That's hard to do in the US if you don't plan on CORBA. I'm not full time employed at the moment and randomly broke my ankle trying to skateboard for the first time.

The medical bills are 50k and counting. Thankfully my wife's insurance (she's working) fully covers this.

I cannot imagine taking time off without any health insurance and the cost of CORBA is itself one or two thousand every month for two people.

But if you're single and under 27 (where you can still fall back under your parents healthcare) things could be easier.

Yeah, health coverage can be tricky. I'm unemployed ("on sabbatical") and bought my own plan through healthcare.gov for about $12/day.

Was a healthcare.gov plan not an option? I don’t know how the coverage compares, but 1k-2k for 1-2 people seems like way more.

Well maybe I used it wrong. But it also seems to differ by state? The 1-2k/mo for two people was actually the quote I got through the NY exchange (which I think Healthcare.gov sent me to).

The CORBA cost was even higher.

Yes, I was using exaggeration to get the point across that this is written from a position of privilege that many of us reading cannot afford.

But who actually cares? I don't understand the point of your objection. Are you saying that privileged people shouldn't talk to each other about their problems, because those conversations won't be relatable to people without those privileges? Should people who can walk never talk about walking because other people can't walk?

That being said, it's definitely better for poor people to become unemployed against their will, because then they can get unemployment.

Of course plenty of people reading it cannot afford that, but that doesn't make it "unrelatable" to the rest of the HN readership.

Lots of people in tech or programming fields can get paid >$80k per year. Spend some time at that salary, and be thrifty, and you can save up many thousands after a few years. Easily enough for a several-month cushion.

No, not everyone can do this.

But people here also write about their MacBook Pros, and many people can't afford those either. (Indeed, for the cost of a high-end MacBook Pro many people could afford to take a month or two off.)

I understand that not every tech job is paying SV wages. For a while I was earning 60k CAD and was still able to save up a good chunk of change. One thing to bear in mind is that if you voluntarily take a stint of unemployment you should probably see your expenses go down a fair bit as you'll have time to cook from scratch more often and will probably go off daily expenses like coffee.

Being able to voluntarily not work in your early twenties would be pretty spectacular - but once you start building a bit of a nest egg you should be able to afford short stints.

I think most folks assume that people in their twenties will just go without dental/vision/pharma in the US and grab a cheapo bronze tier plan off the ACA unless they have a preexisting condition that requires some regular treatment.

I agree that the costs are higher in the US and it makes dealing with stress more difficult but... the US is a terrible place to be if absolutely anything is wrong with you - so assuming you could take a pleasant sabbatical there seems unwise. It'd almost certainly be cheaper to move overseas and pay whatever monthly fee the local government charges to temporarily enroll on their healthcare and it sucks - but, again, it's the US where healthcare is a stressful burden yall have to deal with - I was born there and emigrated and I've been quite happy myself.