Ask HN: What is your goal in life?

My goal is to be able to spend my life spending time with my family. Have them never have to worry about money. Hike the Appalachian Trail. Get in the best shape of my life and take 4 weeks of vacation a year. See the world.

Eventually I'd also like to be an angel investor and help entrepreneur's achieve their dreams too.

My method to achieve that is very unsexy. I am simply working hard to fully fund my retirement account.

Right now I am funded well enough to retire at 60 if I contribute nothing more -- I'm 33 -- but I want enough to be able to retire immediately. Which would be about $6MM USD.

Not so I don't have to work (I'll still work anyway) but so I can be picky about who I work for / what projects I work on. Probably even self-fund some of my own idea.

To help with that I've accumulated as much equity in startups as I can muster through hard work and making the value I added good enough to earn substantial equity.

Live to learn, feel fulfilled, and give back to bring or sustain positivity in my surroundings.

Material view: Live in a home and land that can sustain itself, OR improve the environment I live in.

Capital view: Live relatively cost free, or generate enough income to allow me to support family if I, or they, fell into a rough time. Lots of money is nice, but I think it's more important to be able to give to others, or those you care about. There's no point in striving to be ultra rich if you only bring negativity or are completely self focused.

Mind/body: Be fit and healthy, stress free.

Indefinitely period.

My name being remembered is insignificant to me, what about me I want remembered are my achievements.

I really hesitated to reply on this but I'm about 15+ years into my career and what the heck. On the one hand, I agree with you. On the other hand, I really disagree. The reason I disagree is we spend an immense amount of time every day working for money. Sure, many of us love what we do but we still go to work at a certain time and certain days because we have to by our agreement to get a paycheck.

So my goal is that I'm writing my own paychecks. By gaining FI, that might mean I'm just going to pay myself to watch TV and play videogames all day. Or go spend time traveling Japan and visiting all the Onsens/hot baths. Or spending time with my kids and working on my own businesses -- trying to bootstrap new ideas and just seeing what works and what doesn't (which includes working on interesting projects).

So the part of me that disagrees with you is the part that sees just how much of our life, how much of every single week day, is dedicated to one thing. And that one thing is not something I live for. I want to work on things I live for and fully believe in.

Does that make sense? I don't want to be harsh but on the surface, startups seem so awesome. Everyone is aligned and motivated along the same angles. But the reality is often much worse than one might expect. The investors are pushing the lead developer, who has health problems caused by stress, to use the new framework of the day. The cofounders are trying to figure out which management to hire. The managers are coming in and deciding to change the whole culture and bring in their people to do things their way. It just goes on and on. And nobody is really aligned in the end. There is that magic when it works but most of the time it doesn't. And it's disappointing to spend your life on things that don't ship, that fail, that aren't interesting to work on.