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Comment by the_gastropod | Hacker News Reader

> but good luck trying to retire as a welder or car mechanic making $50k

Retiring at 30 while earning $50k would be difficult. But retiring at 40 or even 50 is still relatively easy on such a salary.

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Really? In the U.S.? Case study? Without kids and if you don't really spend any money on recreation or vacations (before or after retirement), maybe. Or if you somehow have a job that will give you a pension (with health insurance?) at 50, sure!

I suggest just reading MMM. It's all about savings rate. As an example, I live in Brooklyn, NY (one of the most expensive places to live in the U.S.) In 2016, I spent $32k ($24k was rent!) Assuming a $50k income, that'd be a ~36% savings rate, which requires a 23 year career.

Assume someone making $50k lives in not NYC, I imagine this scenario could be a lot better.

For a more extreme version of MMM, read http://earlyretirementextreme.com/. This guy (Jacob, who MMM mentioned in this interview) never earned much money (never over $50k prior to becoming financially independent), and retired after working 5 years. With a little creativity, most people can retire far sooner than standard retirement age.

> In 2016, I spent $32k ($24k was rent!) Assuming a $50k income, that'd be a ~36% savings rate, which requires a 23 year career.

Assuming a $50k income post-tax

Knocking off 18k for 401k and 5.5k for a Traditional IRA dramatically reduces the tax liability. I recognize 50k-32k = 18k (so the full 23.5k can't be executed in this case), but it makes a significant difference regardless.
And there are methods to pull this money out well before the standard ages without penalty, such as Substantially Equal Periodic Payments (SEPP).

You are forgetting taxes (FICA, state and federal income taxes, etc), which would eat up a significant portion of those savings.

That's an exaggeration, even for frugal people. Retiring at 50 means ~30 years of working life finished and ~30 years of retirement remaining. At $50k per year * 30, that's $1.5m. Spread out over 60 years that's $25k per year before tax. I wouldn't say it's "relatively easy" to save for retirement, pay for healthcare, live somewhere safe, have children, etc. on that, even with investment returns over that time frame.

You're ignoring investment income. I suggest reading MMM. It's a trove of great information.

I second this. He has a ton of blog posts though, so it can be like drinking from a firehose. Start with this one: The Shockingly Simple Math Behind Early Retirement - http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-sim...

Assuming you decide to not to have kids ;)

And assuming there are no bad events in your life which drain your savings, like health issues

Best thing you can do to protect yourself from bad events like health issues is to have a cushion of cash! The strategy is the same: spend less, so you can save more money.

You can't protect yourself from bad events like health issues with a cushion of cash. I mean not unless you have hundreds of thousands of dollars in the bank. My son was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes at 19 months old (4+ years ago) and with what we spend on hospital, health insurance, supplies, etc we could buy a new Toyota Camry every single year. Let that sink in for a minute. I have been a contractor for quite a while so we've been able to weather it, but if I was making a 'normal' salary (I'm in the Southeast US) we'd be drowning in credit card bills to pay for our son's care.

That depends greatly on where you are living and on whether or not you have kids or student debt. In plenty of places a 40 or 50K salary would be burned up every month even if you never did anything crazy.

This is more important than a lot of people realize. "Just move somewhere cheaper!" is the battle cry which ignores "It's cheaper because there's no real jobs there."
Few industries are as flexible about working from home as the software development industry.

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