America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable • Hacker News Board

Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

#301

Post by DonnyV » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 7:45 PM UTC

seem_2211 wrote: post #289

JDiculous wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people don't have the luxury of being their own bosses. For these people, financial independence will enable them to leave their unfulfilling jobs and pursue their own passions, whether it be starting a small business like you or getting a job that pays less but is more fulfilling. Most people are living paycheck to paycheck with little savings, and thus don't have the freedom to walk away from their jobs.

If you are saving towards financial independence you have the luxury of choosing if you'd like to be your own boss, or indeed if you'd like a job that pays less. Most people are living paycheck to paycheck, but those are not the people who are saving for FI.

I think you assume people who are living paycheck to paycheck to be people that are just don't know how to manage their finances. If so, you would be massively wrong. Most people living paycheck to paycheck are people that usually got a horrible start at life with some bad luck thrown in. Maybe raised by a single parent who couldn't give the extra attention, so they fell behind in school. Maybe people who sickly as kids. Maybe people just born into poor families with bad habits. The list is endless. Yes this sometimes create people that were never given or taught the tools of proper finance but most just got the shit end of the stick. Or they made 1 bad choice and then couldn't get out of that hole.

Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

#302

Post by zaccus » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 7:45 PM UTC

forrestthewoods wrote: post #291

zaccus wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't think of it as a large nest egg; think of it as a modest fixed income. You can easily make 2.5MM last for the rest of your life if you're able to live on 100k. That might require downsizing a bit and moving somewhere with a lower COL, but it's certainly doable.

2.5MM will not let you draw $100,000 for 50 years with inflation. That’s a great number for retiring at 65. But this thread is talking about working hard for 5 years and retiring super early.

Assuming a 4% return, 2.5MM absolutely does yield 100k per year, forever.

Yes inflation will eat away at the value of that 100k over time, but that's less of a problem if you own your home and have something left over each year to reinvest.

Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

#303

Post by BucketSort » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 7:46 PM UTC

nimonian wrote: post #136

Murdoch wrote: post #17

The rich are depressed, the middle-class is shrinking and fearful, the poor are hopeless. I'm gonna take a leap here and say maybe people need some religion in their lives to give direction and meaning. I found it interesting that a person in the article who made $1.2M a year was still depressed in thinking they were wasting their lives and it was all meaningless. I ask myself, does this person have children? a famil…

> maybe people need some religion in their lives to give direction and meaning I can't just accept dogma because I'm miserable. I can't just say 2+2=5 even if it would make me feel better. Religion isn't something you can just pick up like pilates. If life is inherently without meaning or direction, I'd rather go with that and be true to myself than refract the universe through some doctrine I understand to be false.…

1. Man is the son of an infinite source: a son of that Father not by the flesh but by the spirit.

2. Therefore man should serve that source in spirit.

3. The life of all men has a divine origin. It alone is holy.

4. Therefore man should serve that source in the life of all men. Such is the will of the Father.

5. The service of the will of that Father of life gives life.

6. Therefore the gratification of one's own will is not necessary for life.

7. Temporal life is food for the true life.

8. Therefore the true life is independent of time: it is in the present.

9. Time is an illusion of life; life in the past and in the future conceals from men the true life of the present.

10.Therefore man should strive to destroy the illusion of the temporal life of the past and future.

11.True life is life in the present, common to all men and manifesting itself in love.

12. Therefore, he who lives by love in the present, through the common life of all men, unites with the Father, the source and foundation of life.

That's Tolstoy's distillation of Jesus' teachings from "The Gospel in Brief". I have felt the same as you in the past, but when you look closely at some of these premises, they are more philosophical in nature rather than dogmatic. As a scientifically minded person, I have seen the unity of things, like in physics, where it does seem like there are some natural principles laid down. Or like in mathematics, where it seems like eternal truths are discovered, not manufactured. You can have a spiritual interpretation of this, or you can interpret it in whatever way you'd like. What I like about Tolstoy's rendering of Christ is that he basically rejects the stupid personification of God, and claims that Jesus didn't mean it that way to begin with, that the Church actually warped the teachings into a system of control.

I don't even believe Jesus was a real person, but these principles do make sense to me (at least some of it does), maybe they will make sense to you. Or maybe it's just dogma to you.

Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

#304

Post by epx » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 7:47 PM UTC

People lost their spines. If your wife laughs if you want to take a hit in salary, consider a divorce, and so on.

Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

#305

Post by vitaflo » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 7:47 PM UTC

strikelaserclaw wrote: post #6

- He had received an offer at a start-up, and he would have loved to take it, but it paid half as much, and he felt locked into a lifestyle that made this pay cut impossible. “My wife laughed when I told her about it,” he said. Sounds like a good wife to me, and this "pay cut" is making 500k-600k instead of 1.2 million, what world are these people living in that you can't give up a job that you hate because you can't…

>what world are these people living in that you can't give up a job that you hate because you can't afford to live on 500-600k.

The same one where a dev making $160k can't give up a job they hate because they can't afford to take a job paying $80k.

Everything is relative. To many Americans and $80k desk job is the lap of luxury. To many devs, that pay would be insulting.

Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

#306

Post by rollinDyno » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 7:47 PM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #166

kough wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Practicing regularly to increase self-knowledge, thinking spiritually, reflecting on your relation to the world – do you not consider that a religion? Organized Christianity is just one flavor.

> Practicing regularly to increase self-knowledge, thinking spiritually, reflecting on your relation to the world – do you not consider that a religion? I'd call that mindfulness not religion.

What would you call a religion?

Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

#307

Post by mrskitch » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 7:48 PM UTC

ip26 wrote: post #111

QualityReboot wrote: post #64

I just don't understand this at all. If you can earn a million a year, do it for 3-5 years, never have to work again, and pursue your passions in life. I think the problem for most workers is the lifetime of toil, not the meaninglessness of the work. I'd happily dig ditches for 8-12 hours a day for 3 years if I knew I was completely financially independent with millions in the bank that. Actually, I'd rather do that…

Have you actually dug ditches for a few weeks? It's a popular rhetorical device but I wonder how many engineers have actually done stints of hard labor.

Having dug ditches for septic tanks for a few years I can definitely vouch for _not_ doing it. 5 years of digging ditches is awful work, and most people aren't cut out for that level of manual labor. After a week I think most programmers would happily return to their day jobs.

Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

#308

Post by jondubois » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 7:48 PM UTC

objektif wrote: post #268

cryptica wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is pure happiness. I'm a curious person and I have a pretty intellectually stimulating job right now (so I understand the appeal) but heck; for $1.2 million per year, I would sit and stare at a blank wall every day for 5 years straight. I can even picture myself after finishing a hard day of hardcore wall-staring, I'd go home with a huge smile on my face. It would be like reliving the best day of my life over and…

You kindnof have a point but the problem is wife and kids. You would have to stare all together.

Sounds great. I think we'd do it for $600K each. It would be nice to have a colleague to talk to while doing the wall staring.

Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

#309

Post by tannhauser23 » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 7:48 PM UTC

School-Cotton wrote: post #213

JackFr wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say you've got three kids and you're living on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Your mortgage and maintenance for a 3 bedroom apartment at $3.5MM are going to be ~15000 a month or 180K a year. Three private school tuitions are 150K. Living in NYC you're paying NYC, NYS and Federal income taxes for probably the highest tax rate in the country. So basically it's easy to be paycheck to paycheck on 500K in NYC.

It's "easy" to squander almost any amount of money -- even Johnny Depp went broke. But just like Depp didn't have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on wine, nobody has to live on the UES and send their kids to 50k/yr schools.

Yeah but imagine that you already do and now you're explaining to your wife why you want to pull your kids out of their schools and move to the suburbs so you can take a job that pays half what you already make. I'm not saying I'm sympathetic to the guy, but I understand the situation he's in.

Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

#310

Post by rjf72 » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 7:49 PM UTC

ip26 wrote: post #111

QualityReboot wrote: post #64

I just don't understand this at all. If you can earn a million a year, do it for 3-5 years, never have to work again, and pursue your passions in life. I think the problem for most workers is the lifetime of toil, not the meaninglessness of the work. I'd happily dig ditches for 8-12 hours a day for 3 years if I knew I was completely financially independent with millions in the bank that. Actually, I'd rather do that…

Have you actually dug ditches for a few weeks? It's a popular rhetorical device but I wonder how many engineers have actually done stints of hard labor.

I'm not sure about nonstop digging of ditches, but I've done a fair deal of farm labor and construction. And absolutely love it.

I enjoy what I do, but I'd go back to it in a heart beat if there was even a chance for comparable earning potential. Hard work feels really really good at the end of the week. I think the one reason I enjoy software is because it gives you that similar high of being able to see something you've built with your own hands, that didn't exist before.