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Comment by cushychicken | Hacker News Reader

Love it. It's a lifestyle I actively subscribe to.

I'm climbing the FIRE treadmill like this guy talks about. I live frugally, and I save like a madman. I'm on track to have stable, passive income for myself, and my family, for the rest of my life, by the time I hit 45. And I'm certainly not living like a monk along the way.

And you know what? I've got a huge war chest that I can pull from if I ever need to tell someone "Fuck you". I may not be financially independent yet, but I have more than enough money to tell a boss who wants me to do boring, shitty work to fuck off if I ever need to.

Thankfully, I don't have to right now. But things can change in the blink of an eye. Fuck you money is a condensed store of options for when things get rough.

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I was reasonably close to hitting my FIRE goal, assuming I wanted to continue living as frugally as I had been, when I was laid off.

I had to decide: do I pull the trigger now, and work on some kind of part-time project to try to fill in the little bit I'm missing, or do I find another six-figure job? I realized pretty quickly the decision was stressing me out, which for me, made the choice easy. I booked a flight to Hong Kong and planned to look for another job in about six months.

Of course, life being what it is, I met my now-wife in Hong Kong, so I've extended my career for a few more years to make things even more comfortable. Still, I definitely feel like I am well-situated enough that I could walk away from anything, take some time off, and find another job "whenever."

It's always on a spectrum!

>> boring, shitty work

I envy you. Everybody (who has a boss) endures at least a little boring, shitty work. If it gets to be too much, the antidote is to start seriously looking for another job. Or write some automation scripts and chill out.

Fuck you money is reserved (or should be) for much more egregious offenses: Pettiness. Hypocrisy. Withholding compensation from you for made-up reasons. Not upholding promises. Instituting new rules arbitrarily to suppress you. Negating excellent performance with irrelevant attributes on a "performance evaluation."

These are the types of things that seriously throw off your economic planning, both in wasted time and missing dollars. This is what you save the f-u fund for, so you can avoid the above at all costs.

> Everybody (who has a boss)

If you don't have a boss, you'll have customers, which also results in boring, shitty work.

Unless you can pass that off to underlings. Which means you have management duties. AKA boring, shitty work.

valid point... we're in agreement, pretty much everybody has to endure at least some boring shitty work

> Fuck you money is reserved (or should be) for much more egregious offenses

Why?

I'm not saying that once you have FU money you are entitled to be a primadonna and expect everybody else to bend over for you. Of course not.

But if there's anything you don't like about your current job, it enables you to discuss it without fear of not being able to meet your financial obligations.

So, as long as you are not a jerk about it, what is the problem with taking advantage of the leverage you now have?

Because the person you're talking to has adopted scrub mindset and constrained themselves out of winning the game.

Some level of boring, shitty work is mostly unavoidable -- choosing to leave for that reason alone, is unlikely to be remedied at a new job.

But if you find yourself working for true assholes? That's a great reason to peace-out.

When we're talking about passive income in a general sense, are we talking about buying stocks and funds that generate dividends and/or growth that sustain a 4% (or whatever) sell-off rate to pay for basic life needs, but the asset is valuable enough to keep chugging along despite that? Thanks.

Most FIRE advice advocates for selling a small amount of long term funds every year, as they're taxed at a lower rate than dividend income.

I read a bunch of Mr Money Mustache to get me started on this path. Recommend that you take a look at his blog to read more about it in detail.

What's your FIRE number, if you don't mind, and what area do you live in (HCOL/LCOL, urban/rural, etc.)?

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