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Ask HN: Getting depressed about money. How do I make a meaningful amount “fast”?

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Re: Ask HN: Getting depressed about money. How do I make a meaningful amount “fast”?

#21

Post by nknealk »

A few thoughts.

The people you see getting insanely rich often have decades of context (and a lot of luck) behind whatever made them insanely rich. I encourage you to not look at just the event that makes someone wealthy but look at the story that got them to that event. The acquired podcast does a great job of this when they cover company and founder history.

Nobody gets insanely wealthy selling their labor. Equity is what creates the massive payoffs.

Are there things you can do where you could own 100% equity? For example, are you an expert in systems administration? Can you write a book or Udemy course on it? Maybe it only makes you 1 grand in revenue but you may learn a lot about sales and marketing and promotion and other important business skills in the process. Those softer skills are just as important as engineering ability and there’s no better way to learn them than jumping into the deep end

Re: Ask HN: Getting depressed about money. How do I make a meaningful amount “fast”?

#22

Post by marketgod »

How old are you? Do you have a lazy stock portfolio? It's the first thing everyone should be starting at 18. Parents should be setting it up the day you are born.

Investing gradually you would have enough money to not worry. Saving with compounding is the best way for the general public.

Re: Ask HN: Getting depressed about money. How do I make a meaningful amount “fast”?

#23

Post by cdnsteve »

Understand that pursuit of this as a priority will likely have a negative impact to other area's in your life. If someone is 100% career focused, there will be personal and family implications. Working and thinking about work all the time is not healthy. Burnout is real, and the impacts to your dependants can be massive.

Whatever direction you go, try to find balance. Good luck.

Re: Ask HN: Getting depressed about money. How do I make a meaningful amount “fast”?

#24

Post by TheFiend7 »

cdnsteve wrote: post #23

Understand that pursuit of this as a priority will likely have a negative impact to other area's in your life. If someone is 100% career focused, there will be personal and family implications. Working and thinking about work all the time is not healthy. Burnout is real, and the impacts to your dependants can be massive. Whatever direction you go, try to find balance. Good luck.

This is always where I land. If you fail try try again, with effort and critical thought. But I just can't meaningfully dedicate the time to making more money at the expense of all the hobbies and other past times I love doing so much. I don't want to spend 20 years with hardly any enjoyment just to be able to retire at 55 instead of 70 or something.

It's a challenging decision to make and I also believe in most cases it isn't a decision that is "free" or without some form of consequences. All things come at a cost.

Re: Ask HN: Getting depressed about money. How do I make a meaningful amount “fast”?

#25

Post by rbflx »

I can't really help you, but I just wanted to say that I've also felt the same way for a few months now. I'm not really in the same situation, but just seeing people make these outrageous amounts of money has been pretty depressing. What really gets me, apart from people like Bezos (like you've mentioned), is that there are literally children making multiples of a doctor's salary by peddling products to even younger children on social media. I guess it's always been similar, considering that child stars have existed for a long time, but there's just something so disheartening thinking about those people making these sums, while others work jobs that are central to our communities and earn a fraction of that.

At this point, I'm at the stage where I'm just trying to start as many projects as possible in my free time and just see what sticks, because frankly, I now believe that people's success is entirely driven by being in the right market at the right time, so you might as well maximize your chances.

Re: Ask HN: Getting depressed about money. How do I make a meaningful amount “fast”?

#26

Post by giantg2 »

rbflx wrote: post #25

I can't really help you, but I just wanted to say that I've also felt the same way for a few months now. I'm not really in the same situation, but just seeing people make these outrageous amounts of money has been pretty depressing. What really gets me, apart from people like Bezos (like you've mentioned), is that there are literally children making multiples of a doctor's salary by peddling products to even younger…

I agree, but instead of creating projects I want to buy land and have a small farm.

Re: Ask HN: Getting depressed about money. How do I make a meaningful amount “fast”?

#27

Post by dirtybird04 »

A wise man once told me "Never count another man's money" and I'll pass that on to you. Figure out what you want in life, stop comparing to the Adam Neumanns and Jeff Bezos of the world, that's a surefire way to lose your mind and self.

Re: Ask HN: Getting depressed about money. How do I make a meaningful amount “fast”?

#28

Post by giantg2 »

TheFiend7 wrote: post #24
cdnsteve wrote: post #23

Understand that pursuit of this as a priority will likely have a negative impact to other area's in your life. If someone is 100% career focused, there will be personal and family implications. Working and thinking about work all the time is not healthy. Burnout is real, and the impacts to your dependants can be massive. Whatever direction you go, try to find balance. Good luck.

This is always where I land. If you fail try try again, with effort and critical thought. But I just can't meaningfully dedicate the time to making more money at the expense of all the hobbies and other past times I love doing so much. I don't want to spend 20 years with hardly any enjoyment just to be able to retire at 55 instead of 70 or something. It's a challenging decision to make and I also believe in most case…

I hate my job so much that I would love to retire at 55. I've already had to give up or greatly scale back my hobbies when I got married and had a kid. I also had to give up my career advancement (watching the kid means I can't work 50-60 hr/week, which is expected in IT).

Re: Ask HN: Getting depressed about money. How do I make a meaningful amount “fast”?

#29

Post by hn_acc_2 »

A thread like this is not likely to help much. Think of it this way, how many of the people getting "stupid rich" do you think would credit their success to starting a thread asking other people how to get rich?

Some valuable pieces of advice I've heard:

1) Owning your work is important.

2) Because few people succeed the very first time, waiting for The Good Idea (TM) to come to you before getting started is foolish. The more effective strategy is to keep trying different things that play to your strengths and learn as much as you can from repeated failure.

3) Try to develop an internal motivation to complete projects and avoid talking to others about your projects for validation. The very act of mentioning your next Thing to your friends can have a powerful demotivating effect, because it tricks your brain into a dopamine response as if you actually already did the Thing [1]

[1] https://berkeleysciencereview.com/2013/04/when-telling-other...

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