the first time I got a bonus that big, $240k, I thought it would be life changing. the gov took $100k in taxes. I paid off my car $20k. then when I really thought about it there wasn’t much I could do.
It was not a down payment on a house in LA/SF/NYC. it was not enough to start a company and hire people. If I’d changed my life style to be like a college student and live with roommates then it might have given me 2-3 years of student lifestyle but I was 34 and not prepared to go back to student lifestyle
To be honest it was super disappointing. Of course getting a $240k bonus is a privilege. My only point was it didn’t change my life like I thought it would.
And, that was 25 years ago. today, even a million ($600k after taxes) in those 3 cities won’t likely change your life. Maybe you could put a down payment on a house or pay for your kids college tho but it not the freedom I thought it would be
Depends where you live. Where I'm from $240k would buy you a really nice house with lots of land, and you'd have money left over.
>>won’t likely change your life. Maybe you could put a down payment on a house or pay for your kids college tho but it not the freedom I thought it would be
How is being able to put a down paymenent on a house or being able to send your kids to collage debt-free not life changing?
You live in Poland? Country or City? Google estimated a 60 square meter 2br condo in Warsaw costs an average of $260k. So a $240k bonus, after paying taxes, leaves you with $145 in Poland, so no, you could not likely get a condo in Warsaw with a $240k bonus. I'm sure if you live well outside a major city that changes.
And, the bigger point is, even if you could afford a house, is that life changing? Would your life style change because you bought a house? Or, would it just basically be the same life style as before except you now own a house?
To me, life changing amount of money means an amount that changes my life style. That could mean, an amount that lets me retire and never work again. Or an amount that lets me quit and start my own company. Or quit and go back to school. Or quit and travel for a few years. Something alone those lines, having my "life change". Buying an apartment but having my life remain the same, same job, same hours, same activities, is not "life changing" to me.
I fully admit a $240k bonus ($140k after taxes) it could be life changing for others. If I'd been 19yrs old when my living expenses were $20k year, then $140k in the bank would have let me go ~7yrs without a job. Unfortunately my 19yr old self would have probably blown 30% on a car, 20% on travel or other things, 10-20% on random equipment like a new gaming rig or cameras and lens and then in a few months I'd be back where I was. And, even if I did manage to not blow it and do the 7 years, what else could I have done. Could I started a company and hired people? How many could I afford to hire and for how long? Would it be enough to not just lose the money or would have needed more than $140k?
I guess it perspective and where you are in life plus your location in the world, I would have to pay 50% tax on it so well a down payment could be it but I would still have to affort the house.
I have a hard time seeing it as life changing for me, having a decent paying job (not silicon valley developer scale) in a expensive country. Ofc if I was having a low paying career without that many perspective my outlook might differ.
I dont live a place where you pay for your kids being in college so I cant speak for that part.
225k in 2025 dollars is life changing for anyone in the middle class of income. The reason you were unable to do anything with it is because you were already earning too much.
I think you probably know people who've gone though something like this via inheritance. A parent dies, leaves them $200-300k You don't see their life change at all. Of course most people don't inherit that much but enough do that you probably know some of them or your family knows some of them and yet nothing noticable changed in their life.
For you maybe. For someone in debt or who has never ever had a financial safety net, the amount of stress relief from finally having a bit of safety money behind you is mental.
Depends on where in the world you are. I wouldn't call $250k life-changing-money anywhere developed.
It's "I can probably stop worrying about money for a while" kind of money, not "life-changing" money. Not a whole lot you can buy for $250k. After taxes, that probably doesn't even buy a house.
Can somebody help me understand why these obviously very stupid takes keep popping up on HN? Is it rich people who genuinely have no idea what anything costs? Is it rich people intentionally being cruel to everybody else? Is it people trying to appear rich by pretending they have no idea what anything costs? Is it a bay area thing, are people just blowing through a literal fortune every year and unaware of their spending problems? Is it children whose ideas about money come from “influencers”?
> Is it rich people intentionally being cruel to everybody else?
If you got a $240,000 bonus in the mid-2000s in tech, that very likely means you were living in one of the tech metros (SF, NYC) and you could expect nearly 50% of that to be paid in taxes (CA/Fed, NY/NYC/Fed). So you take home about $120,000.
It's a windfall of money to be sure. But being in an employment situation where even such a bonus is possible likely means you already have significantly higher costs than the average person. Maybe you'll pay down some student loans and bolster your savings. But this is far from being "rich". High-earners also tend to have high costs of living.
tech salaries in the US are high enough that this is approximately 1-3 years of income as a lump sum. more than that, if you got this amount as a bonus you already have stupid money.
of course $140k would be life changing for most people. but OP, and i suspect most of the other commenters, are not in that situation.
For the simple reason that it didn’t change my life. Before I received it I thought it would. After I received it, paid taxes , etc. My life didn’t change at all.
It’s a fact that my life didn’t change so it wasn’t a life changing amount of money for me.
Maybe it would be life changing for others. tho at least in sf/nyc/la I suspect it wouldn’t for most people. If I had given it to my sister she’d have used it to pay down her mortgage. her life wouldn’t change. she’d have still had a mortgage and her day to day life wouldn’t have changed at all. My nephew could have used it to pay off his student loans. That would be great but again his daily life wouldn’t have changed
What would you change in your life with that kind of windfall?
Definitely not going to quit my job.
Definitely not going to go back to school.
Sure, I could spend it on a vacations over the next decade but I could already do that so not life changing.
I like my car already.
Maybe a renovation?
At the end of the day, I'm already doing things I like to do so additional money mostly is just going to be saved which isn't life changing. It's nice but not life _changing_.
In Sweden, assuming that $125k of that disappears in taxes, it’d leave you with 1.2M SEK. There are currently ~650 properties on Hemnet between 1M and 1.25M. I’d suggest maybe this one in Ödeshög at 1.1M SEK? https://www.hemnet.se/bostad/villa-3rum-odeshog-odeshogs-kom... Not the biggest, but it’s reasonably well done up, comes with 2/3rds of an acre of land, is near a main motorway to get to places, and near the shore of the biggest lake in the country. If you want to take a train then it’s 30 minutes drive to the nearest station on the Stockholm-Copenhagen line.
Where I live (Denmark) even if it was tax free you would more or less be unable to purchase an one bedroom apartment in the capital for this amount.
Getting enough for a good down payment on a house is life changing for many people. You'll make it back not paying rent into a void.
I rather pay a rent than putting 250k on a down payment and still have to pay a rent amount for 15-25 years.
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the first time I got a bonus that big, $240k, I thought it would be life changing. the gov took $100k in taxes. I paid off my car $20k. then when I really thought about it there wasn’t much I could do.
It was not a down payment on a house in LA/SF/NYC. it was not enough to start a company and hire people. If I’d changed my life style to be like a college student and live with roommates then it might have given me 2-3 years of student lifestyle but I was 34 and not prepared to go back to student lifestyle
To be honest it was super disappointing. Of course getting a $240k bonus is a privilege. My only point was it didn’t change my life like I thought it would.
And, that was 25 years ago. today, even a million ($600k after taxes) in those 3 cities won’t likely change your life. Maybe you could put a down payment on a house or pay for your kids college tho but it not the freedom I thought it would be
Depends where you live. Where I'm from $240k would buy you a really nice house with lots of land, and you'd have money left over.
>>won’t likely change your life. Maybe you could put a down payment on a house or pay for your kids college tho but it not the freedom I thought it would be
How is being able to put a down paymenent on a house or being able to send your kids to collage debt-free not life changing?
> How is being able to put a down paymenent on a house or being able to send your kids to collage debt-free not life changing?
Because neither of those are going to change your daily life that much? It simplifies a thing or two, but neither of those things are life-changing.
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You live in Poland? Country or City? Google estimated a 60 square meter 2br condo in Warsaw costs an average of $260k. So a $240k bonus, after paying taxes, leaves you with $145 in Poland, so no, you could not likely get a condo in Warsaw with a $240k bonus. I'm sure if you live well outside a major city that changes.
And, the bigger point is, even if you could afford a house, is that life changing? Would your life style change because you bought a house? Or, would it just basically be the same life style as before except you now own a house?
To me, life changing amount of money means an amount that changes my life style. That could mean, an amount that lets me retire and never work again. Or an amount that lets me quit and start my own company. Or quit and go back to school. Or quit and travel for a few years. Something alone those lines, having my "life change". Buying an apartment but having my life remain the same, same job, same hours, same activities, is not "life changing" to me.
I fully admit a $240k bonus ($140k after taxes) it could be life changing for others. If I'd been 19yrs old when my living expenses were $20k year, then $140k in the bank would have let me go ~7yrs without a job. Unfortunately my 19yr old self would have probably blown 30% on a car, 20% on travel or other things, 10-20% on random equipment like a new gaming rig or cameras and lens and then in a few months I'd be back where I was. And, even if I did manage to not blow it and do the 7 years, what else could I have done. Could I started a company and hired people? How many could I afford to hire and for how long? Would it be enough to not just lose the money or would have needed more than $140k?
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I guess it perspective and where you are in life plus your location in the world, I would have to pay 50% tax on it so well a down payment could be it but I would still have to affort the house.
I have a hard time seeing it as life changing for me, having a decent paying job (not silicon valley developer scale) in a expensive country. Ofc if I was having a low paying career without that many perspective my outlook might differ.
I dont live a place where you pay for your kids being in college so I cant speak for that part.
225k in 2025 dollars is life changing for anyone in the middle class of income. The reason you were unable to do anything with it is because you were already earning too much.
$240k bonus was double my yearly salary.
I think you probably know people who've gone though something like this via inheritance. A parent dies, leaves them $200-300k You don't see their life change at all. Of course most people don't inherit that much but enough do that you probably know some of them or your family knows some of them and yet nothing noticable changed in their life.
Presumably people discovering these bugs are not in the middle class of income.
For you maybe. For someone in debt or who has never ever had a financial safety net, the amount of stress relief from finally having a bit of safety money behind you is mental.
> it was not enough to start a company and hire people.
It is in Taiwan, Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia...
why comments about taxes get gray here? is it bad behavior in US to discuss taxes?
Depends on where in the world you are. I wouldn't call $250k life-changing-money anywhere developed.
It's "I can probably stop worrying about money for a while" kind of money, not "life-changing" money. Not a whole lot you can buy for $250k. After taxes, that probably doesn't even buy a house.
Can somebody help me understand why these obviously very stupid takes keep popping up on HN? Is it rich people who genuinely have no idea what anything costs? Is it rich people intentionally being cruel to everybody else? Is it people trying to appear rich by pretending they have no idea what anything costs? Is it a bay area thing, are people just blowing through a literal fortune every year and unaware of their spending problems? Is it children whose ideas about money come from “influencers”?
> Is it rich people intentionally being cruel to everybody else?
If you got a $240,000 bonus in the mid-2000s in tech, that very likely means you were living in one of the tech metros (SF, NYC) and you could expect nearly 50% of that to be paid in taxes (CA/Fed, NY/NYC/Fed). So you take home about $120,000.
It's a windfall of money to be sure. But being in an employment situation where even such a bonus is possible likely means you already have significantly higher costs than the average person. Maybe you'll pay down some student loans and bolster your savings. But this is far from being "rich". High-earners also tend to have high costs of living.
tech salaries in the US are high enough that this is approximately 1-3 years of income as a lump sum. more than that, if you got this amount as a bonus you already have stupid money.
of course $140k would be life changing for most people. but OP, and i suspect most of the other commenters, are not in that situation.
For the simple reason that it didn’t change my life. Before I received it I thought it would. After I received it, paid taxes , etc. My life didn’t change at all.
It’s a fact that my life didn’t change so it wasn’t a life changing amount of money for me.
Maybe it would be life changing for others. tho at least in sf/nyc/la I suspect it wouldn’t for most people. If I had given it to my sister she’d have used it to pay down her mortgage. her life wouldn’t change. she’d have still had a mortgage and her day to day life wouldn’t have changed at all. My nephew could have used it to pay off his student loans. That would be great but again his daily life wouldn’t have changed
What would you change in your life with that kind of windfall?
Definitely not going to quit my job.
Definitely not going to go back to school.
Sure, I could spend it on a vacations over the next decade but I could already do that so not life changing.
I like my car already.
Maybe a renovation?
At the end of the day, I'm already doing things I like to do so additional money mostly is just going to be saved which isn't life changing. It's nice but not life _changing_.
this is just US people culture, its all about money and taxes they should worrying their budget when they have 1 trillion to fund war machine
In Sweden, assuming that $125k of that disappears in taxes, it’d leave you with 1.2M SEK. There are currently ~650 properties on Hemnet between 1M and 1.25M. I’d suggest maybe this one in Ödeshög at 1.1M SEK? https://www.hemnet.se/bostad/villa-3rum-odeshog-odeshogs-kom... Not the biggest, but it’s reasonably well done up, comes with 2/3rds of an acre of land, is near a main motorway to get to places, and near the shore of the biggest lake in the country. If you want to take a train then it’s 30 minutes drive to the nearest station on the Stockholm-Copenhagen line.
Ödeshög is like “Abandoned Pile”, not inspiring.
Still cool that you can get a house so cheap in Sweden.
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