How long do you think it'll take him to reach his goal? He talks about starting a start-up, selling or profiting, but all of that take a lot of work. And even then there's no guarantee his plan will work.
Saving 15M will probably take a developer anywhere from 10-20 years? Or am I very wrong?
I ran the numbers for a simple scenario, assuming a current $150k income:
- With a 5% yearly raise and a 7% investment return, you end up with ~$3.8M at 20 years.
- With a 5% yearly raise and a 20% investment return, you end up with ~$14.5M at 20 years.
That 5% yearly raise would have you earning almost $400k at the end of 20 years too - probably up for debate how likely that is.
I don’t think most people’s “retire early” savings plans/goals can survive initial contact with reality.
He also got very lucky.
Assuming no cryptocurrency optionality, even if it took him up to 25 years to diligently save and invest, ceteris paribus he would still be able to retire around age 50. The only catch is that family formation can be quite expensive unless you get extremely lucky and find a life-long partner who shares the same frugal mentality.
Finding said partner is much, much harder than it sounds.
(See the one for regular contribution required for target).
8% before inflation is reasonable historically for 25 years.
You still need a 400k+ salary to do it, but that's not out of reach in the Bay area, particularly for a couple.
https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-paycheck-calculator#...
And his plan does contain banking a 46x return on his yet unconceived start-up ($500k -> $23m is 46x, Minus 35% for taxes in CA)
This is a discontinuous event. This is not “fat FIRE.” This is called trying to spike it and get rich, like everybody else in this town.