Comment by fnid | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fnid | Hacker News Reader

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FU money isn't only a big lump sum of cash. It can also be a residual flow of payments for SaaS or royalties or dividends. As long as that money is coming in every month, you're fine and can do most anything you want as well.

Flipping a company is just one way to say FU to the man.

I've said FU to the man lots of times, even when all I had was some cash I had saved up from working really hard and long hours at a salaried job.

There's a sense out there that you need lots of cash to break free, but lots of homeless people break free all the time and many of them are way happier than those receiving big exits for startups. That is not hyperbole.

Breaking out of the machine is about mind not money. If you believe it is about money, you'll never break free even if you have lots of money.

Even with lots of money in the bank, you get bored. You end up wanting to go back into the system, to be part of a team, to do something productive. FU money is not all it's cracked up to be and it's mostly those who have never had it who think the world of it.

"lots of homeless people break free all the time and many of them are way happier than those receiving big exits for startups. That is not hyperbole."

I'm sure you can find several homeless people who are happier than several people who made FU money in a short amount of time, but I'd be willing to bet that on average, people who started up a company and sold it for dump trucks full of cash are happier than homeless people.

I wouldn't be too sure about that. Many lottery winners are actually less happier a year after winning the lottery than before. Many also wish they had never won.

Of course, this could be psychological due to them not having done anything to earn the money.

Can you cite any studies that demonstrate this? This is often stated as fact, and I'm sure 'many' lottery winners are less happy, but I would still assume the vast majority would see massive gains in their quality of life and would report increase in their overall happiness.

I'd love to read up on any actual data gathered on the topic if you know of any.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_w...

"Here's two different futures that I invite you to contemplate, and you can try to simulate them and tell me which one you think you might prefer. One of them is winning the lottery. This is about 314 million dollars. And the other is becoming paraplegic. So, just give it a moment of thought. You probably don't feel like you need a moment of thought.

Interestingly, there are data on these two groups of people, data on how happy they are. And this is exactly what you expected, isn't it? But these aren't the data. I made these up!

These are the data. You failed the pop quiz, and you're hardly five minutes into the lecture Because the fact is that a year after losing the use of their legs, and a year after winning the lotto, lottery winners and paraplegics are equally happy with their lives."

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=123...

Act two (This is a very fascinating story)

"This American Life producer Alex Blumberg talks with Ed Ugel, who had a very unusual dream job: he bought jackpots from lottery winners. When you win the lottery, your prize is often paid out in yearly installments. And Ed would offer winners a lump sum in exchange for their yearly checks. He's talked with thousands of lottery winners, and the vast majority, he says, wish they'd never won. Ed is writing a book about his years in the "lump sum industry" called Money for Nothing: One Man's Journey through the Dark Side of Lottery Millions. It comes out in September 2007."

Even if it's true [1], lottery winners are a completely different group of people than startup founders who built massively successful companies.

Here are some more examples: http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SavingandDebt/SaveMoney...

Agreed. Money earned is a different game than money won.

Right on, here's a story to further make your point: Teenage lottery millionaire who won £1.9m broke at 22

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1208498/Teenage-lott...

It seems logical that pissing away all of one's £1.9m prize money would make one unhappy.

Most lottery winners piss away their winnings and end up where they started.

It's kind of surprising how many people are absolute idiots at managing their money. My girlfriend's parents are broke again after blowing over $100,000 in a year on leather couches. Their manufactured home is still not paid off.

Bet you're hoping right now that the old saying "Like mother, like daughter" is only a saying...

She's a lot more mad about it than I am.

I suspect it's more from their not being able to manage the money. One thing getting your money by working, saving, investing, creating your own company does teach is how to manage money.

Easy come, easy go.

>It can also be a residual flow of payments for SaaS or royalties or dividends.

None of those are guaranteed - especially compared to a lump sum.

>I've said FU to the man lots of times

They're saying it to him permanently. Almost all of your examples are temporary.

>Even with lots of money in the bank, you get bored. You end up wanting to go back into the system, to be part of a team, to do something productive.

No one said they would do nothing. The whole point is they can do whatever they want without worrying about it being monetizable.

lots of homeless people break free all the time and many of them are way happier than those receiving big exits for startups. That is not hyperbole.

Do you personally know some? Tell us about them. They must be remarkable people.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but your claim sure sounds like hyperbole. I know a few startup-exit-receivers who seem pretty happy. Of course it's hard to tell these things (http://robinson.bokardo.com/poem/richardcory and all that).

The only modern case that comes to my mind is the homeless guy who recently left $4 million to NPR. I seem to recall hearing information about him that made me think he might have been happy.

Well, let me take a harsher stance than you and call BS on his 'that is not hyperbole'. Most homeless people are rather miserable, if not about their immediate situation or their worries about the near future, then about the psychiatric diseases at least half of them are suffering from. Being homeless is hard and anyone that has taken any trouble to know something about homeless people knows that these romantic notions are utter BS. Being homeless is easy as long as you have the ability to fall back on a home, a fund, family, etc. Most homeless people do not have that option.

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