On the other side have you lived out your wildest fantasies yet?
Ask HN: 27, accidentally became wealthy, lost drive. What should I do?
71–80 of 266 posts
Re: Ask HN: 27, accidentally became wealthy, lost drive. What should I do?
#72Re: Ask HN: 27, accidentally became wealthy, lost drive. What should I do?
#73Find a good therapist. Seriously they can help you through this way more than strangers on HN. Oh and congratulations on the wealth.
Re: Ask HN: 27, accidentally became wealthy, lost drive. What should I do?
#74Consider getting involved in some IT area for which you have passion in a nice project (probably open source) and set a fixed amount of time you at least and at most spend on it per-week or bi-weekly and try to keep it. It also has the benefit that if you somehow lose you money you still have qualifications to show to get a new job even years after you finished you degree. Assuming software engineering is you passion…
Re: Ask HN: 27, accidentally became wealthy, lost drive. What should I do?
#75get yourself a wealth management company
don’t tell anyone besides your advisors
pay yourself a modest salary that pays the bills
decide what you like doing regardless if you had the money or not
do it
lastly, realize how fortunate you are, how many people you could be helping even with a miniscule amount of your fortune (you don’t have to, but you could)
Re: Ask HN: 27, accidentally became wealthy, lost drive. What should I do?
#767.5M euro is not a lot of money. It's a decent amount of money to have to start doing something useful with it...or burn it all away.
Re: Ask HN: 27, accidentally became wealthy, lost drive. What should I do?
#77This is normal. You will get used to it, and you will likely bounce to your personality before the windfall. You have solved one problem in life that most people never solve, and that puts you in a very small group. However, the rest of the problems are still there. The need to work for money can no longer distract you from them. You still need human connection and purpose. You still will age, have to worry about you…
Re: Ask HN: 27, accidentally became wealthy, lost drive. What should I do?
#78Your priorities and goals have likely changed from earning a living to finding meaningful and fulfilling work and leisure. When was the last time you traveled overseas? Had a girlfriend? Developed a product or service that had an impact on society? Took up a new hobby that you enjoy? Once you refocus on creating a new life, you’ll likely find your drive and ambitions returning.
I have no credentials whatsoever being rich, but I do have some experience having major plans diverted, and I would like to chip in that it's good to keep in mind it's not strange to get this sort of psychological impact from such a significant change to your life conditions and plans.
From where I sit it looks like you can afford to take your time about this more than ever before. Protect your bankroll and don't make any hasty changes to lifestyle. I suspect you'll have to re-examine what you really value the most, and suddenly you have one less excuse for not attending to that at the best of your ability, but as I understand it, the direct impact from suddenly getting wealthy (or deadly sick, or unexpectedly healthy, and so on) is basically pretty transient and people tend to soon come back to a similar set-point as before once they have adjusted their expectations to the new conditions. What could give a much more lasting impact is changes to habits or environment made while under the influence, so trying to exercise some care to make those judiciously seems in order.
Fundamentally, congratulations and good luck with it!
Re: Ask HN: 27, accidentally became wealthy, lost drive. What should I do?
#797.5 million is a lot, but it can disappear just as fast.
Re: Ask HN: 27, accidentally became wealthy, lost drive. What should I do?
#80This is normal. You will get used to it, and you will likely bounce to your personality before the windfall. You have solved one problem in life that most people never solve, and that puts you in a very small group. However, the rest of the problems are still there. The need to work for money can no longer distract you from them. You still need human connection and purpose. You still will age, have to worry about you…