I know this is a niche question, but have you reached a point where you have enough passive income to not to have to work for a living?
If so how did you accomplish it?
I'm only responding because nobody else has replied to your thread. Feel free to ignore me if you think it is irrelevant.<p>My favourite Dr. Who quote: "Work for? I don't work for anyone. I'm just having fun."<p>Describes me, even though I receive money every month. My expenditures are considerably less than the money I receive every month by having fun. If I didn't receive money, then I would be in trouble, so I don't really qualify for your question, but I'm having fun so I'll answer anyway.<p>Step #1. Reduce my expenditures below what most people consider reasonable. I lived for more than 5 years on less than $10K a year. It was much easier than I thought. I discovered that spending more than this amount of money, I was no happier. Who knew? What really counted was having so much more income than outgo that money became completely irrelevant to me.<p>After I did that, I stopped worrying about working. There isn't a job in the 1st world that pays less money than I'm comfortable with. I started taking jobs that interested me instead of jobs that paid me money.<p>Then I got married. <i>That</i> threw a monkey wrench into the works! But I'm slowly working thought that ;-)<p>Honestly, people tie themselves to a grindstone to make as much money as possible because they think it will <i>remove</i> stress and give them a nice life. I don't think that works most of the time.
Just turned 30. Invested most of my savings (20k€) into Bitcoin several years ago, and then converted everything to Ethereum in the pre-sale. Those 20k€ are worth roughly 1M€ pre-tax at the current rates.<p>Started a fintech startup three years ago and we are close to a liquidation event that would net ~1.5M€ pre-tax.<p>Right now, though, I have less than 10k€ in my bank account. Would be also really curious to hear how to convert that money into sustainable passive income.<p>Spending 3k€ per month for the next 30 years would be about 1M€. Seems like having <5M€ is far from the "go bananas" type of wealth, but it can definitely be enough to achieve FI.<p>Achieving ~4% annualized ROI after tax and inflation seems plausible in the long term: <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/wiki/faq" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/wiki/faq</a>
A mix of consulting, products and bitcoin. Happened to just be in a right place at the right time, and took (mostly) the right risks. Basically I went from zero net worth to 2-3 million liquid, within about 7 years. Also have some other illiquid assets which could be worth more or less.<p>First I started with consulting, then slowly started developing different apps/products/services, and funded the development from consulting/contracting income. Soon the products themselves gave me 2-3k/month, and I didn't need to do that much consulting any more. As Bitcoin came, I already had some money to invest. I lived very frugally, and invested heavily in Bitcoin when it was around $10 or something. Also I have invested in stocks/ETF:s/etc all the time but those play pretty minor role. Mostly got one thing right.
I haven't achieved it, but I'm taking the safe route: Avoid lifestyle creep. Invest as much as I can for long-term gains (index funds, bonds etc.). Then live off slowly selling it off. So no passive income from a business. (I feel most people claiming "passive income" from those are actually working on them anyway, though)<p>By living off 50% of my paycheck, I can invest 50%. This roughly means for each year I work, I have one year saved up. However, after saving up many years, interest of interests have accumulated, so the first year I saved gives me more free years when I choose to "spend it". That's how I think about it, for the math, safe withdrawal rate etc. reddits r/financialindependence has a lot of resources. Most can achieve FI on modest income, so as a developer it should be double-doable.
I described this in pretty great detail over on IndieHackers (<a href="https://indiehackers.com/businesses/complice" rel="nofollow">https://indiehackers.com/businesses/complice</a>) and also answered a bunch of related questions on this HN thread: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12269425" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12269425</a><p>TL;DR = spent 20h/week for 2 years building a product that people wanted. But there are a lot of juicy insights etc in those links.
I consider myself as financially independent. I worked for a number of years in London as IT contractor (£400-500pd). Then I moved back to my home country and my hometown in Poland (reasonably affordable, not a capital). I don't have a car and I try to keep my spending to minimum (no fancy holidays, which I don't need. I cook, etc). I try to ensure my spending doesn't exceed equivalent of €500 a month.<p>I still spend most of the day in front of the computer. The only difference is that I wake up and finish when I want. I work on my personal projects (without aim to make money), which I find more interesting than doing commercial CRUD apps.<p>My decision was largely influenced by a Danish guy living in the USA, who wrote this blog: www.earlyretirementextreme.com
In the USA the surest and safest way to do this is to follow the American Dream... ie: buy a house. Specifically, buy a multi-family in a constantly in-demand area / big city. The devil is in the details on the economics of all this... how much you put down vs how much you borrow, etc.. etc... But within 30 years (assuming you get a 30-year mortgage) you will certainly be financially independent. The key is to manage this wisely and ensure you are in a location where you can get near 0% vacancy. Why am I so sure this will work? Because the US economy is designed for this... it's designed to massively leverage yourself up against the collateral of the home. The tax code is designed to basically writeoff your expenses - and even more so if it is your primary residence.
As others have mentioned, financial independence isn't hard. The hard part is financial independence without lifestyle compromises.<p>I'm making roughly $2k/month with books and workshops. The marketing and content producing takes about 2h/day on average. It makes my life a lot easier and less stressful.<p>But rent alone is $3500 in this stupid city (San Francisco). So I still need a day job for now.
1. Started working full time at 19.
2. Still alive at 60.
3. Worked hard in every job.
4. Maximized retirement contributions.
5. Only owned two houses.
6. Paid off current home as quickly as possible.
7. No debt other than credit card paid off monthly.
8. Only married once (and still) 32 years ago.
9. Spousal unit has same fiscal strategy as me.
10. We never had kids.
We can both afford not to work, although we both choose to.
I can't say we're especially frugal. I own four Swiss mechanical watches, a brand new Subaru WRX Limited, and lots of other toys, and have traveled all over the world, all of which I paid cash for (or paid card off each month).
Doing pretty well from consulting these days, however I can't manage to generate any passive income. Having saved about 30k in the past years doesn't seem to help either, interest rates are ridiculously low. Stocks and bonds are not really my area of expertise so I decided to stick to cash. Investment funds might be an option in the nearby future.
Obligatory link to ERE Journals : <a href="http://forum.earlyretirementextreme.com/viewforum.php?f=9&sid=8c02ee36bb6309086a0184db619cfe9b" rel="nofollow">http://forum.earlyretirementextreme.com/viewforum.php?f=9&si...</a><p>You can read tens of life stories centered around early retirement/ financial independence there.
Related, I am wondering if any of you have any tips on securing financial independence / passive income that will hopefully be Tech recession proof.<p>I.e, best way to see yourself through a Tech downturn without taking a severe hit to your wealth.<p>I say this because I've had recent experience with people losing huge amounts of their wealth, and almost going bankrupt during the Oil price crash.<p>For instance I know Oil workers who had most of their wealth in oil company shares, a house in an oil related city and lose their oil industry job.<p>I'd imagine their are lots in tech that are the same, large amount of Tech shares, a house in the Bay area and a job in Tech.<p>Anyone got any tips on diversifying for a downturn? What shares (if any???) are likely to do well if Tech has a bad patch.
I worked for a very large company for over 20 years, and the stock I received, bonus and standard issue, made my wife and I fairly much independently wealthy given our frugal life style. We spend a fortune on travel, otherwise we live on very little money.<p>The other thing that helped was buying some income property when I was younger. Getting rent money from tenants every month is wonderful.
I can pay my rent and bills from investment income and capital gain on investments. This is, of course, not remotely guaranteed, but over the last few years it's worked out. I do still work, though.<p>I did it by putting large amounts of my income into low cost index funds focussing on various sectors, and some specific shares that I thought would do well.
I'm trying to get closer to this goal by renting out rooms in my house. It's not something that a lot of people do and there are legal issues. however it does get me a nice amount of passive income. this is about 1k EUR per month. I'm hoping to get it up to the level of my salary (1700 EUR) within the next year.
Not me, but the last time I talked to the CTO of my last company, he was making ~$120k/year passively via LendingClub with ~$1M invested (which he acquired via our exit).
I'm not yet. 31 years old and working on it. I have a good chunk of money invested, but my magic number is 1 million and a paid off rental (maybe 2) + 1 primary residence. I have 12 years left on my mortgage. This house will eventually become one of my rentals.<p>The idea is just to reduce expenses a ridiculous amount and invest everything in the stock market + rentals. I should reach my goal by 40 - 45.
Income is superfluous if you have enough to burn for a hundred years or more. For me, it was as simple as buying some monero and relocating to a lake home: No city burn rates, and my stash rose 12x so far, with another 50x foreseeable in the baseline scenario, 10000x in extremely low-probability tail scenarios.