As someone who would absolutely love to be a billionaire (I once wrote an 'Ode to Wealth', it's under my comments somewhere), honest question: What makes that the best part of the article?
At the end of the day no one can argue that someone that lives on $20,000 a month doesn't have a better quality of life than someone living on $5000 a month.
I totally appreciate the sentiment in the article but at the end of the day, money equals freedom.
If I had assets of $5 to $10 million in investments throwing off $200k-$500k a year in cash, that would be a nice lifestyle indeed.
Does it mean I would work any less harder? Probably not. But, if I want to take that 3-4 month trip to Europe and spend 50k on the trip, then that's what I would do.
And I think the comparison is wrong. Being billionaire is incrementally better than a multimillionaire (let's say net worth of $5 million and beyond).
Making $100k a year is definitely not close to somebody making $500k a year.
In terms of starting a company and the risks involved, I think for most people that do it, its an itch. The money is the reward but that's not why we want to do it.
I also think that the odds increase dramatically when you focus on building a business where you don't expect it to ever go IPO or be worth more than 5-10 million.
You said it best: "at the end of the day, money equals freedom." My previous sentiments: [0]
>At the end of the day no one can argue that someone that lives on $20,000 a month doesn't have a better quality of life than someone living on $5000 a month.
Oh, you'd be surprised. TONS of people will disagree; I know several of them :). They'll create strawmen, saying things like "Oh, yeah, he spends $20,000 / month, but he {had to sell his soul to get it | isn't happy | has a bad relationship with his family"}. Personally, I think it's just jealously, and bitterness.
Me? I'm a 1st year CS student. I have a math final on Thursday, but I owe about USD380 on my tuition, so I'm gonna be barred from sitting the exam, which means an automatic fail. The course is a pre-requisite for semester 2 courses. Which means my degree plans just got pushedback. Being in this situation, when I hear people talk like money ain't a thing, it kinda makes me shake my head. No beef with @carsongross, but to me, money is really, really important. For want of 0.4BTC, my kingdom is lost ;(.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2025537
My 'Ode to Wealth': https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2026680
While you work on the numerator, there's also a denominator there you can work on without actually hurting your happiness too much, it turns out.
There are two directions to attack this from: make a sufficient amount of money and also work mentally on wanting less.
The beauty of the second direction is that it doesn't tempt you into a leveraged position where you can really lose it all. It lets you approach wealth from a position of strength: fuck you, wealth, I don't need you. And, paradoxically, it ends up making wealth (and certainly freedom) more likely.
I'm aristotelean about the whole thing: there is obviously a balance between the two. But I tend to think that the natural desire for money and freedom is often used to manipulate otherwise sane people into desperate positions of weakness vis-a-vis wealth.
Studies show that beyond a certain surprisingly-low point, wealth doesn't add much to happiness.
Additionally, as I say below, I think approaching wealth from a position of strength ("fuck you, wealth, I don't need you.") ends up making it (and even more so, it's final cause, freedom) more likely.