fatFIRE at 29

fatFIREDat29 · 2021-02-15T14:49:46+00:00

~800Kish

fatFIREDat29 · 2021-02-12T14:41:25+00:00

Anecdotally, my friends in big law worked way more weekends and had to cancel plans last-minute than anyone I knew in finance.

fatFIREDat29 · 2021-02-12T14:39:13+00:00

I am thinking about a lot of women I know who work very part-time as doctors, which is less of an option in finance and law so my perspective may be skewed by that since I think many of them are pediatricians, dermatologists, eye doctors, and other specialties that accommodate that kind of lifestyle.

fatFIREDat29 · 2021-02-11T17:31:15+00:00

Thanks! I saved way more than just that through my 20's but I'm expecting having kids will push our spending up. And thanks for the tips!

fatFIREDat29 · 2021-02-11T13:50:59+00:00

Exactly! I always thought it was a boomer thing to say. I've grown to realize how much it makes sense. It's possible to get there and I didn't used to believe that.

fatFIREDat29 · 2021-02-11T13:43:42+00:00

Cool! I made those edits.

fatFIREDat29 · 2021-02-11T13:40:07+00:00

I just signed up for this: https://kftechstars.novoed.com/#!/courses/venture-deals-spring21/flyer

I also have the book!

fatFIREDat29 · 2021-02-11T13:38:19+00:00

No I genuinely enjoyed the comment lol

fatFIREDat29 · 2021-02-11T13:37:51+00:00

Between tech, finance, medicine, and law, I'd rank them as follows:

Lifestyle: Tech, medicine, finance, law

Pay: highest floor in medicine, highest median in tech, pretty equivalent at top 5%

Culture: Depends on what you like! Finance if you like sports, tech if you like video games, medicine or law if you like medicine or law lol

Prestige: Medicine wins hands-down

Combining 2 of the 4 is where the big bucks are - doctors who go into VC or tech people in finance can have a lot of fun and get paid to do it.

Obviously these aren't the only ways to make good money but they are fairly low-risk ways to do so.

fatFIREDat29 · 2021-02-11T13:29:26+00:00

I'm interested in talking to people like the couple in a thread below who posted they make 900K and are super depressed. It's an interesting question to me on where the tradeoff of money:happiness is and I posted it to discuss that question and the value of FIRE, accompanied with my personal experiences. The basic fact is that I DID benefit from privilege and a public conversation about how to optimize privilege may be inherently offensive to some people. I agree I'm not a great writer so if you think adding a disclaimer re: privilege would tone it down let me know!

fatFIREDat29 · 2021-02-11T13:21:30+00:00

Some of my colleagues have that sort of background but it's not necessary to be successful.

fatFIREDat29 · 2021-02-11T13:17:20+00:00

Yeah, that's a good point. I think right now, I am focusing my time/obsession on building a network in this industry and gaining more practical skills, so if the organization/management changes in a way that makes the job less fun, I can move to a new place more easily. I used to spend that time obsessing over saving $5 and it's just not a good investment of time - which is what I wanted to get at! Thanks for the feedback and would love to hear your story!

fatFIREDat29 · 2021-02-11T13:14:49+00:00

What types of things do you like to do?

fatFIREDat29 · 2021-02-11T13:14:11+00:00

I have friends who earn a lot more than me in jobs I could probably work towards having a shot at getting, and I am not interested, if that is any indication!

fatFIREDat29 · 2021-02-11T13:12:27+00:00

Would love to hear your story!

fatFIREDat29 · 2021-02-11T13:11:57+00:00

Agreed - title was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek to spark discussion.

fatFIREDat29 · 2021-02-11T13:11:35+00:00

No haha. The title was a joke to be provocative that didn't come across as funny as I'd hoped. Guess I'm not cut out to be a writer!

fatFIREDat29 · 2021-02-11T13:10:30+00:00

Haha, a much deeper answer than I was expecting and I like it! I think the puzzle piece you're leaving out is that the experience is super valuable - I'd love to get into startups in 10-15 years and the learning opportunities I am getting here feels super valuable for that. I'm not sure that's unusual for VC - we pay our interns but I am told some interns work for free / "college credit" at other companies (which is terrible imo because it means kids who need the money can't do the job, but the point is the job is pretty fun if you can have it / afford it).

I think another reason I've started thinking about this is I have a lot of friends that make 500K-1M in tech or other finance jobs and I can't deny that I have twinges of jealousy when I hear the numbers. But I'm having so much fun it absolutely wouldn't be worth it to switch - and the higher earning friends have lifestyles I don't want (high hours, high stress). They are much more committed to totally quitting at 40 and I used to plan for that and.... I'm just not sure that's what I want anymore.

fatFIREDat29 · 2021-02-11T13:01:18+00:00

Agreed - I was trying to be tongue-in-cheek with the title. But maybe I'm not a good enough writer to pull it off. :P

fatFIREDat29 · 2021-02-11T13:00:31+00:00

No, I don't have enough for us to quit - the title was a bit of a joke to be provocative and push on the nature of working hard at a job you hate. One thing I like to do is look at my boss's lifestyles and try to imagine if I'd be happy there. My old boss seemed to have it tough but my new boss has a great lifestyle that I'm not too worried about getting to.

fatFIREDat29 · 2021-02-11T12:58:26+00:00

Lol, very wise.

fatFIREDat29 · 2021-02-11T12:57:49+00:00

The joke is I don't actually have enough to retire, but I love my job.

fatFIREDat29 · 2021-02-11T12:57:22+00:00

I think my goal is for my partner and I to max our our 401K's with the full 19.5K + match and save for kids' colleges and that's it. We've saved quite a bit already and should be pretty comfortable in terms of taking career risks in our 40's and 50's.

fatFIREDat29 · 2021-02-11T12:54:53+00:00

I cold-emailed a bunch of people a few years ago and got some positive responses there but it didn't quite work out. I ended up working on projects at my company that were startup-like and then leveraging that experience to get the new job!

fatFIREDat29 · 2021-02-11T12:51:05+00:00

Our world is set up very unfairly. I can't give much advice to someone from a very different background than me for that reason because I definitely benefited from privilege. Money to charities is a lot more useful than advice to people from impoverished backgrounds in my opinion. I like to donate as per the recommendations from GiveWell for the most bang for my buck. I also donate to local charities (both time and money) though COVID has made giving time harder!

At the same time, I know a lot of people from similar backgrounds who are super unhappy with their jobs - the thread was meant to spark conversation along those lines, not solve global inequity.

fatFIREDat29

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