Nope. Failure. Try inflation. ty.

Whoops. I suggest reading the title of the thread before making **** up.

ETA: A 5% real ROI for this is lol outreageous. GMAFB.

Since Friday morning.

I think the fact that you believe a person has to buy the $5-8 popcorn to "be entertained" is telling and shows why your thinking about money & entertainment in life pretty limited.

Actually I don't. As I said going forward I think going to the movies is fun and it is not something I do but somehow the idea of going to the movies came up and yes if you go to the movies you need should have something to eat while there. If not popcorn than candy or fast food all of which will be more than popcorn.

My idea of entertainment almost always includes booze so $6 popcorn isn't really expensive in relation to what drinks cost.

Ugh. Its not about personal preferences or whether you like popcorn or not. Its a representation of a normal adult activity that virtually everyone should be comfortable with doing for entertainment.

Sub in any other activity like, "Blah blah blah I wanna go to an art museum" or something of the sort. The point is that these trivial activities need to be saved for otherwise the hypothetical 10-15% of your entertainment budget is overspent.

So what you're saying here is that being able to buy some cheap things only once a week is OK if you have to bust your ass working 40+ hours a week, but it's not enough if you don't have to do anything productive?

...

Seems like you are just not the sort of person who would want to live on a reasonable wage with no effort.

Other than necessary expenses, gas is pretty much the only thing I need to pay for to entertain myself. Pretty much any sport is practically free outside of spending a few hundred each year to maintain equipment. Hiking is free. Camping is free (depends on where you go, obviously, but it's not expensive at all). Video games are practically free considering how many hours you spend playing 1 game. The fact that you required booze to be entertained is ridiculous.

The title? It says "If you had 1M dollars to live off forever could it be done and how?" How was anything I said inconsistent with that?

You should note two things. First, 5% would give us $50K, which is significantly higher than the $30K you said was too generous. Second, it's actually not super difficult to find funds that have returned over 5% real ROI (plenty of these funds did so since their inception date).

If you work the actual employment consumes time and energy. It acts as a form of free socialization -- even if you just go to work at least you interact with other people. If you are at home all day by yourself you'll be bored to death so you need to be able to go out more often.

I understand this. I'm just saying that it really isn't that difficult to find cheap hobbies to take up 8-10 hours of your time each day. I would love to be able to not have to work. Especially if I didn't live with my girlfriend, I could easily live on 20-30k a year in a small apartment. I guess it helps that when I socialize with friends it is mostly playing board games, poker or video games inside, or rock climbing outside or at the gym, rather than going to bars, eating at expensive restaurants, etc.

Is it really that difficult to replace 8 hours of working with 8 hours of playing DotA or chess or something? I find it pretty easy.

Again, you don't understand math in the slightest. The idea that you could invest in those funds is laughable and down right ridiculous.

Except those friends likely all have jobs. I think I said it earlier in the topic but basically if you are looking for socialization during normal employment hours you basically have a choice between bar staff (who like to spend money), the wealthy (again like to spend), old retired people (not really much fun), losers who have some stupid failed business idea, or the crazy. I guess with online poker becoming popular and with so much of the community being major nits about spending it offers an option if you know some poker players but normally it is really hard to find someone to do stuff in the afternoons with who isn't either going to want to spend money or undesirable.

I climb with people during normal employment hours all the time. You obviously don't know anyone who does shift work.

You mean like working at the gap?

Like firefighters? Like EMT workers? Like people working in steel mills? I mean come on. No wonder you people can't entertain yourselves during the day, you can't even be bothered to look something up on google before assuming the worst.

I bet I'm at a higher level of mathematical skill than you.

And let me repost, since you didn't address it in the slightest.

I knew a few people who worked shifts but they all worked for auto companies and were making either just under or in a few cases over $100k. I'm not sure how shift work is otherwise but generally I assume for a company to run 24 hours they must pay well. The only other data point for shift work I have is a girl I dated who worked for the company that makes those tabs on soft drink cans and she wa being paid $20/hr in the late-80s plus overtime. Assming this is standard for shift work it would effectively price them out of the group someone who makes $30k could spend time with without feeling bad.

Do you not understand that any variance = busto? I've mentioned this before but you still don't understand it. While you may have passed Topographical Analysis with Triangular globular differential Modeling 912812, you still can't understand a Stats 101 concept.

Here is how you can test this. Why don't you open up a montecarlo and test your theory. Or look at any of the ****ing graphs that exist of the market.

You seriously are exhibiting such a primitive level of understanding that I find it hard to believe you're not trolling.

LOL, you're funny. All this time I thought you just liked being an ass, but it's finally clear that you're just trying to amuse us.

I obviously understand that big losses can mess it up. Did you even take a look at the formula I provided? I said right then and there that r can be viewed as a random variable (i.e. it has a variance). But just having variance doesn't mess anything up, it just adds a random component. The variance might actually help you if you have a significant upswing. Obviously, a downswing can be problematic. But that's besides the point, since variance in and off itself is not necessarily a problem, because some years you will have upswings, in others you will have downswings, and in expectation they'll cancel each other out (I figured someone on a poker forum would understand this).

You don't ****ing understand ****. How the **** can you retire forever, if you have no ****ing money. FFS. Your "understanding" of this is anything but.

Aggregate expectation roflcopter

Prop bet me. Please. 100k. We'll run montecarlos.

Speaking of going bust and variance how would our hypothetical individual deal with **** happening?

Even if we assume that it is possible to maintain this budget we all agree it is pretty tight. **** happens all the time and if there is no room how is he going to pay for an unexpected expense?

A simple example. You either return 30% or -20%.

Year 0: 1m
Year 1: 776k
Year 2: 596.8k

Boom. We're busto. gg

People are basically thinking on a moronic level (lol aggregates gtfo) and don't understand that kurtotic distributions have only one pertinent end in this discussion.

You don't understand anything about BR growth. Literally anything. Variance is the entire problem.

After actually reading more than just the last 3 pages, I see why you don't understand how someone can live a decent life on 30k a year, Henry and Thremp. But I would say that most of it is due to the fact that you are probably used to living on far more than that, so you've never even attempted it.

I mean, you participated in a several page discussion on whether or not it is possible to eat healthy on $300 a month, in which you claimed that a) it's not reasonable to do so and b) that the cost savings between eating well out and cooking your own food is minimal (especially the bit about it costing $40 to make one meal, LOL). Both of these claims are so incredibly absurd I can't hold back laughter even thinking that two people who claim to know things actually believe this ****. Of course, when your definition of eating well include eating a prime filet, well then, you're an idiot, and "eating well" to you means "eating expensive artery clogging trash."

Please, tell me how much it costs to eat oatmeal, a banana, a glass of orange juice and some melon for breakfast, a sandwich on wheat/whatever healthy bread you like, with pickles/turkey/tomato/pepper/w/e else, an apple, beans and a glass of milk for lunch, some chicken, potatoes, broccoli, carrots and milk for dinner, and an assortment of fruit/nuts for snacks throughout the day.

Hint: if your total for that comes out to be much more than $300, and you don't live in NYC or LA, you're doing it wrong. I've been able to do this for ~$7.50 a day in Eau Claire, WI, and ~$8.00 a day in West Georgia. Obviously not your big urban area, but around where I live now outside of Baltimore, MD, prices on most of these foods are only slightly more expensive, and I could easily do it for $10.00 a day.

Even if you include buying vitamins/protein supplements/whatever, it's definitely no more than $500 a month to eat healthier than you've probably ever eaten in your entire life.

Reading through this thread to see how expensive you people think it costs to eat well is LOL. It's also pretty funny that you call eating well "surviving." I guess in comparison to eating steak every other night it's pretty good for survival, but that's about it.

It's also hilarious that you think socializing=going to a bar and buying overpriced drinks.

I could continue on with the ******ed comments, e.g. implying that books don't become available in libraries until they are irrelevant (other than poker books, what the **** books become irrelevant quickly and contain information that cannot be obtained elsewhere for free?), but I just don't see how anyone can actually believe the sorts of things that have been said in this thread.

This thread is pure gold.

Obviously there is a lot of truth to the fact that a single bad event could ruin you, but that's pretty much life for anyone who isn't a multi-millionaire, and that's not really the issue I want to address.

What is this supposed to illustrate? That if you get extremely unlucky two years in a row, you'll go bust? Wow, thanks for opening our eyes, none of us could predict such a thing. What about the flip side? What if you get lucky for two consecutive years? Are you implying that in order to get a 5% ROI, you'd have to take on a ton of variance? If so, I think you're exaggerating.