My favourite Dr. Who quote: "Work for? I don't work for anyone. I'm just having fun."

Describes me, even though I receive money every month. My expenditures are considerably less than the money I receive every month by having fun. If I didn't receive money, then I would be in trouble, so I don't really qualify for your question, but I'm having fun so I'll answer anyway.

Step #1. Reduce my expenditures below what most people consider reasonable. I lived for more than 5 years on less than $10K a year. It was much easier than I thought. I discovered that spending more than this amount of money, I was no happier. Who knew? What really counted was having so much more income than outgo that money became completely irrelevant to me.

After I did that, I stopped worrying about working. There isn't a job in the 1st world that pays less money than I'm comfortable with. I started taking jobs that interested me instead of jobs that paid me money.

Then I got married. That threw a monkey wrench into the works! But I'm slowly working thought that ;-)

Honestly, people tie themselves to a grindstone to make as much money as possible because they think it will remove stress and give them a nice life. I don't think that works most of the time.

This means zero other expenditures: you need to already own all furniture and appliances you want, and you can't have a method of transportation other than a bike and feet. There will probably be random other expenses like light bulbs, repairing a flat bike tire, etc., but it seems to be possible. Did I get the math right, or am I forgetting something (like an uncovered expense, or that you can totally have a car as long as it's electric or so)?

When you have children, it gets worse on that front. :(

The bright side is that it's still possible to achieve if you both have the discipline: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/

I too live extremely cheaply, but my girlfriend has way more expense than me (still reasonable, but too high in my book).

We are not married, but we spend a lot of time together and I am a little afraid that this difference in how we spend money will be a problem.

How did you manage it?

My very first step was to have her create a save account where she deposit each month a little bit of money, after I explained her the why she need one she started to accumulate money pretty quickly and in a very disciplinate way, all those money however disappeared when she bought a new house (but I believe it is fair).

I was lucky/fortunate in that my wife and I both have a similar outlook when it comes to financial planning. We both want to achieve financial independence before the traditional retirement age and as such, we keep track of our expenses to ensure we're saving enough each month.

Before we got married, we sat down and talked about these things, a lot. Each relationship is different, but in my opinion, if you're in a serious relationship, openness and honesty are pretty important. Talking about future goals, plans, etc. can go a long way.

I have had a reverse path - I spent my early career working for a research lab, where the the work was immensely intellectually satisfying and fun for the most part. However, the pay was so ridiculously low that my industry salary was a few integer multiples of my researcher pay.

Insurance is my main hedge against these risks. I try to follow a healthy lifestyle as well. I used to keep fish and it's amazing how much longer fish live when they aren't stressed. I try to replicate that. Finally I try to buy long term, low risk investments (like government bonds) with my excess cash. However, I keep a few years worth of money available in liquid assets for things like disability.

Probably the biggest risk is getting a mental illness that isn't covered by long term disability insurance. I have no idea how to deal with that one :-( All of my skills to live simply may be useless if I lose the mental ability to use them.

Started a fintech startup three years ago and we are close to a liquidation event that would net ~1.5M€ pre-tax.

Right now, though, I have less than 10k€ in my bank account. Would be also really curious to hear how to convert that money into sustainable passive income.

Spending 3k€ per month for the next 30 years would be about 1M€. Seems like having <5M€ is far from the "go bananas" type of wealth, but it can definitely be enough to achieve FI.

Achieving ~4% annualized ROI after tax and inflation seems plausible in the long term: https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/wiki/faq

That is only withdrawing the principal without taking into account the real interest/yield rate you can make off the investment. That money would probably last longer or yield more for the same time period.

In fact, as you point out it can last indefinitely with an after inflation and tax ROI(real yield) of 4% which converts to ~3k/mo. You would have to plowback excess returns on good years and withdraw part of the principal on bad years. Plus readjusting your expectations from time to time.

One of the best investments you can make is to get a financial education. You don't need to get a pedigree to show on your job interview, you should go only after the knowledge which will be cheaper.

And lastly a diversified mix of stocks, long term bonds and short term notes will earn you that passive income. Now that you are young take a little more risk and shift your allocation gradually towards short term debt as you age.

My line of thinking has been that in order for the 4% to be meaningful, you need to start with at least millions. Saving few hundred from the salary each month and getting 4% annualized growth just wouldn't have ever achieved the type of financial wealth I had in mind. YMMV.

But now I feel like the time has come to diversify and start reducing the risks. Going from 20$ to 10$ per ETH definitely hurt.

Definitely worth checking out: http://betterment.com/invite/seanhess

(disclosure: that is my invite link which gets me free months without fees. I do love the service a lot).

I.e, best way to see yourself through a Tech downturn without taking a severe hit to your wealth.

I say this because I've had recent experience with people losing huge amounts of their wealth, and almost going bankrupt during the Oil price crash.

For instance I know Oil workers who had most of their wealth in oil company shares, a house in an oil related city and lose their oil industry job.

I'd imagine their are lots in tech that are the same, large amount of Tech shares, a house in the Bay area and a job in Tech.

Anyone got any tips on diversifying for a downturn? What shares (if any???) are likely to do well if Tech has a bad patch.

First I started with consulting, then slowly started developing different apps/products/services, and funded the development from consulting/contracting income. Soon the products themselves gave me 2-3k/month, and I didn't need to do that much consulting any more. As Bitcoin came, I already had some money to invest. I lived very frugally, and invested heavily in Bitcoin when it was around $10 or something. Also I have invested in stocks/ETF:s/etc all the time but those play pretty minor role. Mostly got one thing right.

TL;DR = spent 20h/week for 2 years building a product that people wanted. But there are a lot of juicy insights etc in those links.

I did it by putting large amounts of my income into low cost index funds focussing on various sectors, and some specific shares that I thought would do well.

Also, the % that you're pulling out of stocks should be determined by looking at, say, a 30 year window, not a very recent one. That is, if your savings can sustain a 2% withdraw every year, taking into account inflation, then take out 2% every year. Some years this will be less that your cap gains and some years more. The key is making a long term outlook.

FWIW, these are some very brief thoughts of mine on investment: https://github.com/nickgieschen/investingguidelines

I hear this sort of thing a lot, and in my experience, everything already being priced in isn't true (both of dividend stocks, and stocks not paying dividends). This relies on the efficient market hypothesis being broadly correct, and based purely on my own experience, it isn't.

My findings are very much based on my own experience, but I have had no small success simply reading the news and seeing that a company is doing well or is looking at a brighter future, and buying shares in them and making a nice profit on it out of both increased share price and increasing dividends. The EMH suggests that it shouldn't work; that by the time I get round to buying the shares, the efficient market has priced all that in. But it just doesn't seem to be true, in my experience.

I do not believe this because stock picking works for me.

I believe it because the market is not efficient, and dividends being priced in relies on an efficient market. Any success I have in stock picking relies on this inefficiency; it's just a symptom.

All my dividends get reinvested. I'm in the UK, and I've taken full advantage of the tax free savings scheme, currently allowing about 15000 GBP a year to be put into stocks and funds with no tax to pay on dividends or gains.

There have been market downturns during the time I've done this (started around 2005). Generally, during a downturn, I scrape together as much spare cash as I can and invest it in things that seem cheap. April 2015 to April 2016 was something of a downturn, for example, and I ploughed extra money into the markets while prices were low.

I'm making roughly $2k/month with books and workshops. The marketing and content producing takes about 2h/day on average. It makes my life a lot easier and less stressful.

But rent alone is $3500 in this stupid city (San Francisco). So I still need a day job for now.