Comment by fooker

Comment by fooker 2 days ago

7 replies

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You do not understand compounding growth.

You could have looked up the numbers for indices yourself, but here you go -

S&P500 -> ~4 million

NDXT (top 100 tech) -> ~14 million.

> just save 100k out of your 170k comp

Yes, that was my starting salary, and that's almost exactly what I saved.

This calculation assumes your salary is somewhat constant and maxed out as the person I was responding to claimed, but in my experience you can expect your tech salary to double every ~5-6 years.

ahtihn 2 days ago

Your math seems way off?

NDXT went from ~2300 in 2015 to ~12500 in 2025. That's ~5.5x return. So even if you had your whole 1M saving in 2015, you'd only have 5.5M now. No idea how you get nearly 3x that?

And it's way worse if you take the actual scenario which is 100k added every year instead of starting with the 1M.

S&P500 is worse yet, at about 3.5x total return if you had the whole million at the start.

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  • ragingregard 2 days ago

    Really appreciate your comment, literally the only comment in this long sub-thread that picked up on the nonsensical numbers fooker put out.

    Realistically fooker's investment strategy into NDXT of 100k over 10 years would have produced around $2.5M depending on exact timing in the year and partitioning of that 100k. Way less than $15M nonsense. Also would have required extreme conviction alike the crypto types and completely counter how typically multi-million portfolios are managed (diversified).

    Also, who needs 15M, at 5M net wealth there honestly is no reason to be working at a $200k/year job. You'll make way more after-tax income even assuming lousy 5% yearly return thru capital gains. Same story for 2.5M @ 10%.

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    • raw_anon_1111 2 days ago

      Counting on 10% returns long term is way to aggressive especially when you have to consider sequence of returns risks during withdrawals. Even 5% is not conservative enough while you are in the withdrawal phase.

      If I had $5 million of investments outside of my home, would I work? Maybe? My job is far from stressful, I work from home, I “retired” my wife over 5 years ago when she was 44 eight years into our marriage so she could pursue her passions and we could travel a lot.

      All of my friends still work so what could I possibly do with my free time that I don’t do now? The only restrictions that not working would lift is that we could more easily spend an extended amount of time outside of US time zones.

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      • ragingregard 13 hours ago

        > Counting on 10% returns long term is way to aggressive especially when you have to consider sequence of returns risks during withdrawals

        Yes though the propose is not to retire. There's better things to do with your life (IMO) than work a standard 9-5 job for some corporation once you've accumulated sufficient wealth to have financial independence.

        > Even 5% is not conservative enough while you are in the withdrawal phase.

        Assuming you spend 5% per year. 5M@5% is 250k, 200k+ after tax for CG + eligible divs. That's a lot of money to spend every year, more than most families get to earn thru their labor yearly. Can be secured against downturns with higher 4%+ bond allocations too. 5M is financial independence for vast majority of households. 2.5M can be as well for many if their baseline spend remains at 100k.

        > All of my friends still work so what could I possibly do with my free time that I don’t do now?

        Financial independence provides vast opportunities for those with ideas but lacking time. There's a reason most businesses are pursued by those who have financial wealth on their side.

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raw_anon_1111 2 days ago

I calculated saving $100K out of $170K gross some pre tax and most post tax is living off of around $1800 a month.

And again, expecting your salary to double every six or seven years is not realistic for most developers.

Most developers making around $120K in 2013, aren’t making $480K now.

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LunaSea 2 days ago

$170K as a starting salary, scratch that, as any salary, is already way beyond the average SWE salary.

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  • raw_anon_1111 2 days ago

    That’s true. I said “top out at”. When I left AWS working in the ProServe (cloud consulting division) in 2023, I was seeing “architect” positions in Atlanta - I didn’t live there any more, but most of my network was still there - topping out at $175k. But for “senior” developers it was even less.

    I obviously decided to stay in consulting and work full time for a third party consulting company.

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