Another possible removal of golden handcuffs
- Thread starter Aquarians
- Start date
I'm clearly not starving. On the other hand, ask some $150k / year engineers from the Bay Area (ideally also with wife and kid(s)) if they're absolutely thrilled by their jobs and 'overload' class status, it's the same here.
I'm also fully aware there are guys in this world who have it a lot worse than me but you're surely aware that dismissal of valid complaint on the basis of "others are having it worse" is a logical fallacy. And actually, solving my legitimate and rational complaints and pokes at the defects and absurdities of the current system is what will ACTUALLY make their lives and everyone's lives better. Not putting me down for not applauding laud enough with the herd.
In my native country (which is much much smaller then the US) there is a shortage of approx 30,000 IT'ers. So globalization seems not to work fully to say at least. Companies are even trying to find people without any IT education to teach them at work. Shows how desperate the situation becomes.
When my youngest son finished his IT education he had already 6 months before graduating a fix contract (so no probation period) and a company car (Mercedes). He was only 22.
Your name aside, he got a Mercedes so it's like super-hard to guess what that country, much smaller than US, is
Can a person who is worth $5 million complain that he is poor because some others are much richer than he is. And then dismiss any mention of the fact that there are so many people who have it much worse as a logical fallacy?
You are in the top 1% or income earners. You don't have a valid complaint either.
My guess you are upset because you are not YET in the top 1% of people by net worth ( i think you need a net worth of $400K to be in that 1%).
If you don't already own property, i suggest you start buying some, then it wont be long before you are too.
Well, maybe a bit what you're saying but probably not for the reasons you think (will talk about it later). Anywayz, your post reminded me of this:
Your name aside, he got a Mercedes so it's like super-hard to guess what that country, much smaller than US, is
I don't live in the same country as my son.
I divorced years ago and he was living with my ex. 
He might soon join me however as he wants to start daytrading too. He noticed that it makes more money and gives more freedom then his actual job.
Seems like he is more or less in the same situation as you.
I have the impression that he is not complaining about his salary. He does not like his job. I know that feeling. There are a lot of people that switch for a lower paid job as they feel more happy in that new job.
The best of course is to have a more pleasant job and more money.
I'm seriously thinking of also walking the path pioneered by Fan27. At the moment I'm employed with a good salary but in a domain completely unrelated to my interests, experience and drive. Perhaps it's possible to live a life of grindwork when you've got zero drive to it, but if I can help avoidig it, I'll give my best shot to escape from it.
Question's how much of personal finances would you consider reasonable to risk into a self-employed venture and how long would that be reasonable to take?
The question on how long is important: a woman won't give birth to a baby earlier than 9 months, if I could do the things I wanna do in 2-3 months, I wouldn't need to quit my job to work full time on that. I'd say 9 months - 2 years, problem's I've only got money for the lower estimate, so 9 months.
On how much to risk: ideally less than 25% of savings, in my case it would be 50%. So sort of 4x more risky than my own conservative view. Yours might differ
Final thoughts: why the heck would I (people in general) need to quit their job in order to make real progress on something meaningful, outside the soul-sucking corporate job? In my experience, the job only provides enough to live through, and in exchange asks for what is effectively all my available time and energy to work on crap that will never get me out of the hole, just provide enough so I don't succumb either. Of course it doesn't help at all having a wife and kid, as a bachelor at least I had full weekends to grind on my own stuff and 2x12 hours undisturbed makes wonders. Now when the job is not sucking my time, the family is.
“A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.” ( Bob Dylan ). I'm probably at the lowest point in my life from this definition of "success" and feel that if I don't do something about it I'm gonna get stuck here forever.
Don't give up the salary until you can't afford to spend time at work because the trading is so successful. Don't consider giving up work until you're making money with long-term trading: if you can't make money long-term trading, you certainly won't be able to do it through day-trading.