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Comment by fallentimes | Hacker News Reader

Having the site/business pretty much run itself and grow slowly but surely. I don't care about the toys - if I could have 100k a year in passive income I'd be set. "Making it" for me has much more to do with disposable free time than disposable income.

Edit: Issuing dividends to our investors would be great, but probably isn't a requirement.

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I have good news for you! You can easily live on $15,000 a year in many areas of the United States and you would have all the disposable free time you wanted (if that income was passive, like the $100k you mention).

free time isn't all its made out to be. Boredom sets in after about a week.

It depends if you define "free time" to be "time you don't have to do anything" or "time you don't do anything".

Thanks Paul - that's how I was defining it. I'm not going to just sit on my ass and watch Southpark. I have a whole list of projects I want to work on, places I want to go, hobbies I want to try.

and watch southpark

swish!

You're right there. All of the retired people I've seen look really old and worn down.

You should meet my Grandparents. My Grandma especially is a firecracker. She's done more this past year than some do in a decade.

> You should meet my Grandparents. My Grandma especially is a firecracker. She's done more this past year than some do in a decade.

Must... resist...

you are right.. but who said anything about not doing anything?? id travel, spend more time with my family (actually may be have a family first :D), focus a lot more time on my violin...

I'm actually living on 15k per year right now.

Free time + stuff to do + safety net + support family = ~100k per year. YMMV.

But thanks for the good news anyway. :)

Heh, yeah, I know, I was just light-heartedly picking a hole in the statement many people make about time being more important than money.

As an aspiration, it's noble, but when pressured people nearly always find a reason to make more money instead of taking the time ;-)

It would be cool to learn more about how you budget it, assuming you pay for some kind of housing. My rent is more than $15k/year.

I'll definitely write about this later on the TicketStumbler new stuff blog.

Short answer: we live in a spacious dumpy place a 15 min walk away from Davis Sq (Boston area), have shitty health insurance, rarely use a car, keep the temperature low (read: cold) in the winter, don't go out to eat much and cook our own healthy food from the grocery/bakery. Despite all this, we still live like relative kings.

It's sort of cheating though because in terms of clothes & tech I came to Boston with everything I need so I spend literally no money on them now.

good on you. just having the ability to do this (sadly) sets you apart in these times. the ability to prioritize costs allows you to have a standard of living higher than your income would suggest. this translates incredibly well to having more money. when you do make 100k you'll find yourself spending 50k and still living just as well as everyone else who makes 100k, or spending 100k and living like someone who makes 200k. most people don't prioritize because they never spend the time to sit down and really figure out what is important to them.

I live on about $17,000 per year after tax (I'm in the UK though). I have a mortgage, a comfortable style of life, a new car, a contract iPhone, yada yada.. and.. there's no real secret except a) live where the day-to-day expenses are as cheap as conveniently possible, b) spend as little money on frivolities as possible, and c) split the day-to-day expenses with a partner (my wife in my case - half the mortgage, half the property taxes, half the utilities, etc..)

Grad students do this all the time. A friend of mine managed to save $20k in 2.5 years on a grad student salary (~$20K/year).

The secret is really roommates + no car + long walk to mass transit + cheap food. If you're willing to walk about 20 minutes to the nearest T stop, you can get quite a few places in the Boston area for ~$400/month. Eat vegetarian with a lot of rice & pasta dishes and you can probably squeak in under $10k/year, particularly if the university provides health insurance.

That's what you say now, but if you ever get to that point, you'd miss the excitement of the whole process and you'd want to do it again. So free time is not something an entrepreneur would really want.

I disagree, but I think it's because of our separate interpretations of "free time". I don't mean free time in a sense of doing nothing, I mean it in a sense of hobbies, travel, family and pursuing projects that may or may not be monetizable. I'll always have a business of some sort I'm taking part in, the variable will hopefully be the amount of time dedicated to it.

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