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Comment by danlugo92 | Hacker News Reader

Hack to life: Always always aim to only spend 50% of your salary each month.

Housing makes that very difficult. Throw in some kids (daycare, summer camps, sports and music enrichment if you want them to have a chance in dog eat dog world) and you need big $$$ to hit 50%. I mean 30% goes to taxes right away!

50% is high for most, but seems like a good target for the upper-middle class outside of HCOL areas. I'm amazed at how many high-income folks save 5-10% and view the rest of their income as blow money.

If you have the means save aggressively, you may well be able to retire 10+ years earlier than the standard. Yet millions people are foregoing a decade of freedom in exchange for the fleeting satisfaction that comes from having marginally better stuff.

Have quite few friends who spends nothing and does nothing, I don’t even think they will regret it either because they have nothing to compare to. No ups and no downs. Programming is addictive.

A lot of the expensive stuff for kids to “have a chance” is BS, not very relevant to their life outcomes, basically parents being grifted and engaging in status competitions you could choose to opt out of.

When my kids were applying to summer programs, they asked them what they do in their free time, and listing things like reading and practicing crocheting got a very unenthusiastic responses. The expectation is your kid will do a lot, maybe it could be free stuff, but generally free stuff requires more time from the parents.

It doesn’t surprise me that one part the status rat race (selective summer programs) cares about another (after-school activities). The big question is how do either of these play into your kid’s overall life satisfaction. You just have to get over the tragedy of them going to U Michigan instead of Cornell.

I'd rather be able to retire than have children. I suspect I'm not alone given falling birthrates.

So don't live in a top tier city, or if you do, have roommates like a college student.

I'm sorry, that's ridiculously naive.

At some point /shrug. If you want to live like you're richer than you are, go on right ahead. Incredibly illogical but whatever.

That's dismissive. At a certain age you can't live like a college student anymore.. Jobs are in expensive cities, and they're getting thinner. Remote is out the window.

Plenty of people do it. I roomed with 40 yo right out of college. It's fine if you want to live a high class life, but otherwise, its not hard to not get on the hedonic treadmill.

That won't protect you from lifestyle creep over the years though.

How do you figure? If you're always saving/investing half, you've capped the creep.

You're still spending half on ... stuff because once you're at sufficiently high amounts it's not going to necessities anymore. Then you lose your $500k job in tech and have to find a lifestyle that can fund you $250k expenses a year you've gotten used to. It's a real thing. Not for everybody but for many.

One trick is to always save bonuses. Live on salary and save anything extra.

Agreed and here's a better hack: Alway aim to only spend 40% of your salary each month.

Agreed and here's a better hack: Alway aim to only spend 39% of your salary each month

Or go for 33% of your salary or even better, live on 1% of your salary… at some point you simply can’t make it work unless you are making 7 or more figures. Which then it really doesn’t matter anyway. :-/

7 minute abs

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