It takes planning but you can get your money out early via SEPP 72t disbursements and Roth conversion ladders. You can also just straight up pay the early withdrawal penalty. Depending on your effective tax brackets pre/post retirement - you may very well still come out ahead compared to a non-tax advantaged account.
If you’re the kind of saver that’s on target for an early retirement thru high retirement savings then you should have a pretty good idea of what your annual expenses are. Throw in a buffer + known liabilities (roof needs replacing, aging car, health issues, etc).
There’s a few methods here - and it’s going to depend on your mix of retirement accounts (ROTH vs Trad vs HSA vs non-tax advantaged). There’s lots of tools to help plan scenarios - I particularly like ProjectionLab. I would also recommend hiring a professional that can assist in the planning and especially taxes during early retirement.
For SEPP 72T you need to make similar withdrawals every year for at least 5 years or until you hit 59.5 of age. My plan is a mix of SEPP 72T + non-tax advantaged accounts for 5 years. During those 5 years I will also be making ROTH conversions from my Trad accounts. Once the 5 years are up - I will continue my ROTH conversions but can finally start withdrawing the money I converted 5 years ago (this is a ROTH conversion ladder).
I was a bit of a late bloomer and spent my 20s working my way into tech - so I won’t retire at 45 - but am on target for 50ish.
Yeah exactly. This is what makes RRSPs/401ks the absolute worst place to park your money. You are locking away your funds, and deferring taxes to 1) the stage in your life you probably want to pay the least tax possible, and 2) a time when the tax rate will probably be higher than it is now (after all, tax rates pretty much exclusively go up).
If your employer offers a match, you should absolutely contribute up to the maximum match (it's free money after all), but not a penny more IMO. There are much, much better vehicles for parking your money than retirement funds.
My friend, I'm not sure you've thought through this all the way.
Historically, tax rates have gone down over time, not up. Especially in recent history.
You do pay a reduced tax in retirement because you're able to blend your income. You defer taxes on the 401k until requirement, but you pre-pay taxes on a mega backdoor/roth, so if you need 100k of income in retirement you pull 50k from 401k and 50k on the roth and only pay taxes on half of it, putting you in a lower bracket.
Having the pretax money to grow before paying taxes on it is greater than having post tax money and having less to compound.
The alternative to tax advantaged places to park your money for retirement is strictly worse than non-tax advantaged. In a 401k you pay taxes only in retirement, for roth's you pay taxes only with your paycheck. In a brokerage, you pay taxes at your paycheck and then you pay taxes on withdraw for your cost basis.
Not sure if there's a US equivalent, but in Canada, "having the pretax money to grow before paying taxes on it" is a worse deal. In an RRSP/401k you pay full tax on any investment earnings. Meanwhile a normal non-registered investment account is classified as "capital gains" and only taxed at 50% of your marginal tax rate.
At the end of the day though, I'm sure it boils down to having both instead of trying to minmax it. Being able to liquidate a portion of your investments to, say, purchase a house is probably a good idea, which you can't do if you've been putting everything you have into a retirement account.
Idk about Canada - but in the US most people are going to be in a lower tax bracket in retirement (sometimes substantially lower). Is that not the case in Canada? You only pay your marginal tax rate on what you withdraw.
For example - if my wife and I max out our 401k’s - that’s about 50k we are deferring taxes on. If our pre-tax household income is 300k - then that 50k would have been taxed at 24% marginal rate.
In a year of retirement - let’s say we withdrawal that 50k but now it’s doubled (probably more than that since it only takes 9 years to double at 8% annual growth via compound interest). Now we pay 12% and end up with 88k. (Technically we’d have more than that because of the 24k standard deduction - but we’ll ignore that for the sake of simplicity)
Let’s take the non-tax advantaged comparison. We’d have paid 24% up front and invested 38k. It doubles to 76k. We’d pay 0% capital gains - but even then we end up with less investment income.
If you retire in 30 years, and invest that $50k in the S&P500, you'll end up with about $872k (given the S&P makes about 10% annually[1]). The difference is, in the non-registered scenario, you only pay 50% of the marginal tax rate, because it's capital gains. In the RRSP, you pay full tax on all investment earnings (because it's considered "income" at the time of the withdraw). Your tax bracket might be better at retirement, but will it be 50% better? That's the big question for me (not even considering the value of a liquid vs illiquid investment, but that's more of a personal planning problem).
I would really recommend playing around with Canadian specific financial planning and retirement calculators. Maybe the Canadian system is totally fucked - I don’t know. But your inclinations are a very common misconception about 401k’s in the US and I suspect this holds true in Canada too.
A few things to note:
* In the US at least - you invest your 401k in whatever funds you want. Mine are a mix of S&P500 and Total Market.
* 7-8% is the average inflation-adjusted return of the S&P500 over its history and is general figure you’ll see used in retirement planning discussions
There’s a huge wealth of resources out there on this topic. Look up Canadian specific “FIRE” guidance (Financially Independent Retired Early). I don’t know enough (or anything!) about Canada to really engage on this - but I’ve done pretty extensive planning both myself and with my financial advisor on my own early retirement objectives. For me - the math massively works out in favor of a 401k over non-tax advantaged accounts. I personally have a mix of Traditional (pre-tax), ROTH (post-tax), and non-tax advantaged accounts (because I save more than I am allowed to stuff into tax advantaged accounts per year).
I used to agree with you, but then I learned about 401k/roth conversion ladders. Basically, you can convert everything in a 401k to a roth (taxable event) and after 5 years you can withdraw all of that money penalty free and tax free (except the gains made in those 5 years). The key thing is that you want to strategically do the conversion when you have a very low income, for instance if you're already retired and living off of Roth contributions or taxable brokerage investments, so your only income for the year is the amount you convert. So basically, you just need enough funds to retire for 5 years before you can start withdrawing from the 401k->Roth.
I started doing this when I got a raise and realized pretty much half of my raise was going straight to taxes, whereas I could invest it all if I just upped my 401k contributions.
Very cool. I'm Canadian (which is why I mentioned RRSPs above), and I don't think an equivalent exists for us. Our alternatives to an RRSP (which is equivalent to your 401k) basically boil down to:
TFSA: you pay standard income tax up front, but no income tax on investment earnings. Annual contribution room is added. You can withdraw anytime and get the contribution room back.
FHSA: you do not pay income tax up front, you do not pay income tax on investment earnings. But you can only withdraw for a first home purchase (or convert into RRSP), and there's yearly and lifetime limits on contributions.
Non-registered investment account: you pay standard income tax up front. Investment earnings as capital gains are 50% of standard income tax. Withdraw anytime, no limits obviously.
With RRSPs: you do not pay income tax up front, but you pay standard income tax when you withdraw, and pay standard income tax on investment earnings (no capital gains rate). You cannot withdraw until retirement age.
Those are effectively your only four options here. When they're broken down that way.. does it make more sense?
Gotcha, your TFSA sounds pretty similar to a Roth. So if there was a way to convert RRSP into TFSA in the manner I described, you could potentially get access to that money earlier than 59.5 (or whatever your age limit is in Canada) if that rollover is able to count as a "contribution".
> a retirement vehicle that doesn't let you withdraw until age 59.5.
If you're referring to US retirement accounts, that's not accurate. The early withdrawal penalty is 10% - the same as jumping from the 12% to 22% tax bracket when you're working.
If your company allows partial withdrawals starting in the year you turn 55, you can use the "rule of 55" to get your money out penalty-free January 1 the year you turn 55.
You can withdraw Roth contributions penalty-free at any age.
You can take SEPP withdrawals without a penalty.
You should have some cash and brokerage account money too. You could also own a rental house, sell your house and become a renter, etc. The 10% penalty is seldom going to stop someone from retiring.
A SEPP plan let's you get the money early and penalty-free from a 401k and an IRA. And the saved medical receipts let you take some money out of a HSA at any point for reimbursement, also penalty-free.
True, but I think there's another dimension implied: how many devs are left that understand the code? Being able to start at zero is a fascinating surprise (compared to five years ago).
At least with a person, you can say that there's one person in your org that understands the code after they write it and submit it for review.
Maybe they stick around for a while, maybe they move on to another job, but they were THERE at some point. They have a name. You can ask them questions about what they did. And hey, they still exist in the real world too, so you can get in touch with them even after they leave if you need to.
AI powered development is like a guy shows up, gets hired for 90 seconds, writes part of a feature, and dies instantly once the code hits the screen.
a comment I cannot stop thinking about is "we need to start thinking about production as throw away" Which is a wild thought to think about when I think about on my career. We had so many dbs or servers that we couldn't touch because they were a special snowflake
Honestly, I'm a huge supporter of large-scale immigration. It just has to be legal. And I'd prioritize 2-parent families above everyone else. I can tell you're being snarky and maybe think I'm some Ultra MAGA character (I'd characterize the project as slightly center-right), but personally I think immigration is a fascinating topic and a powerful tool for social good (if done above board).
Also, I know some people on the right really are racist, but in my personal experience that's primarily a left-wing narrative. Most right-leaning people I know are not against immigration, nor immigrants themselves, and are not racist. They just want people to follow the rules.
And you may be reluctant to believe this, but from my experience living in a very poor, very white region of America for the last five years, right-leaning people actually do care about rules for rules' sake. Occasionally "law and order" is a dog whistle for racism or another -ism...but usually it's just an echo of a strict upbringing and a high value placed on respecting authority figures. Which might not be your cup of tea, but that's usually what's going through peoples heads.
I'm quite capable of snark and I wouldn't say that I was being particularly so, but maybe something adjacent to it. Mostly I think this is amusingly naive. America has a history of attempts to create utopian communities, but I'm unaware of any that have persisted for terribly long. I think the one I'm most fond of are the Shakers, whose biggest legacy is their carpentry skills which is a hobby of mine.
I didn't really get an explicit yes or no out of the above, but I take it to mean no? That's the interesting question to me - who would be allowed to join such a community, and if someone was discovered to be undesirable for one reason or another, what would be done with them?
Yea, the history is honestly pretty ugly. Lots of religious cults. And also billionaires with visions for a tech utopia of one flavor or another and, why, look at that—rich people won't have to pay taxes any more! I agree the Shakers are an exception though!
I think there are two ways to answer your second question.
Regarding people who entered the U.S. illegally, we won't be a sanctuary city.
Regarding who's allowed to join and what to do with "undesirable" people, the short answer is that anyone may move to the New Athens. Nobody is "undesirable" until they've been convicted of a crime. Then our justice system will determine the consequences, just like local justice systems do every day everywhere else in America.
I think the fact you asked the question is revealing though. Not of you, but of the kind of people who try to start cities. To be very blunt and just cut to the chase, a lot city startups, at least in American, are thinly veiled attempts by white people to get away from black people. And this isn't distant history: an article in the New York Times from less than a year ago covered a new housing development that's using clever legal tricks to only accept white residents—openly and brazenly. I know that some of my ideas sound right wing—marriage and children are themselves coded right-wing here in 2026—but it's not lost on me that many, many gated communities, and even non-gated suburban developments, if not the entire growth of suburban America in the mid-20th century, is just whites fleeing blacks.
At risk of leaping into 400 years of race relations in a comment to a comment in a small corner of the internet, my solution to "undesirable" people is the legal system. I'm sure there are billions of people on the planet who will roll their eyes and call me naive, including tens of millions of cynical white Americans, but count me a fan of the American tradition of assuming people are innocent until proven guilty. Due process, equal treatment under the law, the entire bill of rights—this is the way.
Insofar as groups of people in the U.S. are still trying to get away from other groups of people, I see that as a failure of the law and law enforcement. The obvious alternative to racial segregation is to make bad behavior illegal and put criminals in jail. Perhaps that means more people belong in jail? Perhaps. This is the path New Athens will take, not just because I personally like it and I'm kickstarting the city, but because the American legal tradition broadly warrants our gratitude, we should fight to keep it, and the best way to keep it is to invest in doing it well
Does it recommend taking a break? Mostly I've seen it ask if I'm still watching. I've always assumed this is not for user benefit, but in order to not spend bandwidth on a screen that is not being looked at.
The only site I'm familiar with that has somewhat decent self-limiting functions built in is HN's no procrastination settings. But that's of course because HN isn't run to make money, but as a hobby.
I think my favorite interaction with a dev around this was when I was explaining how his java program looked like a big juicy target for the OOM killer and it had killed it in order to keep the system working. His response was, "I don't care about the system, I care about my program!" And he understood the irony of that, but it was a good reminder that we have somewhat different views and priorities.
> JP Doherty did not want to sign the email. But he knew he didn’t have a choice. His son, Rhys, was scheduled to have strabismus surgery in January, correcting an eye issue that made it difficult for him to walk on his own. The procedure cost $10,000 out of pocket. Doherty discussed the decision with his wife, and while she wanted him to be able to quit, they both knew the kids needed his health insurance. [0]
If an order is legal, yes. Not if an order is illegal. If a superior officer orders a private to shoot unarmed civilians or commit some other war crime, the private is supposed to refuse the order. They are not protected by a "just following orders" defense.
"And doesn't their pay and their family's healthcare depend on them remaining employed?"
Sure. But that does not excuse committing war crimes or otherwise knowingly following illegal orders.
Most of the time, the presumption is that illegal orders will be issued infrequently and by rogue elements in the armed forces -- so disobeying may have unpleasant immediate consequences (say, get thrown in the brig) but long-term they should prevail.
Right now? Well... that's the problem. But if significant numbers of the armed forces refused illegal orders, there's little that the administration can do. Which is why they've been cleaning house to kick out anybody at the top who might push back.
They're only required to obey lawful orders. An order to massacre a village would not be lawful, to pick an extreme (but historical) example. Following such an order is a crime in itself, they should disobey it.
Kinda hard to do that when you've locked all your money up in a retirement vehicle that doesn't let you withdraw until age 59.5.
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