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Comment by willio58 | Hacker News Reader

> It’s hard to mentally reconcile that if I had performed better on a few coding tests a few years ago, I would be 100x wealthier than I am today.

Wealth like this sounds great to those not that wealthy, but those experiencing it often aren't any happier than those who have their needs met. Look at any of the tech (b|tr)illionaires; do they seem as genuinely happy/content as the neighbor down the street who gardens regularly and has a tight-knit group of friends and family they spend time with?

Don't get me wrong, money is great! But the "keeping up with the joneses" never stops. You quickly adjust your mindset and feel poor compared to your buddy who has 400 million dollars.

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> Wealth like this sounds great to those not that wealthy

It’s also great to the wealthy. Speaking as someone moderately wealthy myself.

Not having to worry about day to day bills, being able to splurge on friends and family for a celebration or when they have an emergency, being able to travel to see things because you read about it in a book and want to check it out, not caring about your credit score and being able to single-handed direct non-profit efforts to achieve civic outcomes they’d otherwise have to spend months fundraising for, all of these are tremendously rewarding. I agree that once folks get into the billionaire bucket there seems to be a negative return on wealth. But going from having to think about the mortgage to not is a major step up in quality of life, and it’s something of a sour-grapes middle class myth that I also grew up with which preaches that wealth isn’t actually all that, hard work is the reward yada yada.

90% of my extended family’s issues and my partners family’s issues could be resolved with 10 million dollars. Sure we would graduate to “rich people problems”, but they don’t carry the same sting of desperation and futility

I can assure you that if I had a $40M payday that I'd cash out, never work a day in my life again, and be perfectly content.

Of course that's also part of why I'll never be in a position to achieve a $40M payday, so there's that.

I’m not so sure of that.

The recent Money Stuff newsletter had a blurb about how many anthrophic employees were quitting because you can’t use stock as collateral while working there. That condition only applies to emoloyees so once they left they can do that and rebalance their wealth out of a single position.

I did say if I had a $40M payday. Having purely paper shares isn't a payday in this context, only a liquidation event.

In any event, it'd take a number far less than $40M of liquid cash for me to drop out of the workforce forever.

> I can assure you that if I had a $40M payday that I'd cash out, never work a day in my life again, and be perfectly content.

I recently listened to an npr story on why people work into older ages. Of course some of it is financial need, but a surprising number of people return to work because retirement is isolating. People find missing that structure and need to wake up and work on something with others crippling to their health, both mentally and physically.

I also think I'd do the same if I had a 40M payday, though I'd immediately be thinking about what I need to do for work to fill in those gaps, something physical, social, etc. Something like gardening, working on community gardens, joining a local pottery co-op, etc.

Just something to think about in case you strike it rich someday! In my case, I'm saving for early retirement with a goal of 50 at the latest.

I'd likely do "something" but it definitely wouldn't be tying myself to the grindstone.

I've had the good fortune to wind up with a few funemployment stretches over the years, and yes, I'd go stir crazy quickly if I just went off the grid completely. In fact I learned that the hard way on the first one. But I learned quickly that about 10 hours a week of "something useful" was enough to fill in the gaps. And that paints with a broad brush in terms of what the activity is.

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