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Comment by bdamm | Hacker News Reader

Do you have kids?

The answer to this question seems obvious. There are no 42 year olds that retire by merely "saving and not over spending" when even one child is involved.

Yes there are. My brother in law sold his startup and is sufficiently retired while raising my nephews. Not a common case, by any stretch of the imagination, but it's not zero.

I used my words carefully when I said "retire by merely 'saving and not over spending'".

Your brother in law did not merely save and not over spend, he built a business and sold it for a large payout.

Nope. Before the kids we had an incredible savings rate. Sometimes around 80-90%.

Now our spending is much higher but the growth of our investments over the last 10 years has been incredible and outpaced that by a large margin.

For a while I thought some startup stock I had was going to fund a lavish retirement but then AI largely destroyed the value of those shares so we're just planning on the boring index funds.

I said “saving and not over spending”; do folks on HN really have trouble with reading and comprehension?

I said nothing of investments and growth.

My apologies, I thought it was obvious that if you saved 90% of your salary, you would, in fact, then invest it.

Ahh, I see what you mean. When I read the original comment it seemed like a regular save and spend less approach. If some saving in index funds was obvious, I am sorry for my assumption.

2 kids.

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