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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

You don't need the "buy the house" part, which is actually bad advice now - renting is now half the cost of home ownership in many areas of the US.

But I strongly believe you're making this out to be much more difficult than it is if you are making decent (not "FAANG level") tech-type salaries. Where I live tech jobs generally pay at about double the amount of people in trades, for example. E.g. a mid-level software engineer is making at least 160-180k, while a trades person (plumber, etc.) with similar experience is making 80-90k.

So obviously if you can live at the level of these trades people, you can save up enough to be able to live without a salary for some time.

The problem is that most people just get used to their standard of living and find it hard to downsize. That's fine, but it's still very much a choice.

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The problem with what you say is that you need to be in such environment. Not everyone pays good salaries. Europe is far behind US salaries. In US high salaries are concentrated around SF, which in turn means high cost of living, or subpar living conditions (I couldn’t imagine myself living with roommates in my 30s for example, and what do you do when having a relationship?)

And then comes the downsizing. Sure you can live only with necessities, but then question do you want to find yourself in mid thirties, or early forties, without any travel experiences, no relationship, living in your parents basement? I exaggerate a bit, but the math does not work out. You either live very frugally, or you use exploit geo arbitrage (low cost of living area, with a high paying remote job). There are no other shortcuts.

Every time this topic comes up, I'm a little astounded how whiny people get.

First, I wholly agree Europe salaries are far worse. But in the US, there are plenty of locales besides SF that pay comparatively high tech salaries (I live in Texas). But the main point is that making a professional software engineer-level salary at a tech company with 5+ years of experience in a mid-to-large American city should put you squarely in the top 10% of American earners. I mean, what you decry as "very frugally" is simply figuring out how the vast, vast majority of Americans manage to get by. It kind of reminds me of those NYT articles that would explain how people were basically living paycheck-to-paycheck on $500k a year: private school costs $X, a nanny costs $Y, Upper East Side co-op costs $Z. I'm like yeah, no shit Sherlock, expensive stuff is expensive, but don't pretend forgoing that stuff means you're living in poverty.

It's not whiny, in exact terms, it's something much worse: people not wanting to admit they can have agency.

You see this a ton on social media. People make excuses after excuses of why they can't get out of debt, why they can't lose weight, why they can't…

And, sure, some people have it tough and have the odds stacked against them. But most people would just prefer to swat down ideas on how to get what they want like they're playing Beat Saber.

(And I can be sure that someone will come through and accuse me of being insensitive because I haven't considered someone who has X, Y, or Z that only impacts .5% of the population, and almost never the person making the complaint.)

Agreed. Nearly all of the arguments I see about this (again, from people who are relatively extremely well off) boil down to "but it's not easy!" Well, you got me there, but it often isn't nearly as hard as people make it out to be, it's just they have locked themselves in to a particular lifestyle and change is difficult.

I said to buy land, not a house. Houses are ridiculously overpriced for what you get (one housing unit.)

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