An acquaintance of mine was accidentally wired about $100k when it was supposed to be $5k. Before it could be reversed, they moved accounts and immediately bought a one way flight out of country. They then changed all socials and handles. They are now ignoring all court documents and are on track to get a default judgement against them.
Their rationale? “It’s mine, they owed me this”. They are 100% convinced that they are in the right, not just that they can keep it but that they actually intended to send them this to begin with. I get it $100k isn’t nothing but they’re also throwing their life away for less than what they used to make a year in salary.
People do weird things when given sudden access to money or power.
I had a client send me an ACH that was legitimately a fat finger extra zero. For me, it was a "lot" of truck payments. For them, it was a rounding error that they were unaware of until I reached out and let them know about their mistake. I couldn't wait to make it right with them because it bothered me so much because suddenly I had a pile of money that was theirs and not mine.
I had a similar situation where someone had their email client configured with my address in the reply-to header. We shared a first initial, last name, and isp… also happened to be my email address. His email was firsnamelastname, or something similar. I emailed the guy several times explaining how to fix it, and that I was getting a lot of his business correspondence. Never heard from him.
Then one day I get a Chase Zelle email saying that someone was sending me money. Something like $500. Logged into the Chase app and sure enough, could have taken it with the click of a button.
I contacted the sender to explain the situation and recommended they call the intended recipient for a correct email address.
Couldn’t image just taking it knowing it wasn’t intended for me.
Had a similar experience. Was at a party when I suddenly received a notification from our country's equivalent to cashapp/Venmo. It was about $450, so not a lot but enough to be significant to many people. About a minute later I get a call from a seemingly young man who's very stressed telling me he sent the money to the wrong number and asking me to send it back. I told him don't worry I'll get your money back but I need to contact customer service first just to make sure it's safe for me to do so. I wanted to avoid some kind of charge back scam or similar.
So I called CS, they said it was safe to return the money and so I did and the guy called back just to thank me.
This reminds me of the terribly designed timesheet system I was using earlier this year, where I accidentally logged like 55 hours of work for something instead of 55 minutes… I got a shocking direct deposit that week and had to mail them back a large check. Really hope they definitely don’t mess up the 1099!
Not to mention that, despite having done nothing wrong, you can still be blamed and suffer the consequences. Imagine that company did notice, and the person who sent the payment went into a panic. They call their bank, that bank calls your bank, they put a hold on your entire account, and now your payroll, bills, leases, etc. all start bouncing and you can't accept payments from other clients to cover anything in the short term.
Now you've done nothing wrong, maybe even haven't noticed yet, and suddenly they kill your business overnight.
> An acquaintance of mine was accidentally wired about $100k when it was supposed to be $5k. Before it could be reversed, they moved accounts and immediately bought a one way flight out of country. They then changed all socials and handles. They are now ignoring all court documents and are on track to get a default judgement against them.
$95k does not seems like enough money to totally upend your life like that for.
> $95k does not seems like enough money to totally upend your life like that for.
That's because most of us here are so used to the amount of money we earn. But for people who literally struggling with month-to-month payments, 100K feels like a life-changing amount of money. If they were just saving month by month, they might have never reached that amount in their entire life.
Our perspectives here on HN are very one-sided when it comes to things like this, anyone who been poor previously (or is currently) could attest to this.
There was a thread here not too long ago about employees getting fired because they were cheating on their expense accounts. C-level execs cheating on pretty trivial amounts. And others brought up star athletes getting paid millions, then getting busted placing thousands of dollars on insider bets. There's a lot of irrationality in these decisions.
Greed knows no limits. That's how polls showed the happiest people earn around 60-80k a year, and both the people below and above that threshold, reported to be less and less happy the less they made and also the more they made.
It's as if the more money you make, the more you need to feel fulfilled, so people start stealing and scamming to cover a self inflicted psychological money deficit.
> That's how polls showed the happiest people earn around 60-80k a year, and both the people below and above that threshold, reported to be less and less happy the less they made and also the more they made.
This is a myth. The original 2010 Kahneman-Deaton study showed that how favorably people judged their overall lives continued to improve beyond $75k. Daily emotional well-being appeared to stop improving around that level. [1]
A larger 2021 study by Killingsworth using real-time reports found no happiness plateau at $75k; instead, well-being continued increasing with income, including above $200k. The relationship was logarithmic - going from $40k to $80k mattered more than going from $160k to $200k, but the benefit didn't disappear. [2]
So of course, in 2023, Kahneman and Killingsworth jointly re-analyzed to resolve the conflict, leading to more nuanced conclusions: in the least-happy 15-20%, unhappiness declined as income went up but eventually leveled off; for the majority of people, happiness continued rising with income beyond $75k; in the happiest people, the association sometimes became stronger at higher incomes. [3]
I don't know, the very same comment mentions that the person was earning 6 figures. Less-than-a-year's-salary is definitely a weird thing to throw a comfortable 6 figure income out the window for - it's not like 95k is "never work a day in your life" money.
> I don't know, the very same comment mentions that the person was earning 6 figures.
What does that mean for where and how the person live though? How much money were they realistically having left at the end of the month? 6 figures surely means a lot in some places, in others not so much and maybe they didn't have much left after all. Even with 1K left in a month on average, that's 95 months (~8 years) of saving for the same amount, maybe it was always the plan to just get the fuck out once they got close to 100K or whatever.
Humans do rash things, especially when some shortcut appears. But all this is also speculation and hypothesizing, who knows the real reasons behind it for sure.
> What does that mean for where and how the person live though?
It means they lived somewhere where a 6-figure income is feasible, which already puts it on the expensive end of the spectrum. If they are fleeing to somewhere where 95k looks like retirement money, that's not going to be a place where replacing that 6-figure income is feasible (especially with a default judgement against them blocking access to the whole US-influenced banking network)
> That the main factor in income is not even job, but merely location and access to work visa? Talk about deeply unfair ...
For sure unfair. It drove whole generations to seek to emigrate to the US to work in Silicon Valley - one lucky break in the Bay Area, or 10-15 years of regular work, could set your whole family up for life back home. Now the equation is shifting, as US immigration policies become less predictable, and BigTech is back in layoff mode.
I expect that the EU's more moderate (but still high globally) salaries coupled to robust worker protections, cheap healthcare + education systems, are going to start looking pretty good for the next while.
Now he's up to his ears in debt and a felon in his original country, plus he's not likely to get another six-figure job from any country willing to do a background check. I hope that extra $95k was sufficient to set him up for life.
I don’t think that changes the equation any? If you are underwater on 100k/year, you sure as shit are going to end up underwater on 95k for the entire rest of your life…
But the poster said that that was basically his yearly salary. He fled the country and has to spend the rest of his life worrying about extradition (and/or having people find out he's a felon) for a year's pay.
> People do weird things when given sudden access to money or power.
It's more that money and power enable you to be who you really are, and amplify your worst traits if you're lacking self-awareness.
There are many people who are rich/wealthy and/or powerful and they're decent individuals living relatively ordinary lives. You don't read about most of them because they're "normal".
If the only reason you didn't behave that way to begin with is that you lack the money and power to evade the consequences, then yes. You really are that person.
while i somewhat agree with that reasoning, it can go too far - most people would murder and kill if there weren't any consequences to doing so. But is it right to say who they really are as being murderers?
> most people would murder and kill if there weren't any consequences to doing so
This is what Christians tell themselves and others to explain why believing in their religion is so important, but it's not even remotely true. Humans evolved community and society long before we evolved organized religion.
I constantly see Christians pitching this like some kind of gotcha: "If you don't believe in God, then how do you know what's right or wrong?" The simple answer is that I have empty and I care about how other people feel; I try to do things that make things better and avoid things that make things worse, both for me and for others.
If the only reason that you don't rape and murder is because you're worried about consequences then that makes you a horrible person whether you act on it or not.
Conversely, it seems as though Christians see these 'teachings' as a get out of moral quandary free card; if the Bible implies it's okay, or you can justify an interpretation where that's the case, then it's completely fine to do whatever you like. Harass or attack trans people, bomb Iran, make miscarriages illegal but refuse to feed the poor or help with daycare - all because one reading of the bible supports the things you want to do (even though it doesn't) but doesn't require what you don't want to do (even though it does, actually).
It's especially interesting when you consider that doing the Right Thing despite the consequences (like when challenging a tyrant) is seen as heroic. The logical consequence is that, if you view God as the ultimate tyrant, challenging him is supremely heroic.
> most people would murder and kill if there weren't any consequences to doing so
Do you have any evidence to support this? Feels like this opinion is made up, for unknown reasons.
In reality, psychopathic tendencies are about 4.5% in the general adult population, a far cry from 'most people', with the gold standard assessment being only 1.2%. [1]
From that same article, "The construct of psychopathy is understood generically as a type of personality disorder characterized, among other important features, by the presence of behaviors that conflict with the social, moral, or legal norms of society, giving rise in many cases to clearly criminal behaviors ..."
There's also the bagel experiment described in Freakonomics. [2]
> most people would murder and kill if there weren't any consequences to doing so
Citation needed. There are a lot of ways I can improve as a person, but I can promise you I am not and not ever been a murderer or killer regardless of consequences. Even if someone threatened me or someone else, I would do my best to not kill them and simply diffuse the situation.
I believe the original statement is an oversimplification. What actually happens is that extreme situations, both positive and negative, can help you discover things about you that you didn't know before.
Apart from that, the problem with "who you really are" is that individual is more of a process than a static thing, so any such reification becomes invalid in the next instant.
You're right that people aren't static, but we should also acknowledge there are lots of people who become rich and powerful and they don't do horrid things. Many are perfectly decent people who care for their families, help those around them, contribute to their communities and use their wealth and power to support causes that are important to them.
You don't hear about these people as much because they're not out looking for attention, making outlandish statements or even trying to "change the world" in a narcisstic Silicon Valley way.
"Who you are" at your core drives the direction you go in when you acquire wealth and power.
I'd say who you really are is whoever you really are. If you're acting like a dick then you really are a dick, I don't care whether your financial situation influences your behavior.
Same goes for money: It enables greedy jerks to be more greedy and more of a jerky, and it enables people who e.g. voluntarily donated already to do much more in that direction, too.
> People do weird things when given sudden access to money or power.
Given your story its not sounds like this is power grab. More like they actually on spectrum and have some mental issues on top this. Or had mental breakdown because something happened before that money arrived.
Situations when people do something weird, bad or just plain evil for money and power are usually logical. E.g people think they got access to more money they percieve they can earn in next decade, or ever, something that settles them for life.
Earning more than $100,000 and throwing everything away for $95,000 only make sense if you are terminally ill. Or if it was never your real identify in first place and its well planned scam.
If you're earning $100k in Silicon Valley, your expenses will swallow up almost all of that. A sudden $100k windfall, on the other hand, tax free and suitably invested,will let you live for years quite comfortably in many poor countries.
Sorry to disappoint you, but no you cannot live "comfortably" in "poor countries" for $100,000 for "years". Well, unless you mean like two years.
I lived across South East Asia for more than decade and now live here full time. I have to live on around $20,000 / year most of the time since starting my company. And I do not live anywhere close to what average US / EU citizen will call "comfortable" let alone people from valley.
Stories of rich living for cheap in poor countries its just that: stories. It only possible if you preserve your US salary. For $50,000 post tax a year you can live well unless you have kids that need not a "poor country education".
I live in what according to Wikipedia is 18th most expensive country in the world. Average person working full time as a nurse here earns about 30k dollars a year after taxes. If they can survive here, 20k a year in most of South East Asia should be perfectly fine for comfortable life.
Sure, if you're starting from nothing and expect to live a Western lifestyle. But you can draw down $5000/year from that sum for a very long time, and make twice the average Indian yearly income.
One more thing about life in developing countries, ones with seemingly super low GDP per capita. Its that low because a lot of economy in rural areas is simple unaccounted for: communities build their own housing, grow their own food or work in family business usually with no accounting or taxes whatsoever.
If you're born there you unlikely to ever end up in US on $100,000+ job unless your whole family or village invest in it.
If you're expat you will soon end up finding out that as expat you'll pay completely different prices and starting local business is just impossible unless you become part of a family.
EU have free healthcare and education. Also not everyone, but alot of people still own their own houses and appartments or they can get relatively cheap mortage.
Nothing of it available in cheap country for expat. If you move to developing country you better pay for health insurance like 80-250 EUR / month / person.
Also if you have a partner who is not remote worker they might not be able to find well paid job there. If you have kids then giving them good modern education in English is exorbitantly expensive.
I wont even start about fact that government of cheap country might change and you lose your residence permit, social circle or even property. And in most of countries that are easy to enter never give permanent residences and passports. You have to pay pay pay all the time or jump countries.
… which is precisely why I mentioned gross, pre-mandatory social contributions, pre-taxed income, and not net take-home? Considering said taxes pay for said healthcare, pensions, and education?
As a supporting point for
> 50,000 sounds like a lot. Most people in West European countries don’t make that much.
And a counter-point to
> I lived across South East Asia for more than decade and now live here full time. I have to live on around $20,000 / year most of the time […] And I do not live anywhere close to what average US / EU citizen will call "comfortable" […]. It only possible if you preserve your US salary. For $50,000 post tax a year you can live well unless you have kids that need not a "poor country education".
> I wont even start about fact that government of cheap country might change and you lose your residence permit, social circle or even property. And in most of countries that are easy to enter never give permanent residences and passports.
Good, because that is an entirely different and very loosely related point.
Honestly conversation did derailed. For me it isnt about US vs EU. Its about difference between living in a country with some functioning institutions, rule of law and education / healthcare.
I do care about having to waste my life setting DIY solutions because country I live in doesnt have it.
I just lived around the world a bit especially in said cheap countries. A lot of people who spend 3-6 months travelling there after college or while nomading seriously undersell how much hassle living there can be if you're there for good.
Its a good to have a job or company in US / EU while living in SEA knowing you can always return if something go sour or when you decide to start a family. Its nowhere as easy if you have hypothetical scenario of moving there for a decade.
They are not free, the costs are deducted from the gross income listed above. Not that fundamentally different than employers paying for your health insurance (besides the system being way more efficient etc.)
Whole point is that as expat in developing countries you'll have to DIY your own healthcare. And education if you have children. And pay commercial prices.
And good education is either non existing in cheap cities or expensive in expensive ones.
> And good education is either non existing in cheap cities or expensive in expensive ones.
As it is in most if not all of the world? Free, high quality, public education is a rare thing, in most countries, even fully developed expensive ones.
Even when the schools themselves are nominally free you see well-off highly educated people do their best and pay a very large premium to get to live into the proper, usually expensive, neighbourhoods so their kids can live in the "right" school district to get into the "right" school.
Which is just paying a premium for supposedly better education. An indirect education cost.
And that is on top of the taxes deducted from the gross salary figures I mentioned, which are, in part, used to cover said "free" education.
To be fair if you are an English speaker and move to medium/lower CoL central/eastern/southern European country you will mostly have the same concerns and will realistically have to pay commercial prices for the most part.
Yes of course someone pays for it, in this case your deductions as you say.
But I think there is a fundemental difference to employers paying for health insurance in that it doesn't depend on your job. So if you lose your job you don't lose your healthcare so companies can't use that as a way to retain you.
And the actual cost of healthcare to the organisations paying for it is actually far lower than the US system, probably partly because it's more regulated and also because there is far less litigation so insuranace for doctors is cheaper.
So I don't think the US system is "more efficient", unless by "efficient" you mean in extracting money from patients / their insurances. In the US hospitals exist to make money, in the EU it's more about providing treatment.
Since I'm an engineer in europe I think I have a clear idea of how little engineers in europe make. And it's not little enough to run away from your life for only 100k$
The question is still what number people need to live "comfortably" (i.e. upper middle class). The average salary there may not quite provide for the amenities the average American considers "comfortable".
For expat most important part of comfort its entertainment and socialization. In cheap areas you will only have locals who depend on country might want or not to socialize with you, but either way cultural gap will be massive and finding friends will be a struggle for most.
There of course cities with a lot of expats and activities, but imagine what - living there is not cheap. Cheaper than US / EU, but you still gonna need that $2000 / month.
Wont even start on topic of lost opportunities from lack of networking since we talk of some extreme downshifting here. But most people need friends and safety net at least.
You need half a million 500,000 dollars @ 4% interest (major US Bank) savings account = 1666.66 per month $1,000,000 = $3,333.33 per month $1,500,000 = 5,000 per month $2,000,000 = $6,666.66 per month
So with half $500,000 US dollars you could survive on 1666.66 per month in Yugoslavia most people, however, will spend beyond that amount however, the temptation is too high. Soccer players and basketball players, well actually most people will simply not have the discipline.
I agree (from semi-relevant experience). Also, any “poor” country that’s inexpensive enough to fit this requirements probably isn’t one you’d voluntarily live in.
Side note for the original commenter: It would be kinder and more accurate to state “lower cost of living countries” than “poor countries”. There are numerous lower COL countries that offer a higher quality of life a than that of the US but they aren’t “poor” (I moved to one).
And likely "suitable" countries are not the ones you want to do any investments or even transfer 100,000 to local bank.
I understand that side note wasnt for me, but yeah most of cheaper developing South East Asia countries are not "poor". Though there are ones you can call that, but again in a such countries you dont really want anyone to know you have $100,000 somewhere on a bank because its can get unsafe very fast. Its either "live just a little better than locals" or get in trouble.
PS: I talking of Myanmar, most of Laos and Cambodia.
If you okay to live like vietnamese person do yes you can live on $700 just fine. Especily if you single, healthy and love driving on motorbikes through rain and take a bit of risks.
Plus health insurance like Cigna for $100-200 unless you want to pay $10,000-20,000 in vinmec if you crash on a motorbike or get other serious sickness.
Plus border runs like $200-300 three times a year or often for cheaper depend on your paasport.
Problem that I doubt its how average SWE on HN imagine "comfortable" living.
Then if you have a partner who is not remote worker and kids there will be other surpeises for you.
If "poor country" includes "places US foreigners won't go" than you sure as shit can survive longer than 2 years.
For example, Thailand would be 2 years like you say. Neighboring Burma/Myanmar would be EASILY 5 years, possibly 10 depending on how long the civil war goes. That's assuming you don't work and live in the capital Yangon.
I do get that $100,000 in expensive parts of silicon valley likely will buy you a room, some food and commute to work, but math dont make sense here.
Person from that kind of country likely had to spend $100,000 just to find job and move to US and survive there for the first time.
Legal migration to US is super hard and super expensive. You have to be both very successful in what you do and very dedicated in order to do it. Or very rich. And it take years.
People who choose to migrate to US and manage to do it isnt the type to throw it away on small scam.
And if they managed to get in easy, fast and illegally then they wont be the ones competing for $100,000+ job.
The number of people we got to see on TikTok discover that you can write yourself a cheque for $100k and then get access to that money as though it was some kind of infinite money glitch that no one had ever thought of, manufacturing money out of nowhere that no one would try to get back... ridiculous.
> People do weird things when given sudden access to money or power.
10 years ago my last boss told me one last advice before going onto entrepreneur ventures: « be careful, people do become crazy and stupid with money » (and I guess he knew what he was talking about…)
Maybe there were other factors? Maybe they were leaning towards leaving anyway and this influx of cash enabled them to do so? It’s a stupid idea, for sure, but I think the explanation that “people do weird things when faced with a lot of money” is not really all that explanatory.
Was talking to a lawyer, and tells me how often he has clients say (after a crime, and while trying to resolve things), "We've got this far [in trying to fix it], don't worry, I'm not stupid enough to screw it up". His response, generally, "My career is built on people who did dumber things, and for less, so..."
What privilege? Anyone's life (someone who lives in the Valley) is worth more than 95k. Anyone who is a software engineer at Apple, is definitively worth more than 95k. The kid is dumb. Not sure how Apple interview processes are these days.
There's homeless people living on the streets or people in jail who destroyed their lives for way less than 95k. Often for nothing, like throwing a punch over a parking spot argument.
You'd be surprised how far down poor impulsive choices can drag you down even when there's no money on the line.
There's a line from the movie The Way of the Gun that I love about this. The number is higher, but it still applies. Some criminals are loading a $15 million ransom into the back of a truck, and a younger criminal says, "Boy, $15 million is a lot of money, huh?" and James Caan, playing an older, wiser criminal says,
"Money? $15 million is not 'money'. It's a motive, with a universal adapter on it."
Spot on perfect. I see this too often and not just in tech.