Comment by busterarm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by busterarm | Hacker News Reader

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> if you follow your interest into extremely niche domains, the option of irregular highly-specialized consulting gigs becomes available. This income stream, while not consistent enough to live off by itself, proves formidable in conjunction with retirement-level investments and enables a much higher SWR.

I just had a weird moment this weekend where I calculated what my yearly cost of living would be at the house I'm inheriting. My mom bought her house in cash, in a low property tax state and it's amazing what not having a mortgage will save you -- and it's a _nice_ house. Yearly CoL, counting food, a small home emergency fund and estimated maintenance of the house and car came out to around 7k.

Considering what I make from sporadic consulting, I realized that I could live off that for years just working a few weeks a year. And I only have to do that until Social Security payments kick in (though I'm probably going to try to maintain this level of income until 62).

It drilled home the point that I need to save what I'm earning here so that when the time comes I will have a nice large, easy cushion.

What will you do for health insurance? Rely on Obamacare (which looks shaky given the current politics)? Or take a risk of bankruptcy in case you develop some health condition?

Live out my life as comfortably as I can for as long as I can. I have a certain amount of medical training to care for myself for basics. People go to hospital for the simplest things...

Beyond that I fully support euthanasia. If I found out I had cancer tomorrow though, I probably wouldn't treat it (unless it's of the extremely treatable variety).

What about family? The more members you have in your family, higher the odds that at least one of you will need healthcare.

Anyway, good luck and hope you don't develop any condition :)

I'm the youngest member of my family, unattached, and I have no interest in having kids.

This might change. Not necessarily - but I've known a LOT of people who kept saying that in their twenties...

There won't be any Social Security when you are 62. The system is a ponzi scheme that will collapse with the boomer retirements.

> There won't be any Social Security when you are 62.

Unless political opponents use this exact kind of scaremongering to push a repeal, yes, there will.

> The system is a ponzi scheme

It's not, though it's failure mode is a sustainable analog of one.

> that will collapse with the boomer retirements.

No, it won't. The projection is that the Trust Fund would be exhausted, which would reduce SS to paying benefits exclusively out of current payroll tax revenues, this would reduce benefits below full benefits, but would not collapse the system.

I don't know. I thought that when I was in my 30s and 40s. I'm 56 now, and it looks like there might actually be something by the time I get there.

Would I count on it if I were 30? No. I don't count on it for myself, either. But I was more cynical than has been warranted (so far).

I'm going to make a bold statement and say that it's highly likely that I'm among the most pessimistic people _on earth_.

That said, the idea that the government (any government) is going to tell about one hundred million people that they've been paying hundreds of thousands of dollars into something their entire working lives that will give them nothing in return seems beyond ludicrous to me. That's a recipe for disaster. The violent kind.

Human nature's need to maintain the status quo for as long as possible definitely applies here. I'm in my 30s and I won't start worrying until the government starts massively scaling back what we pay _into_ the social security system. If that even happens before I'm retired.

Basically, I sneer and laugh at anyone who says Social Security won't be around in the near-term.

Yep, as long as old people continue to massively out-vote young people, Social Security has zero chance of going away or becoming privatized (which is essentially the same as it going away).

This doesn't seem like an evidence-based opinion.

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