut down, a person can have major illness, or disability.

There are many reasons why you may not be able to do what you like, let alone doing it for a living.

Being prepared for such things in the future not only saves you from all the trouble, it saves your family too.

On the whole, there will come a time when one would like to do something else before checking out. There's a balance between doing good work and enjoying life - I recommend trying to do both while the all the pieces work well. Keep in mind that deferring things to a future time is a risk in that the future time might never arrive, or it might arrive in a way you can't use.

Retirement is mainly appealing to those who have other interests outside of work or want to do good/interesting things which don't necessarily produce income.

That's a great attitude to take if you're at retirement age. But in order to retire you have to save decades before you know whether or not you still enjoy what you do for a living.

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