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Financial Samurai
Personal blog · financialsamurai.comeconomicscareerbusiness
Financial Samurai is a personal blog at financialsamurai.com about economics, career and business. Since 2011, 101 different Hacker News readers have linked it 128 times, most often “Scraping by on $500k a Year: Why It’s So Hard to Escape the Rat Race”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-30, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 2 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers cite it for personal finance data and explainers on wealth distribution, mortgages and non-recourse states, salaries and car buying. One commenter calls its writing soulless.
- Recommended for · 2 comments
- One commenter liked a stealth-wealth guide that has held up; another names it a personal finance source to read.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
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Most-linked posts?
- Scraping by on $500k a Year: Why It’s So Hard to Escape the Rat Race9 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2019-05-05
- Households Need to Earn $300,000 a Year to Live a Middle Class Lifestyle5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2018-03-25
- /how-much-money-do-the-top-income-earners-make-percent/5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2014-02-11
- /non-recourse-states-walk-away-from-mortgage/4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2021-01-05
- Scraping by on $500,000 a Year3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2017-03-24
- /the-110th-rule-for-car-buying-everyone-must-follow/3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-04-04
- New Tech IPOs Could Cause SF Bay Area Real Estate Prices to Fall Further3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-03-11
- /the-average-savings-rates-by-income-wealth-class/3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-02-22
- The Unhealthy Desire for Prestige2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-04-22
- Ways to Stay Invisible from Society If You Have Money2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-09-18
What Hacker News says?
The quote says a specific group pays 51% of all tax revenue and says it's way too much. Well did they collect 51% of all income? Probably not. Some quick Googling finds this analysis: http://www.financialsamurai.com/how-much-money-do-the-top-in... It uses different split points, but claims that the top 5% of earners make about 35% of the total AGI, but pay 59% of gross income taxes.
Comment linking /how-much-money-do-the-top-income-earners-make-percent/
on “USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources”Submitted The Unhealthy Desire for Prestige as a story · 131 points
HN discussionEven still, there is no sales tax rate that ends up charging wealthy people anything meaningful. Roughly speaking, the savings rate of wealthy people is so high (and therefore 1-that as spending rate) and everyone else basically spends all their money, such that you need exorbitant taxes on “stuff only rich people would buy”. Zucman and Saez have a decent figure for this, which this article in the Atlantic includes…
Comment linking /the-average-savings-rates-by-income-wealth-class/
on “TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free (2019)”Submitted It's time to worry about the housing market again as a story · 59 points
HN discussionI think the problem here might be the different meanings of "money is tight". https://www.financialsamurai.com/scraping-by-on-500000-a-yea...
Comment linking /scraping-by-on-500000-a-year-high-income-earners-struggling/
on “How People Get Rich Now”Submitted Households Need to Earn $300,000 a Year to Live a Middle Class Lifestyle as a story · 50 points
HN discussionread the comment about his life in chicago - giving money to bands as one example. he's spent much of his life helping the larger communities around him - php and music are just two that have been mentioned. We've got no idea what Richard earned, but saying "six figures" can make it sound fabulously wealthy. $999,999 is six figures. So is $100,000. $100k in suburban Chicago raising a family is quite possible, but li…
Comment linking /how-much-money-do-the-top-income-earners-make-percent/
on “Richard Lynch, an awesome PHP community guy and former colleague needs our help”Submitted A Day Job Is So Much Easier Than Entrepreneurship as a story · 33 points
HN discussionThat is across all ages and I would guess that few here are seniors. At 35 the top 1% is $2.3m. So many here may be more wealthy than you realize. https://www.financialsamurai.com/the-top-one-percent-net-wor...
Comment linking /the-top-one-percent-net-worth-levels-by-age-group/
on “Ask HN: What to do after $8M (all cash, post tax) exit?”Submitted The Biggest Benefits of a Stock Market Meltdown as a story · 20 points
HN discussionUber employees who joined in 2015 actually saw their RSUs decrease in value by the time the lockup ended in 2019. 4 years of working at a pre-IPO unicorn for negative growth. Heard this from multiple people but here's an article: https://www.financialsamurai.com/how-uber-employees-failed-t...
Comment linking /how-uber-employees-failed-to-get-rich-off-the-uber-ipo/
on “If founders treated their investors the same way they treated their employees”Submitted Don’t Get Fired or Quit, Get Laid Off Instead as a story · 5 points
HN discussion> The whole country is a gigantic house of cards propped up by real estate, with horrible service quality, terrible healthcare, no jobs, ZERO innovation, risk taking and entrepreneurship. This is so true it hurts. And while there's some numbers that outsiders can look at and gasp[0] at how absurd it's become, there's a whole lot that isn't being tracked or documented. Official immigration numbers are ~0.5mn for 2023…
Comment linking /what-if-the-u-s-housing-market-turned-into-the-canadian-housing-market/
on “"Fake Chinese income" mortgages fuel Toronto real estate bubble: HSBC bank leaks”Submitted What If You Go to Harvard and End Up a Nobody? as a story · 4 points
HN discussionFinancial Samurai strikes me as sadistic. His post about Mr. Money Mustache's divorce is pretty horrible example of soulless SEO headings kicking a rival blogger when down https://www.financialsamurai.com/mmm-divorce/
Comment linking /mmm-divorce/
on “Lowest “Who is hiring?” Post Count in 30 Months”Submitted How to Get Hired If You Are Overqualified or Don't Need the Money as a story · 4 points
HN discussionhttps://www.financialsamurai.com/best-time-to-start-a-busine... “ The Best Time To Start A Business Is During A Downturn”
Comment linking /best-time-to-start-a-business-is-during-a-downturn/
on “Lowest “Who is hiring?” Post Count in 30 Months”Submitted You Need Less Money Than You Think to Be Happy: A $40k Experiment as a story · 3 points
HN discussionIt's nice that you have such a great perspective on who "everyone" is. It's self-reported and thus probably well underestimated, but only 55% of Americans say they own stock[0]. And 84% of the total stock belongs to 10% of the people[1]. [0] https://www.financialsamurai.com/what-percent-of-americans-o... [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/08/business/economy/stocks-e...
Comment linking /what-percent-of-americans-own-stocks/
on “Evaluating State and Local Business Tax Incentives [pdf]”Submitted The Minimum Investment Amount Where Work Becomes Optional – Financial Samurai as a story · 3 points
HN discussionOne big difference is that many men feel obligated to buy expensive diamond engagement rings to their pretenders to "show his love", i.e., the three salary rule[1]. This kind of cultural/social pressure was built from a long history of, one could say brilliant, marketing campaigns. [1] https://www.financialsamurai.com/the-new-rule-for-engagement...
Comment linking /the-new-rule-for-engagement-ring-buying/
on “Diamonds Suck (2006)”Submitted Sadly giving up on early retirement and going back to work as a story · 3 points
HN discussion> especially for those borrowers with fixed-rate loans Which is like 90% of US mortgages [0]. [0]: https://www.financialsamurai.com/adjustable-rate-mortgages-a... .
Comment linking /adjustable-rate-mortgages-as-a-percentage-of-total-loans/
on “Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)”Submitted Foreign Real Estate Investors Are Coming to Buy American Homes as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI wasn't aware of the divide between recourse and non-recourse states. Google tells me: <<Alaska, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Idaho, Minnesota, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, Texas (sometimes), Utah, Washington>> Ref: https://www.financialsamurai.com/non-recourse-states-walk-aw... It looks like resource vs non-resource also impacts the likelihood of foreclosure.
Comment linking /non-recourse-states-walk-away-from-mortgage/
on “My job is to watch dreams die (2011)”Submitted How to Enjoy Your Life After the Fed Ruins the World as a story · 3 points
HN discussionAlso it is not just the "landed gentry" who will feel like they lost their investments but also the 64% or so of Americans who own their own homes. [1] Ithaca NY has the unusual situation that much of the land is owned by universities, colleges and other non-profits that don't pay property taxes so residential property taxes are high. In recent years tenant organizations have come to perceive that any increase in pr…
Comment linking /u-s-homeownership-rate/
on “Land value tax in online games and virtual worlds (2022)”Submitted Quiet Quitting Is Wonderful for Financial Freedom Seekers and Parents as a story · 3 points
HN discussionYou may want to ground your advocacy in real-world data. This is a widely discussed topic. You might want to start with http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/07/the-case... . The salaries of public sector workers are public, as are the CEO and other parts of upper management in public companies. Everyone's salary is some countries are available to the public. Quoting from that Atlantic article: > The wors…
Comment linking /never-tell-anyone-how-much-money-you-make/
on “What happens when you talk about salaries at Google”Submitted Scraping by on $500k a Year: Why It’s So Hard to Escape the Rat Race as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
