We have no debt, more than enough passive income to retire (more specifically, at the T-bond rates, we generate a complete offset of two pharmacists' worth of income), have nothing in the market besides those T-bonds (and we have been out of the market for the past eight years as we both were extremely pessimistic and still are about the future), and two houses, one in civilization, and one where my wife is from in a community that is cut off from much of society and is restful. Everything we make now, we do not worry about saving, because the passive income has plateaued at a level that we cannot outspend the interest. That said, we don't spend more than 60% of our net income (30% of our gross), because we simply don't have the time, and company perks go a long way in my wife's work.
The only adjustment I have made is to have a job that I do not need to report physically in the office and one that I can leave without major penalty. My wife's had enough big kills such that she can walk away if she can psychologically reprogram herself. If we get divorced, neither of us would have to work for the rest of our lives anyway, and our assets are protected. I do put the $19,500 in T-bills for the 401k and the IRA pittance, but it's unnecessary. My last concern, that of health insurance, became a nonissue on my last birthday due to the way civil service works at my level.
You pay for the privilege of living in NYC, so, you can fix that if you want. Do you really want to? Living in Minneapolis sounds great in theory (beautiful lakes, everyone's decent although Minnesota Nice is pejorative, little conflict, crime is confined to the wrong neighborhoods and not yours, etc.), but it does not have the culture, the food, nor the people or interesting situations that NYC has. Most can't give up living in a Alpha++ city and there is nowhere like NYC, where Beta cities like Minneapolis are like most cities such that outside of the urban core, most of the suburban areas could be substituted anywhere else in the country.
Both of us are friends of Nate Hagens, and we've come to agree with his position that growth is slow, but declines are fast. No more proof for my eyes is needed after watching how limited many of my own classmates had with their career, and how the market for intellectual labor (not just pharmacy) is becoming more competitive for less resources. What I really ought to do is to figure out some way to find myself into one of those DARPA or DoE unicorn jobs, but even right now, I like how the financial ending is right now for us. We are financially marketproof individually now, but the question is whether or not we can still acquire consumer goods (especially food) if the market collapses. The main internal driver for making more money is to have a permanent fund to hire service, which we pay domestics out of our income right now and is a significant household expense, because we do it legally and pay the household tax penalty for doing so. That's probably going to be done in the next 3-4 years or sooner if another big kill happens.
The only thing that I disagree with the aggressive investment strategies is only if you are using leverage and not risking your actual money. Leveraged solutions historically blow up hard, but if you risk your own true money and not from debt, gain or lose, it's workable if that's what you choose your utility of money to be. Otherwise, I'm astounded at how well some of you have managed your investments, they are better than I could have done, and I have the math training to do at least passably at it. Sovereign risk is the only risk that I'll take, and even with that, I just wonder how the next downturn is going to work out for most of you considering your strategies.
