[grunch]

I think 50k would definitely be a game-changer... for most it would mean paying off car/credit cards and having a few months or even a year or more pay in savings. Having $300-500 less in bills each month is a huge booster to quality of life.

No, you can't retire on it, but you can continue working with a better grip on everything. That's what makes it a change of lifestyle, someone going from having to scrape to get by to having a solid amount of expendable income and a safety net is a change in lifestyle, a big one.

It would be a game changer if, like many people, you have 50k of debt, and most of your income is going towards paying interest on the debt.

It would be a game changer if that 50k coincided with an understanding of money management. Without that kind of wisdom, most people would revert to brand new piles of debt.

Has anyone looked at the homes your grandparents lived in? They suck. Trying to compare income v housing prices without adjusting fro the quality of home is blatantly ******ed.

You can easily buy a house in a suburb of any city in Texas that would comfortably fit a family of 5 for $300k, easily.

In the 70s, an engineer would make $10k/year where one might make $80-90k (or more if living in the "desirable US urban centers"). How would making 9x as much lead them to not be able to afford a house that's 9x as much?

For half a million, I could set you up in some very very nice houses. Even in overpriced areas like Phoenix and South Florida. Perhaps Toronto is different, but it's the exception, not the rule.

This. For the average debt-burdened individual, improved monthly cash flow resulting from the erasure of debt would be a significant boost in quality of life.

WAT.

The houses my grandparents lived in were awesome. Quality construction, old growth timber, style. Nothing like the half-prefab, mass produced, drywall from China toxic pieces of **** being built today.

Being out of the "rat race" is more a mentality and skill than a net worth figure, see all the lotto winners who were busto within a couple years. I think $50k would be a huge boost to an investment minded individual but would likely get spent fairly quickly by the large majority of the population.

sorry but i have to ignore redmanplus after all the...

l
o
l

Depends how you define "rat race".

Some see it as reward-less over working to endlessly get the next big bonus and it will probably never happen but they do it anyway.

Others see it as the pursuit of money to purchase larger and grander things of no utility or long term value - its a "keep ahead of the Jones" mentality.

Yet others view it as the ability to stop working and live off passive income.

This is how I took the question.

$50k isn't enough. The number I am aiming at is $4M. If I were single with no kids and intended to keep it that way, and planned to live frugally, I think I could have a hell of an outdoors/travel/volunteer lifestyle for about $700k.

$50k is what a laid off 58 year old who doesn't want to work at the gas station needs in savings to hold himself over until social security payments kick in, living very frugally in a mobile home purchased from bwana et al. and eating at home with groceries purchased from the food outlet, maybe with a once a month treat to the early bird buffet.

Exactly. Totally. Especially when they bask in the fruits of your labor(frequent golfing,extravagant lifestyle,1,000 times the pay).

I think the title of the thread is misleading since it's obvious $50k isn't anything you can retire on. The main point I was trying to get at was that, what can someone even do with $50k besides buy material things that would have ANY significant impact on their life because I was telling my friend that if you give the average person $50k it does nothing but buy something material or get stuck in a bank and is pretty useless (as far as still having to wake up every morning and go to work goes).

Maybe can be used for a few vacations or something but in the grand scheme of things it changes nothing. The only things that would change ones lifestyle is a much larger amount like 10m+, passive income, or a job thats actually enjoyable. I was basically looking for counter arguments to those views in making this thread.

This is true but only because you mentioned that the business itself makes them happy, IMO.

My friend brought up this point to me as well about starting a business and I countered with the position that just starting a business doesn't change anything in terms of quality of life/lifestyle and can actually make it worse. Like he was talking about hypothetically opening a restaurant with the $50k and that actually seems worse to me because most businesses fail for one, and even if it doesn't then your lifestyle now just is managing/running a restaurant for 10+ hours a day instead of working at whatever previous job you were at.

Actually seems that it would be worse because owning your own business would be more stress, less pay, and more hours/work. Unless it hit the type of success where you could just sell it and retire then it seems like it would actually decrease overall quality of life instead of increase it.

If you assume that optimal enjoyment of life is the goal since just having a bit more money in the bank still doesn't get you to the point of changing ones life, then to justify starting some restaurant or other mom and pop shop as being better than just using a degree and working, you would have to actually prefer working on a restaurant over your other option... as in, you'd have to prefer the lifestyle of someone that just manages a restaurant in general, since banking on the business being successful enough to maybe sell it and retire after 30 years of hard work is a bit optimistic.
wow, agree 100%

This is precisely what I was getting at. I've thought this ever since I was like 14 that something was wrong with the general model of life to just slave away until 65 and only THEN do you retire? Well who cares at that point.

If where you want to get is out of the rat race... it's not getting you anywhere, is it?

I suppose that it would change ones lifestyle in that they have a little bit of money each month so maybe they can go out to a restaurant here or there when not at work or spend some money on entertainment but I guess I'm referring to something that I think would have a big impact on quality of life. Also for sake of the example I was kind of thinking of someone who is getting by just fine, not scraping by and they can already afford to do things they want to when not at work. Obviously someone that's REALLY poor and BARELY scraping by would have a big boost to lifestyle with $50k.

This is what I had in mind. Being able to stop going to a job 50 hours a week that you don't enjoy. If you do enjoy your job then lucky you and your quality of life is just grand.

Where I live houses are expensive. A million dollar home is decent but far from a palace.


^ This house for example is 855K

^ 969K

^ 1.3M

WOW 300K is cheap!! In Victoria 300K won't buy much.
Even this house costs 479K

I'm interested in having this view challenged to hear other perspectives:

The way I see it is... your lifestyle and quality of life is extremely confined by what you're doing for a living because that's where a huge % of your waking hours are spent. So just having a bunch of money in the bank while going to work for 9 hours a day isn't changing anything. Maybe if you're one of those people that is happy just having material things or money in general then maybe its possible this isn't true but I think those types are extremely rare and it's mostly just people who think they would be happy in that situation until they get to it.

So if you assume what you're doing for a living has a direct correlation to quality of life, then either getting out of the rat race or finding a job that you genuinely enjoy seem like the only options. In which case, unless the amount of money you have in the bank is huge, then random amounts of money does nothing. Someone with $250k in savings in the bank still can't quit their day job even though they have a lot of money they are still living the same day to day life as the other people at their job who could very well be in debt.

It's kind of along the same line of thought of someone who spends their whole life saving all their money, living on $2k a month, and dying with $2m in savings or something (I've read stories of this happening). The money they saved was absolutely useless since they lived the same lifestyle as someone who was just barely getting by with $2k in the bank, except they just died and passed the money on to someone else to spend or do something with. Obviously it wasn't "useless" but in terms of that persons lifestyle it didn't change anything.

OP, I could go into details, but the entire way you're looking at this is completely wrong.

You completely ignore the fact that there is 168 hours in a week of which people who work spend only 35-60 with an average of 42 of those hours actually at work. The lifestyle of someone who has money vs someone who has debt is very different in those off-hours. You seem to be under the assumption that unless you can stop working completely then nothing else matters which is rather odd.

That is because some people are stupid. Yes there are insanely cheap people out there who work and work and save everything. It makes no sense to me but it is their life. The fact remains that these people do have the choice to have a better lifestyle but choose not to. If you are in their situation you don't have to make that choice. It is easy enough to avoid by just not being cheap and spending the money.

wow u guys depress me, how much money you need in life to be comfortable really sucks, i dont want to work my arse off, cant it all be easier.

Just take whatever amount of cash you need to live off of a year and multiply it by 25 and you can retire today, earning 4% a year to withdraw and live off of.

For example = $50,000 / 25 = $2,000. So if you can live off of $2,000 a year, OP, then you've made life changing money.

Personally, I'd need 50K a year (I live in the cheap cheap midwest, thank the lord), x 25 = $1,250,000. So if I received that amount, it would change my life and I'd quit my job.

$50k wouldn't do a damned thing for me...I'd be putting it in some safe investment vehicle for the next 3-4 years as my downpayment fund for when I buy a house at that point.

$1Mil would make a huge difference, though. However, I enjoy the job that I do and I'd keep doing it even if I had $100Mil...the money would just make day-to-day more "comfortable" and I'd get to travel a tonne more to conferences.

You are probably looking at central locations.




$256k, 3000 square feet outside of Dallas, TX



$480k, 4,000 sq feet. Outside of Dallas.


If you want to pay for location, you are going to have to, but it's far from the norm.

Location is kind of important. Yes if you want to live in the sticks or a satellite suburb you can get property for less but then you are also sacrificing quality of life.

This is a value judgment you're imparting. A lot of people live in suburbs because they enjoy it or its closer to their wants/needs etc.