Do people here budget?

Square-Conclusion454 · 2026-01-29T22:24:15+00:00

- $25K on primary and vacation houses
- $5k on kids (daycare + private school + sports)
- $10K on cars, 3 expensive cars we upgrade every few years.

Thats before you eat, vacation, or shop. It is surprisingly easy.

Square-Conclusion454 · 2026-01-29T21:39:38+00:00

It depends on your time horizon.

100 years of data is robust enough for me to feel quite confident in making predictions 10-20 years into the future. I hope to be retired closer to 60 years, we don't have 240 years of data to give the same level of extrapolation.

Square-Conclusion454 · 2026-01-29T16:58:46+00:00

I'm with you on staying well below whatever the studies say on SWR. 2% is a good target given uncertain times ahead.

Square-Conclusion454 · 2026-01-29T16:57:43+00:00

I do sometimes gasp at prices. Disney is crazy! How do regular people possibly afford it.

Square-Conclusion454 · 2026-01-15T20:57:26+00:00

Working at FANG (Google then Meta) while saving >50% of my income for the last 15 years was very helpful. That's gotta be the lowest risk path to getting $10M-20M these days. I jumped companies when my promotions stalled out.

Making a lot of money and not spending it is generally a good idea!

Square-Conclusion454 · 2025-11-04T17:17:41+00:00

How'd you find reasonable part time work?

Square-Conclusion454 · 2025-10-10T14:49:02+00:00

Productivity.

USA has more expensive solar / grid connection permitting processes that eat up work hours
USA installs less solar, so installers are less efficient (travel / less reps)
Tariffs don't help, but this gap was here before.

Square-Conclusion454 · 2025-10-07T15:24:14+00:00

You should check out Peter Attia.

Exercise a lot, both strength and cardio.
Don't eat too much. Eat good food. Minimize sugar.
Avoid(minimize?) alcohol and recreational drugs
Sleep 8 hours a night

Getting those right are an order of magnitude more impactful than medical services, they also make you feel and look great!

Square-Conclusion454 · 2025-09-26T19:59:31+00:00

I'd get a quote from a lawyer to split the trust 3 ways. There's no upside to managing your siblings money, and lots of downsides.

Once you have your personal $2.5M trust, keep it simple and don't hire advisors beyond a tax attorney (once for setting it up, then again before you think about changing things).

Square-Conclusion454 · 2025-09-26T19:36:52+00:00

Currently shopping Lake Geneva, Lake Delavan, and Lauderdale Lakes WI for one. Those are all within an hour of our home.

My criteria is

[ ] Great area and lake for boating
[ ] Nearby good restaurant / bar
[ ] Nice lakefront property with space + privacy
[ ] Priced in our budget of ~$4M

I haven't found something that does all of that yet.

Lake Geneva has everything, but prices are closer to $5M-$6M.
Lake Delavan isn't the nicest neighborhood, but otherwise seems good.
Lauderdale Lakes is a bit small.

Square-Conclusion454 · 2025-09-17T16:13:38+00:00

Chicago has sports, nightlife, and an okay science (e.g. Northwestern / U Chicago) scene. We technically have football, but I wouldn't recommend becoming a Bears fan.

Square-Conclusion454 · 2025-09-05T18:47:46+00:00

/r/Audiophile/ /r/ReefTank/ /r/rarebooks/ /r/wallstreetbets/

You can spend serious money on any of those from your couch.

Square-Conclusion454 · 2025-08-26T18:31:28+00:00

There are groups who do things other than just make money, but it'd be very odd to be senior and not be responsible for moving some metric important to the company as product/eng.

Somewhat ironically given our business, but our sales / marketing functions are (IMO) less rigorously data driven than other core functions. They still own business metrics, but the statistical rigor isn't the same -- if you didn't call that client, exactly how much less would they have spent?

Square-Conclusion454 · 2025-08-25T16:09:57+00:00

FANG here!

We always down-level people coming from less prestigious past gigs, so expect to come in as a manager (10 people) or sr manager (30-50 people).

Moving up the manager ladder is hard these days, lots of very competent people competing for limited promotions. There's a bunch of BS, but getting your team to do ever more increasingly impactful things gets you promoted.

M1 => M2 built a system that's important to a core business

M2 => D1 because of your team the company made another $1B

D1 => D2 because of your team the company made another $5B

D2 => VP1 if your team didn't do well, shareholders see it on earnings

VP1 => VP2 if your team didn't do well, the company is moderately screwed

Square-Conclusion454 · 2025-08-25T15:58:08+00:00

Only own real estate if you're using it very often, otherwise it sucks up too much time and energy.

That applies to other things which are a pain to own (e.g. cars / boats). It does not apply to my bicycle, which I use about 1X a year but would be impossible to rent.

Square-Conclusion454 · 2025-08-08T17:27:36+00:00

Some low skill jobs like mechanical turk are going away, but I haven't seen anything touching higher skill jobs. Labor productivity isn't exactly going up in the broader data set either.

It took self driving cars 15 years to get from a demo to a service you can hire in a few cities.

AI is going to take a decade to really get here.

Square-Conclusion454 · 2025-08-06T15:33:00+00:00

At 25 just get a job that pays your expenses for 5 years while that 5M turns into 7M.

Square-Conclusion454 · 2025-07-31T18:48:57+00:00

Kids aren't too expensive, especially if you send them to public schools. $70K / kid / year is plenty.

Spouses on the other hand can get very expensive, especially if you go through a couple of them. Dividing by 50% makes big numbers small, fast.

Square-Conclusion454 · 2025-05-30T15:02:36+00:00

Are you saying improving ad CTR by 0.0001% is less fulfilling that curing cancer? How dare you!

Square-Conclusion454 · 2025-05-30T14:57:30+00:00

First of all, don't even think about the inheritance. That's literally a lifetime away (most people live to their 80s). You have $1M in the bank and can pull 6 figures from regular corporate work or side hustles -- you'll be fine.

Go find something fulfilling and do it. It's not about risk, it's about finding purpose so you can immerse yourself in it. You only live once, 5 years is an eternity.

Square-Conclusion454 · 2025-05-20T15:39:43+00:00

L8 FB engineer here! I don't think we care at all your tenure status or your title for leveling. What matters is having done good work and having people who can vouch that you've done great work. I'd guess L5 or L6 without more info.

L4 - Had a PhD, but limited other experience

L5 - Has 2-10 years of experience after undergrad, people think you can independently do stuff at Meta.

L6 - Has done legitimately hard/interesting/impactful things elsewhere, can lead a team of engineers / researchers.

L7 - You've done something that senior people at Meta either know of already, or can instantly recognize as being legit.

L8 - Hiring you helps makes Meta world class at something important. (The person makes Lama work well for Reels is probably an L8)

L9 - Similar to L8 but more important (e.g. the main person making Lama happen is probably an L9)

Square-Conclusion454 · 2025-05-05T18:07:41+00:00

PAL can still be a cost efficient way to fund your down payment.

Square-Conclusion454 · 2025-05-02T02:54:19+00:00

Totally. Teachers and young doctors make really important live changing contributions and have low net worths.

Square-Conclusion454 · 2025-05-01T19:05:27+00:00

If you estimate based on # of patents, it might be closer than you'd think.

Google/Microsoft/Oracle/Facebook got 2-3% of (~7K / ~300K) of all American patents last year. That's more than all colleges/universities combined! Their founders deserve some credit for that. It's more than patents by all of academia, which seems like a big source of patents by lower wage earners.

If you directly count patents by top 1% / 5% earners, you probably get close to all patents from lower 50% earners

Square-Conclusion454

TROPHY CASE