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Comment by jleyank | Hacker News Reader

By the 4% rule, 2m in the retirement funds gets you 80k of income. Of which you have to pay taxes and fees and all those charges that accumulate. Most people who wish to do this add “going to a very low tax environment” to the discussion. But take a pro tip: health care costs add up.

As a guesstimate for California…. If you get 5m, taxes will take a third of it, and a house will take 1-2m. Which leaves you +/- on the 2m to invest. If you’re not into heirs, you can reverse mortgage.

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> and a house will take 1-2m

Remember, I'm operating under the assumption that the house is already paid off. Right now, I've got about $250K left in my mortgage. Property taxes aren't too bad, about $4K/year.

That $2M is also assumed to be after taxes from selling my options, but I acknowledge that any gains from the index fund will be taxed.

> But take a pro tip: health care costs add up.

Yeah, this is likely the expense I'm not planning enough for.

But also, as I said, I've got projects that could make money. Also, my wife has stated before that she wants to work to avoid boredom, so she'd keep working, though she'd cut her hours to work 2-3 days/week.

Consider this: Rent out the house, move somewhere where you can continue to work remote and have universal healthcare or similar systems where your healthcare risk is limited. Quality western european countries will accept folks with as little as ~EUR25k/year in passive/rental/remote work income.

Personally, healthcare costs keep me up at night regardless of NW. I've seen high net worth individuals get obliterated by a black swan healthcare event (almost always cancer).

EDIT: @mukwenhac Drop an email in your profile.

Out of wanting to research more, which countries accept folks at that income level?

I think it easy for techies to get a job in Canada. Once there, they can start the clock for permanent resident, which takes 3-5 years. Once that’s obtained, only have to be here 2 years out of 5, or working for a Canadian company or married to a Canadian to keep it. It’s not bad living here, and I suspect the aggregate taxes are comparable to high tax states and you have a diversity from Texas like to France like.

They’re not into health tourism, however, so you have to lay the groundwork earlier in your career.

You can also "retire to startups", meaning go pick the most interesting company to work with and not worry about their ability to pay you or even their long-term viability. If the work interests you and the people will be good to work with, you don't need anything else.

I've done this and it is truly great.

As a pure swag, assume 2k/month outside the us and 5k/month inside the us as insurance for old farts is $$ and things like dental, glasses, meds, … might not be covered under typical insurance. Once you’re not on work provided insurance, things like travel insurance becomes a concern. If a partner wants to work, use that as a source of insurance in the us as long as possible. Not needed outside, really.

I've recently heard some criticism of the 4% rule. It's designed with two assumptions: that you are old, and that when you die there may be basically nothing left. So it only needs to last around 30 years give or take. But if you retire at 30 with a strategy that runs out in 30 years that could be an issue.

But on the other hand I do believe you can prevent blowing up if you are willing to live lean when the economy is doing bad (the standard assumption is that you keep increasing your spending in line with inflation even as your portfolio craters).

Quite agree - good point. In other words, 2m isn’t that much of a pile to put up against Father Time. Perhaps choose to use your fuck you money to go somewhere you like to do something you like. Work isn’t bad when it’s enjoyable or worth doing.

The 4% rule is pretty generic. But if 2.5-3% will cover your expenses, statistically that will never run out no matter how long you live.

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