Ask HN: After earning how much money are you planning to retire? |
Ask HN: After earning how much money are you planning to retire? |
I'd like to be a kind of tech monk. Someone who goes around on the bare minimum needed to survive, be away from the distractions of society, and polish my skills day after day.
Every now and then I'd leave my monastery to rescue a half billion dollar project somewhere or to take down an evil tech giant with open source. Then I use my loot to continue another few years of peace and solitude.
Are there any learnings you had from your half a year break like this?
I find I am much happier working 14 hours/day than resting 24 hours.
I did have an extremely productive remote work era during that period for a side project, but unfortunately the team fell apart.
I've run my own businesses since leaving school and although I expect to slow down as I get older, I don't ever want to retire. I just want my role to evolve and spend more of my work time doing the (work related) things I enjoy most. I've always thought that business owners who look forward to retirement need a new business.
based on spending 18,668/mo = 224K/yr
25 x 224k = 5.6MM
assumptions:
- withdraw 4% per yr
- earn avg 7%+ per yr
- inflation 3%
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-sim...
ps. I will hit this number in 47 months. Here's how I know: https://lab.madfientist.com/
I'm spending my free time acquiring better skills so hopefully this will change for me.
Once you have your FY money, you'll see that retirement is overrated... and I have a lot of hobbies + plans to travel with my wife when the kids are out of the house (hopefully in the next few years), but besides all that, every year I am postponing my retirement, because I just cannot leave the team I am managing... so maybe next year :-)
What kind of bad habits did "resting" form?
The take-away from the post (and vid, linked at bottom) is that most people should be mediocre. It's not a bad thing. Take pride in having reached that far.
As for the selling issue; you're aware of it, so that's obviously a good thing. Next is to put together some kind of promo that you can live with. A portfolio site, some blogging about what you've learned etc.
Sure you'll get decent opportunities if you keep skilling up and making folks aware of your current abilities.
Regarding non-hub city: remote work an option? Biggest local companies?
EDIT: Just saw you've seen the post linked to above already. And you're probably more experienced than I'd understood from your comment. I'm tempted to say you might only be bad at selling yourself because you self-deprecate too much. But that's another assumption!
I do tend to self-deprecate. I'm really working on not doing that anymore. I've come a long way but the past few weeks have been really discouraging. I interviewed for some jobs and got turned down. The sad thing is, after talking to the devs that interviewed me, I was pretty certain that I'm more competent than they are. I was turned away because I'm "obviously not passionate about front-end", whatever that means... Interview process was long and I wasted a lot of time.
Then I came to this place where I realized I'm writing lots of framework code, and not really understanding Javascript as well as I thought. Heck, I've forgotten more about Javascript than I can remember.
Anyway the most discouraging thing is that I can become as competent as I have, and still have a very difficult time getting work. The people I am contracting for are very, very happy with my work (probably because they're getting a good deal).
EDIT: I'm really good at cranking out work. I'm a workhorse. Some days I can put in 8 - 10 hours of solid coding if I need to, and my bug count is pretty low...really low. But I'm terrible at remembering specific technical knowledge. A lot of things, I internalize and practice intuitively. I get in interviews and they start asking "gotcha" language questions and I just choke. Then I leave and kick myself because I knew the answer all along, but I couldn't remember it during the conversation. So I need to get better at interviewing, build a better portfolio, learn new frameworks, keep working so I can eat... Sorry for the sob story, it's just rather daunting at the moment.
Also, you may be underselling yourself by focusing too much on specific technical knowledge.
I'm happy to do a resume review (which is often a how-do-you-pitch-yourself review) - been doing a bunch and people seem to find them helpful. Email me at itamar@codewithoutrules.com. May answer with delay, but will answer.