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Comment by sebslomski | Hacker News Reader

I envy your work style, but I'm constantly afraid I would then be poor when I'm old. What's your retirement plan? Do you even have one yet? Don't take me wrong, I'm in my mid 20s and I live in a country with offers you an ok retirement.

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Well, to be frank, I am putting off thinking seriously about retirement. I feel like I can accomplish some substantial creative work and that the time to try to do that is now while I'm young. I guess you could say I'm hedging multiple interests, with the expectation that if none of my experiments takes off I'll have to try out something different and more full time in the future. Just to be clear, the idea isn't to not work. In many cases I'm actually working far more than 40 hours a week, but I'm only doing 25 hours of work for some person or organization that is paying me. But I'm working on stuff I personally care about.

Some of us work for today ... but many of us work for tomorrow. Let's hope your side projects prove fruitful.

Even at working 25 hours a week, a freelancer can make a good income.

That's true. I am doing far better than just scraping by but I also don't have much in terms of savings. One challenge is that I live in Brooklyn, which has a high cost of living.

I used to think like that a lot but more and more I wonder if it is really a good idea to go through life in a way so you have it nice when you retire.

I currently am doing something very similar, and I feel pretty strongly that I could literally do this until I die, just like I plan to do my music gigs until I die.

Literally, I am billing < 20 hours a week, and unless I become disabled and/or get dementia/Alzheimers, I feel that I will like doing what I am doing in some form or other forever.

I've done a lot of different things in my life, and this _is_ having it nice. It's far nicer than the "retirements" of many of my friends in their 70s, though I will grant it is not as plush or completely free of pressure as my parents' retirements as school teachers/administrators.

Yeah I'm doing something similar. The hours I work varies, this week I'm waiting for a client to get back to me about some stuff so it'll be < 20 hours, but I never work more than 40. As you say I could probably do this until I die. I don't have a family yet though, I'm sure things will be different then.

I'm also travelling in SE Asia so my outgoings are very low. I didn't realise how cheap it was here. I'm bringing in nearly 5x (before tax) of what I'm spending.

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