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Comment by aantix | Hacker News Reader

No children. No travel.

Living frugally and then the risk of an early death?

Is this really that great?

Someone in our profession can retire in their 30s or 40s with no children and absolutely still have budget for lots of travel.

Putting a few million into index funds or a dividend-bearing portfolio can yield a decent annual "salary" of six figures. That affords insurance, travel, mortgage, time to work on side projects or a start-up...

I think the main problem is to make "a few million" first.

Or rather, if you had "a few million" to put into index funds, why bother doing that instead of living in a cheaper area that your few million would take you a lot further?

Why not both? You can get very far with $80-120k/yr in Atlanta or similar.

Travel is peanuts compared to children. Yes travel, no children. Seems like a good compromise.

Why is there risk of an early death?

There always is risk of an early death.

I've seen coworkers die in their 30s, 40s and 50s from cancers and heart attacks. Can concur.

A picture that will never leave me: 0745, one fine Tuesday morning, Van Diemem straat, Amsterdam about 30 years ago on my bike on the way to work. Ambulance parked on the side of the street. Very young guy on the stretcher, clearly a corpse. Very fancy briefcase sitting upright next to him, his hand still aimed at it.

It wasn't the corpse that got me, but the briefcase. It talked tales of ambition and a future and suddenly there was none of all that. Heart attack, according to the 5 lines he made in the local newspaper the next day. I can still see that briefcase. It's a good reminder.

If you drive a car or cross street there is always risk of early death.

Other thing is if you spend a lot of money when you are young and you live long and then don't have money for medication so your quality of life is shit.

> then you don’t have money for medication so your quality of life is shit

Not if you live in a country with universal healthcare. I have no concerns about healthcare in later life (or at any point in my life).

I live in a country with universal healthcare and still you have to pay for a lot of drugs you need when you are older. There are older people who have to choose buy drugs or food as well.

That is really wierd. In the UK we pay a fixed price (£9) for prescriptions when we have the means to do so (i.e. in work), that's regardless of whether the drugs are more or less expensive than £9. Pensioners and people on benefits get prescriptions free.

It seems perverse to do it the way you suggest. Do you have to pay the full price of the prescription?

You don't pay full price on perscriptions, like insulin is reimbursed in some part, you still have to pay some amount. Though for people in small villiges it still might be a lot.

I am not good on details because I don't take any medication, I only see my granmother having like 5-8 different things to take. She can afford that no problem, but still all is not free, and there are people who are a lot poorer than my granmother.

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