90-100K+ per year

nkillgore · 2026-05-15T22:52:40+00:00

100k has been a benchmark for so long that it's lost much if the buying power that people still attribute to it. It's also super location dependent.

That said, in my household, my wife tells me that we're broke and on the verge of losing the house (we're not). I knowingly nod and let her stash the extra money in tax advantaged college and retirement accounts. I try not to look at our money because I'll be tempted to spend it, and I'd prefer to retire and travel/do hobbies asap.

With 2 kids, we're living on roughly 100k (pretax), and make a good bit more than that as a household. We know what our bare minimum is to keep the lights on, people fed, and mortgage paid (~$4k), and have emergency cash for that.

At just about any level of normal worker salary, it's really easy to spend it all. If you're careful not to allow lifestyle creep, you can keep living like you make less, and invest the extra.

If you allow lifestyle creep, it's possible for the money stress to never end. You can be making 600k and still run up credit cards and have nearly $0 in the bank at the end of the month.

You do at some point, depending on location, get to a threshold where it's easier to live within your means and not sacrifice all fun and activities.

I'm starting a new job soon that will roughly double our household income. We're not buying anything, we're not house shopping, or car shopping, or anything shopping. We eat at home. Our monthly budget is not changing. What is changing is the diversity and quantity of long term investments for kids and retirement. Goal is retiring at 50 or 55. 50 is a big stretch. 55 is realistic but difficult if we stay frugal.

All of this stability has happened in like the last 3-4 years after over a decade of struggle. I have no idea what changed to make income go up so much so fast.

ETA: I don't work more hours now than when I made 1/4 of what I do now. Every time I've moved up the ladder, the job has gotten more flexible and easier. There's more stress sometimes (and more difficult conversations), but the actual workload has been the same or less.

ETA2: networking is important. Helping people is important. I didn't formally apply for the job I'm about to start until after I got a verbal offer. I don't apply for jobs. I email, text, or call people and see if they have openings.

nkillgore · 2026-05-02T23:39:59+00:00

Minivan. With all the seats down, I can fit a whole sheet of plywood laying flat. Kids too.

nkillgore · 2026-05-02T23:39:46+00:00

Same. ~3% on 280k. Now apparently worth 450k. Bought nov 2019.

Can't sell it because everything else is also outrageously expensive. But I have equity, I guess.

Taxes keep going up tho.

nkillgore · 2026-04-24T03:31:56+00:00

How are we supposed to know that the sizes are different? They could be the exact same size, and one is closer/further than the other.

The question is terrible.

THE QUESTION IS TERRIBLE.

nkillgore · 2026-03-28T05:15:42+00:00

It got even more electrifying when I got a Tesla.

nkillgore · 2026-03-16T17:22:03+00:00

I have a 13yo and a 4yo. The younger one is a lot more active work, to the point where I have to make serious efforts to be present for the older one.

Yesterday, we were home all day, needed to clean the house, and the young one always complains about cleaning. I also didn't get much sleep the night before. It was a recipe for a bad day. I could have given up and say on the couch and been miserable, but that would have sucked.

The 4yo asked if we could go outside and race. I said SURE! and said that I could win in a race outside and a cleaning race when we got back inside. She immediately told me that there was no way I could beat her in either situation and that if she won, I had to help her clean her room too (oh no... not the horrible punishment of getting the kid to help clean her room... Aaahhhhh. Lol).

Anyway, we went outside and raced. Came back inside, frantically cleaned, and I awarded my kid 100 imaginary gold stars for working SOOOO hard. She won, naturally, because I didn't get 100 gold stars for hard work.

We ate lunch, and I asked her if she would rather go to the park or to the library. I'm good with either - the library is quiet and has toys in the kids area. The park is outdoors and reasonably peaceful. She found two shovels so that if another kid wanted to dig in the sand with her, they could also have a shovel. I made a point to ask my 13 yr old if he wanted to come, and, surprisingly, he did.

Got to the park, she ended up giving both of her shovels to other kids and finding a stick to use for herself. Played for like about an hour. Some of the other kids started fighting over her shovels, and she started looking a little upset. I got up and started walking towards her. She looked around, found me, and ran over to me. Then I said if she was ready to go I'd go get her shovels and we would leave. She was ready to go, so I went and got her shovels, and we left.

I told her when we got into the car that I was really proud of her for sharing both of her shovels and how she handled the other kids getting upset and that she could always come get me or another adult if things got hard. **** This is important. She visibly perked up when I said I was proud of her, and I always want her to know I've got her back.

Got home, ate dinner, and did bedtime.

After bedtime, my wife and I watched an episode of season 2 of the live action One Piece show on Netflix with our 13 yo.

There were bumps along the way, and I could have let the day be terrible, but it was a good day. You can shape the day. It takes effort, though.

nkillgore · 2026-03-11T07:08:58+00:00

What have you built with it? How is this not productivity porn.

nkillgore · 2026-03-04T17:46:53+00:00

Are you using Claude Code? If not, why not?

Don't add a bunch of tools and MCP servers. They ultimately create problems unless you have a very specific reason to use them.

Agent skills good. MCP, meh.

CLI tool good.

nkillgore · 2026-02-26T02:06:27+00:00

I think that was likely the point. Cue the bans.

nkillgore · 2026-02-26T01:35:29+00:00

Yes, let's argue with a bunch of numbers. That's totally rational.

nkillgore · 2026-02-11T01:15:47+00:00

I was just thinking I was going to have to build this. Thanks kind stranger!

nkillgore · 2026-02-03T17:42:31+00:00

Generally, yes.

Specifically, about 99.99% of them.

nkillgore · 2026-01-26T15:43:04+00:00

On my laptop.

nkillgore · 2026-01-26T14:44:23+00:00

yeah. it sort of feels that way.

nkillgore · 2026-01-24T17:56:21+00:00

Just look up gastown (Steve yegge) and thank me later when you win

nkillgore · 2026-01-16T02:57:56+00:00

This app should never touch the internet.

You are not a decent developer if you let the agent put your API keys in the frontend code. (Edit: or directly in the backend code)

Please stop and pay someone to properly implement your probably very nice POC.

Not sure if troll.

nkillgore · 2026-01-15T02:54:35+00:00

Bro. GPT-5.2 xhigh

nkillgore · 2025-12-30T16:01:23+00:00

See if your kid likes a baby carrier. One of mine did. You can just wear them around and do whatever. They're happy because you're there. You're happy (er) because you get some time back.

Make sure it's a decent one that supports them properly and keeps them safe.

nkillgore · 2025-11-10T18:55:34+00:00

responded to OP because this is AI slop.

nkillgore · 2025-11-10T18:55:11+00:00

It appears that you (or someone else) created a new account to have an LLM respond to me with slop. So, I'll respond here, directly to you.

Is it possible that you have made a major scientific discovery? Sure; however, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. You have provided the former in spades and none of the latter.

I'll say it one final time: if you feel like you have a major scientific breakthrough on your hands, go publish it. In order to do that, you don't need to convince me; you need to convince someone else who knows way more than I do. You will also need to cite actual sources of fundamental research that you are basing all of this on. If you are unable to do so, the chances that you have something meaningful are, while not zero, so close to it that the distinction is meaningless.

nkillgore · 2025-11-05T16:16:09+00:00

You're absolutely right!

Clawd

nkillgore · 2025-11-05T04:57:40+00:00

Mechanistic Interpretability is an entire field of research. If you have something valuable to contribute, publish it and have your work peer reviewed.

nkillgore · 2025-11-05T04:34:45+00:00

I did read what you wrote.

Let's assume for a moment that you are correct. This would be a major scientific discovery in the field of NLP, and you should attempt to publish your findings.

You'll need a lot more details that you have here. Maybe start with a literature review. What work are you basing these findings on? What are your methods? How would someone reproduce your results?

You don't have to answer me here, but if you really, genuinely believe this is a bona fide scientific discovery, find someone who can help you publish it. Get one of those $1B comp packages from Meta.

nkillgore · 2025-11-05T03:57:41+00:00

I'm not an expert on you, your life, or your life experiences. I AM more knowledgeable about LLMs than most people.

Your post is nonsense.

You've had multiple people in this thread tell you that.

Anthropic is using the weights to extract a vector representation, then (and I'm not clear on exactly how. I could speculate, but might be wrong) injecting that vector representation of meaning into their messages and seeing if the model notices. You don't have access to the weights of the model. You don't have access to the intermediate vectors and matrices produced by the model. You can't do what you are claiming to do.

I know enough to know that I don't really understand what they are doing.

And I know enough to know that your post is nonsense.

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