181–190 of 216 posts
Money is not happiness. Experiences are.
BTW, long lasting happiness is a myth, a wrong concept. Joy, which children are bursting with, is the real one.
Study 1: "Students participated in exchange for the chance to win one of three prizes valued at $700." Study 2a: "Two hundred and sixty UBC students participated in exchange for entry into a lottery or for course credit (78% female)" Study 2b: "In Study 2b, 518 adults were recruited from a science museum in Vancouver, Canada" Study 3a: "In Study 3a, 242 UBC students participated in exchange for course credit or candy…
Whenever I see "in a study of N people..." I translate that to be "in a study of N university students..."
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Out of curiosity: do you do contracting / consulting work, or have you found a stable 15-20 hr/wk job? I think the latter sounds excellent, while the former sounds stressful.
I have stable clients. I've only had 2 main ones over the last 3 years. I think there are maybe some misconceptions about what a consulting life must be like. I agree it does sound stressful if it were my long term goal, but it is not, it's primarily a type of life that keeps me as open as possible to finding something truly worth pursuing (IMO at least), which may or may not take the form of a startup. I have my can…
There are plenty of downsides, of course, but it's a far cry from the initial fear I had of a life of constantly hunting for clients and constantly playing the 'is my client an asshole / will my client pay / is my client a micro-manager'-roulette.
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I have stable clients. I've only had 2 main ones over the last 3 years. I think there are maybe some misconceptions about what a consulting life must be like. I agree it does sound stressful if it were my long term goal, but it is not, it's primarily a type of life that keeps me as open as possible to finding something truly worth pursuing (IMO at least), which may or may not take the form of a startup. I have my can…
Same here. I've gone for long periods working primarily for one or two clients, and 1) I made more working part-time than the employees did full-time, 2) I got all the 'fun' new projects while the employees spent a lot of their time doing maintenance and bug-fixing (which they only asked me to do occasionally once I was a 'trusted' contractor), 3) I could go on vacations pretty much whenever I wanted. There are plent…
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People say that and it seems true to some extent, but financially, people rarely fall into the categories of "limitless wealth" and "not a penny to my name." It's almost like a false dichotomy is being implied by this statement, claiming that if you don't prioritize money, you will be left penniless and ruined. That simply isn't true. There are a wide range of conditions between wealth and poverty and studies like th…
I think studies have shown that past a relatively low (by SV standards) level of income ($75kish I think) the relationship between money and happiness breaks down. The argument can definitely be made that the happiness difference between "comfortable and independent" and "Zuckerberg" is not all that great.
Not that I don't want to work anymore, but being able to leave my programming job and becoming a dog breeder would make a lot of difference. And take month longs vacations to travel whenever I wanted.
When I was young and fresh out of college, I earned £8000 per annum and attempted to support a non-working partner and a small child. The idea of time vs money was irrelevant. I did not have enough money to live on. I would work as much as possible to get more money, and it still wasn't enough to live on. Fast forward to now where I have enough money not to bother about budgeting day to day and there is still enough…
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But to be fair, and this won't be a popular comment, but I'm asking honestly, why did you take on a non working partner and child fresh out of college? You evidently have great character to overcome, and I don't know the UK system, but these would be impossible burdens for most middle class Americans before the age of at least 25, and likely put long term if not permanent damping factors on their career growth to be…
Sounds like he fell in love with someone who already had a kid.
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Even in a (totally unrealistic) scenario where N dollars are "useless" to you, but N+1 get you something of great value, it's not true that the (N+1)th dollar has greater marginal utility than any of the other N dollars, because you need all those other dollars to buy the thing. In other words, the previous N dollars weren't actually useless: they enabled you to obtain the (N+1)th dollar. Without them, that (N+1)th d…
Sometimes there's a psychological difference though. Say you have $8 in your pocket, and there's a movie you like to see in the cinema nearby. The ticket costs $10. You know you won't get that $2 in a reasonable timeframe - maybe it's your only evening off, so even if you get some more cash tomorrow you won't have a chance to see the movie. Maybe you also don't feel like begging strangers for change. In this situatio…
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Which happens to correspond with an old saying: "Money doesn't make you happy, but lack of money does make you unhappy."
> Mr Micawber's famous, and oft-quoted, recipe for happiness: > > "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen [pounds] nineteen [shillings] and six [pence], result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery." - Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
When I was young and fresh out of college, I earned £8000 per annum and attempted to support a non-working partner and a small child. The idea of time vs money was irrelevant. I did not have enough money to live on. I would work as much as possible to get more money, and it still wasn't enough to live on. Fast forward to now where I have enough money not to bother about budgeting day to day and there is still enough…
These things bother me as you may be paid a lot, but your company might making $250M losses every year and has no plans on turning profit.
Are you counting that your income might go away and never to return? In which case the threshold might still be too low ;-)