It's worth mentioning that retiring early is an important goal in and of itself. You can either spend the bulk of your healthy years working towards a far off goal in your 60's, or you can work hard in your 20s and 30s and then spend your only time on this earth doing things that interest you, with your spouse.
I'm gonna die before be I can retire (cuz shit happened). I decided to deal with this by getting a remote job and traveling. My cost of living is lower than when I lived in SF, and every weekend can be a mini vacation with a little planning. It's a new development, just since December. I'm planning to do it thru end of year to see how I like it.
I did this for 18 months, figured out that stable personal relationships were critical to me (read: met someone I loved) and settled down again. It was completely worth it though as it really changed my outlook on the world and I'm a much happier person. I also feel more grounded in where I'm at in my life. I wish you all the best, if you ever want to chat with someone who has been a digital nomad and knows a few spots, feel free to reach out to me directly.
> or you can work hard in your 20s and 30s and then spend your only time on this earth doing things that interest you, with your spouse
What if your spouse wanna spend her 20s and 30s with you, in a place that has a normal cost of living, doing a job that doesn't require you to be on 60hours a week?
What if she doesn't wanna wait for you to retire or she doesn't want to retire early (or can't)?
What if you spend your 20s and 30s to do the things you like and interest you and then spend the rest of your life working a steady job enjoying your family?
It is possible to work hard in your 20s and still have a lot of time to do what you like.
It is not possible to do what you like in your 60s with the same energy you had in your 20s.
It's not binary, you either work or stay with the people you love doing interesting stuff, you can do both if you realise that retiring at 38 is not that important as a goal.
> What if your spouse wanna spend her 20s and 30s with you, in a place that has a normal cost of living, doing a job that doesn't require you to be on 60hours a week?
I'm not sure 'bout the exact number of hours, but the top comment in this thread already said "In fact you'll typically find significantly better work-life balance at a FAANG than a startup.".
> "In fact you'll typically find significantly better work-life balance at a FAANG than a startup."
I agree with that sentence.
But it also depends on what people are looking for. If working at a FAANG means having to spend a capital for housing in the bay are, maybe that's not what they really want.
Or maybe life in the bay area is not the kind of lifestyle they like.
My point was more about trading money for freedom, especially freedom from bureaucracy/politics and freedom to prefer to be with your spouse instead that being at the office to retire early in your life and maybe divorce in the meantime.
We are young only once in our life, we have plenty of time to work hard.
> It's worth mentioning that retiring early is an important goal in and of itself
Is it really?
I'm not sure retiring early is such an important goal per se.
There are many categories where it isn't true: researchers, scientists in general, doctors, writers, journalists, politicians, teachers, artists (some arts more than others) etc.
The more they age, the more their reputation goes up.
I think many of those people having retiring at young age as a goal are going to change their mind when the time comes
Retiring at (really) young age is a goal when you are in your 20s, not so much anymore when you are in your middle 40s and have a good stable job, where you are respected
It's amazing what you can do with life if you don't care much about your reputation. I'm not in my middle 40s yet (still ~10 years off from that), but have a good stable job, feel respected, and still totally want to go for early retirement in 5-7 years.
You got a point, a provocative one, but still one.
Let's expand it: it's also amazing what you can do if you don't care much about being good at what you do and pass it to the others (that's what reputation is for, being authoritative), it's even more amazing what you can do if you don't care about your family or other people in general.
Madoff achieved a lot by not caring about scamming other people
Then he got caught
It's ok to not care, but rest assured that one day not caring will catch up with you
What I mean is: if your wife wants to move far away from the place that will give you early retirement, maybe it's because she hates the kind of life that will let you retire early...
Is it better to retire early (much early!) or end up divorcing or having an unhappy marriage?
Have you thought about that?
These are the kinds of compromises people usually go through when they are building something that involves more than ME.
