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Comment by homosaur | Hacker News Reader

100K is the point where you have the illusion of financial freedom because you can purchase a BMW, buy a nice home in a bland cul-de-sac with a bunch of nameless white dudes, and it's not until you're in your 40s and you're in danger to losing the job to a robot or a whipper-snapper that you understand that kind of "freedom" is actually enslavement. You made the wrong choice because you wasted your life buying plastic.

I don't make 100K but I did recently have what you might call a religious epiphany about my job, my finances, and freedom. Luckily for me, I have little debt and actually like my job a lot so I'm not the hole some folks are, God bless them all.

I just hope most of us aren't Bukowski's age when we realize we were building useless bullshit for useless people in order to buy useless plastic garbage. I know some of us are doing important work, but many of us are not.

Jeez, guys, we get one chance at this. Most people are destined to live anonymous lives so at the very least try to enjoy it.

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I think more and more Gen Y people in advanced European countries see owning a car as a failure - you are a fool for wasting money, when transportation can be done cheaply and also often for free. You are basically penalized for owning a car by high taxes, and for those few occassions in a year when you need a car (moving stuff) it's easy enough to rent. Spending your life in traffic jams is just a plain fail.

Having to wear a nice suit is also a failure. I would never consider working anywhere where I have to wear a suit.

Edit: My overarching point being that attitudes are changing. The 'American dream' doesn't really apply anymore, and especially not everywhere.

Agreed, the absolutely pervasive 1960s car culture in America seems to be vanishing, and it is on its way to becoming more of a quite-popular hobby. Traffic is worse, insurance is expensive and now may incorporate your credit score, and driving a car gives the police carte blanche to search and violate your civil rights under the flimsiest of excuses. More young people, other than those in very rural areas, are interested in re-urbanizing and riding a bicycle. As both a motorsports / driving enthusiast and bicyclist I think this is great.

I think you may need to recalibrate your idea of failure. I own a car specifically so I can load it up with gear at the weekends and go diving or camping. I know a few people who are rabidly anti-car and ride fixies. They spend their weekends bar-hopping and nursing hangovers. Fair enough, but that's not the lifestyle that particularly interests me.

Having to wear a nice suit is not failure either. Both cars and suits are just tools. It's what you use a tool for that matters. Also I'll note if you resent wearing a suit, you have never actually worn a nice one...

Most of the SF people I know who use a car only on weekends just use Zipcar or a rental for that. Depends on precisely how often you use it, but if you're not driving the car daily for commute, the economics of owning vs. renting shift considerably.

Fair enough point of using a car for outdoor hobbies - I'd call it an exception to the rule, an appropriate use of technology. But let's face it, in most cases it isn't like that.

Regarding my suit comment, it's about looking into the mirror in the morning and thinking whether the person you see is really who you once aspired to be.

Some people like to wear suits. One of my friend's greatest days was when just off high school he got straight into finance and finally could wear a suit 24/7. It genuinely makes him happy, it's an extension of his personality. He wants to be the big-shot-80s-New-York-cocaine-snorting-penthouse-owner-investment-banker type of guy.

But for me and I guess many others, to walk the earth in a suit would be, I don't know...perhaps the antithesis of existence. I think most people never think about it and even enjoy the office culture in a perverse way. Perhaps it's some form of a groupthink empathy, a we're-all-in-this-together style of getting a kick out of this masked suffering. I remember being a small kid and swearing I'd never be like an office manager or the bankers I saw, all wearing the same suits and becoming an empty shell that just assumes whatever of a corporate idenitity, becoming an embodiment of a foreign entity. Really just a zombie or a host for a parasite until it chews you out.

Because it does chew you out exactly as stated in this Bukowski letter, you're not really getting out. All the prices, the whole economy is set upon this 40-hour workweek, wage slave reality. All value is derived from this standard. I saw this very clearly 20+ years ago without even knowing the proper vocabulary to understand it. It's surprising how simple and clear it is, yet it's collectively decided that we don't want to look at it, we don't want to face it. You want out? The only way is to become the embodiment of the hope of getting out - a well-known star that can sell us the dream. And we'll gladly pay for it!

But you're right, the binge-drinking, fixed-bike urbano hipster thing is also a joke. We're all a joke in the end. But at least we could maybe strive to be funnier than we are because the joke is getting old.

Try living in something like Silicon Valley and not owning a car. Shopping for groceries would probably take a whole day, if you're lucky, and you can forget about doing anything else.

Here's the problem though - you don't need to buy the BMW or the suburban McMansion. Save that money instead and when you're in your 40 you can tell the boss that he should give you job to a whipper-snapper, you're headed to Thailand.

No one holds a gun to the consumer's head, they just convince themselves they need thing. Then they whine when they haven't saved more than 300k for retirement at age 50 and social security is looking rocky.

Definitely, and it's of course unfair to paint everyone with a broad brush as I know folks who are making near 100k and are donating 30% or more of their salary to charity. I just feel really angry about the US and the American culture since taking a recent trip overseas to one of those "third world" countries we roll our eyes about. Maybe not even angry, just sad and disappointed. We have so much production here, so much money, so much creativity and people seem to have nothing but fear and animosity. We've taken the richest nation ever assembled and used our resources to build a proto-police surveillance state and empire of nothing when we could have fixed the fucking world or at least fed and clothed most of it.

Probably though I just need to quit Facebook again.

>No one holds a gun to the consumer's head, they just convince themselves they need thing. Then they whine when they haven't saved more than 300k for retirement at age 50 and social security is looking rocky.

I think that we in the tech industry are... different here. In other industries, there is a /lot/ of pressure to look the part (well, to look an /expensive/ part.) Have you ever seen a real-estate agent in a car worth less than thirty grand? Hell, I've met a few sales folks and managers who wear watches they claim are worth at least half that.

Engineering is a little different in that we can dress down, and nobody is going to seriously give us shit for driving a piece of junk car. One can reasonably be a six-figure computer nerd and be a frugal person. A six figure salesman would be... well, he would be breaking a lot of expectations if he lived frugally.

"America is essentially about hustling, and that goes back more than 400 years. It’s practically genetic, in the U.S., by now; the programming is so deep, and so much out of conscious awareness, that very few Americans can break free of it. They’re really sleepwalking through life, living out a narrative that is not of their own making, while thinking they are in the driver’s seat. It’s also especially hard to break free of that mesmerization when everyone else is similarly hypnotized. Groupthink is enormously powerful. Even if it occurs to you to stop following the herd, it seems crazy or terrifying to attempt it. This is Sartre’s “bad faith,” the phenomenon whereby a human being adopts false values because of social pressure, and is thus living a charade, an inauthentic life. It’s also what happens to Ivan Illych in the Tolstoy story, where Ivan is dying, and reviews his life during his last three days, and concludes that it was all a waste, because he lived only for social approval."

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/08/how-americ...

This post made me realize "Bad Faith" was translated to something different in my language.

There's a way out of the looking-the-part problem. Cultivate an image of an eccentric genius (and work hard to actually have genius level skills) and people will start to focus more on what you can do and less on what you look like you can do. In fact, that's why the tech industry seems to get an exemption -- they're mostly perceived as eccentric geniuses.

Also, spend lavishly on the best clothes, eat lavishly, but drive a very modest car and live in a modest home. People don't know what to make of that.

This thread is showing the US bias of the forum again. Some of aren't earning enough to run a car let alone a modest one.

Well we are talking about rampant consumerism here, the US is heavyweight in any discussion.

>This thread is showing the US bias of the forum again. Some of aren't earning enough to run a car let alone a modest one.

Really? huh. My experience has been that even foreign workers demand $10+ per hour, which is enough for a shitty car in a low cost of living area in the US. Good English is a reasonable multiplier.

Jesus, you people are delusional!

You are not perceived as eccentric geniuses, not by anyone. Never, ever. They might say that to keep you on the treadmill but the the truth is that (especially by VCs) you are perceived as cannon fodder with a personal hygiene problem. You are kept around as long as you are useful and don't bitch too much. The minute that stops you are out on your ear. Welcome to the real world.

Indeedy. The squeaky wheel does not get greased, it gets replaced.

Yeah, uh, I didn't mention that you are only employed as long as the employer thinks you are useful because that's obvious, and is true across all fields. Dressing nice doesn't change that, except to the extent that dressing nice makes you more useful in your job role.

My point was just that if you are in management or sales, it seems that having expensive clothing and an expensive car are part of that 'being useful' - Appearance is a huge part of those jobs that are primarily human interaction. Appearance is a hugely important when dealing with other humans. I mean, I'm not saying that social skills and appearance don't matter for the technical individual contributor; they do, but it is not everything (like it is for management and sales.) It is possible to be technically good enough that people are willing to employ you in spite of your poor social skills. Obviously, that isn't the case for sales and management (as those jobs are, in a very real sense, social skills in and of themselves.)

Also note: If you are dealing directly with VC, you are more sales/management than an individual contributor.

You're clearly thinking of IT support and entry level programmers. They're not judged at that level. However, if you have 5-10 years industry experience, a degree and have worked in some management capacity, you're expected to look a certain part. Unless, that is, you're known for doing things that other people say can't be done. Then you get to live simply. Anecdotally, and off the top of my head, I can name at least half a dozen people like that I've worked with in just the past six months.

Also, might want to work with that resentment problem of yours.

>>> have worked in some management capacity, you're expected to look a certain part

If you're talking about dressing cleanly, not betraying only passing acquaintance with showers by one's smell and being able to appear in public without shocking small children into tears - yes, sure. But that costs next to no money. Beyond that - nobody could care less which car you're driving and which house you're living in, unless you're a bank president or some other C level executive or business owner, where your conspicuous consumption skills may imply the success of your business. If you, however, are a professional, there's no problem with living simply, should you wish so, if that doesn't imply looking like a dervish or living literally in a cave.

>There's a way out of the looking-the-part problem. Cultivate an image of an eccentric genius

Yeah, this is what I was talking about with our industry being different. This is... common for programmers. You don't even have to be uncommonly good, just useful.

But I think this is dramatically harder in other industries; to the point where I've never met, say, a real-estate agent like that, or a lawyer.

>> Have you ever seen a real-estate agent in a car worth less than thirty grand?

I've not only seen such an agent, I've engaged hers & his (they're a couple) services to buy my house. And it was just fine. Of course, I don't know the exact price tag on their car, but it was a moderately old suv, nothing flashy, probably nowhere near 30K. Actually, I'd be more vary of an agent with a really expensive car - if he's already so rich, would he care about getting my money enough?

The vast majority of people will get married and have kids and actually want to enjoy life a little bit while working 9-5.

They want to stay near their close family & friends, because they love them and want to see them and want their kids to grow up around them. Which means spending X per month on a house.

They want to have a car that doesn't embarrass them when they drive into work or round their friends, because owning a BMW has been a secret dream and it's a totally reasonable price, and a smooth ride and great acceleration.

They value different things than you and that all costs money.

I'm actually somewhere between the 'norm' and your view, but at least I'm realistic enough to realise that my priorities are different to most people's. I understand why they buy what they buy.

Most people aren't massive over-consumers.

> They want to have a car that doesn't embarrass them when they drive into work or round their friends, because owning a BMW has been a secret dream and it's a totally reasonable price, and a smooth ride and great acceleration.

This is really pushing it. Anybody buying a BMW on $100k in Silicon Valley while paying SV-level rents is a pretty big over-consumer. If you have a family on top of that, well... you won't be retiring any time soon.

I also find it odd that you jump immediately from "a car that doesn't embarrass them" to BMW. There's no in between? You have to go all the way to a luxury BMW to not be embarrassed by your car?

By all means, if you really value owning a BMW then get one, but unless you're making considerably north of $100k you don't have a strong case for not being an over-consumer.

You know how much $100k was when the term "six figure salary" started being used in the early 60s? Let me put it this way. The rich Donald Draper on Mad Men made $45k. $100k would have been more like $800k today. That was a CEO's salary. A "six figure salary" today is nothing like what it was when that term was coined.

> A "six figure salary" today is nothing like what it was when that term was coined.

Exhibit A is whenever a story about public employees makes the front page of HN (for example, the Detroit bankruptcy or the BART strike) and people start freaking out about train operators making $100K: "They don't even have college degrees, for godsakes!"

Well there's the thing: $100k salaries are most commonly made in portions of the world where lots of people make $100k salaries, thus merely increasing locational inequality while not actually pushing up the quality of life for the highly skilled workers commensurately with the income.

What I've seen in my friends is that certain men will buy an expensive car on a loan, keep it 3-4 years and then swap it for a family friendly car when they have kids. Often they will buy the car 2nd hand.

The car retains the majority of its value, they enjoy the car, they're not actually spending massive amounts of money like you seem to think they are. It's essentially a hobby item that they enjoy driving.

And it's only a proportion of my friends, some just get other cars that are a lot cheaper to run.

Not only that but leasing an expensive car can actually cost you less than the value of the car you lose for using it.

I remember checking how leasing a Porsche for 3 years would cost me less than half of the value the car would lose in that time.

If that was always the case, leasing agencies wouldnt be able to make profit, so you might just have stumpled on some really good offers which popup from time to time. In general, leasing costs hould be equal to or more than the deprecation in value of the car itself.

I agree with kayoone; it doesn't really seem like this could consistently be true or else it would just be bad business.

In general, though, the best way to combat the depreciation of a car's value is to take out a long-term 0% interest loan, provided of course that you can get it. This works because (1) inflation reduces your effective net expenditure on the car; (2) you can take the cash you would have spent on the car and invest it instead; if you even conservatively get 3% returns a year, you've still come out far ahead.

Regarding (2), if you can't afford the car in cash, then you can't afford the car. That's always been my motto. Financing is a choice; it should never be something you are forced to do, unless this is your first car straight out of school and you just have no money yet.

It's children that are the real financial issue. Even one child, last I heard, is the difference between early retirement as a reward for spending your 20s and 30s on grad-student frugality while earning plenty of money, and just having to work a 9-5 until it kills you.

N of one here. I have on child. Started saving in early 20's because I remembered two things my parents struggled with in the 80's. 1) being under water wrt their mortgage and 2) just making ends meet meant that they were never able to effectively save for retirement until they were in their mid/late 30's.

Got married to someone who thinks like I do wrt to retirement and with one child we are on track to 'retire' when we want to. Barring us doing something dumb or global financial meltdowns - by mid 50s or so. I put retire in quotes because who believe in retirement where one site on their ass all day and says I'm so glad I don't have to work any more? I don't. Retirement means we will be able to give meaningful time to .org's that need it. But this will still be 'work'. I can't imagine a worse hell than retirement where I have no meaningful work to do.

Note: with two or more children much of what I can still do would need to be re-evaluated.

This is one reason the wife and I will not have a child.

The cost is over a $1,000,000 (with a Dr. Evil pinky). If you look at the costs online, then you will see something between $200K to $400K depending on how good of parent are you. However, this doesn't bring in the opportunity cost of investing. If you just take the 18 year time span, then the first year is insanely expensive. Now, imagine it expanding 30, 40, 50 years out.

agreed. the fact is life pretty enjoyable including the occasional financial strain. its the journey not the destination.

I like this because Bukowski's first purchases when he "made it" was a BMW and a house in a nice neighborhood.

I'd write more but, as you say, we only get one chance at this and we're living in the best time ever.

Thanks!

http://bukowski.net/timeline/

Martin expresses concern for Bukowski's "image" when he buys a new BMW. Volkswagon Beetle is relegated to the garage.

BMW makes a nice car and there's nothing specifically wrong with buying a nice house, I just mention it as American iconography. Not sure about the cul de sac though.

And it wasn't what we would consider a "nice house" in the present day. It's not on a cul de sac and it's no McMansion, just a house that a guy used to living in boardinghouses, bedsits, and apartments for fifty years would be proud of.

Water view, but it's of the harbor, which is mainly shipping. Kind of like the difference of a bay view from Oakland, CA and the SF Peninsula, Tacoma/West Seattle and Magnolia, or Newark and Manhattan.

    For some reason, we see long-term travel to faraway 
    lands as a recurring dream or an exotic temptation, but 
    not something that applies to the here and now. Instead 
    — out of our insane duty to fear, fashion, and monthly 
    payments on things we don't really need — we quarantine 
    our travels to short, frenzied bursts. In this way, as 
    we throw our wealth at an abstract notion called 
    "lifestyle," travel becomes just another accessory — a 
    smooth-edged, encapsulated experience that we purchase 
    the same way we buy clothing and furniture.

http://www.vagabonding.net/excerpt/

the misrepresentation is your post is the word 'buy'. You don't buy when a bank owns it and expects you to pay monthly payments. You buy when you own. Is it a big deal to loose job at 45 when you own house and a car or two? It is, but not as much because you don't have the obligation to spend half your previous salary monthly on payments. Which takes us directly to this where the problem really is: debt.

You're just playing with words though. People choose to use debt, I've got debt, on the car we just bought, that's it. I HAD debt, but the student loans are now paid and the house was sold.

Am I lucky to make a good salary that allows me to pay these things down? Absolutely. However, I'm also responsible for the choices I make. Many people make more than I do and don't save as much, many More people make less and drive cars that are twice as expensive as mine.

I don't think I played with the words. No debt == freedom. And to have no debt isn't easy mostly due to social pressure - keeping up with the Jones. But it wouldn't really hurt to plan in such a way that before one hits 45 they are debt free and own house among other things.

There's a lot of hyperbole about "debt," I see propagated about, especially amongst the far-left and far-right. Debt != Slavery. Conversely, No Debt != Freedom, there are plenty of people I know with no debt who are no more free to do what they please than the people I know with crushing debt.

Debt is leverage. Leverage, applied correctly, is an excellent means for accelerating the furtherance of a goal. Is having debt on a house a bad thing? Certainly not in a rising market, or in a market where rents tend to exceed mortgage payments. Additionally, equity gained in that house can be leveraged when times get rough in the future, or a new opportunity arises. Most people do not have the capital power to buy a home outright, even after many years of saving -- if you're spending on rent, you likely cannot save enough for an entire home in one lump sum. Most notably, you'd have to have a very smart growth strategy on that saving to beat both inflation and the rising prices of homes in the area you want to live over the course of the 15-20 years you'd have to employ that strategy. Therefore, for those with the wherewithal to manage their leverage correctly and effectively, a loan makes a lot of sense - they don't have to pay the rents, and they've gambled, successfully or otherwise TBD, against the future price of that home. They can as well make a decision to take gains early, long before ever having had to lay out the entire capital should their local market rise. In the case of 20% down on a $100k house that increases to $200k in value over 3 years with a total of $24k spent in payments over that time = $100k in returns for $44k invested, or a profit of $56k, with no additional rent charges during that time.

In addition, the same can run true for a vehicle. If a person needs a vehicle for transportation, they can apply leverage, especially if they do so wisely, to purchase a vehicle better suited to their needs than their normal cash flow allows. I, for example, could be fine with a 20-year old vehicle that needs regular maintenance. I can do that maintenance myself. Someone else may rightly say a 5-6% interest rate over three years is less costly to them than monthly visits to their mechanic.

So, this "debt is bad," thing is mostly stated by people who get leveraged beyond their means, or don't understand how to successfully apply the right amount of leverage at the right time. No debt can be as bad for one's fortunes as too much debt.

Very few Americans (or otherwise) could consider the idea of owning a house and a car outright at 45 without ever having taken on debt.

Debt is a time machine. You get today the money that you may have in 30 years. Of course, if you watched any sci-fi movies, you know what happens when you abuse time machines... bad, bad things.

Debt isn't bad, debt is great - provided a) your time machine use doesn't cost too much and b) you really will have this money in the future (or, in other words, can keep up with the payments). Most problems with debt stem from misunderstanding the concept that it doesn't produce money, only shifts money around in time, and does not produce, but rather consume money - and of course from failure, deliberate or out of ignorance, to predict one's future amount of money. People also tend to double-count future money - once they debt-shifted it to present, they still consider it being there in the future, available for another debt-shift. This is where the trouble starts.

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