Ask HN: Financial independence in high cost of living city?

I'm older (54), live in San Diego, CA. San Diego is also high cost with a 440K median house price.

I was employed as an electrical hardware engineer for a computer peripherals company until November 2014. The job market for electrical engineers in San Diego is currently in an awful state.

While I was employed, I managed to buy a vacation home which I converted to a rental property after I became unemployed. I also was able to build a large nest egg of investments and cash. I am using these to live off of at the moment.

I am Financially Independent to the point where I can pay for basic living costs, but not for fancy stuff like eating out or vacations.

When I became unemployed, I updated my home engineering lab with a new test equipment by selling items on Ebay which I no longer needed. I currently spend a lot of my time developing open source hardware,firmware, and software and upload my projects to Github.

If the job market in San Diego improves, I would consider going back to work, but it would have to be on my terms. I have enjoyed not having to commute to work every weekday. Any new job would have allow 80 to 100% telecommuting.

Financial independence can be achieved, but it requires sacrifice and dedication. For details on how to do this I recommend visiting the Mr. Money Mustache blog: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com for ideas and support.

It doesn't sound like you're looking for financial independence. It sounds more like you're looking to buy all the same things that everybody else buys and otherwise act like all the other adults you see, but be able to do so now with your entry level salary.

But that's what everybody wants. And it's why people end up living beyond their means.

If you want actual financial independence, that's pretty easy to pull off. Even in a place with million dollar houses. Just convince yourself that you don't need a million dollar house. Or a nice car. Or your own place without roomates. All you really need is to pay that debt down to zero over the next year or so then find an equilibrium where you can live on about a quarter of your take home pay.

Then you're done.

At a developer salary (even a canadian developer salary), that will start you down a path of saving a lot of money in a hurry. Enough that were you to lose your job entirely five years down the road you could happily coast along another five years before really needing to worry about money.

That's what you're shooting for. Notice that at no time do you do any of that coasting in a million dollar house. But if you keep at it, you'll eventually get to a place where you can buy that place in cash.

Nothing wrong with wanting a detached home. Wanting one where it's too expensive, or getting one far away because it's affordable while continuing to work where it's expensive, probably requires a rethink.

Right now you're building experience, knowledge and savings/investments, so you should probably focus on that. So live as cheap as practical where you are.

At some point the curves will cross. If you still want a detached house, and you haven't become rich relative to where you work, then move to somewhere that you can work and live cheaply. Then buy your house.

I'm a startup founder living in Toronto, and thought I'd post in counterpoint. I live in a small apartment, and pay myself using any money I can cobble together from grants, contracting, investment, etc. I have no interest in buying a house, and I'm actually pretty sure that committing to that would be counterproductive if you're founding your own startup. If you think it's necessary to have a paid-off house before you start something, then you likely don't fit the risk profile of someone who would successfully be able to do so. No first time startup founder I know owns their own house, and most pay their own rent, and most have jumped off to do their own thing because they simply cannot wait any longer and hate working on anyone else's stuff.

On the other hand, you're right about developer salaries being low here, comparatively. It's partly a function of the startups that exist here, and of Canadian cultural tendencies to just sit and simmer. If engineers are unlikely to jump ship, it's likely going to mean that salaries are lower than they could be.

So if you just want to get paid more, interview at a bunch of places and get higher offers, then tell your boss. If you want to be a startup founder, then quit your job when you've got six months' runway saved up, incorporate your company in London, ON, and do your best to get NRC IRAP and OCE SmartStart, and expect the rest to work out.