A Position of F*ck You
A Glance at Financial Planning
Welcome everyone, to my first ever Substack Article. Let’s jump right in.
F*ck You – The Gambler
It’s just a crude way of speaking the reality of most anyone growing up in our age. Achieve autonomy from the state, from your family, and from anyone who seeks your time, energy, or attention. A certain amount of money, or wealth, can put you into a position of where you do not have to sacrifice your time, energy, or attention for anyone, ever again. And that’s ultimately the goal, right? To live your life as you please?
This looks slightly different to each person of course. Some want to travel the Mediterranean in an 80 foot yacht. Some want to have 3 homes, a trophy wife, spend their winters in their 5000 SF chalet in Veil and summers on a Grecian island, and raise their kids in a private school in Switzerland. And some just want the white picket fence, golden retriever, “Japanese shitbox”, and to raise a few kids above the GMO, Seed Oil, Propaganda ridden society we find ourselves in. In this article, we are going to generalize and make assumptions for the average reader. From there, you can make your adjustments with your own goals and plans.
Define Your Future
The first major point for anyone, figure out what your definition of F*ck You is. Describe your major needs for the rest of your life. They can be abstract, such as always having X available or traveling every year for Y days or retiring at 25, 30, 40, whatever. The point here is to figure out what exactly you’re striving for, because each of these items above have their own costs and cost range. Retiring at 30 is going to look vastly different than working until 50/60/70. Being able to have top tier new cars, electronics and goods looks different than using the same car for 150,000 miles or having the same laptop for 8 years. We’ll dive into a lot of great examples of what someone who’s achieved “F*ck You” may want to consider implementing in their life.
Second major point for anyone, figure out how to get there. For some, this is going to look like wage cucking at Taco Bell, living with your parents, pumping 80% of your paycheck into crypto hoping for a 100x. For others, this is going to look like focusing on career/starting a business and scaling it to the point where you make an extremely competitive annual income. For others still, it’s going to be a mix of both, minimizing expenses, maximizing investments, and dedicating yourself to advancing your career while markets churn. Think anyone able to achieve over 6 figures right now is doing alright. I think the line in the sand for extreme individual comfort is probably around the $200k mark, giving you probably about $10k post-tax monthly. By the old rules(28-33% for housing), that gives you about a $2,800-3,300/mo spend on a mortgage which is about what you can get a $500k house for right now.
Value Your Future
Generally, you’re unlikely to find an amount of “F*ck You” for the next 50+ years under $2.5 million. That is, unless you plan to live in a van on the road or in a trailer park alone or without kids. There’s nothing wrong with wanting that lifestyle, and to be honest it’s quite a pragmatic and/or experience based lifestyle at that. But I’m making an educated guess that most people want the 4 bedroom, 3 bathroom 2500 SF home with the reasonably nice car, happy wife, and a few kids. The close knit, well to do nuclear family is probably the best outcome to stand against the machinations of today’s society. As time goes on, that “F*ck You” number will increase too, likely tracked closely to inflation. It’s about having a certain dollar value in today’s currency to begin implementing the plan, because a lot of costs surrounding lifestyle can be front-loaded to lower your future cost.
Home base
For example, buying a house in today’s dollars in cash gives you a place to stay for life and a locked in price point. If you try to buy that same house in 10 years, the price could’ve doubled and you would be subject to paying more for the same thing, and would have to worry about your investments outstripping the rise in housing costs. Who wants that worry in their F*ck You life? This may be a third or a fifth of your total “F*ck You” money spent on a house, but in my eyes, there’s no better single investment for an individual or family. If you really love the house, you can get 50 years of use, a family, and resale potential out of it. Or, leave it to your kids to use or split. And certain states, like Florida, allow you to do even more like lock in that estate as your homestead, making it so your taxes can only increase by a maximum of x% annually. In a high inflation environment, over a long time frame like 50 years, that could make a HUGE difference.
Long example, but anyways, front loading certain costs like this is important in the F*ck You life. You alleviate yourself from interest, mortgage payments, gain an appreciating asset in your portfolio, and give yourself a place to live. The main consideration here is location. If you plan to send your kids to public school, it’s a very important factor. If you plan to send your kids private, then the school system doesn’t matter so much as location for property taxes and home insurance. Picking a place on the ocean is obviously aesthetically pleasing but will probably be a hefty sum on insurance. And picking a place in a county with historically aggressive property tax hikes is likely to continue that trend and stay above adjacent markets.
Family planning
Considering the finances that go into having a family is one of the most important concepts. To have children or not. To have a spouse or not. Of course, some or even most of us have goals of being married and having kids, and we should consider these goals as eventualities for this financial consideration. With what’s going on in the public school system in the west right now, it wouldn’t surprise me if many are considering private schooling options. Private, religious, traditional schooling options. With this option however comes a hefty price tag, since you can’t rely on the state funded programs to educate your child.
For now, it looks like these private schools can run between 30k and 40k annually, so for one child over the course of their life, that’s 450-600k over 15 years. Then you have college, which will likely be another $30k to 40k/year(if they decide conservatively and don’t take out student debt) so worst case, ~$760k. Then you have all of the creature comfort costs like if they want an xbox, the newest game, equestrian classes, a new car when they get their driver’s license, etc. All of these costs, and you’re looking at $850k-$900k by the age of 21. Add in medical costs and upkeep like food and you may very well be over 1 mil per child.
Of course, there is a massive stipulation here. This is a number based on removing your child from the system. If you have a strong home life and feel okay with your school district, you could always try public, and save 50%+ of the costs of a child. There are also state and federal programs for private school subsidies if you’re not working or your household income is low. I’m not sure if there are stipulations for if you have money in the bank preventing you from using these programs.
Hanging your hat
Retiring early is usually part of the “dream scenario” where you take your extra time and travel, or go picking up women at the bar/club/coffeeshop or spend a lot more time with family. But to be honest, I don’t think most people would be happy retiring early. I think they just don’t want to feel under the thumb of their organization working to live instead of working for compensation. I think given a strong financial cushion and a position to negotiate, people would take larger risks, either by demanding better compensation or leaving for greener pastures. Sometimes too it’s about how we’re treated. And in the end, keeping the job til 35/40/45/50 makes a big difference in the amount of money you need for the rest of your life compared to retiring today with a lump sum. Having stable, supplementary income for another 15-20 years allows a lot of the costs of a family, lifestyle, etc. to be more easily achievable. You’re not dwindling down the nest egg so rapidly, and you can actually use a large sum of it to ROI in the system for a long time.
Now, if you want to go retiring early, you need to consider that you will have no major income sources for the next 50-80 years. And that scenario puts you heavily reliant on how your money is working for you, i.e. real estate appreciation, interest rates, the market. $2.5 mil isn’t enough to achieve “F*ck You” if you’re not going to use the system to your advantage. With that advantage comes additional risk than cash however. Unfortunately, if you want to retire today, you’ll probably need to double the number if you want any form of creature comfort. $2.5 mil can’t afford you rented apartments and leased cars for 80 years. $2.5 mil can get you the trailer park while retiring early and 80 years when it’s in the system, but not the white picket fence, not the family. $5 mil gets you the house, a few kids, and enough to live reasonably with GMO and seed oil free foods for a long time while 50-70% of your liquidity earns you ROI in the tradfi system.
The question now is though if you retire how expensive will your hobbies be? Are we talking a country club membership where you golf 3 days a week? Or are we talking a yacht where you travel the Caribbean and the Mediterranean and have to cover gas, upkeep & maintenance, and the salaries of multiple crew members. Or do you just need a TV, a gaming console, and some chips?
Helping hand
Retiring your spouse/mother/family is a good goal to have, but usually requires enough capital on hand to not only set yourself up for life, but also others. I personally prefer the subsidy method, like paying your parents mortgage off, or buying them something they normally wouldn’t expend on themselves that you know they would enjoy and use very regularly.
If you want to retire your parents, and they have no savings, you’ll probably need about 500k for each of them on hand. Assuming they’re 55-65, they’re probably looking for something smaller to accommodate to, such as a 2 bedroom condo. They’ll also probably enjoy local festivities instead of the extravagance as travel becomes harder, so the costs change accordingly. Travel to Greece and Japan and having a Chalet in Veil turns into a beach day, ice cream on the boardwalk, and half off shrimp appetizers at the local grill. Their definition of a splurge is likely going to be a cruise. And those $500k numbers are based on them not having any savings, and no real estate.
Retiring your spouse is a bit different. They’re going to be with you on all of your adventures. I think an important question to ask here is, are you going to fund all of their creature comforts, or will you have boundaries? I.e. will your retired spouse have 12 bags from 10 designers, 35 pairs of heels, and wear $500 dresses once? Or is she more pragmatic? Of course, I’m only using this example to prove my point, that retiring a spouse who wants to live at a certain status if possible is going to be a much heavier cost than someone who wears jean shorts and a blouse most days and is grateful for having a home and a happy family.
Powers that be
To end these discussion points, there is a very generalized topic to finish on. Escaping the state. Essentially what this means is being outside of the purview, out from under the thumb, of your local ruling class/authority/governing body. We have to contend with the reality that unless you make/have a certain amount of money/power/influence, you can be very easily leveraged by circumstance. The easiest of the three to acquire without entrenching yourself is money. For example, a crime that comes with a fine alone is not a crime for someone with wealth.
Anyways, what I mean to point out are two main silos of control that the state has influence over, and how having a certain amount of wealth can remove you from this influence. The first is propaganda.
Propaganda comes in the form of state funded decisions that have to do with narrative, group think, and the like. Its intention is to get society at large to feel and think a certain way. We saw this with great success during COVID. We see it with limited success around lesser topics, like the foods we should be eating or about how the weather is your fault. With wealth, you don’t need to rely on the traditional media sources to stay up to date on current events, unhindered by the swing/sway/lean of the platform. You’re able to stay above the groupthink bias and fearmongering that you get from both polarized sides of national media.
The second is Health. Health is much more pervasive and more difficult to navigate than removing propaganda, but is arguably more important. Without health and wellness on your side, you are likely to be plagued with issues and ailments solely because you don’t know better and much of the literature is targeted towards achieving a certain goal, by skewing data. A great example of the influence of the state on health is big business using sub-par products to cheapen the cost of foods, and by doing so not only decreasing the nutrition of the food we eat but also introducing chemicals, carcinogens, and materials not meant for human consumption. Many smaller scale businesses choose to keep their foods organic, but at the cost of higher prices, and that in effect limits their potential for growth. You can bet though, that the well to do buy the same foods that the market deems too expensive to buy, making it a privilege to eat cleanly. There are tons of food industry items that are mass produced and you don’t think about it, between Seed Oils and GMO’s or using grain feed when historically for thousands of years were grass fed or looking out for Organic foods. It’s a dance and I never thought as a kid that we would have to stand in front of a single item for 2-3 minutes just to make sure the food I’m trying to buy isn’t going to harm me.
Wrap up
Considering all facets of what you want your future to look like allows you to plot out what kind of lump sum you really need to achieve to get there. And yes, maybe that’s a moving goal post, but at least you have a general idea of the large costs that come with certain lifestyle expectations and can quickly revise your plans if necessary.
For someone with simple needs but the standards of an average person, $2.5 million should last you 50-75 years on this planet in the system. For someone who wants the family, kids(x2), private school, and the best nutrition available, you’re probably looking at the $4-5 million range. If you want to not only retire, but retire your spouse, and retire your parents, probably $6-7.5 million.
If you want the yacht too, you’ll probably need 8 figures. Yacht are expensive.
Seek Your Future
Now, how to get there. That’s going to look vastly different for everyone. Some will never get there, but if you get caught up in that thought you’ll likely give up before you start, and that’s no good for anyone. You don’t achieve your potential sitting on your ass waiting for life to come knocking. You go seek it.
There are some considerations that you have to make when seeking this amount of wealth in a short time. Taxes, taxes, taxes. Unless you play the tax game and play it well, you’re going to be paying 37% on your income. Maybe 25% if you make most of it by long term capital gains. That’s before any state tax considerations. States with no income tax: Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Wyoming.
But the point is, if you’re seeking to make $7.5 million after taxes, you really need just shy of $12 million to get there to buffer yourself from the 37% US federal taxes. Of course, this number adjusts based on which country you’re from. Always consider tax codes when seeking to gain wealth. Many of the world’s richest play the tax game. Sometimes it involves shell corporations and tax haven nations, sometimes it involves accelerated depreciation of assets, it all depends on where you’re located and what tax structures your nation follows. Usually, especially in the west, there are tried and true loopholes for the well to do that you can fit into your own personal gain.
Take the approach of income by tier. And leave the speed up to your drive. You need to decide on certain things.
Set a goal, achieve it, revel, move the goal post, achieve it again. A lot of people say the first million is the hardest. Let’s extrapolate this thought to income. If you think $100,000/yr is unachievable, make it your goal and manifest it. Once you get close, move the goal post. Maybe the goal post gets moved to $250,000/yr. Now you have to figure out how to scale what you do or leverage your free time to continue expanding your income. Are you going to put in the sweat equity? Or are you going to take the route of having your money work for you?
Are you going to work for someone else? If so, what are you going to be doing for them? What’s the glass ceiling? How can you continue scaling what you’re doing to take it to a level where you can achieve your nest egg goals? No disrespect, but being a garbage man doesn’t really have a skill to scale beyond the maximum potential of the career of a garbage man which is probably about $200,000/yr after 10-20 years in the industry. Maybe after 5-10 years you can start your own waste management business and if successful get to $400-500k, but that’s about it. Very limited growth potential in terms of options(I’m not knocking 500k/yr, lol).
Are you going to work for yourself? Do you have the wherewithal to be an autodidact and learn about what you need to know when an issue arises? i.e. do you have the capacity to learn at a pace to open a business, keep good financial books, learn about margins, figure out how to price your products/services, iterate, and any other pertinent information while also keeping it afloat and supporting your personal expenses? Business is a juggling act, and it’s not for the faint of heart, but this is where the sweat equity can earn you a lot. Being the sole owner, you are the decision maker, and as your margins grow, or your scale and revenues grow, so too will your bottom line and your take home potential.
Maybe there’s a middle ground approach. Like working(what some would call wage cucking), hustling in your free time, and letting your money work for you in capital markets. It’s not so specialized where all of your time is dedicated to one outcome, so it’s likely to take a bit longer, but it provides some mitigation to the negatives of each section while allowing you to have some strong growth potential.
Try a bunch of shit, learn from it, drop what’s not working(after a full-fledged effort and a considerable amount of time dedicated), iterate on what’s partially working, keep doing what does work. Maybe you have a good voice and think you could make it in audio content. Pursue that. Maybe you have a love for computers and gaming but never gave programming and world building a try. Maybe you’ve always hated the idea of sales and the art of persuasion but you see friends or coworkers really successful at it and want to push yourself to be more aggressively social. Whatever it is, give it a try. Most people walk on eggshells in society today, and it’s of great advantage to you to be a little shameless about trying things you know nothing about but find interesting. Put yourself in a position where there is a very high glass ceiling, give yourself a break and have a strong will towards pushing yourself to be better daily, and you will only know what happens when you really give it a full effort try.
good stuff!
It was a delight to read