Enough

Wow, thanks for sharing my post. I&#x27;m honored. I wrote this quickly and didn&#x27;t expect it to go anywhere (I didn&#x27;t even send it to my email subscribers), because it was more personal to me. Glad you all are enjoying it as well.<p>I should answer a few things:<p>1. This is possible because I sell products. I don&#x27;t do consulting and haven&#x27;t for over a year. My products will continue to sell even when I&#x27;m not working like crazy to create new ones.<p>2. I live in Boise, Idaho which is not very expensive. I could live quite comfortably on $80,000 per year. In Q1 2014 I made $140,000, so I&#x27;m not exactly hurting for money. If I hadn&#x27;t purchased a house last week, my bank account would have plenty in it. This is not a risky financial move.<p>3. The consulting example was just a story I heard from a friend. That&#x27;s not me, I don&#x27;t do consulting. Being able to do something like this is another reason I like selling products even better.<p>4. This would not be possible without the great team I have in place to run ConvertKit. While it still takes my time (and I really enjoy it) they handle all the support and serious issues.<p>Anyway, hope that clears a few things up. Thanks again for all the kind words and attention.<p>-Nathan

Great story, but as someone who freelances, I have one rule: never say no to (good) work.<p>When you&#x27;re freelancing, there will be natural droughts. And when they happen, I do fun stuff without feeling guilty (travel, personal projects, nothing). So take advantage of the droughts, but don&#x27;t plan them.

Good luck! A challenge in my neck of the woods is that once you say &quot;no&quot; to a client, you often lose them. It&#x27;s easy to see why: they have to find someone else, and someone else has an opportunity to grow them into a house account.<p>If you&#x27;re in a field where you have this kind of flexibility, you have my respect and envy. :)

Nathan&#x27;s wife is the one whose opinion about this matters. If they are both on board with his choices, they are going to be fine.<p>But more generally, I always think of a statement I heard somewhere, to the effect that &quot;You&#x27;re not going to be lying on your deathbed wishing that you had spent more time at work.&quot;<p>Yes, it is a luxury that we can even consider taking lots of time off. You could argue that it is foolish to take it — and you could argue that it&#x27;s foolish <i>not</i> to take it. As a freelancer who happened to have an insane amount of work just as <i>my</i> second child was born (two years ago May 10th), I know it was not the best time for our family — in fact one of the hardest. In our case it was the right thing (adoption is expensive) and we got through it. But on balance, healthy babies are not all that expensive, especially your second one, and especially if the mother can nurse. You might as well spend that time together, because, unlike work, your time is not a renewable resource.<p>So, congratulations and best wishes to the OP.

I have a kind of fractal approach to this which is more viable for my use-case (self-employed, long-haul projects):<p><i>Don&#x27;t work half of the day. Don&#x27;t work a day in a week. Don&#x27;t work a week in a month. Don&#x27;t work a month in a year.</i><p>I&#x27;ve tried what&#x27;s described in the blog, but it was too fickle and not enabler of bigger things.

This seems so risky to me. What do you do if a time comes when you can&#x27;t find such high paying work so easily? Moreover, even if the plan works for years, how will you ever retire?<p>I&#x27;m all for seeking financial independence, but this seems the opposite. You&#x27;re still completely dependent on work--the work is just more infrequent.

&quot;what about retirement&quot; is a common question.<p>I suppose a valid one if you are considering the &quot;work until 65 and then stop&quot; approach to life. Sounds really shitty to me. There is a concept of &quot;micro-retirements&quot; that I find incredibly appealing. Much like Nathan describes here. Putting in the work, and enjoying the dividends.<p>I&#x27;m 40, have 4 children, and frankly want to enjoy my life <i></i>now<i></i> (and when I&#x27;m 70), but the options at traditional retirement age seem so droll to me. I don&#x27;t want to sit around, play golf, fish, or whatever.<p>My situation is similar to Nathan&#x27;s, and my goal is not to be rich. My humble bootstrapped products make me enough money to live modestly and enjoy life now.<p>Working, making, building, and creating are actually a part of my lifestyle. Retirement in the long-term sense has 0 appeal to me, though when I&#x27;m 70 I might feel differently ;)

Given Nathan&#x27;s business model I don&#x27;t see how this is a risky move for him to make. He sells products and will likely continue to earn money on those even without investing additional hours of work during the year.<p>It would really only be a big risk if he was to stop putting in hours AND take his products off the market for the rest of the year.<p>I agree this would be a very scary proposition as a freelancer with a direct correlation between hours worked and revenue.

Well, first off, if you have digital products like ebooks, it&#x27;s not as if people will just stop buying them. He may not write more books but I imagine Nathan will still make a decent amount of monthly revenue with little intervention.<p>But selling actual software requires a lot more maintenance than ebooks.<p>Also, some people (myself included) are a lot more susceptible to parkinson&#x27;s law with regards to money. I don&#x27;t have an &quot;enough money&quot; number. I&#x27;m not greedy but if I can maximize my income while working a healthy amount, I&#x27;m going to do it. (All my kids are in school anyway). If I want to take extended time off and embark on adventures with my family, I&#x27;m going to do it.

A very risky (reckless?) bet, especially with a second child on the way. Get the money while it&#x27;s there and that it keeps coming. As a consultant, you have the added benefit of being the master of your schedule, which is crucially important when you&#x27;re having a child, but suddenly saying &quot;no&quot; to all your customers for the next nine months because of some arbitrary decision? Terrible idea.<p>Use your status of consultant as an asset to set up your schedule so you have time for both your new child and your new work, but keep that money coming: you&#x27;ll need it, especially with two children.

I actually have been doing similar things, but without the side projects to back me; depending on my mood and the opportunity I:<p>- do some high-end consulting at an above-market rate<p>- enjoy myself at a below-market rate in a start-up<p>- take some time off to spend it with the kids, while I learn about new things<p>This usually happens in streaks of a few weeks&#x2F;months...<p>Regarding the continuous flow of money to back you: while it is nice to have, it is not exactly a necessity; I build a little pile of cash and am very picky when I spend it. You don&#x27;t need a continuous flow of money to get started, but you have to prioritize what is important for you.<p>Last year I have been doing high-end consulting for about 5 months, spent 4 months at home learning new things (ElixirLang etc) and enjoying myself with the kids, and the remainder was spent remoting for a start-up where I ended up experimenting with Erlang, GoLang, Haskell and a plethora of tech stacks.<p>In my opinion, people tend to forget why they work (to have a life and enjoy themselves), and end up focusing on getting more and more ... They tend to be afraid of breaking their habits and always predict doom scenarios.<p>I have been doing this for years, and my income fluctuates like hell - I even once posted a graph of about 10 years of income on my blog -, but I enjoy my life and work...<p>I agree that it does induce some stress every once in a while (for example, in January this year, I had just paid a huge amount to social security and taxes, and after a two week break my project was ended), but in the end you always manage.<p>If it had not been for this stressy period, I now would not be working on two start-ups simultaneously: one as a consultant for one or two days per week, and the remainder of it on my own (for which development is being paid for in advance by the first future customer). Maybe that is the post-traumatic growth Nassim Taleb was referring to in it&#x27;s &quot;anti-fragile: things that gain from disorder&quot;.<p>I would suggest everyone to really think about your work&#x2F;life&#x2F;fun balance and just take a leap of faith.<p>&quot;If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.&quot; - Lao Tzu

I&#x27;m surprised at how many people claim this is risky. Granted it is. But isn&#x27;t this entire community about embracing risk and pursuing happiness&#x2F;reaching our business goals?<p>Avoiding burnout is a very real thing to keep in mind, and I often fear many in this community are at risk of burning out hard.

Bravo. Good on you for taking the leap.<p>It&#x27;s a tough decision to make, when the getting is good, to step away from all that good getting. The temptation is so strong to just let it ride a bit longer and build up the stack. Especially when you have a family, house, etc. that might really appreciate having a nice pile of cash in reserve one day.<p>The problem is, the longer you leave it, the bigger the pile you &quot;need&quot; becomes. One year&#x27;s expenses isn&#x27;t enough anymore; It should be one year&#x27;s worth of your current earnings. No, maybe three years of earnings &#x27;cause you never know. Or come to think of it, maybe I should pay off the mortgage, <i>then</i> sock away those 3 years of reserves.<p>A lot of guys never step back and say enough. Hats off to you for doing so!

Nice! I did something similar. I worked ~20 hours&#x2F;week for a year, also took an extended 2 month vacation. I&#x27;m back to full-time now, but here&#x27;s how I did it:<p>1. I had 6 month emergency savings. I figured the worst thing that could happen was having to job hunt and return to normal FTE. The job market felt safe to me.<p>2. I did this by freelancing. I could not find any ~20 hour part-time job for developers.<p>3. It&#x27;s not difficult to start at $50&#x2F;hour and move your way up as a developer.<p>4. I eventually moved to a day rate. Instead of working ~4 hour days, I worked 2-3 days per week. This helped deal with my goal lifestyle (only wanted to answer client calls while I was in the office, preferred batched work instead of 1-2 hours here and there, etc...)<p>5. My living expenses weren&#x27;t extravagant. Probably low considering I&#x27;m in the Bay Area. Even at 20 hours&#x2F;week, I made sure the math worked out and that I&#x27;d still have a solid buffer just in case.<p>It immediately made me much happier. I started spending afternoons jogging around the local lake, playing video games, spending more time with parents&#x2F;grandparents, working on side projects. It felt like the opposite of burnout. Of course, there were still problems:<p>1. Explaining to friends&#x2F;family. There was a lot of criticism about how I was wasting money, being lazy, or being irresponsible. Worse was the constant &quot;did you find a job yet?&quot; question. At the end of the day, if you&#x27;re financially sustaining yourself&#x2F;family and not assuming too much risk -- you&#x27;re not being irresponsible!<p>2. From the clients I&#x27;ve had experience with, most preferred full time contracts. It was a little more difficult finding 20 hours or less per week.<p>3. Droughts suck. I had a ~1 month drought that doubled my vacation length. Saying &quot;No&quot; to a full-time request means they&#x27;ll find someone else who can work full time.<p>Hope this helps anyone else considering the jump.

This is too hard. I plan on doing something similar except instead of work 4 months every year and take the rest of the year off, I plan on working about 7 more years and never working a day again.

I&#x27;m amazed by how many people&#x27;s reactions to this are shouting about how irresponsible it is. I don&#x27;t see the author saying that he&#x27;s decided he&#x27;ll never work again, just that while he has enough in the bank to cover him, he&#x27;s going to pursue other interests.<p>Someone with the experience he clearly has should at the very least be able to get a job pretty quickly should he need to, so why not embrace being able to choose not to work for a while?

It&#x27;s nice to be able to earn enough for a year in 3-5 months.<p>One important thing: the &quot;enough&quot; amount must also contain your yearly portion of retirement savings.

This is laudable because it&#x27;s so difficult. For many of us, enough is never enough.

I wonder if only working a few months a year is enough to keep your skills updated to the point where you can charge $100&#x2F;hr at will.

I&#x27;d really like to see the follow-up to this in about 6 months. As somebody lucky enough to have lived the &quot;enough&quot; lifestyle, my main feedback is this: It seems a lot more amazing to other people than it actually is.<p>Now as somebody with children, you certainly can spend time with them, but I think generally if you aren&#x27;t finding new challenges in life, it is just going to be boring. I think that is why already rich people still keep working... it isn&#x27;t about the money, it is about the challenges.<p>So I wish you good luck, but don&#x27;t feel like you are &quot;throwing in the towel&quot; by continuing to pick up new projects. If you enjoy your job you don&#x27;t necessarily have to work for the money, you can just work for the work.

I like this idea and tried something similar myself recently (though perhaps not as extreme). I, too, found myself bored (a problem magnified by the dismally cold winter and that I live by myself).<p>Is that what retirement is like?

Taking time out is a great idea as its not all about money, but to say you&#x27;ve made enough money for now and downing tools, when you haven&#x27;t finished some of the course you&#x27;ve just sold people for 200 USD+. I&#x27;m not sure how you expect your customers, who now feel forgotten, to react?<p>The course is great btw, but I feel a little like I&#x27;ve bought a car which promised a great feature coming soon, and the manufacturer has got bored and moved on!

I am often amazed by how much freedom a lot of people here have. I&#x27;m a graduate student in physics after betraying my first love in programming because I thought I would end up in a 9 to 5 dead end hacking job, I never heard of this whole &quot;freelance&quot; and start-up scene, otherwise, I would have done that.<p>I&#x27;m happy for you and you should feel very blessed to have the options you have. That just isn&#x27;t an option for so many of us.

I more or less did this last year. I didn&#x27;t say &quot;no&quot; to everything, but I basically stopped looking for new work by May. I then worked a max of a couple hours a day for the rest of the year.<p>Starting in November and December I started looking for stuff again-- I picked up a number of great clients for the new year, and it worked out quite well.<p>This plan obviously works a bit better if you have a few months savings to cushion any unforeseen droughts.

Wouldn&#x27;t it make more sense to work more the years where his hourly wage is the highest? The years where he reaches his goal in May is the years he should work longer. I remember reading a story about how NYC taxi drivers worked until they made a 100$ before going home. This lead them to working longer on days with lots of competition and less demand, and shorter days on days with less competition and more demand.

I do this each month, where I work enough to support us for the rest of the month.<p>Unfortunately, it&#x27;s always at the end of the month when I reach that goal.

Yeah, I agree but, then the signup box on the bottom.

In general I agree with this approach. However, with many people who do it I see that they don&#x27;t really plan for the future. I&#x27;m not for running in the treadmill out of fear, but there may come times in the future where more money is needed, and jobs don&#x27;t come along as readily as they used to. Or some disability might prevent people from working.

For me the overarching reminder is that of contentment. It&#x27;s easy to talk yourself into an endless pursuit of more. There are bad reasons to turn down more work, but taking time for your family and hobbies seems like a good trade off.

Not sure how retirement or emergency preparedness or kids educations plays into this scenario. Certainly seems very risky vs some alternatives which still let you live your life

The ability to do this is definitely a major luxury. Just imagine explaining this situation to someone who had to work all year round. You&#x27;d probably come off a little arrogant. Even among those with well-paying jobs, most of them probably work for companies which would never let them do that.<p>Power to you if you have the kind of job and income where this is possible, but maybe avoid bringing it up too much in casual conversation.

I have the same rule for month, but for long project we cant stop after two weeks. Plan for year sounds good.<p>Thanks for sharing.

Disclaimer: I am a huge lurker on Hacker News<p>I think a humblebrag tag on posts would be utterly hilarious and useful.

I think it&#x27;s a fallacy that one should only work to provide for or further himself.

This isn&#x27;t a very good title for a link aggregation site.

Yes go for it everyone. Skew the market even more!

Just enjoy your work, that&#x27;s enough :)

Could work well for a small percentage of people. What if after you say &quot;no&quot;, the client never emails &#x2F;calls you back? How many clients can one afford to lose? Not everyone has that luxury.<p>Make your money while you can and then retire or slow down is better IMO.