Why Aren’t Rich People Happy With the Money They Have?
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
BTW, money is not just good for buying material things. You can spend arbitrary amounts of money on philanthropy and political donations. Once you start to do that, a lot of people start to want to be your friend. That kind of attention and deference can also be a very powerful drug.
It's a well kept secret.
And I've been much happier since I stopped looking at it, but every now and then I fall off the wagon and sneak a peek.
Much more useful would be notifications of people responding to my comments, or maybe even people continuing discussions that I'm interested in. It's easy to lose track of those if I haven't posted in them.
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karma.textContent = " | "If we are asked to do something that in abstract we would consider stupid or pointless, but is now accompanied by a large amount of money, we accept with the presumption that no one would offer so much money if it weren't very important.
Money provides a very simple, neat way of valuing every item or service on Earth. Deceptively simple.
I imagine this is especially true for people who have a high score on this metric. It appeals to ego and vanity.
oh boy I'd take a higher paying job to pay my mortgage or ease vacation with kids. No need to have a higher value than that.
Isn't that the very concept of money? :)
Edit: newlines
If we traded in goats, it'd be how many goats you have. It doesn't matter at all the medium, as long as the value is tenable.
That seems to be overthinking motivation.
If a sponsor was offering $500k for someone to stand on a streetcorner and sing Weird Al songs most people wouldn't consider that was an important job but they'd still do it for the money. Because the money provides opportunity to buy or do things that are worthwhile.
Money is a simple way of valuing objective time vs opportunity.
The 2008 financial crash, for instance, arguably demonstrated that a lot of practices in the finance industry weren't really creating value for anyone, just deceptively pushing up the value of something worthless in order to profit from it. But if you had approached someone making $500k at Bear Sterns in 2007 and said that, it would have touched off a whole string of rationalizations that basically amount to: "I'm being paid a lot of money, so this must be useful, otherwise I wouldn't be so rich" and potentially even "if you are so smart, why aren't you making $500k?"
And it's not just finance. I've had a version of that conversation often with Googlers when I criticize the company's bizarre and inexplicably messaging strategy were they seem to deliberately blow up any semblance of a good product. Their argument is ultimately, "we get paid $200k+ to do this and you work in a power plant, how could you possibly know any better than us?"
That's what I'm trying to get at with "money as merit".
But they're just new grads, so obviously they can't know much, right?
I haven't looked deep into it because I just don't care at this point, but 200k in Mountain View isn't the same 200k in other places.
But also, compensation is a sensitive topic. I don't know of the other posts you're speaking of, but people don't like having compensation history go with their comments.
Compensation is an intense topic for obvious reasons. There is a lot of variance in the data and it is anything but transparent. It's not surprising that people would create accounts to post sensitive information about it. I haven't seen examples of abuse in this area, but if you or anyone think you're seeing some, please email hn@ycombinator.com so we can investigate.
Just because the company got wiped out by a black swan style event means nothing about whether their employees were providing a lot of value to the firm.
Progressive betting strategies for example can appear to work in the short term, but anyone executing them is destroying value.
The same applies to traders, etc.
My dentist fixing my toothache still provided value to me even if I die of a massive heart attack in two months.
Really, the company did not die in "100 hours." People just noticed it was already dead.
it is actually against reddit rules to auto ban users like that but it is part of the increasing number of rarely enforced rules on reddit
Aside from saying unpopular things, a net negative karma will also do it, which is a reflection of the same outcome
Always check your post history from an incognito browser to see if others can see it
So with due respect, Kafkaesque suggestions to contact the mods don’t help. What would help is getting rid of juvenile practices that are arguably ineffective, i. e., shadow bans.
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=we%27ve%20banned&sort=byDate&d...
Plenty of explanations about why: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
also the semi-noob phrase is showing the age of that document
I believe the real explanation of why identity is important to them is a bit of social psychology. The theory is that identifying with people makes them less mean to each other. So they probably want consistent identities so people will be more civil, which is one of their stated goals.
It's also the way HN has always worked. A collection of nameless posts would be a very different kind of forum. Anyone is welcome to start one, but not to turn this one into that one.
Bollocks.
While other things conform to the prevalent opinion and masquarade as insightful high quality comments
there is a reason we can still see the now-laughable criticisms of dropbox
But was it really?
It certainly wasn't a high-quality comment, it was too negative and arguably mean.
But the "failure" of the comment was merely a failure in correctly evaluating the business value. Something most of us have done many times in our "forum careers". Just think about all those comments that amount to not much more than "if you don't use the command line, you're not worthy of using a computer".
On a technical level it was fine. And remember, Dropbox in this very first stage was a very different beast from today's Dropbox.
It's also a social reward function that privileges egotism and narcissism over empathy; exploitation, scamming, and rent-seeking over creativity, curiosity and invention; and short-term gain over long-term damage.
Like the hardest of hard addictive drugs, it's an almost irresistible modifier of behaviour and attitude.
Now, I'm not saying that is the kind of creativity you want to promote, but it certainly is there. There are many people who have fun doing this kind of work.
If money was a poison, the west should be dying. Instead living in rich societies has isolated us from the realities of life in the underdeveloped world, and from our own past of just a few generations, that 'first world problem' has become a persistent joke.
Money can be toxic. Look at the awful social and political problems so many petro-states suffer from. Productive work is the great cleanser though. My wife is Chinese and grew up in a hut with no running water heated by a stove. Since I started visiting her hometown in 2001 it's been transformed beyond recognition, and not by a poison.
I often hear this about capitalism, but why do same people never attribute the genocide of American natives, enslavement of Africans and Indians, to capitalism? The earliest emergence of stock companies, lay waste and devastation to an entire sub-continent.
When the sixth mass extinction is underway, ecological disaster on a global scale, and yet "it be as it be", but this is not attributed to capitalism?
Capitalism: it sits to bask in every glory, and all its failures expelled, literally explained away
The underlying pattern has been there for even longer of course, e.g. Bertrand Russell wrote this in 1932:
In the past, there was a small leisure class and a larger working class. The leisure class enjoyed advantages for which there was no basis in social justice; this necessarily made it oppressive, limited its sympathies, and caused it to invent theories by which to justify its privileges.
Because:
- Slavery and genocide predate modern market economics. They are not unique to capitalism. It would need to be shown that they are more prevalent (tough, given Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, etc.).
- The slavery and genocide you are probably referencing comes from mercantilism and imperialism, not free market capitalism.
- Slavery, violence, and murder are not features of free markets. Property rights aren't exactly established if people and land can be taken by force without compensation or agreement, not that people are property anyway.
I beg to differ. Slavery, violence and murder are inherent properties of an unjust relationships which follow from unequal distribution of wealth.
If you can show me a society which used property but did not have those effects, feel free to correct this point.
But on other hand, I can show you societies which did not have concepts of property, of trade, and did not have slavery and other forms of oppression.
Capitalism means free markets. Free markets means freedom to buy, sell and invest. Freedoms must be protected, and the freest markets have the strongest protections for person and property. Freedom and security go hand in hand.
If capitalism is responsible for slavery and genocide, then it's also responsible for eradicating slavery and genocide within its sphere.
Alternative economic systems don't magically promote human rights. Let's discuss the gap between rich and poor in China or Cuba. Or ethnic suppression and genocide in the USSR or China. Or endemic racism in Cuba. Or systematic impoverishment of millions of people in oligarchies across Africa and South America.
I'm still waiting for socialist systems to make a billion people freer and happier, instead of dead, impoverished or imprisoned.
No, it's a model of property rights. “Free markets” are a slogan, but not even a particularly coherent concept much less a concrete thing that is present in capitalism.
To me, it's similar to looking at a voting system like first past the post and identifying that the system tends towards two parties as a fundamental nature of the system. Underlying motives and strategies of individuals within the system will produce this effect.
I'm not commention on the validity of the "no real communism" statement here, just the comparison of it to the "no real free market"
Capitalism like everything else must adapt or die when circumstances change. As for attribuitable to capitalism a dirty secret is that the USSR was worse environmentally without the greed. It might excaberate some but it is fundamentally the wants and needs that drives consumption.
Haiti's poverty is why their border can be seen from space via deforestation. Humans hunted megafauna to extinction back in ancient times and they weren't exactly morbidly obese.
True to its very mantra: socialize the losses, privatize the gains! At least you can't blame it for inconsistency.
Also, it isn't really capitalism that lifted people out of poverty, it was a very resource-intensive exploitation of fossil fuels on an unprecedented scale.
In the scope of just 1 century, we probably burned at least ~10 million years worth of accumulated energy in fossil fuels. It would be ridiculous if this didn't lift people out of poverty.
BTW, it's not like communism didn't lift people out of poverty. Compare the wealth and possessions of an average citizen of USSR in, say, 1925 and 1975, half a century later.
The mercantilist form of capitalism lead to great abuses and problems, but as always capitalism is the a horrible economic system- but its better than all the alternatives.
In fact Capitalism says very little about politics though. All it takes for it to operate is a functioning legal system and respect for property rights, and that's about it. Capitalism is simply about the freedom to own and raise capital, make investments and earn profits. That's about it. People have been doing that for thousands of years, it's simply the degree to which it is taken that makes the difference. What makes a system non-capitalist is really the degree to which freedoms to invest and practice economic activity are restricted or reserved, and the degree to which property, profits and investment can be appropriated.
Capitalism has very few ideological requirements. A such you can layer over or under it almost any other political ideology. Just look at China with it's Communist political system, statist public sector but burgeoning capitalist economic sector. Is the persecution of the Uighurs down to capitalism?
One problem with capitalism is that it makes a society dramatically more efficient and wealthy, making it a lot more capable of prosecuting whatever other political, racial, cultural or religious agenda the society might have. Just look at the wealthiest nations on earth. They are either capitalist, or they are resource rich such as the petrostates, or in the case of China have re-branded capitalism as 'Chinese Characteristics' and used it to fund the statist side of their agenda. Russia is failing precisely because it has been unable to establish a functioning capitalist economy and relies on oil and gas money instead.
Look at the middle east. Israel is easily the most capitalist society in the region and, even though it faces up to some of the wealthiest nations on the planet, if there was a war between Israel and say Saudi Arabia even, there's no doubt who would get humiliated. That's how terrifyingly effective capitalsim can be. It's the reason Japan rose from being a miserable medieval backwater to dominating all of Asia, even though it retained it's feudal hierarchy. That's how flexible capitalism is because it's not really an ideology, it's just about basic economics.
You see, capitalism indeed works great for the people who "win", yet to keep a relatively high standard of living at home (I'm talking about America since it's the wealthiest country in the world), much suffering has been inflicted in other faraway places: labour is exploited, natural resources are pillaged, brutal control is effected, either directly or by more dissimulated means... This is what people don't talk about then they mention the "joys" of capitalism, they don't mention the repression and murders in Guatemala and dozens other countries, they don't mention slavery and the genocide of natives, they don't mention how multinationals exploit resource-rich countries and siphon that sorely-needed wealth back to the privileged West, etc.
Capitalism didn't originate the concept of resources, or politics, or even money. How can you justify blaming Capitalism for things that happen just as much, if not many, many orders of magnitude more in non-capitalist societies?
Conversely I think it is justifiable to attribute the enormous economic gains of that billion people to capitalism directly. It's an economic system and we're measuring economic gains directly attributable to investment, often replacing decidedly un-capitalist systems.
ANY sort of inherent human greed capitalizes on suffering. It doesn't magically disappear with another system. There is always a pareto distribution of wealth. The differences are in which metrics are the primary leverage for accumulation and the scale of the differentials (wealth disparity) along the curve.
Consider your favourite successful startup and move it to Central America. Now consider what additional factors it needs to take in to simply operate. Take security as an example: Private guards acting with high aggression (machine guns) are a basic requirement in some areas. Compare that to New York (Hand gun).
It's not a reasonable comparison.
You're missing the point. The United State's functioning capitalism is a major cause of your hesitancy to call Central America's countries functioning capitalistic societies.
1 Timothy 6:10: "...the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil."
With that in mind, it makes a lot of sense why money (and the economy generally) rubs people the wrong way. We have here a powerful system in which if you act rationally, selfishly and with intent to maximise your personal outcomes (but within the law), others will benefit. Intent is explicitly not part of the equation of who gets to be wealthy. But the whole thing hangs together because of the intuitive fact that a clever person acting with selfish intent can usually do more good than a clever selfless person acting with noble intent.
There is an irony that working to maximise your income looks, in real terms, a lot like dedicating your life to the betterment of others with personal perks. The people who get rich under capitalism do not spend their time sitting in idleness.
That was useful behavior for guard animals but not universally For vast periods of time you want them to bark at intruders, cattle rustlers and predators but not mauling small children or innocents who may leave you liable.
Essentially it may be the power that does it technically.
Check out Michael Hudson and Richard Werner for a dose of reality.
Looking at research and listening to experts in this fields, it is really fascinating how anything can be made into a value system for social status. Not only that but we can participate simultaneously in multiple social circles with completely different value systems, and as one researcher put it, we tend to channel most of our self worth based on the system where we are ranked highest.
Strangely, money seems like one of the hardest method but also one of the most effective method to achieve this.
Money equals certainty for a lot of people. It lets them count on certain things always being there. Having your own home, respect, clout totally builds your confidence and lets you face life with positivity. You can afford to be wrong more often, so you don't mind sticking your neck out - sometimes you lose, but often times you win big. In short, money removes a lot of anxieties.
A poor person simply doesn't have these luxuries, and the anxiety of poverty is a killer in its own right.
Our flavor of capitalism is also such that all the wealth ends up in a small number of hands. The winner takes all. I wished we could somehow enforce equality without negatively impacting innovation. Probably wishful thinking, but I wonder if society can be optimised so everyone can feel prosperous at the same time?!
Has to do with society functioning as a genetic algorithm: look into a-life like the work of Danny Hillis. You don't make gains when one 'solution' dominates over all others, that's called a plateau. Currently we're at a very low plateau where meddling with finance instruments or collecting rents of various kinds is the only effective way to wealth, and where most innovation will just get you broke and out of the game, because the risk of failing is far too severe.
In history we've had far better conditions for innovation (for instance, the dawn of personal computers) when people were generally more well-off but the disparity between extremes (Gini) was far smaller. This wasn't true for all populations, but I mean the populations that supported technological innovation.
You have to have whole thriving populations of individuals with bits of the eventual answer, including bits that aren't in themselves self-sufficient, in order for crossover and inter-pollination to give you new heights of innovation. Part of that is challenging (disrupting) existing 'best answers', something that's already in the DNA of silicon valley. Right now the best answer is just to get wealthy by any means necessary, preferably by collecting rents and bringing nothing to the table (to work or develop new things would be redirecting energy that can be used to just collect rent and extort money out of the system: it's disadvantageous to make anything new or better when you can engineer the existing system to your benefit)
There is no way Gini inequality helps innovation at all. Innovation has to do with populations of actors that are all reasonably capable of addressing a problem, not seeking a single optimal individual who will do all your innovating for you. Our incentives are literally backwards.
https://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/10-countries-with-most-in...
I don't think there is any level where more equality does not lead to more innovation (any evidence to the contrary is welcome).
The thing with innovation and inequality is that some government programs that help (or claim to) the first can harm the second at the same time. But AFAIK, there is no absolute antagonism between them.
I imagine having that whole weight lifted... and then I read articles like this. Maybe we're all doomed. Call the Buddhists.
When I was younger the lyrics of "Common People" by Pulp [0] really resonated with me on this point - that day to day background worry of making ends meet plagues communities.
Obviously once you reach a certain level of comfort, you get diminishing returns (and even negative returns once the money owns you), but we still need to work on getting more people up to comfort.
I think it works because Shatner's spoken work technique really brings out the lyrics.
I don't see how any of these would not have been true earlier though.
Because of the inherited status of M&P grades most of us where quite happy to take our toil - though this depended on your family's status as well.
That said, perception can quickly change and it very possible that the distance that Internet has makes it more vulnerable to collapsing. In an other lecture on stress it was pointed out that few things cause more harm than when false hope is found to be misplaced, so it very possible that if a individual perceive themselves as high ranked only to be proven wrong, then that can cause major health related issues. It was something that stress studies found out the hard way.
Do you have any resources that you recommend?
That turned out to be a good thing. I lost most interest in advancing the counter...
Curiously enough, the least happy people I've met are the ones that fall into neither category. Enough money to feel safe, fed, and warm, but no direction or meaning in their life. They aren't sure what to do with themselves. Should they try for more money? Should they choose a less vapid career path? They can't give up the middle-class salary or the middle-class experience. It's very sad.
I still kid my wife about "internet points" when I take a photo for Google Maps and the like, and I totally empathise with you on the feeling of seeing that number, but for my own peace of mind I've had to restrict myself from it.
Added this to my `userContent.css` in firefox to hide my scores and votes
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Anything that can be purchased is that much more enjoyable when real human connection is involved, otherwise it honestly doesn’t matter how lavish the thing is, it just becomes kind of boring.
It’s possible to purchase fake connection, but again it’s pretty boring because it’s fake.
Even the money making process is more boring without genuine connections to others.
If only we could somehow get the rich to look at the CO2 ppm and be excited about that number getting smaller.
It didn't seem as so insightful then, but as I navigate this world, I get it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/2s9u0s/what_do_i...
The main gist was that in the $10-30 million range you can live a comfortable life without having to worry about finances again. In the $30-100 million range you can start doing "rich people" things like have a private jet (though this might be a stretch at the low end), have multiple residences in expensive parts around the globe, have personal staff, etc. After that level of wealth, more money doesn't really get you material things anymore, so much as influence and access to other important people.
This statement strikes me as very disconnected from the reality that the vast majority of people on this planet live in, and honestly, a little bit irritating. I'm well aware that many here on HN would be millionaires, but as somebody who grew up in poverty and is now a full-time uni student with no savings in the bank, and no safety net, I wouldn't describe my life as comfortable, but I'm not starving or sleeping on a park bench either. My largest expenses are rent, food and medical expenses. If somebody were to give me a hundred thousand dollars to invest, I am quite certain I could live comfortably for the rest of my life. I'd never own a Ferrari, but why would I need to?
In other words, I think your comment reflects the very problem that the posted article is discussing. To me, the idea of needing $10 million to be comfortable and not have to worry about finances seems absurd. Unless your idea of a comfortable life involves owning a luxury car, or renting a $2,000 a night suite. I live on what many here would consider to be an extremely low income, and the only thing I feel I'm really missing out on is desperately needed dental work, and even that would be measured in thousands of dollars, not millions.
I apologise if my comment sounds harsh or impolite. It is not intended to be. I'm just amazed that anybody would think they need $10 million to be comfortable.
Because you were raised poor, you still are poor, so your views on life do not revolve around one of the finest and most exclusive automobiles money can buy. You've never been in a position to be even remotely close to owning a Ferrari, so your brain has ignored the value they offer.
Yes. Driving a high speed status symbol can be rewarding. It can start conversations. It can get you access to groups of people who would never have looked at you before. Is it easy to write them all off on the premise of "if they wouldn't talk to me when I had a Honda, then they are vain and I don't want to talk to them?" Sure. But you'd be missing out on potentially meaningful connections. On top of that, hearing a visceral exhaust note while rapidly accelerating is adrenaline inducing. Does it get boring after 10,000 hours? Probably. But, what doesn't in life?
The same way a trust fund child never views owning a dump or being in debt. It just isn't in your payscale/range, so why waste the brain cycles?
Studying. I learn (not skim or read but study like I did in uni) new things all the time for the past 30 years and it does not get boring while it costs very little to do so (I do not need diplomas or certificates but I am hard on myself and I do do exams if I can find them like it is real).
I grew up in a very wealthy area and learnt to stay away from that kind of people.
10% is about the best return you can count on (very optimistically) I don't know what country you live in, but 10k in the US, even for a single person, would put you far below the poverty line. No way you could afford that dental work after you pay rent on that. And let's not even talk about all of the other huge expenses that will come up later in your life.
$10m * 3% = $300k/year
That's a high end salary in the US. You could cut this number in half, and that would be ok too IMO. Less than some developers make. But you can buy a reasonable house, car, etc. Not a farrari though, unless you're irresponsible.
If you actually intend to live on this money forever, then the return you receive is really the maximum you can spend. And that's really not as much as you would think. Especially when you figure there will be some years where you won't earn anything (during recessions).
Again, if you live in an expensive country like the US. If you live in a poor country, maybe 10K is enough. But this article and these numbers, aren't really about that situation.
For the record, thousands of Australian university students live on less than US$10K per year. You seem to think we can't exist, but we do.
> No way you could afford that dental work after you pay rent on that.
And thanks, that is very helpful of you to remind me.
I think you need to revisit this in 10 or 20 years. I think you'll have a different opinion on this number.
$10k is not comfortable. That is poverty. And the question wasn't what is possible to survive on.
Again, I apologise if my comment/s seem impolite. I am not having a great day, but I don't mean to come across as disrespectful. I understand that I live in a different world to many of the people here on HN. I also think we may be talking past each other a little bit, using different definitions of "comfortable". I think it's possible that I don't know what comfortable is supposed to feel like, at least not the way most people here seem to be using the word. To me, comfortable is just having a loaf of bread in the cupboard, a roof over my head and a healthy body. I feel like that is all I need, and that's the point I was originally trying to make.
You might be happy as a PhD student, but your housing and life is entirely dependent on the university. You are one academic violation away from that all being in jeopardy.
What happens if you get a spouse and child? Will your current housing and savings be enough to support them and yourself if you both decide you want to stay with the baby instead of working?
What if your government passes legislation that costs you your job, your housing, or your healthcare?
The $10m money is about not worrying about anything other than global economic collapse and/or massive wars.
"Not worrying about money again" means never again. Not just while you manage to hold down a job.
I really like the peace of mind that gives me and everyone, even if that means I have to pay more taxes.
From the data it does not seem to make people here lazy, and being long-term unemployed is still bad for mental health and being part of society. I am not sure how much of this is cultural since it is surely connected to attitudes towards work.
That's certainly better security, but it's still nowhere near the level I'm talking about. You're still having to concern yourself with money for things like smartphones, entertainment, holidays, etc. and you're one government crisis away from austerity taking a big chunk of that away. Also, keep in mind that there are still people alive who witnessed WW2. You can't take the stability of your country as a given.
The $10m number puts you in the position to even diversify away risks to your home country.
Sure, but you're comparing apples and oranges. Almost 2 of those orders of magnitude disappear when you change $10M of assets into a few hundred thousand dollars of annual income.
A lot of the rest goes away when you notice that not worrying about finances "ever again" includes an awful lot of expensive things you don't pay for day-to-day or even year-to-year, such as the dental work you're putting off.
We had obamacare which helped a lot.
I see people on HN talking about needing massive amounts of money to live and I just wonder where it all goes? What's it for?
You're right, spending 40k for a couple is plenty to live on. It's all of the above that sucks up the rest if you want to retire (let alone retire early).
And I think they have a point: $100k is a lot of money, but what if you got sick and couldn't work anymore, ever? Wouldn't you be at the risk of starving or becoming homeless if you had to stretch that over 30 or 40 years?
Agreed.
> And I think they have a point: $100k is a lot of money, but what if you got sick and couldn't work anymore, ever?
That's a fair point. I don't really worry too much about getting sick and never being able to work again ever. I think some of this comes down to the level of risk that each individual is content to live with. If I had children or a family, perhaps I would be a lot more worried.
Well there's the problem right there. Your salary should be higher than your cost of living because you're actively trying to save for retirement. Once you're actually retired you shouldn't need as much.
For example, if you wanted to spend $20k per year, then you would need $20,000 / 0.03 = $666,666 invested in index funds.
I'd be happy with something like $40k per year ($1,333,333 invested), or just a SaaS service that provides passive income. Running a business is far riskier, but it also gives you something to do.
And maybe I wouldn't mind having a nice house in an expensive city like New York, Melbourne, Vancouver, etc. $20,000 per year would be nice, but I think $200,000 would be pretty nice as well.
I think you might have a bias in your viewpoint here. At half would be 150k/year and is still significantly above what most developers make. And I am assuming only United states.
> above what most
I don't see the contradiction here?
Of course if you don't expect to invest, work or advance everything is going to be have to paid for up front and you will need a lot of money. But that isn't realistic for most people. It is very expensive to be a poor millionaire, but relatively cheap to be modestly wealthy.
Give me $100k and I'll retire within the year. A few smart quick investments can really pan out. It can also fail, as we all should know.
I'm really curious how you forsee this working out. Even if you can live comfortably on the federal minimum wage (about $15k/year) you're going to have to be able to consistently bring in something like 25% returns on your investments to stay afloat.
The rule of thumb is that you can you can withdraw about 4% of your savings per year if you want them to last forever. $100k in savings gives an annual income of about $4000/year. There are places on earth where you can live on much less than that - my wife spent less than that for 2 years as a Peace Corps volunteer in rural Peru. There are very few in the U.S. Even in small towns, rent on a 1BR will run $400/month. That's already over budget. Here in the Bay Area, minimum rent is about $1000/month with roommates. Anything less and you're living in an RV. If you're really frugal you can live as a single person on about $20K/year.
Kids add a whole new wrinkle. An uncomplicated hospital birth is $20K if insurance doesn't cover it. A NICU stay is about $10K/day. Just the equipment to bring a kid home safely from the hospital and keep them safe (car seat, crib, high chair, diapers, babyproofing) can run a grand or two. Living in a 1BR is not really practical with a family (yeah, that's how my mom grew up, but her one non-negotiable as an adult was a house with a yard). Day care in the Bay Area is about $20K/year for a decent program.
I'm generally someone who thinks people overestimate what they need to spend to be comfortable by a lot - I saved 80% of my income, consistently, for a decade. Still, expenses go up a lot when you have kids, and oftentimes they go up a lot even without having kids, simply because inflation. I'm really glad that my top-line was quite high for the first decade of my career, because I have a number of friends from college who thought "Oh, I don't need a lot of money to be happy" and therefore took career paths that didn't generate a lot of money, then got to 35 and found out that their career path does not support having a family.
Assuming that you meant something closer to $1M than $100k I would start to agree. At that rate an initial investment into a home becomes realistic and more advantageous investment options open up. You are still not living high on the hog (60k/yr, ish), but you will probably only have significant problems if you are struck by disaster, illness takes you, or you have children.
At a further 10x that (roughly what the OP describes) you must really screw up to ever be one of the poor again. Many inefficient ways of living (eating out regularly, nice homes, expensive hobbies) open up. These are what most people consider comforts, and so I generally agree with the sense that this is the band where permanent comfortable living becomes possible.
I think you have made the assumption that I would stop working. That might be the goal of many people, but it's not mine, and it's not how I would define being comfortable.
Aside from that, yes, I was using a fairly arbitrary number to make a point. I hadn't done the math. Which, here on HN, was probably a mistake. But for somebody who has never had more than $3K to their name, $100K in the bank still seems like a very comfortable safety net.
I understand how ridiculous this may sound. There’s a presupposition of access to capital / employment. A large chunk of the world doesn’t have access to that, to no fault of their own. But don’t discount yourself that quickly — a non-trivial amount of people have created and captured an insane amount of value. It doesn’t seem entirely fair, and to be honest, sometimes it isn’t.
Re: $100k, completely sane and reasonable expenses add up quickly. You’ll be surprised what costs rear their heads as you have more liquidity. You’re better off being broke while you’re in University and, once you’ve finished, learning the ropes and demanding compensation for your productive hours. You can calibrate your income against researched market rates / cohorts of friends if you’d like to optimize, and nobody will fault you for it — in fact, it’s expected.
You’ll figure this all out but for now it doesn’t matter: everybody here is giving you sound advice (based on pre-assumption of: University-educated individual), you just can’t see past the iron wall of academia yet. It’s a much bigger world than you can imagine, with a lot of opportunity to generate wealth if that’s what you’re interested in. (It doesn’t have to be, but some sort of optimization in this direction is helpful for general contentment given your pre-supposed opportunities: not everybody gets to attend college.)
It’s obscenely difficult to get there, but an entirely reasonable and well-defined goal for people who are willing to compete (and, with high likelihood, fail) in the market to get there.
It’s up to you to decide if you’d like to pursue that path. There are plenty of paths to stability without setting that goal; you’ll just find yourself arguing with a self-selected subset of people targeting it when you post on a place like HN.
You shouldn’t wish ill upon them, and they shouldn’t wish ill upon you. We’re all just figuring life out on our own, but if you’re in a professional career in your ~30s you’ll hear “$10M” (USD, or in North America) as a pretty standard target for a “dream amount.”
Very true, and thanks for my first chuckle of the day.
I certainly don't wish ill on anyone. I've suffered a lot, in various ways, but that has made me more compassionate, and I think therefore there has been value in that suffering. I have learned how to make do with very little.
Again, I appreciate your comments.
Ten years ago I was a broke college student doing lab grunt work. I couldn’t really afford coffee in the morning. I know what it’s like. He might not like me sharing this, but I watched my father who didn’t have a whole lot to begin with lose everything to his name just as I was preparing to enter the working world. That wasn’t even the worst of it for me personally, shit just happens.
I am very fortunate now to be able to work alongside some absolutely mind-blowingly talented people. Hit me up in ten years and see if I’m in a a cohort of people who have reached their dream amounts, but I’m not sure how much absolute numbers matter anymore. I’m happy. There’s a really big world out there. Don’t discount yourself and don’t sweat being broke in college. It’s part of the experience, humbles you, and grows something special that will allow you to relate to others more freely in the future.
I bring this up because: keep it up, keep asking questions, and when people tell you “$100k isn’t much,” work on figuring out what they know that you don’t yet. If you know it’s possible there’s a chance you’ll get there sooner than they did. Stay humble, but be hungry. Good luck in the future.
Why not take your current annual spend, multiply it by 1.2 for a nice cushion, and then figure out what you need at 3% to gain that annual return? This should come out to be roughly an order of magnitude less than $10M.
My point in saying all of this isn't to depress you or wave money in your face or anything-- just to be clear, I don't have that kind of cash. It's just that the math says somewhere in the $1M to $10M range is what you need to be legitimately isolated from personal financial stress.
This shows a pretty big disconnect. And is something no one in their 30s+ would say.
The common rule of thumb is you can live off of an investment at 4% indefinitely(assuming 6% return and 2% inflation). This gives you $4,000 a year. Crappy insurance: $4,200 a year. Crappy 300 sq ft efficiency in cheaper town: $5,400 a year. Cost of owning a car: $5,000 a year(you could skip this expense, but you'll be spending most of it in increased cost of living in area with great public transit. You could also bike but not everyone's knees last forever)
And this doesn't include food/entertainment/travel/internet/phone/medical bills etc.
Why would you not work doing whatever it is you do as an avocation, or if you like, a hobby or dream job? If it's what you love and what fascinates you, why would that not lead to income across your whole life? Granted, it'd take years to get to the point where it's sustainable, but surely there is tangible value in this?
I do not understand a mindset of 'My only purpose is to amass a pile of wealth so large that I don't spend any of it or do anything else ever, merely use the mechanisms of finance to subsist unproductively off the leakage from my giant pile of wealth, literally forever'.
How is this plan in any way good, ethical or beneficial to either the person or the society they're in? You're going to die having made no use of the hoard you seized, despite having taken it from others who need wealth of their own to survive. Rethink these assumptions.
> You're going to die having made no use of the hoard you seized, despite having taken it from others who need wealth of their own to survive. Rethink these assumptions.
I would encourage you to rethink your assumptions. What you wrote goes completely against how economics actually works.
You are not "seizing" a hoard, and definitely not taking it from others. Unless you are literally a thief, that's just not how things work - you are making it seem like the economy is zero-sum, whereas it absolutely is not.
Also, having a pile of wealth that you don't spend is something that no one actually does - almost everyone invests their money, which means it is put to good use, as an investment - the wealth that someone created out of thin air, is turned into the building blocks for new people to create their own wealth.
I highly recommend you read a little about economics, it's one of the most rewarding and eye-opening things I've ever studied (only as an amateur, I'm not a professional economist or anything.)
Can you suggest some resources?
A good book for getting started, IMO, is Charles Wheelan's "Naked Economics".
The first thing that I read was "Basic Economics" by Thomas Sowell, which I liked a lot and highly recommend - however, keep in mind that Thomas Sowell is very capitalist/right leaning, and the book is quite "biased".
A great textbook, if you really want to get further into economics, is Greg Mankiw's Principles of Economics (almost all undergrad economics textbooks are called "Principles of Economics", for some reason, so you have to search by author.) That's definitely the place to go if you want to have a more sophisticated understanding of economics than you'll just get by reading books.
Yes it does. That was my point.
For starters, you're assuming I'd want to live off the investment, instead of continuing to work.
Regardless, I shouldn't have mentioned the arbitrary figure of $100K, which has made it so much easier for people to ignore my point, that many people are comfortable with much less than $10M.
$10M means you don't have to work, even when you can't.
I would still maintain that it is possible to live on much less than $10M, although some may not enjoy the change in lifestyle.
And I could spend 10% of the 1 million on just maxing out my unused pension allowance for the last three years, and probably I should do the same for my sisters.
Okay, fine. You mentioned that you're a student, so I'll assume that means you're 22: if you're a man, that means you have another 55 years. That $100,000 thus works out to an extra $1,818/year for the rest of your life, which is roughly a month's rent or a dozen or two really good meals a year. Is that a nice supplement to your wealth? Sure. Is it enough to make your life significantly better? No, not really.
Ah, but perhaps you're investing it, too. Let's say that you get 6% a year (optimistic), and withdraw 1/55th of the principal + interest each year. So this year you'll get $1,927, next year you'll get $2,006 &c. Is it nice to have that extra money? Sure! Is it going to be life-altering? No, not really.
Your general point is right, but the situation is even worse than you say since you are misinterpreting the 4% rule. It isn’t that you can live “ indefinitely” - it is that using historical returns, you could live about 30 years taking 4% (allowing for increases due to inflation) off an investment before it is zero. People seem to think that taking 4% means you won’t have to touch your capital - that isn’t the case.
>...What we now call the 4% rule comes out of research by financial planner William Bengen in the early 1990s. Essentially, Bengen tested a variety of withdrawal rates on several different allocations of stocks and bonds using inflation data and investment returns going back to 1926. After crunching the numbers, he concluded: "Assuming a minimum requirement of 30 years of portfolio longevity, a first-year withdrawal of 4%, followed by inflation-adjusted withdrawals in subsequent years, should be safe.”
https://money.cnn.com/2018/02/07/retirement/4-percent-rule/i...
That's nowhere near "not worrying about finances". "Not worrying about finances" means you never have to work a job for income, you don't depend on the social safety nets of a single country, you never have to worry about affording a place to live, getting optional healthcare and so-on.
You're thinking that people who don't constantly have to worry about finances is what the poster is talking about, but that's worlds away from never worrying about finances again.
>I'm just amazed that anybody would think they need $10 million to be comfortable.
Seriously, read the thread again. This has nothing to do with comfort, it's about FU money.
I was responding to the HN comment, not the Reddit thread. If you're talking about having "FU money" and I'm talking about being "comfortable" then I think we are talking about different things.
> You're thinking that people who don't constantly have to worry about finances is what the poster is talking about, but that's worlds away from never worrying about finances again.
I agree, I think we have a different understanding of what it is to "worry" about finances. I am talking about the sort of worry that comes from not knowing where the next meal will come from, or not being able to pay rent. That, to me, is what worry is. I appreciate your explanation that others mean something different.
I had no money in Uni. My parents were boat people with no money either.
Not long after Uni, I had 100K in my account. Comfy, no mansion, no car.
The first thing I spent more than a couple of grand on ever was dental work. Felt great to fix the crossbite.
But here's the thing. You could just be alone your whole life, no wife, no kids. I've got friend who do that, and indeed they can live on near minimum wage and be perfectly happy.
Once you decide you want a wife and kids, the budget changes. By a lot. You'll need a bigger place to live. You'll want to send the kids to private school. You'll need a bigger car.
This can easily add up to several million depending on exactly what you mean.
For the record I did go on to buy an expensive sports car. Not worth it, surprise surprise.
Maybe it would be more correct to say You'll want a bigger place and a bigger car too, because there's no real need there.
But if you're going to have kids there's at least one other person who will have an opinion about this.
You will definitely reduce your chances of having kids if you insist on finding someone who is totally fine with squishing the kids together.
Not my opinion, but a lot of Americans hold up Scandinavia as such.
$1 million will provide you with enough money to live comfortably. You'd still need to be somewhat frugal and be mindful of the hedonic treadmill. But that's not "never worrying about finances again". $10M will get you there. $100k when you're young is a good start to retirement savings, a hefty real estate down payment, or temporary living money while you spend several years chasing a dream. But that's about it.
I see where you are coming from, and agree with you. I am happy to say I'm at a point in my life where I feel I will never have to worry about finances, and I'm nowhere near $10MM. I'm 30 years old, live alone in an apartment that could be big enough for my wife and a kid if I decided to marry and have a kid. I save/invests around 60% of my income. I'm not at $100k on savings/investments yet, but can easily calculate when that will be and it's not too far in the future. I work full time, and I'm looking to reduce hours/days worked before I turn 40, but maybe I won't. If I will, financial implications will not be the major factor of that decision.
So yeah, considering I'm comfortable with two or three less orders of magnitude less than 10 million... I'm as amazed as you are.
if you weren't worrying about finances at some level why are you going to work today instead of going on holidays in a nice spot ? could you handle, say, your house burning overnight with all your belongings ?
Never means never, not "comfortable enough to turn a blind eye to the potential problems that may come sometime in the next 60 years".
I care about my finances. But I don't worry about them. I have a high degree of certainty that, barring getting a disease that prevents me from working for multiple years, I won't have major financial problems for the rest of my life. The fact that I live in a country with good public healthcare (Spain) is a factor here.
>? could you handle, say, your house burning overnight with all your belongings ?
100% yes. My belongings are worth less than $10k. It would be annoying, but completely manageable.
I think that is the key to understanding much of the disagreement here. Some people seem to concentrate on the possibility that something catastrophic could happen, which admittedly, is true. But I think it's possible to be comfortable in life, with that risk. Most people don't have a choice but to bear that risk, and many would still, I believe, describe themselves as happy and comfortable.
I think by "comfortable", some people mean "immune to any possible threat", in which case, I begin to understand their point of view.
I don't see any distinction between "caring" and "worrying" in this context: "worrying" means "thinking about it". When people say "without having to worry about finances again" it must be understood as "don't even want to think about their account balance ever in their whole life".
I have thoughts and regards about my financial situation, and will for the rest of my life. I think everyone has such concerns, so saying that someone cares about their financial situation is kind of meaningless. If that's your definition of worrying, even the richest person in the planet worries about their finances.
I certainly don't torment myself thinking about my financial situation, nor do I think I will ever need to again.
EDIT: Actually, there are people who don't care. I've seen them. But these people generally have never learnt to care: they are either children, who havne't had to handle money yet, or people spoiled people who essentially behave as children. In my experience, not caring about money is not related to how much money you have.
If you had to guess, what percentage of people outside HN, outside Silicon Valley, do you think would consider having $10M to be a risky bet? I'm sorry, but I believe that is very, very disconnected from the reality that most people live in.
I understand you, I have been a student and believe me I lived for few dollars a day (that too in a comfy way) including accommodation and food. When I started a job in 2004, making 200k USD was my dream retirement amount. Now I don't call it would be comfortable with even $10 mn and never having to work again. I would definitely keep working as long as I can even with $10 mn in my bank. It's not that I am greedy and have to constantly go for vacations or stay in 5* places. When you have a partner and kids, you really need to spend that much money to live in the social status that you ends up in your society. Home mortgage, kids school fees, dress, food, family outings and it could easily add up. You are talking about in the range of 10k-200k per year depending on the country/city you live in. In expensive cities where you need 100-200k to live comfortably, $1mn will last you only a few years even with good return on investments adjusted against inflation. It's very unfortunate but it's true. You too shall see that day when you grow up.
btw i just noticed and in case you need any emergency assistance, feel free to ping me, it's not that I am rich, but can help you out in anyway i can - murukesh @ <google's email service.com >
Yes, I can appreciate that.
And I appreciate your offer. It's honestly pretty nice just to know that somebody here understands, and cares. We have all struggled, and will continue to struggle, in our own ways. Kindness is everything.
Haha come on. You know that is not true. I live a pretty good life where I get to move country every few months (in Europe), have expensive hobbies, ski 100+ days a year and after currency conversion make closer to 50k.
For what it's worth, I only work 2 days/week, if I "needed" 100k USD I could go to a full time position but I don't see why I would ever "need" that. Especially if I was choosing to live in 1 location and spend less time on hobbies.
Also part of the 100k goes towards a retirement fund (investments in bank savings, real estates etc) and saving for any unforeseen circumstances. I can't imagine living in united states with less than 100k per year and paying for tuition fees for your kids, house loan/rent and have a decent savings. If the medical is free, and i have an option for retirement and not that much strings attached, 50k would suffice..
Improving your life in the least bit is the whole point of life itself. Being that as you grew up in poverty, came from nothing monetary wise, and are already in school you're already doing better than you were imagined to.
You'll go far; it takes a long time.
Knowledge of investments will take you far in life. Ferraris are (fast)depreciating assets that take a lot of time and extra expense, they're simply not good investments unless you're a race car driver. Not when a Toyota will do the same for you.
Whenever you can, take care of your teeth. Eventually, they can hurt more than just your mouth.
I wouldn't apologize. You're just being real.
The point I was trying to get across was not that you need $10 million in order to live comfortably. I was just saying that having that level of wealth won't really provide you with any additional material goods. The only thing you gain at that level is more financial security. At that level of wealth you could go through a divorce and have a major medical emergency all at the same time, and still come out of it with enough to be able to live in a nice home, have a vacation home, travel in first class, etc.
My mom did low pay volunteer work as a consultant for a few years after she retired, but now they are in their mid 70s and not “worried” about money between social security, a pension, and retirement savings. They don’t live an extravagant lifestyle.
That being said, I understand that they are fortunate to have had a guaranteed pension and paid for health care at 55.
On a more practical note, seeing that $120K a year is twice the average household income and even if you add another $25K for insurance, if you consider a return of 6% a year, most people could live comfortably with $2.5 million in investments. That would be even easier if you have a paid for house.
So many people are so concerned with The Jone's and new cars and high-expense lifestyles that it requires a very different kind of number.
It's a formula, and you just need to put in the numbers to find what works. For some maybe that's $200k. For others, maybe $200M.
- Unfortunately, this whole thread is yet another example of the HN bubble.
Worse case, what would We do retired that we couldn’t do with me contracting/consulting part time? My hobbies are technology and fitness. I’ve been developing for 20 years and never disliked my careeer. I have disliked my job but there is mobility in the technology industry if you keep your skills up.
"Let me share with you the saying which pleased me to-day. It, too, is culled from another man's Garden: "Poverty brought into conformity with the law of nature, is great wealth." Do you know what limits that law of nature ordains for us? Merely to avert hunger, thirst, and cold. In order to banish hunger and thirst, it is not necessary for you to pay court at the doors of the purse-proud, or to submit to the stern frown, or to the kindness that humiliates; nor is it necessary for you to scour the seas, or go campaigning; nature's needs are easily provided and ready to hand. It is the superfluous things for which men sweat, - the superfluous things that wear our togas threadbare, that force us to grow old in camp, that dash us upon foreign shores. That which is enough is ready to our hands. He who has made a fair compact with poverty is rich."[1]
"Do you ask what is the proper limit to wealth? It is, first, to have what is necessary, and, second, to have what is enough."[2]
"I do not regard a man as poor, if the little which remains is enough for him."[3]
[1] - https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Let...
[2] - https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Let...
[3] - https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Let...
Because of $reasons I really didn’t focus on my career until my mid 30s. I bought a house in my late 20s in a new (statistically) middle class neighborhood. All of the houses around the area and all of my friends were middle class. Some houses slightly bigger, some cars slightly better but no serious differences.
Then I got married and had (step)children who were use to going to school in the more affluent part of town. When I was single, I really didn’t think about the school system. I was making more by then and we moved to the more affluent part of town. While we were on the bottom of the top quintile by income, since by definition the top quintile is boundless, there is a much wider disparity in income between the 80 percentile and the 95 percentile. I was exposed to the lifestyle of people with a lot more money than I have.
I have a much nicer house (relatively - its nothing extravagant), in a better part of town, making twice as much as I was but I actually feel poorer even though my income is more than double what it was 10 years ago and I’m much more comfortable now.
We are not at all “rich” but as a software developer/architect with a working spouse, our household income is more than 80% of households - again not bragging, almost any experienced developer working in a major metropolitan area would be in the same boat.
There was an English language magazine who's ads targeted these "expats" showing the apartments in that range and other service far far far out of reach of anything I was making.
So in that sense I felt more like a failure.
That said I don't believe I'd always want more if I had 10x what I had now. What I have now is not enough to stop needing an income. 10x is enough to stop and then just do what I want without having to worry that I'd better have a real job saving for when no one will hire me.
I guess the solution is to not hang out with other rich people, don't move to a wealthy neighborhood, and just don't care about your social status. "Ignorance is bliss".
I would be very happy if I had $200k in passive/investment income. That would be a SaaS company worth ~$1.5M, or ~$6M invested in index funds. If I ever get there, I hope I can resist the temptation to just keep going and waste my life trying to make more and more money. I just want a small house, unlimited free time, and no responsibilities. Then I'd like to spend time on hobbies, non-profit work, and maybe start new companies to solve problems (but not for the money.)
There must be lots of people on HN who are multi-millionaires from startup exits. Did you notice a change in yourself, and you started to want more money?
The biggest drug with having money is the opportunities that come with it. Financial freedom is freedom to chose what you want to do with your life and who you want to do it with.
That's one half of the drug. That your days suddenly can look like one long adventure without too much repetition besides what you choose.
The apple in paradise is that other people have more than you and thus you start comparing to richer people and make that the new standard.
Finding the balance between enjoying what you have and wanting more is such a fundamental struggle in humans and start with the poor person without the money.
My hypothesis is that wealthier people are even deeper in this trap, as once you can afford nice clothes, accessories, cars, houses etc., you are immediately exposed to others in the same (or higher) wealth bracket, thus exacerbating these feelings of comparison and inadequacy. It is a self destructive feeding frenzy that can never assuage itself.
So does advertising.
It's really human nature.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/ho...
There's a whole range of "bad" things that society finds tolerable (I'm talking in general, not specifically advertising or trying to manipulate people) and if you cannot stand one/many of those things then you're free to live in a log cabin in the woods.
I'd love to not play the taxes game or put up with the paternalistic government I live under but it just so happens that it's a prerequisite to being part of society. I'm free to screw off to some log cabin in the woods but I'd rather live within society even if it had some problems.
If you worship money and things-if they are where you tap real meaning in life-then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already-it's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power-you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart-you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.
Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default-settings. They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing. And the world will not discourage you from operating on your default-settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default-setting, the "rat race"-the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.
> Worship your intellect, being seen as smart-you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.
which suggests that Imposter Syndrome is a result of "worshipping" intellect, particularly our own individual intelligence. We spend many days judging interview candidates for their intelligence (even when it is not clear that anything more than adequate intelligence is needed for quality, lasting work), and then wonder why we are so afraid that we feel like imposters.
The runaway progression is the same however. That happens in some cases with eating disorders - even when ribs are showing and they weigh under 100lbs they are convinced they are fat.
Some people are hot, and they know it. They do not feel ugly. Ditto for intelligence.
I draw a parallel to sports. It's easy for young athletes to "worship" ability in their sport...to the point where, when you achieve success, you look down on those who are worse than you and look up to those who are better. Reality is that while athletic accomplishment is admirable it does not automatically make you a good person and vice versa.
My experience with "intelligence" has been a bit similar although I have found that smart people I encounter also tend to be wonderful human beings. But I know correlation is not causation.
Anyway, my point is that I think there's an unhealthy "worship" vs a healthy "value" of intelligence beauty etc, and DFW's quote makes sense to me from that perspective.
That's what it's saying that "when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you." I.e. you will start to lose that beauty in many different ways, no matter how desperately you try to hold on to it, with plastic surgery, spending all your time in the gym, etc, and you will no longer be able to win your internal game of being more beautiful than others that you valued so much, before you have died (unless you die young, then... I guess you win, if you call that a victory).
And for intelligence, a common saying is "The more I know, the more I realize I don't know". An intelligent person will just see more and more out there they could be learning and aren't, or don't understand and want to, and no matter how accomplished or smart they are, they can probably always find someone smarter and have used their intelligence more effectively over the years.
There's a game designer named Chris Crawford, for instance. Really smart guy, designed some classic games in the early Mac years and worked for Atari way back in the early days. But at one point he left the game industry because he saw it going the wrong direction for interactive storytelling and started building a storytelling game engine called Storytron that was super ambitious, could tell dynamic cinematic stories and was super complicated. He started building that about 26 years ago now. It still isn't built. I'll let him use his own words:
"In 1992 I dedicated myself to the task of making games that centered on character interaction. It was about then that I settled on the term “interactive storytelling” to describe my efforts. This was long before anybody else was thinking along such lines (although Brenda Laurel had speculated about drama in games a few years earlier). I remember how my friends in the games industry told me that I was absolutely crazy to pursue this line of development -- nobody was interested in stories in games. I know this is difficult to believe now that everybody is talking stories, but it really was the case that, in the early 90s, nobody thought that stories had any place in games. The biggest hit of that time was Doom, and the team that developed it had famously split apart over a dispute regarding the role of story. The winning faction insisted that “we don’t need no stinking story -- action is all that matters”. The rest of the games industry applauded their clarity of thinking. Stories were for wimps.
As the years rolled by, I pursued my lonely quest, picking up a few like-minded idealists along the way. With little financing, it was slow, painful going. We made a major push starting in 2007, but in the summer of 2009 it became clear that we had failed to garner any support. I put Storytron into a coma and contemplated my future.
Thus, when my sixtieth birthday struck, I found myself bereft of achievement in my most important undertaking. I have always felt a calm self-assurance that I am right, that I have developed ideas that would surely conquer the world if I only gave the world enough time to recognize them. My sixtieth birthday shouted loudly that my ideas had most definitely failed to conquer the world. It certainly looks as if I am a washed-up failure. I don’t really believe that -- I still believe that I’ve hit upon a solid approach to interactive storytelling and that someday the world will appreciate my work. But with each passing day the evidence of my failure mounts."
In fact, on that same link, he downplays his own intelligence by comparing himself to others, exactly what I was just arguing: "I do not consider myself particularly intelligent; I have known some real geniuses and the feeling of utter inferiority I feel in their presence drives home the mediocrity of my own intelligence."
I feel he's being too modest. I've read a lot of his writings and feel that he's a super smart guy and I've learned a lot from him. But here he is seeing other smarter people out there and comparing himself to him and finding himself coming up short.
I also think I'm pretty smart, at least in some respects, and used to value that over just about everything else. But eventually you don't find the success you thought you would, or all that learning doesn't lead to breakthroughs or opportunities you thought it would, or you spend your time on dead ends, sometimes out of necessity, sometimes by taking a chance on something and failing, and that's when 'worshipping' intelligence will fail you.
If you're the hottest out of 10, you know someone who's the hottest out of 100. They know someone who's the hottest out of 1000, and they know someone who's the hottest out of a million. And even they look at others like themselves, and think "She has a better smile than me... she has better hair... she's thinner..."
If your identity is in your hotness, you can't win. You can only lose.
Disclaimer: I'm not hot. I'm not close. This is my impression, not my experience.
The fear of losing it all, however, stays the same no matter the amount, and so the urge to keep accumulating doesn't go away despite a rational view that would recognize that 100million is more than enough.
It's roughly the difference between being able to own a private jet. There's probably always something spurring one on to the next level if you let it.
Because of this, the amount these two can borrow is staggeringly different.
I came to this conclusion one night whilst walking along the street some time back. I wanted to buy myself a packet of fries. Not far from the door of chips shop, there was a woman there with three children, laying down cardboard preparing to sleep for the night. The sense of what turned out to be guilt and shame that came upon me was palpable. It actually hit me that I could casually walk in and buy myself something I didn't really need whilst here was a woman with three kids sleeping on the street with nothing.
Investigating my feelings further brought about I had so much compared to them. And what I had was not enough to make a real difference in their lives. Further investigation and thought brought about the idea that this might be the same not just for me, but for all people, getting progressively worse the higher up the wealth steps you go. The basic idea being that as currently set up, economics means that it is a zero sum game. In terms of money, either I have the 100 dollars or you have 100 dollars, we cannot both have the same 100 dollars.
This means, (and I am open to being corrected) that what I have is at the expense of another - my boss, my brother who is having a hard time making ends meet, or all the others who have to walk kilometres to get to work to save on money used in public transport.
My take away and current struggle is that at some point, in order to just live, we have to find a way to deal with this feeling of guilt - which in my case, took on the form of first denying responsibility and assigning blame on others (government & other institutions, parenting, poor decision making, lack of intelligence etc), or just ignoring it because 'there is nothing I can do' about it because 'I also have problems and I dont have enough to make a meaningful difference'. I still don’t have a good answer to this.
Thats my 2 cents.
This is clearly incorrect. If you made something and now own it, the thing did not exist until you made it - hence no one could have been deprived of it.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Ph7Enkr...
I came to terms with ideas like this by changing careers to a profession which, at least abstractly, benefits humanity. I've taken upon myself a modern/global idea of "noblesse oblige". The fortunate have an obligation to use their vast resources in a way that benefits others. We are fortunate to live in the West during this time, but that also means we have access to tremendous knowledge and ability that we are uniquely equipped to make good use of.
Of course, I may just be fooling myself and the resources I consume would still be better spent directly helping others.
I try to be clear that I'm far from a saint in this respect, but it's difficult to discuss these things with others without inducing guilt and defensiveness. I think these kind of things needs to be discussed though, so I'm glad you brought it up.
I find like my mind is resistant to actually going ahead and helping, the aforementioned excuses rear their head and the justifications come hard and fast and anything else seems like I am being an idealistic, wide eyed naive hippy.
On some level I can recognize the need the writer points to, and what is being said. I feel there is a flaw in my thinking and in how I am approaching the world and living my life. Then the selfishness (is there a better word for it?) stares right back at me. There is safety in its coldness. I recognize it. I know it. I hate it too, but I know it. It is familiar. Leaving its cold embrace is too scary.
I will be sharing the essay with like minded people when I can.
It's a common misconception.
A voluntary exchange of, say, a loaf of bread for $5, occurs when the seller values the $5 more than the loaf, and the buyer values the loaf more than the $5. After which they've both increased their total value.
Fractional reserve banking means your 100 dollar example is wrong.
Additionally, someone who truly provides net positive social utility will improve the average persons life even if they make a bunch of money that was going to be spent elsewhere.
People spending money on magic cures for lung cancer from Phillip Morris is vastly different than people buying cigarettes from them, even if they are the same price.
Sounds like that would impose a pretty hefty sampling bias.
I'm fairly sure there is a large pool of people who are very quite and quite happy with the money they have, enabling them to focus on doing things they love.
But such people probably won't show up in this survey.
The researchers didn't tell them what the questions were about ahead of time.
The demoniac person thinks: "So much wealth do I have today, and I will gain more according to my schemes. So much is mine now, and it will increase in the future, more and more. He is my enemy, and I have killed him; and my other enemy will also be killed. I am the lord of everything, I am the enjoyer, I am perfect, powerful and happy. I am the richest man, surrounded by aristocratic relatives. There is none so powerful and happy as I am. I shall perform sacrifices, I shall give some charity, and thus I shall rejoice." In this way, such persons are deluded by ignorance.
Purport:
The demoniac man knows no limit to his desire to acquire money. That is unlimited. He only thinks how much assessment he has just now and schemes to engage that stock of wealth farther and farther. For that reason, he does not hesitate to act in any sinful way and so deals in the black market for illegal gratification. He is enamoured by the possessions he has already, such as land, family, house and bank balance, and he is always planning to improve them. He believes in his own strength, and he does not know that whatever he is gaining is due to his past good deeds. He is given an opportunity to accumulate such things, but he has no conception of past causes. He simply thinks that all his mass of wealth is due to his own endeavor. A demoniac person believes in the strength of his personal work, not in the law of karma. According to the law of karma, a man takes his birth in a high family, or becomes rich, or very well educated, or very beautiful because of good work in the past. The demoniac thinks that all these things are accidental and due to the strength of his personal ability. He does not sense any arrangement behind all the varieties of people, beauty, and education. Anyone who comes into competition with such a demoniac man is his enemy. There are many demoniac people, and each is enemy to the others. This enmity becomes more and more deep-between persons, then between families, then between societies, and at last between nations. Therefore there is constant strife, war and enmity all over the world.
When there is a debate about increasing % of taxes further for higher income (often in the name of redistribution, reducing inequalities), I often hear the argument that it will reduce the motivation for the higher income people to keep working and keep contributing to society. I think the argument is wrong: it's a social game, and if the same rules apply to all, they all can keep playing the same game with the same motivation of outdoing their peers.
See: the disaster of the US yatch manufacturing tax
Wealthy people are as unbalanced as poor people, good to know. I believe that a good group (friends/village) can tame that. You stop caring about your posession when you care for the group and its joy fulfills you.
Among many, many financially successful people I know, there are a LOT who are motivated by money and competitiveness themselves. However, NONE of them are founders of new businesses. (Real new businesses, that intend to stay in the picture and actually do something for the customers, instead of ending up acquihired or otherwise melted back into some comfortable corporate structure. Most of tech start-ups are really far from this image, and are created people who know exactly what their exit strategy is). These founders are always motivated by their desire to change something in the world: they love the field they're working in, and they love the product they're creating, and they wouldn't miss it for the world. And yes, they want more money, because it's the universal resource out of which they build the things they so love building.
So, in other words, the headline of this article should have been "Why Aren't New York Finance Executives And Other Thin Subset of Rich People We Got A Hold Of Happy With The Money They Have".
In reality I suspect most people have the decision forced on them either by their employer, the jobs market or health problems.
Access to medicine can help, but it is not going to eliminate the problem.
The biggest score cards show a bit of priorities. Many wealthy industrialists eventually turn to charities despite being ruthless out of concern for legacy,spirituality, or a sense of noblise oblige.
I would like to think that if I got 'buying additional mansions doesn't make a dent' - obscenely wealthy I'd start funding major biotech research projects both to do good and because lifespan is the limit anyway.
That is something that I've found a bit odd about the megarich - that we don't see more throwing their fortunes away at biotech research given lifespan is a limit far beyond - and most don't plan on giving full fortunes to their heirs anyway.
Some of the very rich try to invest in philanthropic causes. Studying the magnates of a century ago can be helpful. (E.g. the story of T. B. Walker. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._B._Walker ) On the whole, today's ultra-rich seem less-inclined to give a damn (not unprecedented in history).
That view seems inconsistent with this: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/31/14-billionaires-signed-bill-...
It's by no means a random sample. (That would be pretty difficult.)
I wonder what you'd have to do to find the people who say "enough is enough?" It seems they're not customers of this firm.
Sure, with $1 million maybe you could retire in Cambodia but for most 1st world people $1 million is not enough be able to stop working for someone else and do what you want.
I guess that'S my definition of rich. It would basically be, can I afford to have say a 3-4 bedroom apartment or house for a family of 4, be able to travel 2 or 3 times a year, and not have to go to work for someone else if I don't want to. I'm not saying want to do nothing. I am saying to me "rich" equals enough money to have no more income for the rest of your life and still live like you're making enough to support a family of 4 without having to pinch pennies.
I'm confident $1million is not even close enough to be able to do that in most 1st world countries.
You might not have an extravagant lifestyle, but you can certainly live on the interest and returns on investment.
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>I'm confident $1million is not even close enough to be able to do that in most 1st world countries.
The average HOUSEHOLD income in the US is around 59k.
1 million is about 300k more than I need to retire today at 33 with a 3% safe withdrawal rate assuming I never work another day in my life and never marry. I only gross 34k a year.
It's enough (by your description) to not work for anybody and support a family of 1 (at a level a little over to the US current median individual income.)
I have a co-worker that supports a family of four, with a mortgage, on not much more than I make.
Do they take fancy vacations? No.
Do they drive new cars? No, in fact they have 1 car.
Do they eat out, buy convenience foods, buy fast food? No, they make their meals and enjoy them together.
Do they have the latest gaming consoles? No but his kids are both teens and are still happy with 2-3 generation old consoles.
Do they wear new clothes? No, most of their clothing comes from second hand stores, often barely warn.
You don't have to spend gobs of money to have a family. Loo at any number of Christian denominations and you'll find people living quite happily with not a lot of money going out, if you want to really see it look at many families that are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day saints (colloquially known as Mormons) and you'll see families larger than 4 that do are quite healthy and happy, in the US, on household incomes well under 6-figures.
Simply buying food in bulk, buying used cars and buying clothing on sale and/or second hand (and passing it down when it comes to children) stretches money considerably:
- 50lbs of rice $17.98 29,550 kcals
- 25lbs steelcut oats $32.98 42,500 kcals
- 15lbs potatoes $6.98 5,205 kcals
- 5lb bag instant mashed potatoes $6.98 9,600 kcals
- 25lbs flour $6.98 41,275 kcals
And for meat, if you buy as little as 1/4 of a cow at a time you get rather steep savings. A quarter beef is anywhere from 80-100lbs of meat (a lot of steak but mostly roast, chuck roast, 3-5lbs of short ribs and the bulk being ground beef) for 6-8$ a pound. Buy a whole beef and you're talking 350lbs~ of butchered weight at 8-9$ a pound.
Side note: the prices on your bulk beef sound pretty high. My local grocery has ground beef at $3.29/lb, $9/lb is almost what they charge for t-bone steaks. For cheap meat, I stick to whole chickens at <$1/lb or pork when it's BOGO.
I'm talking about buying 1/4 or 1 whole specific cow directly from a farm that gets butchered and wrapped for you, it's actually quite cheaper than the grocery. The average cost per pound is absolutely higher for ground beef because you're getting a LOT of steak and ribs.
For 1/4 beef you're talking like 50ish pounds of ground beef, like 20lbs of various roasts, 40ish pounds of steaks and probably some ribs.
Yeah, you can get ground beef or ground chuck stupid cheap at the grocery, especially if you're buying the big rolls of it. 2-5$ depending on the quantity and fat content, but buy a 1/4 , 1/2 or whole beef gets you a ton of steak, roasts, ribs.
The article is about the motivations of rich people.
it doesn't sound like the lifestyle you're describing is a financially "rich" lifestyle. It sounds like an "I could get by if I pinched pennies" lifestyle. One for which it would be obvious why they'd want more money.
To most of the country 1 million dollars makes you quite rich. Again, median HOUSEHOLD income is 59k. Federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, that means 66.31 years of gross wages for a minimum wage worker.
To me it all plays out in a much weirder manner among common people in countries that experienced rapid growth. Before my eyes my environment went from that of brutal poverty to - sometimes very uneven - prosperity.
Hmm I refused to give my email to a cable provider for a $100 Best Buy gift card (I was in Best Buy). At the time I thought who would trade their email address for a lousy $100?
Now I know.
Actually you could learn a lot about me and who I am by cross referencing all the places i’ve given my fake address to. Since I don’t want to create a thousand fake addresses, I don’t give that out either for a mere $100
(It works like this: You have one identifier (eg smith) and then add anythingn before the dot, like company.smith@mailhero.io), so the identifier is the same in all cases.)
The utility of money is to make you comfortable, give your freedom, and take of other things while you suffer though life.
Money or wealth should never be conceived as a hammer to down all nails.
It looks to me that if you are in $3M to $10M bucket, you have financial freedom to live low key upper-middle class life. This is what Tim Ferris refers to as "New Rich".
However when you are above $10M, something else happens. While you have financial freedom, you are also just starting to taste freedom of will. Sooner or later it might get annoying that you must wake up at 5 AM because that's the only flight available OR that you can't get the penthouse suit because someone more wealthier decided to book it out for entire year. You still depend on publicly available utilities fiercely competed upon. Unlike your peers with $100M you can't own GulfStreams or have $25M Malibu mentions overlooking Pacific with infinity pools.
When you get to $100M, things change again. Now you do have little gulfstream but it's far cry from private 747 with king size bedroom, office, bar and a chef. Sure, you got that mention in Malibu but that large paradise estate in Hawaii with its own beach and waterfalls is out of your reach. When you meet your billionaire friends in blue waters of Greek island of Creet, your little yatch looks like baby's first toy missing things like its own sub and helipad. Life is good but not that good because resources at your disposal have still limitations to achieve maximum possible freedom of will. People tell you how awesome you are but you keep finding new limiting ways you are restricted to act by your will every single day.
I think its only above $3B that you are in realm of pure score keeping, the quality of material possessions cannot be improved further and freedom of will is pretty much maximized. Now you are truly limited by time, and much less by ideas. So until you get in to that top 1000 individuals, it's going to sting one way or another.
The follow-up is that you probably shouldn't be taking life advice for your immediate situation from people who are more than one zero in either direction away from you because they're giving advice for their world, not yours.
my personal financial life goal is never to be worth more than $10M and I am knocking that go a lot of the park right now!
Life after $10M, from knowing people with that kind of money, just gets more and more complicated and no one seems truly happy, as they drown in first world problems.
Its christmas time, I'd like to go to my local box store and buy out the lay-aways. Donate some hams and turkeys to the poor.
As long as I've done what I can to take care of myself and family, I think its important to start helping other people.
One of our big flaws in society is we try to categorize people too much. That leads to the wealthy looking down on others. Middle class looking down on others. The poor looking down upon who they can. It is not necessary. Once you have food, home, and some basic luxuries, all you need is to save for the retirement days.
Also, your analysis on having maximum freedom of will at $3B is flawed in that money can only buy so much. For example, you can be the world's wealthiest man but that won't buy you healthy body, good looks or a charitable personality.
If you aren't working for your subsistence, what else are you doing with your life but finding distractions until your time is up?
> [money] won't buy you healthy body, good looks or a charitable personality.
Money can directly buy you good looks and a healthy body through plastic surgery, more fashionable clothes/accessories, as well as the free time and ability to hire a personal trainer and equipment necessary to get fit. World class doctors are now available as well to help extend your healthy life as long as possible.
I do agree with you about the personality.
Of course, it's dependent on the person. I perosnally believe that our time should be spend trying to make the world a tiny better place - even through seemingly mundane actions like open source contributions, involvement in local politics or just personal development - trying to be a more genuine, thoughtful and warm person. The opposite, i.e. concentrating on yourself only, leads to the said distraction threadmill and is not pretty. > Money can directly buy you good looks and a healthy body through plastic surgery, more fashionable clothes/accessories, as well as the free time and ability to hire a personal trainer and equipment necessary to get fit. World class doctors are now available as well to help extend your healthy life as long as possible.
These are still relatively marginal improvements though. An ugly, small, disproportionate 60 year old man with a bland personality will not be able to turn himself into someone who gives women a faster heart rate, no matter how much he spends on various improvements. The sad reality of the hedonistic lifestyle is that money does not give you a good place on the lader - you can buy gadgets like a yacht with a submarine, but girls in the club would still much rather sleep with a beautiful 20-year old broke guy than with the old billionaire.
The day after I quit my job and I didn't have to go in to work anymore, I felt such an extreme sense of joy that I don't think I ever felt in my life. At the time, my feeling was that "the exercise of free will" was the cause of this bliss - similar to what you're saying about freedom of will.
I didn't have to report to anyone, there was literally nothing that I had to do which did not come from within me.
This feeling lasted for about a year. I moved to a cheaper rental. My cash runway lasted about 5 years, and I felt really pretty good about life for the first 2-3 years. After that, I started to become more worried about whether I'd have to go back to work, or what kind of life I'd be able to live without that.
What I'm trying to say is that you can get to the freedom of will state with far less than $1M. It may not last forever. But I highly recommend doing it. It may be especially sweet for people like me, who have delayed gratification for decades.
They are just still unhappy with money they have because nothing changed about their happiness and their sources, they just got more money.
Many are motivated by 'the game'. But I am not depressed by this. On the contrary, it seems to me that most take care to use their money in constructive ways. They seek to find ways to build better futures for those that will follow them. Some even pledge to give a bunch of it away, after the great examples set by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet.
There are some bad apples, probably, but I think there are a lot more good ones.
The lengths one would go to to become rich rather then where a rich person throws the breadcrumbs of what they already have truly defines them, and also, what evil may be created in this world.
I don't believe "play or starve" economics are the be all, end all of human existence, but I'll be damned if I can figure out a way to make it work without just about everyone else being willing to "come along for the ride" as it were.
This works for people making huge donations, people of less financial worth donating their time and work, but alas also justifies the Kardashians who perceive impact somewhat differently.
I have never known a rich person who wasn't always trying to do more. however I have had and still do have some acquaintances who go out of their way to not have money
Hang out with people who aren't rich and you'll notice they're just as happy as everyone else.
I happened to grow up with classmates whose parents were both billionaires and cab drivers. There's research that suggests beyond a certain threshold you won't get happier from any extra money and that certainly seemed to be the case.
I know, very well, know how quickly this pile of cash can evaporate. To keep from starving again I'd rather have a significant (like orders of magnitude at this point) chunk dedicated to buffering me from that outcome. I do not trust the market to remain stable - I will go out and make more.
I've lost fortunes some of you youngins can only dream of, but came out OK because I was not content to sit on my laurels.