> Based on the available data, the percentage of the U.S. population that can realistically achieve FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) is very small, likely less than 1% to 3%. This figure represents those who can both meet the strict financial criteria and successfully execute the plan to retire decades before the traditional age.
According to Gallup polling, only 1% of Americans in their early 40s are retired, and just 6% of those in their early 50s have left the workforce. [1]
Nice if you can do it. Most of us will never be able to.
Don’t forget the unbounded liability of AGI: your job disappears before you can accumulate the capital you need. On the bright side, you’re retired. Really simplifies the spreadsheet.
I think this would highly depend on figures for real estate and overall COL in the specific location where you intend to retire? And also major life choice possibilities like maybe selling your house and moving or choosing something smaller when theoretical children are fully grown and have moved out.
I'll second that. I tried the trial for a few months then started paying money for it. At $100/year I've found it useful for modeling and gaming out different scenarios for retirement thresholds.
Nothing's certain, but if you like to play with data and you don't want to build the whole damn thing yourself, it's useful.
Still waiting for them to get support for options.
I swear I saw a version of this years ago on one of the popular tech blags like Coding Horror or Joel On Software. I briefly looked for it the other day and couldn't find it. Anyone happen to remember it? I think it was mainly about salaries and when stock options would vest.
If you live in New York, life will get complex without building supplementary passive income from a young age.
If people live a slow-burn lifestyle, buy revenue property one can later demolish as needed, park unused cash in index funds, and split 7% between bullion & high-risk. Most folks will be fine when things eventually go sideways.
Some people like to gamble, but they usually don't talk about their mistakes. =3
Given the national debt (and the state debts in many cases), I do not feel comfortable assuming that tax rates will not change drastically. I wouldn't be surprised if Roth IRAs became taxable, at least for certain people. And there could be straight-up wealth taxes on "the millionaires" (which you pretty much have to be in order to FIRE.
Retirement doesn't mean you can't work. It means you don't have to. It means you can work for yourself on your own interests instead of for some other boss who tells you what to do.
Why not find a career and job that's enjoyable now without even having to defer all of this for later? Not just in software, but you could be flying planes, be in a travelling circus, learn to be a chef, etc.
If the answer is you have too many commitments keeping you tied to your current job, then I'd argue that we should be optimising for that optionality rather than some arbitrary day to end the nightmare 40 years from now
Used to think the same when joining the field and now I despise every minute I have to work on software I don't care about. AI even made it worse as I joined the field due to liking the coding part, not the results. Well, there isn't really an alternative for me either as there are basically no jobs I could learn that pay equally well...
Hopefully you can retire early and then work on software you do like!! All those glorious ideas you had... but didn't have the time for. But be careful on the retirement part, the numbers go out the window (Andersen not Microsoft) when inflation bites :-(
Do numbers go completely out the window due to inflation?
While the price of gas, real-estate, groceries doubled or tripled over the last 10-15 years (here in NL).
It also seems that Stocks/ETFs also did the same, right?
Some of the Tech/IT/AI (and hence to some extent also S&P500 that's heavy on those) increased even more. But even if we consider it an artificial bubble - loads of other more traditional industries/ETFs also grew similarly to inflation, didn't they?
You are right of course.... but one's risk tolerance diminishes with waning work income. So retired folks have less of their money in stocks/ETFs and are more exposed to the ravages of inflation.
So with hindsight, one can easily weather inflation... only hindsight is hard to come by (says the guy who cancelled his NVIDIA buy order a few years back)!
I wont be able to retire early with a measly 2.5k net wage in Germany. Still, job market is dead here. Its all Java and basically zero interesting projects. I appreciate the kind words though!
> Based on the available data, the percentage of the U.S. population that can realistically achieve FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) is very small, likely less than 1% to 3%. This figure represents those who can both meet the strict financial criteria and successfully execute the plan to retire decades before the traditional age.
According to Gallup polling, only 1% of Americans in their early 40s are retired, and just 6% of those in their early 50s have left the workforce. [1]
Nice if you can do it. Most of us will never be able to.
[1] https://www.investopedia.com/what-percentage-of-people-achie...
Don't forget the unbounded liability that is the US healthcare system!
Don't forget the unbounded liability that is the human condition!
Don’t forget the unbounded liability of AGI: your job disappears before you can accumulate the capital you need. On the bright side, you’re retired. Really simplifies the spreadsheet.
For those who don't want to run random python scripts locally https://engaging-data.com/fire-calculator/
Is this the same project, or a different project that does the same thing. I took a quick glance at both and the descriptions are very similar
I think this would highly depend on figures for real estate and overall COL in the specific location where you intend to retire? And also major life choice possibilities like maybe selling your house and moving or choosing something smaller when theoretical children are fully grown and have moved out.
If you like this, I highly recommend https://projectionlab.com/ for scenario-modeling your future income and retirement.
It's been discussed here a number of times and I've been a happy customer for years.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36849502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26969173
I'll second that. I tried the trial for a few months then started paying money for it. At $100/year I've found it useful for modeling and gaming out different scenarios for retirement thresholds.
Nothing's certain, but if you like to play with data and you don't want to build the whole damn thing yourself, it's useful.
Still waiting for them to get support for options.
I swear I saw a version of this years ago on one of the popular tech blags like Coding Horror or Joel On Software. I briefly looked for it the other day and couldn't find it. Anyone happen to remember it? I think it was mainly about salaries and when stock options would vest.
If you live in New York, life will get complex without building supplementary passive income from a young age.
If people live a slow-burn lifestyle, buy revenue property one can later demolish as needed, park unused cash in index funds, and split 7% between bullion & high-risk. Most folks will be fine when things eventually go sideways.
Some people like to gamble, but they usually don't talk about their mistakes. =3
> Some people like to gamble, but they usually don't talk about their mistakes
I just saw a cnn headline in the lobby about people who are looking to sell their family home to buy ai stock
They sure talk about mistakes before they happen
Given the national debt (and the state debts in many cases), I do not feel comfortable assuming that tax rates will not change drastically. I wouldn't be surprised if Roth IRAs became taxable, at least for certain people. And there could be straight-up wealth taxes on "the millionaires" (which you pretty much have to be in order to FIRE.
You mean retire at all. I think this would cause a civil war if govt pulled this.
How much money do you need to allow yourself to be happy and start experiencing life?
How can people not see FIRE is just a way to make you postpone what you want to do? Who cares what you can do when you're old and full of pains?
If you'd written it in Javascript you could have hosted it on Github Pages.
You can use Pyodide for that, no need to stoop to JS.
This is cool, but I for one hope to be able to continue to work until my last dying day.
Retirement doesn't mean you can't work. It means you don't have to. It means you can work for yourself on your own interests instead of for some other boss who tells you what to do.
Why not find a career and job that's enjoyable now without even having to defer all of this for later? Not just in software, but you could be flying planes, be in a travelling circus, learn to be a chef, etc. If the answer is you have too many commitments keeping you tied to your current job, then I'd argue that we should be optimising for that optionality rather than some arbitrary day to end the nightmare 40 years from now
The idea here is you get to work, but you don't have to work.
Used to think the same when joining the field and now I despise every minute I have to work on software I don't care about. AI even made it worse as I joined the field due to liking the coding part, not the results. Well, there isn't really an alternative for me either as there are basically no jobs I could learn that pay equally well...
Hopefully you can retire early and then work on software you do like!! All those glorious ideas you had... but didn't have the time for. But be careful on the retirement part, the numbers go out the window (Andersen not Microsoft) when inflation bites :-(
Do numbers go completely out the window due to inflation?
While the price of gas, real-estate, groceries doubled or tripled over the last 10-15 years (here in NL).
It also seems that Stocks/ETFs also did the same, right?
Some of the Tech/IT/AI (and hence to some extent also S&P500 that's heavy on those) increased even more. But even if we consider it an artificial bubble - loads of other more traditional industries/ETFs also grew similarly to inflation, didn't they?
You are right of course.... but one's risk tolerance diminishes with waning work income. So retired folks have less of their money in stocks/ETFs and are more exposed to the ravages of inflation.
So with hindsight, one can easily weather inflation... only hindsight is hard to come by (says the guy who cancelled his NVIDIA buy order a few years back)!
Gas as in petrol?
It’s up 48% in 15 years, and until the Us-Iran war it was only up 14%
https://fuelwide.com/fuel-prices/netherlands/history
Grocery inflation is 45% over the same period but I suspect you’ll claim CPI figures are nonsense.
Gas for heating has indeed about doubled, unsurprising with both Ukraine and Iran.
I wont be able to retire early with a measly 2.5k net wage in Germany. Still, job market is dead here. Its all Java and basically zero interesting projects. I appreciate the kind words though!
Then your life is completely meaningless. You've rationalized yourself into wasting the one and only life you have.
How much coding are you doing nowadays vs. AI doing it for you and you reviewing/pushing it into the repo?