People on leanFIRE are talking about being hundred thousandaires. They're talking about retiring to a trailer in the middle of nowhere and finding ways to live on less than 2k per month for the rest of their lives.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5890950&forum_id=2#50055166)

All I'm saying is if you take the average poaster from the heyday, assume they got an average job for someone here, and invested a decent % of their salary into conservative investments like SP500, thats about $4m today. 15 years of near-straight growth = insane compound gains. And that's not even factoring home appreciation and lottery tickets like Crypto and TSLA.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5890950&forum_id=2#50055254)

i had a weird salary progression as a lolyer. see below:

2007: $60k (worked for a solo - that old gay guy who always hit on me)

2008: $62k (lol)

2009: $78k

2010: $98k

2011: $120k (in september, the gay had to lay me off. i quickly got a job at a midlaw firm called miles & stockbridge in baltimore)

2012: $140k (in september, i followed the partner who hired me at miles to JACKSONLEWIS)

2013: $152k

2014: $165k

2015: $190k (i lateraled to biglaw in september this year, so i was making $180k at JL until sept, then $230k at BAKERHOSTETLER thereafter. fyi, BH does not have an actual biglaw scale, they just pay first years market. raises generally suck after that. we had kid #1 in january of this year)

2016: $240k

2017: $260k

2018: $313.5k (kid #2 here. i was promoted to partner at BH effective jan 1. they have a "one tier" partnership, which is a scam. basically, 90% of my comp was a salary and 10% was equity. i stayed at this level until i left in 2022)

2019: $320k

2020: $340k (this is the year my spiral started and i moved out)

2021: $350k

2022: $325k (moved back home with gary and our offspring in july. i went back to JACKSONLEWIS in april this year. HUGE mistake, but it sort of wasn't because it led me to my current firm, MSK, and as you can see, i am finally making $$$)

2023: $400k (i got recruited by BAKER DONELSON and they brought me on as a full equity partner (bottom tier of equity); i basically ran the firm's labor practice.)

2024: $500k

2025: $550k (started at MSK in march, after my equity payout from BD. i stole every client i ever worked with from BD, and my originations for 2025 were $1.2m ($1.6 annualized), and right now i am on track for about $2 million)

2026: $652k

you can see that a lot of my career, i didn't make very much. plus the midlife crisis i did from 2020-2022 cost A LOT of money.

had i done the traditional graduation--->biglaw----->in house thing and didn't blow my life up and have to pay for two households for two years, i'd probably be well over $5m now.

thing is, it doesn't really matter. i could never add another dollar to my investments and i'll likely have like $15m in 15 years.

i'll be equity next year. assuming my numbers are what i expect they'll be, i should make $800-900k. i think they'll credit me with like $1.6-1.8m in originations. the way our equity formula works is that your comp is usually going to be such that you make around 40% of your "working attorney" number and 20% of originations. assuming $1.5m working and $1.7m originations, that puts me at $940k. oh, and there's a guy at the firm who does international arbitrations (he sues countries for terrorist acts) and he's been bringing in like $15-20m a year the last couple years, which is a windfall to all the equity partners.

if, for some reason, they only credit me with $1.3m, i'll be around $860k. i think they'll put their thumb on the scale for me because the reason they recruited me is they want to expand beyond the entertainment biz. they have a huge entertainment labor practice, but that's a hugely different skillset from regular labor. i have tons of experience that nobody else here has, and i brought a partner from paul hastings over (he used to work for me at BH) and he's killing it so far, so the firm is basically sucking my dick now.

sorry, that was probably way more than anyone cared to hear about my compensation.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5890950&forum_id=2#50055327)

Would read again

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5890950&forum_id=2#50055409)

A medical bill is payment rendered for services like any other. If you can’t afford it, then you either default on it or don’t follow through with whatever procedure. If your ailment is terminal then you are fucked anyway and Going to Die. Are you really gonna be going to a doctor for every little ache and pain as a 50something? You are just getting Old, that’s what happens, “insurance” or not.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5890950&forum_id=2#50055140)

the ironic thing is that it's stupid for poor people to have health insurance because they have nothing to lose, just declare bankruptcy. but a FIREmo going without insurance is risking everything.

this is why FIREmos almost always leave this dump.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5890950&forum_id=2#50055206)

I assume all the people doing leanFIRE in the US with 1M at 40 or whatever all just have paid off/inherited houses they are conveniently leaving out of the picture

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5890950&forum_id=2#50055306)

then reassess at $5m when the next milly is only a 20% increase.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5890950&forum_id=2#50055323)

I have a wife and four kids to attend to back here in a HCOL part of the USA. It comes with its burdens.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5890950&forum_id=2#50055468)

How many more annual reviews do you have in you, champ?

How many times are you going to explain your own job to somebody paid more than you?

How much more of your finite life are you willing to collateralize against a paycheck that can disappear because one bossprick thinks you're a Bad Fit?

I have roughly $280,000k. Put that around 4.5% and you are talking $12,600k/year, $1,050k/month. My trailer burn has lived around that neighborhood. Obviously keep cash and short bills around because HVAC and automobiles have fat-tailed error terms, but the underlying model is almost embarrassingly simple: get Shelter paid off, crush the fixed-cost vector, let the coupon cover a large part of ordinary existence. Duration risk exists. If I own a 10-year at 4.5% and rates rip to 6%, the mark gets murdered. Fine. I wasn't planning to sell it to buy groceries Tuesday. Match near-term liabilities with cash/T-bills, ladder the rest, let longer paper mature. Bills have very little duration and enormous reinvestment risk imho. Long bonds reverse the problem. TIPS hedge a government CPI basket which may have only passing acquaintance with trailer lot rent, Aldi, gasoline and Japanese car parts. A paid-off Trailer is the ultimate form of unemployment insurance. Suppose your mortgage/rent is $1,700k. Eliminating it removes $20,400k of annual required cash flow. At a 4% draw that is the same arithmetic burden as finding another $510,000k portfolio. Half a million dollars, created by needing less. Nobody wants to discuss this because reducing consumption has terrible Clique Connotations. Every $100/month permanently removed from Burn knocks roughly $30,000k off the portfolio required at 4%. Find $500 and you just found $150,000k. Find $1,000k and you found $300,000k. Rent a spare room for a net $500/month and the room behaves like another $150k of financial assets, except unfortunately it contains a Human.

I would shop every recurring bill like an autistic purchasing department. Insurance, phone, internet, utilities, taxes, groceries. Never buy anything new again unless the secondary market is somehow more expensive. Let another guy absorb depreciation. Used Japanese car. Used furniture. Clearance clothes. Refurbished electronics. Divorce and suburban boredom constantly dump perfectly usable capital goods into the market at absurd discounts. Games are a perfect example. Never buy the Console during Launch Prestige or during a RAM Crisis. Buy when the platform holder starts panicking about installed base. Series S was around $250 during the push. That's when you strike. Then buy Games eighteen months late after the patches, DLC and humiliation have already occurred. $70 becomes $14.99. Better yet, Indies. The State of AAA is Grim anyway. A backlog is a capital asset if you stop pretending release date conveys utility.

Once fixed costs are sufficiently Low, your reservation wage goes completely insane because the employer is no longer bidding against Foreclosure. He is bidding against staying home, playing a $9 Indie and receiving coupon income. That is when the labor market loses jurisdiction imho.

Reclaim what's yours. Trailer. Treasuries. Used Everything. Shop around like your life depends on it because in aggregate it does. Microsoft eventually gets desperate.

Take your ball and go home.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5890950&forum_id=2#50055337)

btw I am practically planning Treasury rotations around the State of Gaming. Bills cover near-term consumption, notes carry the Trailer, maturities arrive into future hardware/software markdown windows. Why extend duration on a $79.99 Nintendo game when the asset has negative carry, technological obsolescence and an almost guaranteed secondary-market repricing event? Hold the Treasury. Receive coupon. Buy the Game later for $29.99. This is elementary intertemporal substitution and somehow Gamers remain incapable of it. AAA writ large has the opposite problem. Huge Teams. Huge payrolls. Huge production cycles. Huge risk concentration. Then after seven years and $200,000,000k you get a map covered in icons, yellow paint, crafting components and dialogue about Trauma. The State of AAA is Grim. Todd Howard is Short btw, perhaps the only non-Huge input remaining at Bethesda. Indies offer a Reprieve imo. Anyway, the LeanFIRE implication is obvious. Never buy Games on release. Never buy hardware during Prestige. Buy during product pushes, channel stuffing, inventory corrections, bundle season, desperation. Keep physical where useful because resale value is embedded optionality. Let Winners finance launch quarter. Losers will Lose, but they can still Ascend. Nintendo will yield. Microsoft already did. Todd remains Short. Accept it.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5890950&forum_id=2#50055521)

pearls before swine, they'll never get it.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5890950&forum_id=2#50055808)