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The most precious resource is agency

simonsarris.substack.com

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Re: The most precious resource is agency

#281

Post by jonfw »

sumtechguy wrote: post #257
bkirkby wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

15 years ago a young engineer i worked with overheard me say "getting rich is a pretty easy formula if you are patient." he came to me later and asked me to expound. i told him "the formula is: spend less than you make and invest the left over. you do that long enough and you'll become wealthy." i also told him "from what i can tell, it will happen so gradually that you'll barely notice a difference in your lifestyle…

I have followed this and am on track to having a nice sum when I decide to retire. I look at that pile. Divide it by what I make now per year. That number is the number I could coast and not have to 'worry' about money with 0 change in lifestyle. I then add that to my current age and figure out where I should run out when I am old. That number is currently not far enough along for my liking. I am also doing ridiculou…

A car that you could buy for a few thousand today is much more capable than the cars people bought for a few thousand in the past.

New cars are status symbols or toys. I never understood how people could trade a human's full time salary for a car. People take old cars to work every day for a small fraction of the cost.

American lifestyles have inflated much more than the price of comparable goods. Average home size is way up over time, people prepare less of their own food, people buy fancy big cars with lots of horsepower and unnecessary capability.

I would complain about iphones and big TVs but in reality- the only things relevant to most of our budgets are our insistence to compete for the hottest real estate and new cars

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#282

Post by jonfw »

onion2k wrote: post #120
PaulRobinson wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just nonsense advice. The entire point of retirement savings is that at some point you can stop working. FU money is just about timing. You can change that timing. 1. Reduce outgoings. It's easier to have FU money if the amount you need to be able to say "FU" is smaller, because you've perfected the art of living on a little less than most. Most people's outgoings grow to meet their incomes: resist that. You d…

Is this not FU money yet? You're the problem, not the regular job. I think we have very different ideas of what "FU money" means. FU money is literally enough to be able to do what you want. It's being able to stop asking "Can I afford this?" because you definitely can. It's being able to stop making a choice between two sports cars because you can afford both. It's being able to buy the exact house you want because…

Of course it isn't FU money if you insist on buying outrageously overvalued cars and real estate. There is no limit to the amount of money you need to play that game to receive increasingly marginal returns. You can be a small time billionaire and fool yourself into thinking you don't have FU money because you'd have to make sacrifices to buy that yacht you've been eyeballing

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#283

Post by linspace »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #242
malydok wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an interesting fact that one could save many lives by donating to charities and yet wouldn't feel quite the same way about it. Clicking "donate" on a screen and filling in credit card details isn't as thrilling an experience as yours even if it achieves no less.

Charities aren't appealing not just because you don't feel as connected to outcomes, but because we know many of them pay out big paycheques to execs and other overhead to the point where barely any of our donations are put to good use. Maybe just being cynical about it, but if I help out at a soup kitchen I know I'm helping people, when I donate I am just getting a tax credit and boosting a charity's executive bonus…

I don't think it's about being cynical and more about proximity. I'm not as pessimistic about charities. We don't get the same good feelings helping people we don't know for the same reason we don't care about all the people that is suffering right now.

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#284

Post by borroka »

icandoit wrote: post #279
borroka wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not FU money, that's enough money not to work for one year. At the end of the year, you cannot, in this context, say FU to anybody.

He can say FU some fraction of his time. The recipe is simple. If you spend 50% of what you make, then you only have to work 50% of your life. If you spend 10% of what you make, then you only have to work 10% of your life. Turn off all sources of marketing and watch your free time and savings swell.

I wasn't discussing lifestyles, I was discussing the meaning of the term "FU money". Otherwise, I could say that with a good 17 seconds flat in the 100 meter dash I'm well on my way to the Olympics.

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#285

Post by mlengineerio »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #71
jkhdigital wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amen. I’m a sober alcoholic, and if I died tomorrow I’d be content knowing that I did at least one worthwhile thing with the time I had: I helped another alcoholic, a 23 year old man who tried to kill himself shortly before I met him, get sober and start working and move out of his mom’s basement and stand up straight and look other people in the eyes and then go and help a few other people stop drinking. Not a singl…

That brings up an old memory for me: I used to work as a lifeguard at a pool for three or four years as I was going through uni. Nothing glamorous in that work, it's just very loosely managing young males showing off in front of young females. Except this one time some kid jumped in the deep end and whilst he surfaced, he couldn't reach the top of the side of the pool in order to stay at the surface, he was clutching…

Not saving life but I directly and indirectly help dozen of people get into top companies. It's an amazing feeling when you see someone success because of you. To some extent, I felt like I'm reliving the offer experience over and over. In a way, I changed some people life and I felt oddly content.

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#286

Post by truenindb »

poppycock! the most precious resource is zement and wheat. Sheep and brick can be had anywhere, and longest road and biggest army are both like kick me zigns, yay unto the septenth generatzion. you gotta spend all your time trying to figure out how to translate numbers from aramaic!

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#287

Post by truenindb »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #255
pgustafs wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I vehemently disagree. Not with your explicit reasoning, but with the implicit assumption that there is some 1-dimensional metric of specialness or greatness that we're all being measured against. The great thing about life is that it's so multidimensional. If you want to be the richest person in the world, of course you're setting yourself up for failure. But if you want to be the best version of yourself, you can e…

You said you disagree, and then you repeated their point with different words.

I zement to differ!

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#288

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

onion2k wrote: post #105
sillysaurusx wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went and did the other side, living nontraditionally and trying to be what I wanted. I just applied for a regular job. Because to be honest, it’s gonna be pretty sweet having a fat bank account, even if it’ll take till I’m 50 to have FU money. My current hypothesis is that the team is all that matters. The work can be the most boring, crud-type work. As long as you’re working with people you like on something vague…

I just applied for a regular job. Because to be honest, it’s gonna be pretty sweet having a fat bank account, even if it’ll take till I’m 50 to have FU money. You will never have FU money working a regular job.

That depends entirely on your salary and your lifestyle. If I made some of the numbers that HNers throw around I'd have FU money in less than a decade.

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#289

Post by hammock »

rpsw wrote: post #229
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That brings up an old memory for me: I used to work as a lifeguard at a pool for three or four years as I was going through uni. Nothing glamorous in that work, it's just very loosely managing young males showing off in front of young females. Except this one time some kid jumped in the deep end and whilst he surfaced, he couldn't reach the top of the side of the pool in order to stay at the surface, he was clutching…

I also have a similar memory as a teenager swimming in a river. A young boy was on his own, with only his face above the water, with said wide-eyed expression. I asked him if he needed help, he managed to say yes, and I pushed him to the river bank. He ran back to his family. I heard his mum giving out to his older brothers for not watching him. There is a good chance that young boy would have run out of energy and s…

If you like these life-saving type of experiences, I encourage adrenaline sports. Whitewater kayaking, big mountain skiing, etc. Having done these for years I can say there are opportunities every season to save a life and to have my own saved by someone else. It is exhilarating.

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#290

Post by ItsMonkk »

an_opabinia wrote: post #101
bedobi wrote: post #8

This article did a great job of articulating something I've always felt strongly about but haven't been able to put into words. I'm sure I'm not the only one who felt like my schooling was mostly a giant waste of my time and energy. I was waaaay ahead in subjects I liked, because those things I learned myself out of innate interest. Rather than the system accommodating and encouraging being ahead, in those subjects I…

> giant waste of my time and energy Telling people not to go to school is bad life advice. > I was [in school and thriving] I don't, would you go into the time machine and like, not go to school, as a young person?

I did this.

I realized what the GP said when I was 13. I was either bored working on subjects I liked because I knew them or bored working on subjects I didn't like and had no interest in. I was an angsty teenager who could not handle this, so I dropped out.

At 18 I got my GED, after doing no studying, and that got me into a local college. After my first year I transferred to a less than Ivy League college in my state.

I had no support, and therefore did not use this opportunity to do great things, but I still ended up pretty much where I would have had I not dropped out. I look back on that time as my pre-working early retirement that allowed me to figure out what was important to me.

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