Any “HENRY” feelings here? Any feelings of inability to cross the chasm into wealth?

To safely pull $100,000 annual income from your investments (live a “6 figure” lifestyle without working), you need minimum $2.5 million. With a $300,000 annual salary it will take over 8 years to accumulate that if you could save 100%, which of course you can’t. So even people with high salaries see a long slog ahead of them: probably 15-20 years or more of working. That doesn’t feel “rich”.

And it is hard to make $300k+ salary for a long period of time. As a doctor or lawyer or a business exec, you are working your butt off. As a developer, you’re not likely to stick at a tech company that long. Either you’ll get bored and leave, or (more likely) you’ll get shown the door in favor of a recent CMU grad who will work longer hours for half the salary. Worrying about your job… again: not feeling rich.

And along the way, living at $300k salary might make that initial $100k dream seem a bit small… maybe what you need is $5 million invested so you can safely pull $200k without working. Now the timeline to success moves out again.

But the original sin of unhappiness is that initial goal of living large without working. It’s objectively ridiculous, and once you make your happiness dependent on that, you’re likely gonna feel bad for decades. Even FIREing at 50 means 25+ years in the workforce. That’s a long time to be disappointed.

Most folks would do better to work a job that interests them and live frugally to give them flexibility down the road. But doing so takes some active thought toward rejecting lifestyle creep the culture tries to sell us.

/r/financialindependence Thread