
Ask HN: What to do after graduation with 100k? - graduating
I'm a regular reader and commenter, but for this question wished to remain anonymous. I apologize about the length of this, you can skip to the end for the question if you are short on time, but would really be grateful for any responses as I really value the HN community.<p>Background:<p>I'm 21 and currently approaching the final year of my undergraduate degree at the University of Virginia. I'm a business major at the McIntire school which is fairly respected (http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/rankings/index.html) and concentrating in management with a sort of sub-track in a newly launched entrepreneurship program that I'm excited about (co-taught by some entrepreneur alumni). The business program is a two year program and I came out of high school with enough college credits that I've been able to take more or less any classes I've been interested in (mostly Philosophy, Political theory, Psychology.. I seem to like the P's). I absolutely love the college academic environment as I love learning. As a result I've done excellent in school all while managing to have sometimes too much fun in the process.<p>I got involved with my first web based start-up when I was 13/14. I saw a business model (niche market, digital product related), thought I could do a better job, and more or less copied it. Within a year I ended merging and working with the business I copied. My age never really came up until I was there for a while and at that point I was 17 or so and the owner ended up getting out of the business and I split off with some others and we formed our own company doing the same thing (although a bit better). We ended up growing the firm to $250,000 in revenues with a great profit margin, however at that point we became distracted and complacent (I was enjoying college, the head "techie" partner was rapidly advancing in his day job as a programmer, people got married and had first kids etc.) and more or less let the business die down.<p>I've played with a few other startup ideas since then related to the same niche I had experience in (one was doing fine, but I didn't have the passion for it and couldn't deliver a product/service that I thought was good enough so shut it down; another I started last summer and the business model works and it is generating maybe a steady $10-20 a day, but that is only with about 100 unique users a day..it's very scalable and is designed to be a semi-passive cash cow but am having trouble bringing in the traffic; if I could get 1,000 <i>targeted</i> uniques a day probably about $100/day and so on). I just recently bought out a partner of the original start-up and am trying to bring it back to where it was before. However, the competition is a lot stronger now, and I'm a bit burned out of the business and would probably prefer to work on other things.<p>In this process I've managed to save about 100k in cash/liquid assets that aren't in a Roth IRA or anything like..and I have my expenses for next year (class/rent/food) covered. The question deals with what to do with those assets...<p>The Question Arises:<p>This summer I'm interning at a global high tech physical manufacturing firm. Great brand name, the compensation is great, and I'm more or less doing a lot of financial analysis and writing whitepapers related to internal business processes and international banking. All the main projects I work on are fairly interesting (Even if most of my downtime I'm doing silly intern things like the occasional printing, photocopying, filing, or any work someone else doesn't want to do etc.) and I work with good people...but really don't seem to like working for a large corporation. All the roles are so specialized and bureaucratic, it's very 8-5 cubicle work, and there just seems to be a constant "cog in the machine" alienation from the work that is being done and the finished product. I've realized I really don't like that. That's partly because the finished product is unbelievably complex and there isn't really another way to setup the system, but I feel my early start-up experience has spoiled me and for the most part I dislike the job and could in no way see myself doing it for the rest of my life or even a year.<p>The Question:<p>So, I have one more year of school left to sort of prepare for my exit into the real world. Unlike most on HN I'm not much of a programmer (I tried to teach myself some C++ back when I was younger, but never really enjoyed it that much; I've recently been teaching myself the basics of Ruby because I got tired of hiring people to fix things, but not sure if I have a passion for it although enjoy learning it as of now...will see when I learn a bit more) although I am very technical and been working with/building and playing with old computers since I was probably about seven or eight years old.<p>I really want to move to a major city, and have wanted to move to the Silicon Valley area/region since I was a kid. I always felt like I was too young or left out of the early web boom (for better or worse). I'd probably love to move to San Francisco and get involved with some sort of start-up related work related to either web, tech, or finance.<p>However, I'm sort of torn as in a poor job market I'm lucky enough to attend a school with a nice almuni network and great recruiting right out of school. About 70% of my business school are finance majors and a great deal of them all go to Wall Street or the top Management Consulting Firms. I could see myself potentially doing that as I like finance, the markets, strategy, and the whole nature of closing and making big deals... but have this nagging feeling that if it weren't for the money or prestige that isn't what I would want to spend my life doing. I felt some of PG's essays pointed this out rather well.  When I did startup work... it just didn't feel like work and my currently internship feels a lot like work. However the paycheck is nice...<p>So, any ideas on what I should do with my remaining "vacation" from the real world in college or what I should do with the 100,000 in the bank? Any ideas on what to do after college?<p><i></i>Note: At the same time I can't help feeling how out of wack this question is with a world where many live on a $1 a day and a global GDP per capita of about $10,000/year and how lucky I am to have the opportunities I have had (especially on the 4th of July here in the U.S). It's something I've always felt a bit guilty about even though I've worked hard, because so many never had the chance that I had. For that very reason I've always had that sort of nagging feeling to really make the best use of what I've been given; hence this question.
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lionheart
Think of it this way, since you're used to living like a college student, you
can probably live on $20,000 a year easily. This is already taxed money so
thats even more than it sounds.

So that means you currently have 5 years of complete freedom to discover what
it is that you want to do.

Move to Silicon Valley, start a startup, or join one. Or go travel. Nothing
really broadens your mind like travel. And you can easily do that on $20,000 a
year if you have no other commitments.

It's not $100,000 that you have saved up. Its 5 years. Keep thinking of it
that way and you'll realize what you want to do.

~~~
kalvin
Agreed with above, although $25k might be more realistic for the SF Bay Area
if you're not naturally very frugal. Just to make it a little more concrete if
you choose the first option:

\- $700-$1200/mo for rent+utils (1BR in shared space, south bay vs. SF)

\- $200-$500/mo (cooking vs. eating out)

\- $50-$400/mo (ascetic vs. lover-of-gadgets)

\- $200/mo for basic healthcare + other bills

\- $100/mo for public transportation

\- $100/mo for exigencies

Feel free to email me if you have questions! (see profile) I've been working
for six months in SF, living in MV.

By the way, I think it's great that you have a sense of perspective already
(and the savvy to be filling your Roth IRA...) that kind of stuff is
priceless.

------
CatDancer
One option: use your entrepreneurship and management training to figure out
the answer to this question: what could someone with your skillset, who didn't
need to otherwise work to support themselves, and was willing to devote 100%
of their time, do that would have the maximal positive impact on the world?

Then live frugally, like a college student. The 100K will support you for the
next four years. To be able to devote 100% of four years of youthful,
intelligent energy towards one of the world's problems without other major
life distractions (school, job) would be an amazing resource and you could
have a tremendous impact. (An important component of this should be finding
something that excites you, rather than just responding only to a feeling of
guilt).

I disagree with the commentors who suggest you should invest your money.
You're an entrepreneur. If you want another 100K, you can go out and do
something to make that. (I would however recommend never, ever, going into
debt: never spend money you don't have on the assumption that you'll be able
to make more later; this is a powerful reality check that ensures that you
really are doing what you think you can).

I expect other commentators to voraciously disagree with my suggestion that
you spend the money supporting yourself instead of saving it; I'll just note
that in advance so I won't feel like I need to respond to any of the
responses.

------
oldgregg
If you care about lifestyle, move up to Boulder. Killer startup community,
more friendly than the valley. City with highest per capita advanced degrees.
Only 100k population with the intellectual capital that you would only find in
Boston/Bay/Austin. Google, Microsoft, crispin porter, tons of great companies
have offices here. Relatively low cost of living. Come up here and bike, hike,
and ski. Hell, you can kayak through the middle of town. Startup community
will really challenge and inspire you...

~~~
Aron
I took a 6 week vacation through Col. and Utah, and would love to live in Col.
I didn't know Boulder was so tech friendly (I knew it had some good culture).
I'm gonna have to look into that.

------
phn1x
If I were you, I'd travel.

I am 26, I now have 1 child and another on the way. If there was anything I
wished I had done right after graduation it is travel around the world. Since
you don't have an immediate need to jump straight into the work force that is
my suggestion. You can utilize the time to figure out what you want to do,
perhaps obtain a new idea for a start up.

Once you start popping out kids, get a mortgage and everything else creeps up
on you it can be hard to find the time to just go on vacation for a week let
alone a month or two.

~~~
lallysingh
Agreed. I backpacked across europe for ~$4k in 1999. Should be a bit more
right now, but really a drop in the bucket for you.

Get some guys together (the more varied the personalities, the better), and
spend a month relaxing, drinking, and womanizing. Have some fun, try to break
a few laws while you're there. Just do it on the last night in each country,
so you can get out. (nothing major, but if you're not kicked out of a single
bar, you'll be disappointed).

------
DanielBMarkham
First, hello from down the road in Lynchburg. C-ville isn't that far out in
the boonies. Heck, you're just an hour or so from the beltway.

For all of your explaining, you never got around to saying what you liked
doing. Do you like working for yourself or in a team, do you want to pursue
education at any cost, or do you want to fit into some large corporate system?

It sounds like you enjoyed your startup experience and would like to repeat
it, but I'm not sure.

I can tell you what I would do, because I'm getting ready to do it again. Find
something to pour yourself into for a while, and enjoy working on something
bigger than yourself. This can be another startup, or charity, or creating a
new solution for world hunger, or whatever, but the key is that it can't be
simple self-gratification.

Doing this allows you to grow, and prevents the over-specialization, boredom,
and frustration that can be part of large corps. It also allows you to put
some of those fun P-classes to work in a practical manner. But you really have
to have drive to make it work.

You could embrace your inner lazy person and work hard for a few years with
the idea of retiring early. That's a cool plan. But the real question is
whether you're going to actively do something or passively wait around for
life to happen to you. That's a question only you can answer.

------
pinneycolton
Network - and don't get too caught up spending a lot of time doing something
you're not happy with. I've seen lots of successful people get bogged down
attempting to be successful with the current task at hand that they lose sight
of the big picture.

Living in Silicon Valley is good advice - it's the right place to be to do
some networking. You seem to be good at identifying opportunity - just make
sure you talk to lots of other smart people and understand what they're doing,
what they find difficult, etc. You'll know it when you hear something that you
want to get involved in.

------
johndevor
I also attend UVA and am entering my fourth year... who are you? And do I know
you?

~~~
antirez
<crappy_horror_movie_voice>He is the other yourself</...>.

~~~
johndevor
My evil twin! Oh my god!

------
dremar
I would second the people saying to live cheaply for some time. In 4-5 years,
you could become highly skilled in any one thing that you're passionate about.
Often times you miss pursuing certain interests in your early years;
simultaneously society forces you around in disagreeable ways. This is a
chance to "correct everything wrong with your life," as much as that's
feasible.

The obvious alternatives - blindly go work in some fashion, or spend your
money funding a startup - are likely to leave you burnt out, because you don't
have a good motivation yet. Once you've figured out your biggest passions,
then work will be easy and you'll have no trouble feeling productive.

------
andrewljohnson
I invite you to invest your money in my start-up :)

------
100k
It sounds like you're a bit burned out on working. You've been doing it for
almost a decade already, so no surprise.

I recommend traveling until you get tired of it. Explore the world. It's
cliche but you do learn a lot about yourself and your culture by visiting
others. This can cost incredible amounts of money or it can be very cheap. It
depends on your standards and where you go.

It sounds like you enjoy the university atmosphere. Take a look at study
abroad programs. My wife delayed her graduation by a semester so she could do
this. Or just extend your education, take some more classes. Then you can
spend some time traveling. Maybe do Peace Corps. Learn a new language.

After that, take stock of your life and think about what you want to do. You
have the financial freedom to do what you want for a few years. You may want
to get a job just to learn from others. Maybe you'll want to tackle one of the
world's big problems. Or you'll be recharged enough to start a new business.

Since graduating, I've worked hard and lived below my means. 3 times I've
saved up a lot of money and then blown it all at once. First was my wedding;
next was a summer in Europe; and now I am working on a startup.

I haven't regretted any of it. My only regrets are not doing it sooner; and
that I pushed myself through college without spending any time abroad.

------
crux_
Random thoughts:

\- Kiva (& similar microlending orgs) seems like a nice way to put some
portion of that to work for good causes, without it disappearing nearly as
fast as simple charitable giving would make it go.

\- If you own a place to live outright (no mortgage), even if it is a tiny
apartment, you have an incredible amount of flexibility in your life that you
would not have otherwise. (Of course, that flexibility is more interesting if
you are living in SF than in Montana.)

(edit: paragraph breaks.)

------
Kaizyn
If you're in business and finance, then you already know about the miracle of
compound interest. Take at least $50K of your money ($75K would be better) and
put it into any sort of interest-bearing account - stocks, bonds, government-
backed securities, anything that pays a pretty good interest rate without
being overly risky.

At 6% interest, your $50K makes you $1.6 million in 48 years. Considering that
that interest rate is on the low end of the spectrum, you should be able to do
much better. Just treat the money as if it isn't there, and you have a
guaranteed retirement in the future when you'll need it. From there, you can
simply take as many entrepreneurial risks during your productive career as
you'd like w/o having to worry about catastrophic failure. Good luck!

------
fuzzmeister
I'd love to hear what direction you end up taking your life in - I'm in
roughly the same position, having established various web businesses and
looking to study a variety of subjects in college, just 3 years earlier (going
into college this fall) and with a bit less money.

------
ctkrohn
You said you're thinking about a career in Wall Street. I work as a trader at
one of the big banks, so shoot me an email (address in profile) and I'll give
you some thoughts about what it's like. I'd rather not air everything in a
public forum...

------
yankeeracer73
Moving to Silicon Valley would be good times but unless you get a job you'll
quickly eat through your 100k on living expenses OR you'll be living 40 miles
away from your job and enduring a hellish commute on a regular basis. My
suggestion would be to try and work with a small start-up who wants to quickly
build some sort of international presence in a country of your choice and go
live there for a year. That way you're working on something cool, you're still
building your skills, but you're also able to take advantage of doing some
travel outside the U.S. Given your background I'm sure someone would take a
chance on you as a good business development guy.

~~~
jasonlbaptiste
Everyone has this notion that silicon valley is extremely expensive. If you
have a family sure, it is. If you're young like the original poster or most of
the people here, it's just as expensive as any other city (not that expensive
if you're smart). Room with other people, which can be done for about 700-800
a month. If you need a car, get one thats 200-300 a month. Odds are you don't,
and the public transportation system in the valley is great if you live on a
main road. Food? Safeway has great prices with free delivery over 50 bucks and
you don't need to eat like a pig. Drinks? Get to know some cute bartenders and
your tabs will easily have 50% vanish :-). Or just split the beer/liquor bill
for the house with roommates. Someone mentioned that you could live in the
valley for 20k a year after taxes, which is about 1,666 a month. Highly doable
and you'll actually enjoy it too. I've said this many times before and I'll
say it again: If you have a REAL desire to give the valley a shot, then DO IT.
You'll meet awesome people and have an experience you will never forget.
Nothing is stopping you, especially with 100k in your bank account and already
sharpened skills.

------
zaveri
I am currently a student at UVA as well. Are u in Cville over the summer by
any chance?

~~~
rjett
I'm currently in Cville over the summer too... it appears that the number of
UVa/ Cville people has grown here on HN since I last asked the question. We
should have a meetup sometime.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I'd be up for an HN meetup in the CVille area sometime over the summer too, as
long as it happened sometime after the end of the month.

~~~
omarish
count me in, too!

------
gregf
Hookers and Blow...

------
brixon
Ignore the money and find your niche/domain. Then figure out how to invest in
the niche to better position yourself for the future. My guess is that you
will start a business to fill that niche. Most great companies started when
someone had a real bad experience at work or with a product or service. Find
your passion, but don't blow your savings on it.

Don't give it away. If you can turn 100K into 10M then give 10% of the 10M
away.

------
aberman
Move to Silicon Valley. Take a job that pays decently. Live frugally. Network
your ass off. Look into a variety of different opportunities and startups --
maybe even start a few small projects, or help others start their's -- and the
minute you find something that really excites you, quit your job and work on
it full time (with a bunch of capital to get you started).

------
Zarathu
Even though people are saying to stay away from the stock market, I think now
is one of the best times to invest (if not 3 months ago).

~~~
ErrantX
2 more months I would say: unless you like really high risk.

I wouldn't invest a full 100K right now in unless I had more to go round ;) (I
do run a fairly large investment pot for me and some friends - things take a
bit of managing atm)

------
csomar
I read it because I like to read other people stories and like to write my
own!

If I was you (ok, I live in a different culture):

Two years ago, I happened to have the same problem as you: I can't concentrate
on one language and one platform (always jump from one to another), trying
basic, javascript, html, php and many other compilers. The solution for this
is to follow the Microsoft Track: It's cheap now and promising.

Yes, got Dot Net and learn Visual C# with WPF, it's very amazing.

Here's what I'll do, if i was exactly in the same conditions:

\- Move to a cool area, where I can meet with other geeks and find meetups and
interesting things to have fun and boarden my mind

\- As you are geek (i guess so) and have some knowledge in programming, 6
months will be enough to master Visual C# and WPF (Microsoft Expression
Blend). I'll buy a new Computer with Windows 7.

\- After 6 months, I should be comfortable with Dot Net, I'll take some
accelerated courses and read few books and take Microsoft Certificates (MCPD)

\- let say 8 months gone... It's time to make something interesting, let say
any application that is simple and can scale. And I want to give you an
example (Abyss Webserver) it's a tunisian product (I'm tunisian too) and it's
a successfull web server although it's very simple and basic against its rival
competitors IIS and Apache but it did succeed, so don't be worried of big
competitors.

One thing to say: Be careful before you choose the application you are going
to build.

Will it take more than 4 months? You can hire few on the Internet to get it
done with you, or just get a partner.

\- 1 Year collapsed, it's time to publish your application and start marketing
it. Now that's the hardest part and you can either succeed or fail, it'll
depend if you made the right choice and choose the correct things: There's
things that works and things that doesn't and also how many people need your
application and how much are they willing to pay for it.

In a matter of 3 months, you should see if this plan did work or not, if your
application was sold or not. If your application was priced $20 and sold 5,000
time then you got your $100K!!

In worst cases, you did learn something and you can NOW work on many companies
since Dot Net has a high demand and you are able to change your location.

study this plan, one benefit is that you don't loose anything with it.

Hint: You can start a blog while learning and building your application it'll
be fun, provide more clients and may be an extra income in the future.

------
locopati
You could easily travel for a year for $10k (depending on where you travel and
how comfortable you are with low-end, backpacker-style travel). Maybe it's
worth taking some time away from everything familiar to see what inspirations
come to you.

------
malloc
I find this discussion of great interest. For those suggestion he goes
traveling, taking some time off, what destiny would you recommend?

Be specific please.

Personally, I can't get satisfied with landscape/water, so its hard to find
cool places :D

------
xenophanes
Considering reading some philosophy like Ayn Rand or Karl Popper. It's better
to learn about which values and ways of thinking are best _early_ in one's
life rather than later.

------
chaostheory
why not work on a new startup new while you're still young?

as for programming, the new languages (python, ruby) are much easier to learn
and use than C++, and just as powerful language wise.

------
bint
Buy 50k worth of gold & silver bullion as a future proof investment.

Give 10k as a gift to your parents and close family.

40k left. From that, mark 20k for one year living expenses. The remaining 20k,
use to launch a business. So you have 1 year where you can work on building
your own business without any other worries or stress.

If at the end of that one year, you have failed, get a normal job. If you
succeed though, you will turn that 20k in 200k soon enough, God willing.

Make it a goal to be able to retire by the age of 40. Ponder life and the
purpose of life and the reason for existence.

------
grandalf
You seem to be good with money, so I'd suggest putting the 100K away in the
stock market in case you need it later. Having a bit of extra security will be
great b/c you'll feel comfortable taking bigger risks than you otherwise
might.

~~~
grandalf
hmm not sure why this was modded down.

Do you really want to do a startup in which you are the main investor and
employee? Seems like you would be better served letting the money work for you
in the stock market while figuring out ways to self-fund with current earnings
or outside investors. Having your own wealth as a backup plan will give you
more negotiating power, but it doesn't necessarily mean you _should_ be
filling all of those roles yourself.

