I quit tech, moved to a rural area, and bought some farmland at the beginning of the year. got a couple different jobs to learn how to do things. first building polebarns and then framing houses. got to journeyman in framing last month and quit. finishing up my first barn and now i am getting ready to build a greenhouse over the winter. been preparing the soil. will be ready for planting next year. technically i didn…
funny reading stories like this as someone who grew up on a farm and knows how much hard work it is, I would drive tractors, feed cows, pull in hay, silage etc on evenings and weekends and even before school when required, from around age 11... I studied maths/sci and went into computing, and am now again coming full circle with vertical farming and controlled environments! Traditional farming is so much better for t…
Ask HN: People who cashed out early and stopped working: What is your life like?
171–180 of 190 posts
Re: Ask HN: People who cashed out early and stopped working: What is your life like?
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is mind boggling. Bored? You have all your free time to literally do anything you want. You can explore the outdoors. You can learn ANYTHING you want. You could get to know more of the worlds 6 billion people and their cultures. Volunteer, start a new hobby, spend more time with family and friends, work on personal growth, exercise... you have Stockholm syndrome, snap out of it.
Not the person you're replying to, and not retired, but I can offer some perspective as someone that does indeed like the job. If I retired I'd be able to learn anything I want - but If I wanted to tackle the challenges I have fun tackling, state-of-the-art and involving some nifty constraints and difficulties... I'd need whole teams around me, and a large infrastructure comparable to a multinational company. That's…
I think many people are trapped by this dream of attaining financial freedom so they can escape work, but in a way that is a cynical take because it presumes that if you are getting paid to do something then it must be something bad that you wouldn't do otherwise.
Such a mindset is unfortunate because harbouring escapist fantasies is a really good way to undermine one's ability to find the joy in what they "have" to do. I spent over a decade not realising that I wasn't suffering from work, but from my hangups about work.
My advice to those who hate not only their job but any conceivable job, and who nonetheless have a job, is to get as good an understanding about why that is as possible. Reflect on it. Try moving around and changing your environment. Try different jobs. Try jobs that have one redeeming thing about them and seem awful in other ways.
The goal isn't to find the perfect job, i.e., the one that fits all your preconceived notions of what you want out of life, but rather to develop an understanding of what your assumptions are and where they come from. It is a useful mindset to be open-minded about what you really want and how you might get that.
Re: Ask HN: People who cashed out early and stopped working: What is your life like?
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
To other people commenting here, farming is hard work and long hours. Don't romanticize it until you've actually spent time doing it.
depends how you farm. at the same time. it is a lot of work, you should try it before you just jump in. ive had suburban gardens for years. so i kinda know what to expect.
Re: Ask HN: People who cashed out early and stopped working: What is your life like?
#174Most excellent. I started working in 1987, got burnt out in a couple of startups (but did well financially), went half-time in 2003 until last year (with a break for a PhD in between), and am now officially retired. It is wonderful having the leverage to do whatever I feel like doing, or not committing to a long-term project. The more I act pricey, the more I seem to attract 'em! I used to miss the camaraderie of off…
Re: Ask HN: People who cashed out early and stopped working: What is your life like?
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
Legit question: what's going to happen when bitcoin is no longer produced? Like, there's a finite amount of bitcoin that will ever be mined, and after that, why would anyone keep running their mining operations? How do transactions get verified after that? Doesn't the entire viability of bitcoin as a currency depend on miners mining?
Miners get the transaction fee in addition to a mining reward. Once the last coin is mined, the reward goes away but the transaction fee remains
Re: Ask HN: People who cashed out early and stopped working: What is your life like?
#17655 years programming. Much more interesting than retirement. I hope I'm writing code the week I die.
Re: Ask HN: People who cashed out early and stopped working: What is your life like?
#177I cashed out and stopped working around 37. It has been a very difficult transition for me. I have had 3 or 4 years of borderline depression despite having more money than god :-) The loss of structure, status, social interaction, goals hits hard. The problem is, I don’t want a job and probably lack the motivation to do another business. I need to build hobbies and friends outside of a work context, I know. My advice…
Re: Ask HN: People who cashed out early and stopped working: What is your life like?
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about picking up a hobby where long stretches of concentration aren't needed and there can be a slight social angle? I personally would love to have more time for solo board gaming or board gaming online? With board gaming the social interaction is on rails with the game, the same goes for joining a book club or more non-cognitively with solo or pair dancing. And then there is the meditative path. * solo board g…
Thanks for answering :) I could do all that, it's just that nothing "clicks" in the sense that I really want to do it, instead of doing it to pass time. That sounds like depression and maybe it is, but I feel it's got more to do with the "I have achieved all I wanted in life, wife, kids, wealth, whoops, now what?" thing. When I was younger, every item of that list seemed like a challenge, and now that they are behind…
or the buddhist notion not to waste time https://tricycle.org/magazine/how-not-waste-time/
Re: Ask HN: People who cashed out early and stopped working: What is your life like?
#179I always knew I couldn't live like that indefinitely. There are plenty of nasty disparaging comments here from kids who've clearly never worked long enough or hard enough or had a strong enough sense of responsibility to get that weary, but there is a tiny nugget of truth to some of what they say. Some structure and goals are necessary to stay sane IMO. Even during my idle period I mostly stuck to my routine. No sleeping in until noon, not bothering to get dressed, etc.
In the last couple of months, I've kind of come out of hibernation. I haven't started any major projects, but I've made several upgrades to the decor especially in my own room. There's even art on the walls. OK, one wall. ;) I refinished a couple of pieces of furniture. I've gotten into resin crafting, especially things that glow. At some point I expect I'll dabble a bit in 3D printing to complement that. When the pandemic conditions ease and my daughter (currently a senior in HS) is safely ensconced in college, I'll probably do a bit more traveling, but still mostly short activity-focused trips - e.g. hiking or snowboarding in mid-week, depending on the season.
I even have a couple of ideas for apps, completely unrelated to what I used to do professionally (distributed filesystems and such FWIW) and I absolutely will not get all wrapped up in all of the non-coding things that make professional development such a grind. Contrary to what the callow youth say, it's not necessary to push that hard to feel happy and fulfilled. People make themselves that way, but that's their choice and it's not mine any more. I'll write the code to do what I want it to do, probably publish it somewhere/somehow, but I'm not going to get tied down handling demands from over-entitled users.
So basically my life is getting back to almost what it was before, just a little bit better. Instead of getting crushed under the weight of responsibility at work, I spend the same part of each day doing a variety of things as the mood strikes me. When something starts to feel like a grind, I context switch. That freedom is IMO the whole point of retirement, and what any mentally healthy person should strive for.
Re: Ask HN: People who cashed out early and stopped working: What is your life like?
#180Most excellent. I started working in 1987, got burnt out in a couple of startups (but did well financially), went half-time in 2003 until last year (with a break for a PhD in between), and am now officially retired. It is wonderful having the leverage to do whatever I feel like doing, or not committing to a long-term project. The more I act pricey, the more I seem to attract 'em! I used to miss the camaraderie of off…
Interested what your PhD is in and what motivated you to pursue it.