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> Why would I "waste" my precious 20s and early 30s being miserable and retire at 35? Who even wants to retire?

A few months ago I read a comment from somebody on a documentary about people optimizing for retirement in their 30s and it stuck with me:

"Live like a caveman until you are 35, then retire and live like a caveman until you die."

Another illusion is that these are absolute numbers. They're relative. When you're young, $100k is a lot of money. Enough to be happy and worry-free. Once you have that, you need $1M in cash to be happy and retire. Once you have $1M but realize everyone around you is making $1M/year to retire at $10M you suddenly need $10M. This will repeat itself, and you'll never have enough. You'll just become more miserable realizing how much more everyone else has. Yeah, platitudes. We all know this, right? Turns out, this cycle is totally unconscious and incredibly hard to break once you're in it and surrounded by such people. Get away while you can.

At least for me, this was one of the reasons why working at FAANG where everyone is striving for $$$ made me miserable. It gave me such a warped view of the world.

The common term for this is lifestyle inflation. As you make more money your “needs” keep increasing. It’s incredibly challenging to reserve this trend but very easy to follow it.

I think the best way to prevent this is, whenever you get a raise, open a new bank account and have the difference direct deposited into it. That way, the main bank account that you work with regularly, always sees the same amount deposited.

> working at FAANG where everyone is striving for $$$

This really hasn’t been my experience at either Google or Facebook, in fact I would nearly go so far as to say the opposite is true. I’ve seen far more “striving” in the traditional corporate world

Not to mention that being able to retire at 35 is exceptionally rare, even in the SV bubble.

Depends on whether you're planning to retire in a high COL area, I suppose. If you're saving 30-50k a year, that goes a long way in other areas.

> “ I left a Silicon Valley FAANG for another country more than five years ago, even though I was making ~3x there compared to what I made in the new place.”

This is kind of what the comment you’re replying to was suggesting. Take advantage of the high income first before moving.

> “You can make money anytime.”

Sure, but interest compounds - money earlier is way more helpful than money later.

I always wonder a little about the family wealth of people that write things like this. Most of the people I know who left high paying jobs come from wealthy families and they’re already basically working for fun.

I didn’t grow up poor by any means, but I also don’t come from family wealth. If I want to have a family of my own, and make sure we will always have a place to live, saving high salary (and equity) in order to reach financial independence is worth it.

If you don’t want a family or you come from wealth then prioritizing other stuff is probably fine. If you do want these things though, I think it’s helpful to be more forward looking until reaching financial independence.

> “Not the life I wanted.”

Totally reasonable, but what people want over their life changes. Financial independence gives you freedom to be able to change too.

As per the OP, the Quality Migrants visa becomes harder to obtain once you reach 30. Japan wants young talent to replace their aging workforce so youth is valued and considered. Grinding in the valley could have caused him to lose the chance to move to Japan completely.

> I always wonder a little about the family wealth of people that write things like this. Most of the people I know who left high paying jobs come from wealthy families and they’re already basically working for fun.

Seriously, these replies that turn securing a future for you and your family into some kind of avarice anti-virtue are ridiculous.

What city are you in if you don't mind me asking? While I agree with the sentiment to live in the present, I do think many of us don't see ourselves living in major US tech hubs for long, it's more of optimizing for money when you are young and de-prioritizing certain other aspects while making sure you still remain Happy and not miserable. For instance, if you are from India, you can get 3x+ salary/savings, learn different cultures/lifestyle and also learn from the best in technology and business for the cost of living away from your family (which you kind of do anyways if your family isn't in an Indian tech hub city).

"Work" (as in the thing you do for money) doesn't make me happy so why would I want to work for the rest of my life? Also, if I'm coming from a poor family why would I want to stay poor and doom my children?

I'd rather want to "work" (as in the thing you do for happiness) for the rest of my life and be "rich" at the same time.

> You can make money any time

But big SV money? I wouldn't be so sure. Ageism is rampant in tech. FAANGs love their coders young, in 20's-30's. Also the dollar saved earlier in life is worth exponentially more later thanks to compound interest

There's no better place to solve your financial problems than in SV in your 20's.