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Comment by geodel | Hacker News Reader

Of course. And he mentioned as such having multiple houses and USD 10M in accounts. There is no gotcha here.

Yep. It's easy to be happy, bubbly, carefree and say money is not important to to you when you're set for life and don't ever have to worry about paying the mortgage, healthcare, childcare, bills, etc in one of the most expensive regions on the planet, but people without seven figures in the bank might disagree.

Sure, he's not Musk, Bezos or Zuckerberg levels of rich, but compared to average folk who need to work for a living till retirement, he's still very, VERY rich.

I think that’s missing the point. This isn’t about glorifying being poor but understanding when enough is enough.

Set for life level of wealth (say, $2-3m) is achievable on a programmer's salary or for someone working in finance, and after only a decade or two of work. You just have to save and invest most of your salary instead of spending it all.

Is that really “set for life” amounts in the US these days? Sounds quite low. I can imagine it being a ton of money in the early 2000s, but not these days (unless you also have a fully paid out house on top of it, at least)

It depends where you live and what your lifestyle expenses are. You can easily be set for most of your life on $3M if you live in a low CoL area and keep your expenses under control. Old age could wipe you out if you need a lot of care though.

Median personal income in the US was $42,220 in 2023. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N

At the "probably safe FIRE rate", 4% interest: $2m -> $80,000 annually, while also preserving the $2m, accounting for inflation

This is precisely my goal, but 80k isn't enough in the Bay Area I think. Trying to figure out where's best.

>level of wealth (say, $2-3m) is achievable on a programmer's salary

Not if you live outside the US.

If you read his boks or others stories about Woz you would know that he was like this long before he had fortune in business. He spent a lot of time and money on setting up a quite popular answering machine service for delivering jokes and did attribute his success as an engineer to not having that much money [1] so he needed to make due with what he had.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Wozniak#cite_note-2_co...

>If you read his boks or others stories about Woz you would know that he was like this long before he had fortune in business

I don't doubt he said that, especially when you're young, healthy and carefree you don't need much money. But being a millionaire doesn't hurt that feeling when you're no longer in your twenties and don't want to live with roommates anymore, since everyone can end up with unexpected illnesses or issues that can be made batter only by money.

> It's easy to be happy, bubbly, carefree and say money is not important to to you when you're set for life

I’m not sure this is true. I know plenty of miserable rich people. What is easy for someone who to look at a rich person and say “I’d certainly be happy if I had that money”.

>I’m not sure this is true. I know plenty of miserable rich people.

Because those rich people are only driven by greed and don't know when to stop. They don't see money and and means to and end, but their life purpose is just being richer than the other rich people which is an exercise in futility, leading to misery. Kind of like the men who's life purpose is being an "alpha male".

Having more money doesn't make you more happy, but having a lack of money can definitely make you more unhappy.

Here in the EU I never had to worry about any of those things by design even though my parents had nothing. I made a fortune without ever having to worry; sure I will never make billions but why would I be interested in that? Happiness does not require that and you can still make 10m in the EU without worrying about the things you summed up. The US is more risk for more reward but is that worth it? Never for me.

Yes, everyone working in Europe can easily makes millions just like you, that's the norm here and definitely not flex on niche survivorship bis or cherry picking, that's how the average EU income is €37,900 and youth unemployment is at peak, everyone's too busy making millions.

It's still remarkable because so many people with that amount of money are still on the grind, still chasing the siren's call, still feeling miserable because it's not enough, still feeling tiny because they compare themselves to the billionaires

Very few people get to that point and then choose happiness instead of ambition

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