Making a good income as a freelancer requires work. And clients. And paying attention to clients' needs. And spending much more time organizing your financial and business life. And dealing with work/life boundary issues. It's something I like to refer as a "job."
And he's certainly not "retired," as he seems to claim, if he's paying the bills freelancing. It kind of sounds like he's decided to take a major income hit in order to have more lifestyle freedom (aided by living in a place with lower costs of living). Which is totally fine! Especially when you're young. But that's a major trade-off, and not one that should be taken lightly.
(and P.S. - I personally did not relocate, so my living expenses are still high)
But. You come off as someone who has just barely started thinking about these issues. You're being wildly overly simplistic about how freelancing works in real life. And using the skydiving billboard as a trigger makes it sound like "living your dreams" means doing extreme sports and hanging out on the beach. Which is fine, but kind of shallow and definitely not the end-all be-all of a well-lived life.
This submission has zero content.
Most people start with freelancing then move on to start ups when they get sick of playing client roulette. He went the other way around. There's probably an interesting story there, something way more compelling than rehashing Tim Ferriss and Ramit Sethi in the most schlocky way possible. But it doesn't look like he'd know how to tell it.
By the way, what didn't you like about the way I wrote my post(s)? I'm honestly interested in hearing your feedback, since this is my first blog.
I'm interested in what you have to say, but you're gonna have to be more detailed and less hand-wavy to keep people interested.
It is going to be bumpy and you need to have the peace of mind to focus on the present.
Moving to a foreign country to save money could be a good idea, but only if you would like to live abroad. If you do it only for the money your life will be miserable. Also the cost of leaving your local network behind might be very high
However, there are many people out there who are familiar with these concepts, and want to act on them, but keep putting it off. So seeing this kind of thing hit the HN front page once in a while, because reading it again rekindles the idea in the minds of those who are interested, but haven't yet acted.
Even if it's just making websites, you're increasing the size of the pie, not just trying to take other's slices. So why place this heavy moral burden on success?
Bill Gates is certainly an admirable figure, but really in spite of his philanthropy and not because of it IMO. He advanced the state of the art and made markets where none before existed. The "developers first" culture he created made it possible for regular people to make real livings in software, bringing tech out of the nerd boondocks.
But I'm not objecting to that: What I am objecting to is the sort of "me first" mindset that you see in that page. Granted I'm not saying that not everyone needs to be a saint, but you do need to be aware that there are other people out there.
