Comment by iplaw | Hacker News Reader

Comment by iplaw | Hacker News Reader

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This is a good post.

I was just having a discussion with someone on HN who considered $200k pre-tax to be affluent, and suggested that if you couldn't save $80k post-tax annually, you're doing it wrong. Having lived at $30k, $200k, and now more, I know that $200k isn't as lofty as it sounds. The dollars never seem long enough.

It's all about living a life worth living. Part of that is buying time by paying for services - from remodeling, to plumbing and electrical, to landscaping and tree maintenance, to cleaning.

Once you have a family and sufficient means, the projects that you used to DIY to save money become tasks that you hire out to save time. Do I want to spend the next six to eight weekends building a massive Ipe deck, saving thousands of dollars, or do I want to pay someone to build it in two weeks so that I have weekends devoted to family, friends, and hobbies? Do I want to spend several hours a week cleaning the entire house, or do I want to pay someone to clean it while I am at work?

This can also be applied to subjective enjoyment. Do I want to drive an A-to-B economy car, or do I want to drive a high performance vehicle which I subjectively enjoy driving?

I usually choose buying time and buying enjoyment.

I get the point about picking and choosing where to spend your time and where you delegate things to others, but if living within your means expands with your means to that point, it's no wonder you find what's honestly a windfall to not be lofty.

And to take a different track than the anti-materialist route, I would ask you to think about how not taking advantage of that salary to save an amount of money that could be the salary of a few people put together is basically abandoning a ton of leverage to just leave a job or take other risks that would be infeasible to someone who's standard of living closely tracks their salary.

In choosing to buy the degree of things you buy and dismissing the sort of leverage a more "frugal" lifestyle could buy you (quotes because I'm using frugal in terms of still spending 6 figures a year), you're selling freedom of a different sort.

(That said, I don't know enough about you or what you spend your money on or what percentage of your income you're spending outside of what you detailed in your post to suggest you do anything other than think about that angle. I don't mean to suggest anything negative about your character.)

It's not a matter of salary or saving for me anymore. I've brokered a few patent acquisitions, each of which would have allowed me to stop working altogether. And it was an abrupt transition from earning $200k to netting a somewhat unexpected and fortuitous 8-figures.

BUT, I still stand by my statement that $200k isn't as much as most people think it is. Sure, you can minimize and scrimp on your house, your vehicles, your children's institutional education, etc. and squirrel some money away for a brighter future a couple of decades from now. But that route was never very appealing to me. It felt like I was selling present-me short for the benefit of future-me. Sure I saved money, utilized 401(k)s and Roth IRAs (until I was priced out), heavily took advantage of SEP IRAs, had a liquid safety net, etc.

But I also didn't save $80k post-tax cash.

I'm curious about your experience selling patents. Are you an attorney or the founder of a startup?

It is very rare to hear of anyone who successfully sold an IP portfolio, and I'm guessing you were either the inventor, or the overall price was quite high for you to get such a large amount for selling them.

Do you assist people to sell their IP today?

Attorney. Extremely large and valuable portfolio in a next-frontier market segment. Began the relationship as a strategy consultant and mentioned a few of my contacts, they drafted and I signed a cap-less brokerage agreement. And it paid off.

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