Just do stuff. The world has a lot of terrible problems and being in your unique position, you could start to tackle those that are close to you. Eg,climate change,public transport, homelessness, hunger, etc.
E.g. If I had that kind of money and time, I would buy up land to do build a vertical farm and research hydrophonics and aquaphonics as replacement for traditional farming.
Ask HN: 27, accidentally became wealthy, lost drive. What should I do?
201–210 of 266 posts
Re: Ask HN: 27, accidentally became wealthy, lost drive. What should I do?
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
This one is really important. Tell no one, or only a very very small number of people, but strong preference to no one. Look at maslows hierarchy of needs, now that your psychological and safety needs are dealt with, it’s time to move up the pyramid
Nah, tell no one. There’s no benefit to telling someone, and plenty of downsides to telling even a sibling/best-friend/parent.
The exception I was thinking of was carefully vetted other people wealthier than you who can act as a mentor and intro to connections
Re: Ask HN: 27, accidentally became wealthy, lost drive. What should I do?
#203What part of you says it's a lot of money? I'd indulge some of the commenters here and try an experiment: tell yourself that it's not much--at least not enough to call yourself "wealthy" or "rich"--and see if it changes your perspective on the problem. Find a way to unburden yourself from the money by not identifying with it.
Re: Ask HN: 27, accidentally became wealthy, lost drive. What should I do?
#204Read Bhagavad Gita - there’s a great audio book and if you grind through the first couple poetic chapters, it’s amazing.
It talks a lot about the concept of selfless action (karma yoga) and why this is the best mode of operating in this universe. A concept fairly foreign to capitalistic societies :) But now since you are out of the grind, you can actually just enact as much positive change as you’d like and enjoy the process.
Like assemble a crew and go build infrastructure in a poor village. Or save animals from poachers (animals and wild nature are dope overall). Build a mushroom retreat in Portugal or Costa Rica (btw check Santa Teresa for sure).
You have a life of wonders ahead of you. You just need the right perspective (less I, more other living beings).
Re: Ask HN: 27, accidentally became wealthy, lost drive. What should I do?
#205Hi,
I've seen a lot of this and I hope I can help.
Some people keep going by trying to make even more money. I wouldn't really recommend this.
Some people just continue doing roughly what they did before, but as people here have noted, it's harder to tolerate nonsense of work life when it's optional. However people who lack any vocation do, I think, usually regret this. Its important to have some sense of identity, something to tell others and yourself, even if you change it from time to time.
Many people are talking about optimal investment methods, but I think this is not the core need. Obviously get professional independent advice on your wealth management and put most of it in a tax efficient ling term holding. But the real investment now is in yourself. Take some time to build a plan for how to connect, integrate and move on. Go on courses, read books, get therapy, make friends. Find out what you are and what you want to do with your days. You may have some hard lessons ahead, but welcome them, better do them sooner than later. With time things will make sense again. The energy will flow again like a river.
Good luck
Re: Ask HN: 27, accidentally became wealthy, lost drive. What should I do?
#206Financial suggestion: consider putting at least a part of the money in low risk investments (ideally a diversified portfolio in multiple accounts managed by multiple banks), don't touch or spend too much of it. Many people make irresponsible financial decisions after accumulating lots of wealth, especially in a short period of time. You should probably care about beating inflation and ensuring the longevity of these resources.
Social suggestion: don't tell about the extent of your wealth to the people in your social circle, or only do that with people that you trust a lot. There are a lot of stories about money corrupting people, even when it's not their money, just being in the proximity of those who have it. Here's one example, though i'm sure that other people here can link better writeups about it: https://time.com/4176128/powerball-jackpot-lottery-winners/
As for the personal fulfillment: that's a tough one. It's a valid way to feel and i hope that you figure out how to make your motivation return. And if you don't in the near future, maybe a change of scenery could be useful - not having to grind for the rest of your life in a 9-5 can be liberating in a sense and give you ample freedom, yet figuring out what you do with it can take a lot of time in of itself.
Best of luck.
Re: Ask HN: 27, accidentally became wealthy, lost drive. What should I do?
#207To me, the most important thing is to make a friend or two who has been through a similar situation. Being suddenly rich is obviously different from being poor, but it's also different from being slowly rich.
The biggest unique issue is going to be feelings of not "deserving" the wealth. People cope with this in different ways, but the important thing is to acknowledge the feeling and to deal with it in a way that makes sense for you. Those feelings can fester and lead to some very dark places indeed. Deal with them.
The other thing is you've almost certainly made the best investment you're ever going to make. You probably won't win like that again. In fact, you'll probably have substantial losses at some point. Don't let yourself feel too smart over this win, and don't feel too dumb over future losses.
Re: Ask HN: 27, accidentally became wealthy, lost drive. What should I do?
#208A lot of people here mention: don't talk about it with anyone .
But i know a lot of people that earn 300-700 k/ year. That's pretty similar in the range of what he referred to.
You can normally have a talk with those friends. They are mostly quiet about that amount of money, because people ARE jealous. Just not everyone and if they trust you with that information, they consider you an actual friend.
Finish your masters. And take a year of to travel and discover what you want to do.
Buy some stocks/indeed and live off the interests, don't spend more than you are earning that month/year.
The nice thing about the current situation, is that you now can just buy something extra of 500-2 k. Range without worrying. Just don't spend > 20 k. Without thinking.
Go to attend some social activity like in the Rotary and say you're a daytrader. They are normally some within the 200 k -1 m. range income there, so they can relate somewhat if you're looking for some people to trust after a while.
Getting back social trust is going to be pretty hard too.
Re: Ask HN: 27, accidentally became wealthy, lost drive. What should I do?
#209I was born into a rich family, so I’m not sure about how money affects one’s morale. But…
> My motivation for my study is gone, I stopped working out, stopped reading books and am basically becoming insanely depressed in the process. The covid situation is not helping much either.
I had that problem around 27 too, and got it completely fixed up by being on a trip for > 2 months. I thought I was relaxing, but, nearing 50th or 60th day or so, I found myself being overly stressed and desperately wanting to do something meaningful. Doing nothing but consuming is such a big pain. So I swore to myself that I’m gonna do something - just anything not meaningless.
After I returned, I worked for an NGO, and then tried to become a political writer, but ended up working for a startup, which is growing pretty good. It has been a quite some journey so far.
So, yeah, if you can’t really find an answer, maybe try to take a long break. Some trekking can be good - keeping your body healthy helps with depression.
> I am still doing my Master studies and will finish it within the next three semesters
I wonder what’s your true motivation behind this. A lot of people do master to get better jobs. With all that money, well-paying jobs should be pointless.
Re: Ask HN: 27, accidentally became wealthy, lost drive. What should I do?
#210I love that you didn’t consider yourself wealthy until you sold off the crypto, converted it to fiat, and paid taxes to a government.
I cant believe he sold it for fiat, euros no less, which are inflating higher than USD! With that much cryptocurrency collateral, you could borrow fiat against it effectively forever and actually increase the holdings with well timed position swaps.