The Bill Watterson quote drives me up a wall. I can't imagine doing nothing.
I live in Washington DC with my wife. I make slightly more than she does (though with taxes and her benefits it probably comes out even), and she made enough before meeting me to buy her own condo here in one of the most expensive areas of the country. I charge only about half of what other consultants with my experience and skill set charge. Neither of us makes six figures. Just shy, but not quite. Combined, our AGI was just under 200k.
By almost all accounts, we're "rich". We went on three international trips last year. We went on three other mini-vacations that were only possible because I can work from anywhere. I'm working two 40 hour weeks here this week and next, just so I can have a big chunk of extra cash that I can play with--I think of it as reverse-vacation, I get to choose to work more for spells of time. I'm buying a gaming laptop with it, and some parts for my desktop. I could afford it without the "overtime", but this way I don't even have to think about the budget. We also put in quite a bit of money to our retirement funds, and have excellent health insurance.
How is this possible? I know couples making $500k between the two of them that don't get to go to all the amazing places we go to, because they're constantly worrying about money. It's because, for the rest of the year, we live in our means. Three international trips was in our means. Computers and electronic toys whenever we want them are in our means. If they weren't, we wouldn't have done them. We pay ourselves first (retirement funds). We don't have a house larger than we need. We don't have multiple cars (I don't need a car, so we have only one. Our great credit has meant that it's nearly paid off after two years, at an APR that has been less than inflation). We aren't fashionistas, so we don't drop money on clothing all the time.
Long story short, we just don't go into debt. The only real debt we have is the mortgage on the condo. We work her travel mileage card, so most of our flights are "free", in a sense. We just don't overspend on recurring expenses.
A $350/mo car payment doesn't sound like that much more than a $300/mo car payment, but it adds up! That's $600 in one year that you could have spent on a graphics card, or on a longish flight, or on a nicer hotel, or on a rental car instead of buses.
A $2800/mo apartment rental doesn't sound like that much more than a $2500/mo apartment, but it's $3600 a year! That's a brand new, uber powerful gaming computer every year. And you don't even need to buy it every year.
The recurring expenses in your life are a lot more expensive than you think they are. They are a hell of a lot more expensive than most of the expensive, one-time purchases you'll want to have in your life. Who needs a large house? Who needs 4 cars in a household of 2 drivers? Who needs a gigantic minivan or SUV for one kid? My parents drove my sister and me around in a coupe for most of our lives, making us squeeze past the front passenger seat to get in the back.
Even if you're living alone, you could get a roommate, or an efficiency apartment. You don't need a lot of stuff. I'd like to get rid of some of my stuff, and I don't actually have a lot. What do you use on a daily or weekly basis? I submit that there is nothing you'd use on a monthly or yearly basis that you can't rent more cheaply than own.
Don't chase after high-paying jobs if they require you to drive somewhere. Cars are expensive, gasoline is expensive. So many people here drive an hour one-way to get to work. It beats up their cars so they replace them every 5 years. They feel like they have an image to maintain so they buy BMWs and Lexuses. Every 5 years, another 45 - 60k for the car, probably 10k in gasoline, probably another 10k in maintenance. Call it an extra 13k a year, to drive to work. No job is offering 13k more to come to the office. I make slightly more now, part-time, than I ever did full-time driving into office. I could be charging twice as much as I am now, and I could be working twice as much. But I choose not to, because it's easy.
We'd have even more if I could convince her to move out of DC. I'm thinking we move to Pittsburgh, get a place slightly larger than our tiny condo, she quits her job, rent out the condo, sell the car, and we have more take-home than we did before.
Everything is so easy when you don't have debt. Yes, we are "rich", but for the types of skills that people on HN have, you should easily be able to achieve our sort of rich. Because our sort of rich happened because we first lived within our means and got out of debt. Once we got out of debt, it was easy to start holding out for the darling opportunities. When you don't have debt, you aren't desperate. You don't have to take just any job that comes your way. And when you don't have to take just any job, you don't have to move into a new place right away, you don't have to buy a new car right away. It's all connected. Poor decisions in one place explode into bad debt in lots of other places.