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Comment by orblivion | Hacker News Reader

Do you really mean 1 million or, say, 10 million? I think there's a huge difference between these two. I haven't done the math, but I figure with the latter you could retire without thinking (much) about what you spend money on. From that point, yes a billion isn't much different.

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Hmm. I agree there could be a difference between 1 million and 10 million. To an approximation, 1 million is not having to worry about housing, while 10 million is not having to worry about work.

But I'm not sure not having to worry about work would be good for everybody — me included. It could be good ... but I worry it could also leave one purposeless and adrift (I have some anecdotal evidence on this point).

Apologies for not looking up the literature to corroborate this (or not), but I should get back to the day job.

>> "...1 million is not having to worry about housing, while 10 million is not having to worry about work."

These numbers are low by a factor of ~2 unless you want to live in flyover country/a cheap country other than America.

I live in Cambridge, MA and I can't see any way that $10MM isn't enough to never worry about work again. At a first approximation, that's $300-350K in income without much risk of principal drawdown. It's surely enough for $250K in income (plus an inflation "raise" each year) forever.

If that's not enough to not worry about work, you might have lifestyle issues.

$1MM won't buy you a "really nice house" here, though, so I agree with you on that point, but it is still enough to not worry about housing if you choose "sufficient, not luxurious" level of housing.

As a counterpoint from the "flyover country" viewpoint, I live in rural Minnesota about 40 miles outside Minneapolis.

$1MM will buy you a very nice new construction 6,000+ sq ft house on about 20 or more acres of land with an outdoor pool most likely. And you're within commuting distance of major job markets. $10MM and you're living quite comfortably (probably spending weekends at your cabin on the lake) and certainly not needing to work, so maybe you spend your free time tending to your horses or alpacas.

Pretty sure you could not work even in SF or NYC with $10M in the bank.

I live in London, and ~$1.5m would be possible for me to retire with my current living costs that includes taking care of my son and the mortgage. $2m would be comfortable.

To just not have to worry about housing, even if I were to buy a house again today, would only take about $600k for a pretty standard 3 bedroom house w/garden even in London...

I read frequently that what was considered a "millionaire" the last century, inflation and cost of living adjusted would mean "someone with 7 millions or more in net worth"

Edit: they're the famous HNWI ("High Net Worth Individuals")

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millionaire

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-net-worth_individual

The famous "one percenters" are people with 8.4 million in net worth or more:

"The 1 percent threshold for net worth in the Fed data was nearly $8.4 million"

Source: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/17/measuring-the-t...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/business/the-1-percent-pai...

From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7257696

There was a redditor who explained the difference between various levels of wealth, from his real life experience dealing with rich people:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/2s9u0s/what_do_i...

There seems to be a pretty big difference between 10m and 1b.

After buying a nice power boat for week long cruises, a nice turbo prop for quick private travel, and that summer cabin in Colorado, 10,000,000 doesn't go as far as you might think. Especially if you like to travel well.

Then don't buy things with such poor value propositions? 4% interest on $10,000,000 is $400k per year. If you can't live off that I feel sorry for you.

Guess you'll have to suck it up and fly first class.

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