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Comment by random4369 | Hacker News Reader

300k is laughable. 2-3M is a more plausible figure if you want to finance two people purely off passive income.

Came to say the same - unless you lived in, say rural India, there is just no way you can live off the dividends from a $300k investment.

$300k of investment yields roughly $1k a month, which is doable in the US. You just have a studio apartment in Indiana or something, and do very little other than cook very economically.

and don't have health insurance, or a car (in rural indiana)

You qualify for significant ACA subsidies at that income level. And there's small towns where not having a car isn't that much of a problem.

Like, you're under 133% of the poverty line, so you pay no more than 2% of your income on health insurance premiums.

But do you still qualify if you are sitting on a pile of investments? Don’t think you would in the UK.

You do, but the pile of investments is either generating income or losing value to inflation, so in practice it's not that much of an issue. You can't spend tax-deferred retirement accounts like a 401k or tIRA without realizing taxable income, and there's significant contribution limits for Roth IRA balances for tax-exempt gains. You can defer capital gains but not dividends, so a large stock portfolio doesn't help you much either.

Plus if you manage your income to stay under ACA subsidy limits, you're generally going to be paying a higher effective tax rate by forgoing tax-deferral opportunities at higher tax brackets in your income earning years or Roth IRA conversions to use up lower tax brackets in your post-retirement years.

So yeah, it's a pretty big loophole.

I spend about $800 monthly on 2 people in Croatia's capital. I do think I'm living a good life.

I'm slowly accumulating my QQQs and SPYs and will probably stop it at a similar amount.

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