The term "fuck-you money" is used to describe the amount of money a person would need to accumulate in order to walk out on their job permanently and live free of responsibilities.

I put together a spreadsheet last night which describes how an average person can achieve fuck-you money realistically. Assuming you can be happy living on 1/2 of your income, investing the rest, your investment returns will exceed your expenses in 10 years, and within 20 you'll be making more off your investments than your entire salary.

This is also an experiment with a Wiki-style spreadsheet using Google Docs. Everyone has access to edit the sheet to plug in their own hypothetical numbers, or even create whole other simulation models.

Submitted by jason - 2007-08-03 21:03:47
Channels - blogcadre hackszine futuretech
Tags - hack money finance retirement

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A pretty interesting economic look at the Linden dollar and Second Life economy. Where is the money coming from? Who is it distributed to? How does it resemble, or not resemble, a Ponzi scheme.

Here's my own takeaway. Most other games cost money to purchase or play. People understand that they are purchasing a product for entertainment. In the case of Second Life, the possibility exists that one can make money, in world, by exercising their creative abilities. Furthermore, Second Life is often promoted as "not a game" but a "virtual world," so there is sort of this presumption that everyone will be able to build wealth.

It's that "everyone building wealth" point that the article's author is really calling into question. With Linden Labs exchanging L$ for US$ -- money that was contributed by game players -- it's obvious that not everyone can cash out.

Submitted by jason - 2007-07-25 21:13:37
Channels - general metaverse
Tags - money secondlife economy linden ponzi capitalism

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Total volume of Linden dollars: 2,608,448,990
At the current exchange rate of L$265 to $1, this is roughly $9.8 million.

Cash flow:
Last month, there were 42,597 avatars with an increasing balance. 132 of them were earning over $5000 a month. The graph is very bottom heavy, with most users making less than $10. No mention is made of users with a negative cash flow.

Transaction size:
Most transactions are for small amounts under L$500 ($1.88). I'd venture to guess most of these are texture uploads that cost L$10 ($0.038) or small L$2 camping transactions ($0.008). There were 856 transactions over L$1,000,000 ($3,773).

Submitted by jason - 2007-07-25 20:04:09
Channels - metaverse
Tags - virtual money secondlife economy micropayment linden

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