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Comment by bm3719 | Hacker News Reader

Despite being well off income-wise, my expenses are under $20k/yr on average. This is with owning a home, buying a car every 5 yrs, and basically buying anything else I might want. I could go as low as $5k/yr in fixed expenses if I had to.

I could spend more, but can't think of any additional products I'd want to clutter up my house with.

Not doing anything too special/weird here (I grow some of my own food and try to repair things myself, but that's about it), so seems strange you'd need so much in retirement.

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$20K/yr is ridiculously low spend. Do you opt out of health insurance or something? I don't know how you could do that unless you are in extreme VLCOL area.

For comparison I'm in MCOL US and my spend this year will probably be about $28K. Taxes, healthcare, groceries, eat up a huge chunk of that. And I buy nothing but essentials (no TV, no streaming, no vacations, drive an old car, no restaurants, starvation level food consumption).

I have health insurance provided by my employer, but when not employed, I skip it and just pay for anything out of pocket. Hasn't been a problem so far, but I can see how people more attached to health care services might find that hard to make work. Their numbers (and perhaps mine later in life) will be different, of course.

I live in WV. Per capita income in my county is $14k, so most here are living on much less. My only fixed costs are power, property tax (which is pretty low here), internet service, some firewood to supplement what I cut myself, some food to round out the garden diet, and a twice a year run to the dump. But, that's only about $5k/yr. The rest are non-essentials, like buying a new car instead of used, trips, hobby supplies, and the occasional video game.

Ah, you play game of life on easy mode, you have no kids.

I was living on sub-10k$/year in the heart of the most expensive city on planet - Zurich (back then), while owning nothing. That was rather trivial, hiking and walking in the forests is for free, great public swimming pools are cheap and lake was for free in the summer so staying happy and fit was easy to achieve.

But like with all games, playing games on easiest modes aint the idea of most rewarding fun for most folks, and this metaphor is also true for life itself.

Can confirm that SWE salary + no kids + modest needs/desires can make for an easy mode life. Myself and some others I'm familiar with in a similar situation use the free the bandwidth to load up on complexity in other areas, like work. Others just enjoy an easy life. Either can be quite rewarding, just as I'm sure procreating sometimes is.

I also didn't have kids and don't regret it. BTW I looked it up and the PA county I'm in is about $42K per capita income, highest in the state, so yeah don't move here lol.

Ah, that makes sense. FWIW I'm one state over in PA, philly suburbs, and the per capita income here I think is the highest in the state or close to it. My SALT alone is $5K. Marketplace health plan is nearly $4.5K just for premiums and the government is kicking in even more than what I pay, but its a PPO so more of a "luxury" plan. The HMO plans here, which I used for a while, are just too much red tape to actually use effectively and they limit you to some, shall we say, budget providers.

I had noted before that WV seems cheaper, though I think if I move out of PA I'll head someplace warmer.

>I have health insurance provided by my employer, but when not employed, I skip it and just pay for anything out of pocket.

This is a fantastic way to lose everything from something as simple as missing a step and breaking your foot in the US.

In that situation, I would just pay for it (and have in the past). If it was one of those nightmare bills you hear about sometimes, I would simply extend my working years by +1 or whatever to even things out. Or, maybe I'd just pretend I lost it in a market downturn and move on with life.

You don't really need $70K, the idea is to keep up with inflation (by investing) and overprovision enough to protect yourself from market volatility (big cash buffer, bond ladders, etc)

Most people right now will probably be considering annuities to offload some of the risk

Medical insurance alone would be $20k per year for most people in the US.

That’s pretty fancy insurance. Check out healthcare.gov and you’ll find many plans where the premium plus deductible are much lower than $20k.

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