Seeing Jack committing to this repo is kinda wild to me. I also wish I had fuck-you money and could spend my day engrossed in whatever I find interesting

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JumpCrisscross 8 hours ago | parent [-]

> wish I had fuck-you money and could spend my day engrossed in whatever I find interesting

A good mental exercise is to calculate how much you'd need to survive indefinitely in a pocket of rural America or the third world. No international travel. No bells and whistles. Limited cuisine. But survival and leisure unlimited.

When I've run the numbers for a comforable living, they've come to $300k (Vietnam, $12k/y) to $500k (West Virginia or Portugal $18k/y). But one could halve (or more) those figures by accepting standards of living our grandparents would have found adequate.

Then you make a choice. That world. Or the one you have. (Or something in between.)

Two-fifths of American households have a net worth over $300,000; more than half over $150,000 [1]. That means somewhere between a lot of and potentially most Americans have, on a global scale, fuck-you money. Just not fuck-you money to retain their status at the centre of the first world.

[1] https://dqydj.com/net-worth-percentiles/

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niemandhier 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Coll idea. One thing: This numbers exclude healthcare costs as you get older this gets more expensive.

For countries with free healthcare, it is usually limited to people working there or citizens and ( in the German case ) recognised refugees.

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0_____0 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

My health insurance (self employed, high CoL area USA, healthy/not old) is 6k$/yr. Kind of blows up that $18k/yr idea. I don't think it gets that much better if you live in a low CoL area.

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nunobrito 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

For Portugal the "free" healthcare is extremely generous to anyone staying there, regardless if citizens or not. It does lose money, but then again Germany always pays the bill.

	▲	alt227 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> Germany always pays the bill I dont think many people realise just how much European infrastructure Germany actually bankrolls. It is a lot.

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JumpCrisscross 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> One thing: This numbers exclude healthcare costs as you get older this gets more expensive

For the U.S., yes, I'm assuming Medicare/Medicaid. For overseas: Vietnam and Portugal have affordable systems you can pay into, with private insurance options above that at $1,200 and $5,000 a year.

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cedws 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

American software engineers maybe. But I heard somewhere that most Americans live paycheck to paycheck or at most have a few thousand dollars in savings.

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alt227 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> I heard somewhere that most Americans live paycheck to paycheck or at most have a few thousand dollars in savings

If you dont inherently know this fact then you should be grateful for a very lucky and priviliged life.

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cedws 42 minutes ago | parent [-]

I don't live in America.

	▲	alt227 38 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It applies to the entire world.

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JumpCrisscross 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> I heard somewhere that most Americans live paycheck to paycheck or at most have a few thousand dollars in savings

Wealth versus liquidity. I'm saying you sell everything you own, pay off your debts, and then take what's left to retire on. Someone with $10mm in home equity may still be strapped for cash on account of the mortgage.

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sgt 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

WV is probably heavily underrated. Such a beautiful part of the US.