Comment by hwstar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hwstar | Hacker News Reader

I'm older (54), live in San Diego, CA. San Diego is also high cost with a 440K median house price.

I was employed as an electrical hardware engineer for a computer peripherals company until November 2014. The job market for electrical engineers in San Diego is currently in an awful state.

While I was employed, I managed to buy a vacation home which I converted to a rental property after I became unemployed. I also was able to build a large nest egg of investments and cash. I am using these to live off of at the moment.

I am Financially Independent to the point where I can pay for basic living costs, but not for fancy stuff like eating out or vacations.

When I became unemployed, I updated my home engineering lab with a new test equipment by selling items on Ebay which I no longer needed. I currently spend a lot of my time developing open source hardware,firmware, and software and upload my projects to Github.

If the job market in San Diego improves, I would consider going back to work, but it would have to be on my terms. I have enjoyed not having to commute to work every weekday. Any new job would have allow 80 to 100% telecommuting.

Financial independence can be achieved, but it requires sacrifice and dedication. For details on how to do this I recommend visiting the Mr. Money Mustache blog: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com for ideas and support.

Thanks for the reply. I'm saddened to hear about the tough job market you're facing, but I'm happy to hear about your garage hacking :) I personally wish you the best of luck. Your GitHub repo's are neat!

San Diego seems like a great city, with much nicer weather than Toronto - I've heard a lot of nice things about it. While the housing prices are equally high, it seems like tech salaries are much higher there, compared to Toronto.

I would like to one day be in your situation, but I feel like starting an independent adult life is harder than it used to be (mainly from accumulating student debt) for graduates in previous generations.

Do you think you could elaborate a little more about your early career?

Thanks so much!

I have been passionate about electronics since I was 6 years old.

In my senior year in high school, I landed a part time job as an electronics technician. When I graduated, I worked full time for that company for 10 years as a self-taught electrical engineer. I started working on my college degree (Computer Science). I was able to take advantage of tuition reimbursement offered by the company to pay for college. Student loans were not really needed back then as college costs were reasonable. I bought my first house.

I switched companies in 1989 and worked for almost 26 years as an Electrical Engineer. I finished my Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science at the second company using tuition reimbursement, and my own funds. I really wanted to do a Bachelor's in Electrical Engineering, but there were not any evening classes available for EE at the time. Sold my first house, bought my second house and my vacation home. Paid off my vacation home, refinanced my first home several times.

I think the main things which got me to where I am today are the following:

1. Think of debt as slavery. It should be paid off as quickly as possible. 2. Have as few children as possible. (I have none). 3. Don't spend frivolously. Live way before your means. 4. Try to do as many home and car repairs as you can yourself. 5. Make sure you are adequately insured. In the US, you need medical insurance to cover medical costs and liability insurance to protect from lawsuits. As your assets grow, you need to adjust your liability insurance accordingly. 6. Invest regularly and often.

Thanks again for the reply. It sounds like you've always maintained some level of financial independence, even at a young age, which is awesome.

Have you ever wanted to work on your own startups? It seems like you have some personal projects - why work a traditional career?

If you could do it all over again, would you do anything differently?

Things I would have done differently:

1. I should have started earlier. I didn't start working towards financial independence till my second job. 2. I should have bought more rental properties.

Regarding startups:

For hardware products, startups involve a lot of effort. You usually have regulatory things to deal with and that is a big burden. Also the capital requirements are more than a pure software startup.

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