The Safe, Boring Alternative To 5 Million Dollars
Honestly, my alternative as a perpetual salaryman is not so bad. My job is paying me quite well. I never have any serious problem saving. Even when I just started working with a small starting salary as a fresh grad, I was able to save around 50% of my salary consistently.
Now that my salary has quadrupled since then, I can save consistently around 70-80% of my salary every month. Even if I don’t do this project, my outlook for the next 10 years is really not that bad. Plugging into the excellent financial calculator I mentioned in my post here, assuming that:
- I am properly insured against any unforeseen catastrophy
- I can maintain my current income level for the next 10 years
- I can maintain a saving level of around 70k p.a.
- I can invest all that money at an annual return of 6% (quite conservative!)
Then it seems that I’ll be having almost exactly 1 million dollars, 10 years from now. Definitely not bad at all.
The thing is, this is not passive income. I have to work hard and smart for it. I can’t suddenly double my income because what I do doesn’t really scale.
Also… maybe it’s my psychological makeup. But if I become a millionaire just by doing this, somehow I think I’ll be quite dissatisfied with myself. I want to do something greater, something beyond what I’ve always been doing (get a regular job, deliver as much value as I can to employer, in return getting a good salary). I want to break my limit and go way beyond that.
So! Going back to the 5m10y project 