Interview with a Programmer Who Retired at 34 | Hacker News Reader

Interview with a Programmer Who Retired at 34

triplebyte.com

25 pointscharliewrites17 comments

The gist of this strategy seems to boil down to: "Have very modest annual income expectations for the rest of your life, live in a place with free healthcare" It would seem that something like having kids would definitely throw a wrench in that. Unless I'm missing something?

Check out reddit.com/r/financialindependence. Plenty of people on the FIRE path with kids.

It's a good time for spending dollars in the UK too!

I believe that people do so little retirement planning that many will never decide to retire, they will be forced to retire because they will becomes unable to work. To me, the biggest benefit of FIRE is actually formalizing my need to retire some day and learning best practices to make decisions that will take care of my future self. Everything else is simply about consciously moving the date at which I am able to stop directly earning income. Higher paying job? That will allow me to move the date up. Second kid? That would require me to move the date back. A new car sooner or retiring two years earlier? Moving to a worse area but retiring five years earlier? Once I started thinking like this I realized that I often chose the option that lead me to be able to retire sooner by saving the money instead. I don't want more or more shinier stuff. I want to remove the powerful financial incentive behind how I spend the vast majority of my time.

4% is a fairly risky withdrawal rate at such a young age. But also being so young, I'd imagine one or both of them will get the itch to do something that earns more money at some point in the next few decades.

Yeah definitely, from reading the article it sounds like they just want the freedom to do what they want to do (and that likely could come with bonus income). The article mentions the programmer's wife is an optometrist and is still working actually.

I'm 30, just graduated in a computational science field, got a baby. I could "do" FIRE just from my savings from the last 10 years, thanks to the great social system in my central European country. Due to the baby, I stayed at home almost two years, so I want to work now, fill my lifetime with something useful. I don't even plan to retire even if I'm rich -- and I don't indend to get rich. I don't get this FIRE trend....

FIRE is quite dependent on steady economic conditions (decent rate of return on investments with low capital loss, non destructive inflation rates), and for many they are trading their prime earning years placing this bet that it will continue indefinitely.

I wish them luck. historically over the time periods that they are potentially talking about (40-50 yrs), that is a risky bet.

Betting on the stock market (mutual funds) over timescales in decades is about the least risky thing you can do. You don't need a 5% return every year (that won't happen), you just need it to be the average.

There is a difference here because you need to draw on your funds.

The math works out well for someone willing to buy and hold for a long time, because if there's a crash you wait to sell until the market has recovered. However, if you need to sell, you need to actualize the losses. Even if your portfolio later recovers, you've lost out on the growth that you would have had.

Sure, during a crash you have to draw down. But in a 10% growth year, you can get it back. Averages.

There are a thousand and one ways to mitigate risk in terms of choosing investments and withdrawal strategies and your FIRE age, it makes no sense for you to be so negative of the concept. In the extreme case, some people make so much money starting so early that they can live the rest of their lives just on cash.

I wish they would talk more about "well, what then?" where is meaning in life, where is purpose? what is there beyond "I can afford it"? Even old retirees struggle with this: what to do with all of this time? Not judging, just want to hear more.

I would imagine that old people struggle to do what they want because they are old. They have family, health, and longevity issues to contend with.

For everyone else, hobbies exist.

Obamacare isn't a bad deal (ie. free) if you can keep your taxable income below 4x the poverty level.

> The biggest boosts in my salary came when I left a job. When I left Scotland I was like, Hey, I'm leaving Scotland. This has been great, thanks for everything. But they were like, Wait, wait, wait, do you wanna keep working remotely?"

> and

> "Hey, I gotta go. I'm gonna move to Vermont. I'm gonna stop working. And it was exactly the same. She said, "Hey wait, wait, you can keep working remotely if you want and, by the way, here's over a 50% raise.”

TL;DR:

1. Become indispensable at a day job.

2. Tell them you are quitting and moving to _INSERT_LOW_COST_OF_LIVING_PLACE_HERE ( and be ready to follow through )

3. Wait for counter offer for 100% remote.

4. Rinse and repeat every few years.

This story is not practical and not applicable to over 95% of us (programmers / software engineers).

Kids, healthcare costs, COLA, commute, very few 100% remote jobs that pay more than the day job,

will all ruin your math and sh*t on your grand plans to retire early.

Obviously this newsworthy example is an outlier, what is your point? That unless you retire at 34 you might as well keep working until you die? You seem to imply that everybody is due a retirement at the official sanctioned retirement age. They are not. Your retirement is of your own design. FIRE is about formalizing this and realizing that everything you do today affects that timeline. The person in the article was very lucky and ended up with a desirable timeline. His exact circumstances are not the lesson that you should come away with.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com