21–30 of 37 posts
This quote was interesting to me, "That would be the end of the world for serious writers, who are not performers and who can’t earn a living giving concerts and selling T-shirts. Nobody knows how this is going to play out." There isn't an audience for successful writers to be speakers?
Anybody found it already?
oblig: I've noticed that people who attain financial freedom often end up continuing to work in that field (after a year or two of feeling useless). We need a purpose more than we need "financial freedom". So you might as well do what you love in the first place; that passion is the best way to be excellent, which is not a bad way to be financially successful as an incident. The challenge is having the courage to live. Money isn't courage.
I'm having trouble seeing what the author's definition of freedom is. Financial "security" is one definition I hear people use, and he brings up. But that can be gone in a moment or you can die and it doesn't matter, as his father did. Freedom from what? Freedom to do what? I think that has to be defined first. The freest people I have met are those who don't worry about what they can't control, work hard at what the…
This shows the author, his father and grandfather had the wrong end of the stick. His grandfather, wanting security, had traded his time and independance for security, and got neither. His father, wanting to ensure he had both security and longevity, got neither. The author, apparently seeing this as a failed experiment, walked away from it. What he failed to realise that neither his father or grandfather ever got co…
Your comment reads to me like an extremely long variant of "Let them eat cake." You really need to explain how working for a little while and then "cashing out" was a viable option for these men that they simply chose not to exercise.
The point is : in free countries, we all get to choose our destiny, particularly so if born into middle class families. Any of us can choose to work hard for a while, find success and cash out. These men chose to take paid, salaried positions : they sacrificed their time for security of income stream. They (apparently, we have no evidence otherwise) never tried to question this, or try any other way of gaining both money and free time.
My point is they should have investigated other ways to make their money rather than work for someone else their whole life. The Authors conclusion, to me, is that working for money doesn't give you freedom. I agree completely, and say you should be finding ways to make money work for you.
I don't think my explanations are coming through very well, that's a shortcoming in my writing. But I fully understand that many readers won't get what I'm trying to say, because they probably have the same mindset as the Author, his Father and Grandfather.
This shows the author, his father and grandfather had the wrong end of the stick. His grandfather, wanting security, had traded his time and independance for security, and got neither. His father, wanting to ensure he had both security and longevity, got neither. The author, apparently seeing this as a failed experiment, walked away from it. What he failed to realise that neither his father or grandfather ever got co…
There are few career paths where one can "cash out."
In other words : you can't sell a job, so why spend 40 years working at one?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are few career paths where one can "cash out."
Right, so choose one where you can. That's my point. Don't bash your head against a bank wall for 40 years and then think you've wasted your life. In other words : you can't sell a job, so why spend 40 years working at one?
>On the one hand, I have no boss, so I can’t be sacked – everything about every single aspect of my day and my work is entirely up to me. From that point of view, I’m about as free as it is possible for a person to be. On the other hand, I have no job security or protection of any kind. If people don’t want to read what I write, I have no income . We always have "boss". It doesn't matter if it's my manager at my day…
This shows the author, his father and grandfather had the wrong end of the stick. His grandfather, wanting security, had traded his time and independance for security, and got neither. His father, wanting to ensure he had both security and longevity, got neither. The author, apparently seeing this as a failed experiment, walked away from it. What he failed to realise that neither his father or grandfather ever got co…
Your comment reads to me like an extremely long variant of "Let them eat cake." You really need to explain how working for a little while and then "cashing out" was a viable option for these men that they simply chose not to exercise.
Actually he doesn't.
They lived far above subsistence. That's a choice. One consequence of that choice is that they weren't saving the difference between subsistence and their chosen lifestyle for investment and/or later use, including early retirement at subsisistence.
I'm also pretty sure that no one forced them into their occupations and that they ignored opportunities that they could have done while pursuing said occupations.
I don't know what they did with their time, but I do know that they had time to do other things that would have had different outcomes. If they're unhappy with the consequences of their choices....
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are few career paths where one can "cash out."
Right, so choose one where you can. That's my point. Don't bash your head against a bank wall for 40 years and then think you've wasted your life. In other words : you can't sell a job, so why spend 40 years working at one?
Social mobility != Economic mobility
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs