121–130 of 230 posts
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Except, today, high levels of wealth is inversely correlated with the number of offspring.
Not really. It looks like there is weak or no correlation between wealth and number of offspring.
http://geocurrentevents.blogspot.com/2010/07/misconceptions-...
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I'm not sure where you live but travel doesn't take a lot of money. If you live anywhere in the western world and make a modest living, it is very much possible to explore the world around on a cheap budget. The pleasure is in experiencing the world and her people, not in being able to do it in style, I suppose. IMO, at least. EDIT: didn't mean -in style- in a negative manner. There are probably only a few thousand p…
I never said anything about style. If you live in the western world with a modest living, you can afford to take a few vacations here and there to neat places. But I would have to be rich to telecommute during the week from Venice, Peru, Japan, New Zealand, Lebanon, France, and and on alternating weekends see my little brother's Piano recitals in Boston, and visit my girlfriend in India. Maybe I would discover that t…
To your point, I would love to visit my family in India a few times a year, if it was within my means. At times, I've wanted to just take off to exotic locations for the weekend. But oh well. I still travel internationally to my heart's content once or twice a year.
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Are you saying that there is some more direct route to working on what one wants? Or that the direct route to happiness is to give up such aspirations?
If your aspiration is simply to code interesting software projects all day long, I see no reason why being rich should be a prerequisite. Your expenses are minimal; you have no need of an office and can live anywhere. Will you require some money? Yes, and acquiring that will distract you slightly from the things you'd rather be doing. But that is a much better proposition, to me, than gambling away a decade or two of…
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I never said anything about style. If you live in the western world with a modest living, you can afford to take a few vacations here and there to neat places. But I would have to be rich to telecommute during the week from Venice, Peru, Japan, New Zealand, Lebanon, France, and and on alternating weekends see my little brother's Piano recitals in Boston, and visit my girlfriend in India. Maybe I would discover that t…
That seems like something quite different from traveling and exploring the world; that's some kind of jet-setting commute schedule, which yes, is the purview of the rich. If you want to just travel and see the world , though, you can do it considerably more cheaply, and no, not just as "take a few vacations". You can travel through Europe for 6 months on Airbnb and train/bus tickets for a few tens of $k, not millions…
You are of course absolutely right - if what you're after is the resort hotel experience, jet-setting around the world, fine-dining and boutique shopping then yes, you do need to be exceedingly wealthy.
But IMHO travel is so much more meaningful than that, and in fact I don't see much of a point to the jet-set lifestyle at all. A trendy nightclub in Shanghai is going to be largely similar to a trendy nightclub in NYC; you will many of the same boutiques on a chic street in Paris as you would in London.
IMHO the point of travel is to experience the uniqueness a place has to offer - and to do so you cannot ignore the people who inhabit such a space. Largely, they are not rich and wealthy, and living the rich and wealthy jet-set lifestyle is essentially a barrier to meeting, interacting with, and getting to know them.
It is consistently surprising and disappointing to me that the upper classes in our society try so very hard to emulate the bohemian way of life, when it is so very easily in reach for just about everyone.
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I feel the author really meant that it's ok not to be obscenely rich. Of course having a sizeable amount of savings is important for all the things you described. Yet the "low six-figures" income of her first example is probably largely sufficient to handle these.
I wish she had said that explicitly at the beginning, a low six-figures income is rich enough for me but making that money is almost as hard as becoming obscenely rich. After you reach 80-100k a year working for someone else it's a very large and all consuming step to make it to the next rung of the ladder.
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If your aspiration is simply to code interesting software projects all day long, I see no reason why being rich should be a prerequisite. Your expenses are minimal; you have no need of an office and can live anywhere. Will you require some money? Yes, and acquiring that will distract you slightly from the things you'd rather be doing. But that is a much better proposition, to me, than gambling away a decade or two of…
You're talking theoretically about the life I actually lived for the second half of my twenties, living cheaply and supporting myself with occasional bursts of consulting. It was not as easy as you make it sound. I preferred it to a regular job (which leaves you too little time to work on your own stuff), but it was extremely stressful to keep running out of money. With kids it would have been impossible. How remote…
In my experience, startup founders who want to get rich want it more in order to have the freedom to work on what they want than to impress people. That could be because we prefer startups whose founders include hackers. On the other hand, we don't just prefer that type because they're more fun to hang around with, but because in our opinion they're more likely to succeed.
When I dream of 'winning the lottery', I don't dream of laying on sandy beaches. I dream of starting a new start up, knowing that I can have enough FU money to take risks and make it great.
In my experience, startup founders who want to get rich want it more in order to have the freedom to work on what they want than to impress people. That could be because we prefer startups whose founders include hackers. On the other hand, we don't just prefer that type because they're more fun to hang around with, but because in our opinion they're more likely to succeed.
I can only speak to myself, but I want to get rich not for a Lamborghini, but so I can start another company to truly make a difference. Personally I think the Gates foundation is going to have a longer lasting impact on the world then Microsoft has. Yes I realize how huge of an impact Microsoft has had.
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I wish she had said that explicitly at the beginning, a low six-figures income is rich enough for me but making that money is almost as hard as becoming obscenely rich. After you reach 80-100k a year working for someone else it's a very large and all consuming step to make it to the next rung of the ladder.
In California, a family making low six-figures is upper-middle-class (my parents made ~$80k and we were generally considered lower-middle-class). So it makes sense to me not to call that "rich," though of course the value of money is a personal thing.