Do you understand you are very likely in the top 15% of the country in income earners, how do you expect people making less than $80k (of which there are plenty of programmers that make this amount)?

Do you understand that your extreme massive privilege is something very few people will ever able to obtain? What should they do? Work until they're 80 and die on the job?

The median household income in the US is $83,730 [1] - half of households are on less than that.

If you earn $100k and are willing to have the median lifestyle, and you can find a spouse that's willing, then the numbers work just fine.

Challenges include lifestyle inflation; housing costs if your six-figure job is in an expensive area; and finding a partner who's willing to be put in what is often a vulnerable and low-status position.

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N

I know multiple coworkers in their late 30s to mid 40s, none of their wives work.

How do you plan that? Particularly for an age 45 retirement?

My friend, I'm not sure you've thought through this all the way.

Historically, tax rates have gone down over time, not up. Especially in recent history.

You do pay a reduced tax in retirement because you're able to blend your income. You defer taxes on the 401k until requirement, but you pre-pay taxes on a mega backdoor/roth, so if you need 100k of income in retirement you pull 50k from 401k and 50k on the roth and only pay taxes on half of it, putting you in a lower bracket.

Having the pretax money to grow before paying taxes on it is greater than having post tax money and having less to compound.

The alternative to tax advantaged places to park your money for retirement is strictly worse than non-tax advantaged. In a 401k you pay taxes only in retirement, for roth's you pay taxes only with your paycheck. In a brokerage, you pay taxes at your paycheck and then you pay taxes on withdraw for your cost basis.

I used to agree with you, but then I learned about 401k/roth conversion ladders. Basically, you can convert everything in a 401k to a roth (taxable event) and after 5 years you can withdraw all of that money penalty free and tax free (except the gains made in those 5 years). The key thing is that you want to strategically do the conversion when you have a very low income, for instance if you're already retired and living off of Roth contributions or taxable brokerage investments, so your only income for the year is the amount you convert. So basically, you just need enough funds to retire for 5 years before you can start withdrawing from the 401k->Roth.

I started doing this when I got a raise and realized pretty much half of my raise was going straight to taxes, whereas I could invest it all if I just upped my 401k contributions.

The blog author wrote somewhat negatively of government work, but I will always been thankful for my 457(b).

I’m sorry but this is just bad financial advice

> * The early withdrawal penalty is 10%*

Still cheaper than my current Long-term Capital Gains tax rate too.

All is fine in Switzerland, there is state part (1st pillar) where people give blindly and then during retirement get some payment; and then mandatory private part where employer contributes too, often the same amount (2nd pillar) which is the most important one. Also another optional private 3a pillar which otherwise behaves like 2nd. Obviously all of this is pre-tax, 2nd and 3rd can be used for purchasing primary property or start business etc. State is always a miserable manager of longterm funds. One can pick investment profile for those savings, or is voted by employees' assembly in case of 2nd.

No complaints, I know how much I saved, projections on how my pension will look like if I retire in year X, Y or Z. I don't expect more from a good social security system if one wants more it should be on them.

So far plan is retiring at 60, already I work on 90% and thus sporting 10 weeks of paid vacations yearly. That way, I don't thread the knife edge of burnout, in contrary and have plenty of time to unwind, have adventures (just came back from 2 weeks road trip in Dominican republic) and spend literal months on vacations with my kids and wife. There is no salary achievable in our field that would force me to consider it a better setup and instead working hard... these are best years of my remaining life and waste them just working would be tremendously stupid and shortsighted. To retire in 45, seeing my skills atrophied and being at the mercy of things like inflation... doesn't sound that great.

So there is another perspective to just chasing biggest paycheck at all costs.

If you're German or French you're lucky if you'll get a pension at all, even though you pay 20% of your wage into them (government mandated)

they're pointing out that the US is insanely stupid when it comes to healthcare and retirement. the stuff we do in this country is so much extra work/effort/cost and all of it comes at the worker's cost.

they were being sarcastic.

If you retire at 45 won't that significantly impact social security?

What about property taxes, the occasional $40k visit to the ER for a few stitches?

Well there's always the possibility of increasing your salary over time, to over 100k, and save more that way. You might not retire at 45, it may take longer. Still worth starting as young as possible.

Not really the case in any of the high cost of living cities - when I graduated undergrad in the mid 2010s, my peers where getting offers from Microsoft for 100-120K for their standard out of school dev positions, Amazon was better as was Apple from what I recall. Plenty of 23 year olds making that much?