Comment by antisthenes

3 years ago

Right, so the "secret" to blowing up your life is just to have massive savings, income and rental property, so that instead of owning your possessions, you can just rent them for 2x the cost of ownership while being a digital nomad.

Got it.

Just in case someone finds this "profound".

12 comments

antisthenes

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scarface_74  3 years ago

I actually agree with you:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36307059

But my former home is rented to our son at a discount to its market value to help him out and it offsets most of the holding cost. But I still lose money. That’s the only thing that the extra money is going to - offset the mortgage.

Honestly, my fixed costs are actually lower than they were before I started working for BigTech when I was working as a journeyman CRUD developer making less than a returning intern got at my current company.

I was making $120K when I had my house built in the burbs in 2016 and paid 3.5% down with an FHA mortgage. I was the only one on the mortgage.

If I had still been making that, I would have sold my house that doubled in value over the past six years and paid cash for my place in Florida.

My total expenses including mortgage and all utilities is less than $3000 where I live now. I was paying more for my mortgage, utilities, maintenance.

Even without that, my 1250 square foot condo I bought in 2022 was the same price I paid to have my 3200 square foot house built in 2016.

The amount we pay for Uber or SixT is about the same as we paid for one car note + maintenance on an older car + car insurance.

googlryas  3 years ago

It's not like OP said "Anyone can do it just like this!". It's just what they did. Is it really so shocking to you that richer people have more opportunities in their lives than poorer people?

  • scarface_74  3 years ago

    See my sibling reply.

    It didn’t take being “rich”.

    My budget is lower than it was when I was making $135K (the median college educated couple in the US makes that much) when I had my house built in 2016.

    The only thing different that I’m doing based on my income now is subsidizing the rent for my younger son instead of selling my old house and paying cash for the Condotel I bought. It was the same price in 2022 as what I bought in 2016.

    • googlryas  3 years ago

      It's not just about income, but also your assets. From your description, I don't think it is wrong to call you rich, or at least above average net worth and income. Also, you making $135k solo is a much better situation than you+partner making $135k combined as might happen with the median college couple. You doing it solo means your partner can put all their time into...well..whatever they want.

      I don't really see anything wrong with your reply, I was mostly replying to the person who was whining that you have to be rich to do it. But I do think, if you had less income and fewer assets you would need to go about doing what you did in a different way.

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