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Comment by eterm | Hacker News Reader

But I enjoy work. I'm happy that I'm well compensated for the work I do, but even without that I fundamentally enjoy my work.

In fact work is preferable to how I spend a lot of my free time. Would I like to work more flexible hours and get paid the same to work 30 hours instead of 37.5 a week then sure, but otherwise what would money be buying freedom from?

I suppose owning a house out-right would be freedom from worrying about security of housing, and having a large cash reserve in a few currencies would be security from political instability.

Perhaps that I only have to worry about these "big" things means I already qualify as rich from my existing income, but "not working" is definitely not a goal I align to (yet).

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I enjoy work as well. Eventually you will work at a job that was great, but through acquisition or whatever, it turns terrible and you will feel trapped because it pays well but the people you work for are less than ideal for many reasons.

Most of the work we have to do is not life changing or world changing, or even makes the world a slightly better place for anyone other than the ownership.

One day you might want to fully explore a new technology or framework, but your current work environment isn't interested and you aren't well versed enough, or there aren't any jobs in your area related to that technology. Spending time after work is an option, but when you get older and have a family, the harder that is.

To me money is freedom to not have to work, or be able to work on what I want to work on, explore what I want to explore, etc.

Holding cash on purpose is a pretty terrible idea in just about every political environment. Nobody who's rich actually does this, unless is specifically earmarked for an upcoming purchase or an emergency fund. You're better off with stocks and metals.

How is holding large amounts of cash bad? I don't understand, could you elaborate on that?

Cash doesn't grow and is generally devalued through inflation.

A diverse portfolio is better protected against inflation, cash ought to make up some of a diverse portfolio but not a large proportion of it. Bonds are a better way of having cash-denominated assets since they still have returns while not being particularly risky (in the general case).

Cash is still useful however because it is easy to access quickly without losing value to having to sell quickly and doesn't incur fees.

You are losing them to inflation.

At a very slow rate, at very low risk. There are always tradeoffs. I think bad about cash.

There's enough of compound effect to make your cash worth a lot less by the time you retire. E.g. here in Norway you'd lose 50% value of your savings over 20 year period.

If you stuff the cash in a mattress and sit around for 20 years. But if you do that, inflation isn't your biggest risk.

And Bitcoin.

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