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Comment by tyingq | Hacker News Reader

That's awesome. Not knocking it at all, but for others, comparing the $100k from GitHub sponsors to a corporate-type salary isn't always straightforward. You would have to consider a lot of things, especially in the US. Things like 401k matching, cost of health insurance for a 1-man company versus as an employee, vacation and sick time, and other benefits. Oh, and self-employment tax (ouch). And a few other items like carrying your own liability insurance if needed, other expenses you might have as a freelancer, etc.

Again, not diminishing the accomplishment at all...very impressive.

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Some tips.. As I've made up for loss of benefits, etc. in other ways after going self-employed. I've always done my own taxes so was comfortable with that aspect.

- Everything is deductible, your computer, home work space, etc.. They have phased out most deductions for employees.

- Max your 401k if you can (~55k Solo 401k) - this will make up for SE tax AND reduce your AGI so you can be less likely to be income phased out of certain benefits.

- Move to a state income tax free state, if feasible. Saved me $10k/yr.

- Look into short-term health plans. They aren't ACA, but have very desirable terms. For instance, marketplace plan for me 8700 deductible, 16000 out of pocket max was $550. Short term plan $2500 deductible $2500 out of pocket max (just no ACA protections/benefits) was $330 and is ALSO tax deductible, so more like $240. Networks are similar for instance mine is United Healthcare national network.

Also move to North Carolina and purchase a house for 200k instead of 2M in Seattle area ;)

Sorry, North Carolina is full. We're not taking any new incomers. Please consider Florida, which has the added benefit of "no state income tax."

Also, free Hurricanes and alligators.

Sorry, Florida is full. We have lots of hurricanes and gators and bugs and crazies. Please retreat north, which has "seasons" and mountains and things. I hear the hipsters up there make great beer.

Sorry, New Hampshire is full. Please try Utah.

You will hate Utah. Please don't come. Too many mountains. And we're full.

Florida also has pythons, moving north from the Everglades.

The pythons are there to keep the alligators from gettin' too uppity.

Florida is a never. They’re truly trying to completely dismantle public education.

In a lot of parts (suburbs & such) people will ask anybody new they notice what church you go to. If your answer is anything other than a church you actually go to, word will spread pretty quickly & they’ll genuinely harshly look down upon you. This is overwhelmingly upper middle aged to elderly, but some of their kids follow suit.

It’s a fuckin swamp. Humans were not very made to live in swamps.

Without trying to sound more xenophobic than this already does - the Cubans need a generation or two more away from Castro… some of them are quite openly insane about perceived issues that don’t actually exist in our country.

Pipeline to prison is very real & social safety nets are non existent. It very much pushes people to either kill themselves or become very… unfortunate people to find yourself having to deal with. That said, most humans don’t go the route of killing themselves (a good thing) so you have a lot more of the latter.

Police like to think they’re Wild West cowboys & they get the authority to execute you with no repercussions faster than barbers get licenses to cut hair. Training with their weapons less time than a boy scout took to get a (weapons related) badge.

Sorry for the rant. Florida is one of the rudest awakenings for many who move there with happier ideals in mind. Much worse than a lot of Texas.

This is the best unintentional advertisement for Florida. Your state sounds awesome. If I move back to the US, I'm going to become a Florida Man (TM).

How are they trying to dismantle public education, by the way?

You think random strangers coming up to you to question you about your religion is awesome?

Not entirely sure what to say to that. Maybe you’d have a nice life living in a theocracy…

As for your question, google (or search engine of your choice) is your friend.

They're banning math textbooks for having CRT or some BS among other things.

Why is that a bad thing? Math books should teach math not CRT.

It’s a joke. There’s not actually CRT in the math books. None of their voter base is actually going to open up a math book and realize that though.

This is actually a pretty simple one… most textbooks are made in Texas, somewhat controlled by republicans. They’re just banning anything they’re not getting a cut of the profits from & bringing in/giving their friends new textbook contracts.

>It’s a joke. There’s not actually CRT in the math books. None of their voter base is actually going to open up a math book and realize that though.

I'm assuming you are arguing in good faith and have read every page of every math book that is banned to confirm yourself. You surely couldn't be accusing others of not confirming themselves while you do the same thing.

And since you have read everyone of those books you could provide links to the books so we could also confirm ourselves.

>This is actually a pretty simple one… most textbooks are made in Texas, somewhat controlled by republicans.

Just because textbooks are made in Texas doesn't mean Republicans control their content. Do you believe every book written in Texas aligns with the views held by Republicans?

>They’re just banning anything they’re not getting a cut of the profits from & bringing in/giving their friends new textbook contracts.

Do you have any proof of this?

Make a nice cup of tea & hop on the search engine of your choice for all the proof you’d like. I promise it won’t take much of your time, but I’m not going to be your personal source compiler.

If you personally looked at the books you could actually point me to some site with PDFs.

If you want to convince anybody maybe you should provide a source, especially since as you say it won't take much time.

I assume you are just a hypocrite who wanted to accuse the other side of doing the same thing you did and for caught and as such I'm not going to waste my time trying to prove your claim for you.

>Humans were not made to live in swamps

Why do so many people rave about Singapore and Thailand then? Full disclosure, I despise Singapore and love Florida.

Good, this is how community is formed and seems much better than people defecating on the street.

Believe it or not, a large amount of older men in India have been quite reluctant to start using toilets because going out and defecating on the streets was one of the ways community was formed & men felt they could spend time talking to each other & about their problems.

All is not as it may appear.

Oh yeah…

They’re also trying to genocide trans people.

https://mobile.twitter.com/ErinInTheMorn/status/151677365339...

North Carolina won't have cheap homes for long. Housing prices are already skyrocketing, and several big tech companies are building new offices in the Triangle. NC is going to befall the same fate as Austin and every other once-affordable area that tech moved into.

> Move to a state income tax free state

It's not binary. State has to get its revenue from somewhere, so then you will pay higher property tax and/or sales tax

For example…

As the “show me” state, Missouri does not tax the income generated by Twitch hot tub streamers and OnlyFans content creators, but the viewers pay an ogling tax based on tracking eye movements.

Worth noting the trajectory of that chart though, if he keeps up the momentum he could double his revenue from sponsors this year.

Edit:

Just noticed that it's a post from 2020, he now has 823 sponsors vs 535 then. So assuming the same average sponsorship that takes him to $173k/year.

the author has written on exactly that topic in a follow up post: https://calebporzio.com/making-100k-as-an-employee-versus-be...

Oh, yeah, that's perfect, and hits my list plus a few more.

That's a good follow-up, with the quibble that the math is wrong -- he added $7.5k for insurance as a benefit for a salaried employee, then also subtracted it as an additional expense for being self-employed. So he double-counted it. Which is odd, given that he didn't use the same logic when talking about the other benefits he lists, like vacation, 401(k) matching, and equipment. Either he should have subtracted all of those from the self-employed amount, or added them all to the salaried amount, but not both.

So really, the difference in take-home pay should be $98,058 vs. $77,842. Or to put in terms of gross revenue ("Total Income", as he puts it), the comparative target number for self-employed people would be $132,371. It doesn't negate his overall point, I just figured I'd mention it.

Good catch, though any decent health insurance you can get on your own would be quite a lot higher than $7.5k/year. What I currently pay ~$500/month for via work used to be $2k+/month when I was self-employed. So in real-life it wouldn't always be a wash.

> Good catch, though any decent health insurance you can get on your own would be quite a lot higher than $7.5k/year.

I mean, my salary contribution to paying the company-sponsored health plan is ~$2K/month, so 14K/year. That's with my employer paying the other ~half of the cost!

Health insurance in the USA is brutal.

It is also a lot easier to get cancelled and deplatformed. There needs to be the equivalent of a golden handcuff/insurance for crowdfunded content creators.

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