101–110 of 333 posts
People look at me like I’m insane when I tell them I’m packing up and taking a year off. I’ve f’in had enough. And that’s me, the wife and our two kids- not quite school age. No I haven’t FIREd. No I’m probably passing up a raise and a promo (or maybe not). Super linear growth requires super linear decision making. You either follow the sheeple or decide enough is enough and make some drastic change. Im not getting t…
I feel like there is wisdom in "Make hay while the sun shines." When you're young and unencumbered by responsibility and family, when your cognitive abilities are at their peak, when your energy is endless, when your body is strong and healthy, when your knees work, and your fingers can type without arthritis: that's the optimal time to work and earn. Min-max that salary and stay healthy. Due to compounding interest,…
Here’s an interesting thought experiment for you - if you could trade 20 years of your life for 10 billion dollars, would you? Just step in a room and walk out a billionaire. I have yet to meet someone that would accept the offer. So if you do the math, they value their time at a shockingly high rate. I’d argue, trading the best years of your life for an early retirement is the same proposal. Steve Jobs would have gi…
i think it depends on which 20 years are taken - the old ones, where you're unable to anything anyway, or the young ones, which you'd need to enjoy that 10 billion?
I feel like there is wisdom in "Make hay while the sun shines." When you're young and unencumbered by responsibility and family, when your cognitive abilities are at their peak, when your energy is endless, when your body is strong and healthy, when your knees work, and your fingers can type without arthritis: that's the optimal time to work and earn. Min-max that salary and stay healthy. Due to compounding interest,…
> When you're young and unencumbered by responsibility and family, when your cognitive abilities are at their peak, when your energy is endless, when your body is strong and healthy, when your knees work, and your fingers can type without arthritis: that's the optimal time to ...capture the value of those ephemeral capacities directly yourself, whether in recreation or otherwise, rather than yield them to the capital…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> is still privilege The guy worked hard and earned his year off, don’t dismiss it by calling it privilege. He has the skills and intelligence and hard working habits to earn the year off, this is not privilege. Successful people aren’t successful because of privilege, that’s just a label for an excuse by those who aren’t successful. You get what you earn in life.
Can everybody earn a year off after working hard? No, because this is privilege. To be born in a rich country. To have family structure to study and go to college, to have a stable job and a successful career after graduation. To be lucky enough to choose a career that is in demand. Or to open a business that is successful. People underestimate A LOT how much of a role luck plays in successful careers. Sure hard work…
I mean, your statement “To be lucky enough to choose a career that is in demand” just misses the mark so entirely. There’s NO LUCK INVOLVED!! People on HN didn’t pick their major/hobby out of a hat. The picked tech because they love it and it pays well, and they have the intelligence to do it well. If someone chooses to be a street musician, they can’t blame “privilege” when they can’t take a year off.
“maybe this is your privilege that is blinding you” - no, maybe your rose colored glasses are blinding you here. Not everyone can take a year off, the world is unfair, and some people will live better lives than others. Deal with it.
People look at me like I’m insane when I tell them I’m packing up and taking a year off. I’ve f’in had enough. And that’s me, the wife and our two kids- not quite school age. No I haven’t FIREd. No I’m probably passing up a raise and a promo (or maybe not). Super linear growth requires super linear decision making. You either follow the sheeple or decide enough is enough and make some drastic change. Im not getting t…
Congratulations bro. You have the gut to do this with a family. My wife is going to rip me open if I do something similar. Actually after second thought, work is probably more interesting than whatever residual life after it. I'll keep working.
Yikes.
I feel like there is wisdom in "Make hay while the sun shines." When you're young and unencumbered by responsibility and family, when your cognitive abilities are at their peak, when your energy is endless, when your body is strong and healthy, when your knees work, and your fingers can type without arthritis: that's the optimal time to work and earn. Min-max that salary and stay healthy. Due to compounding interest,…
And even if it was ... Work is overrated. As a way to make money and altogether.
If you are in a place where they are giving you unfairly large amount of money for doing something ... sure, stay there for a while. Otherwise move. Don't think you'll be retiring at 57 or 62. Life is not that easy to predict. If you stay in the wrong place you'll never retire. And if you move to the right place in your life you might retire before you are 40.
> Due to compounding interest, a dollar made in your 20's is far, far more valuable than a dollar made in your 60's.
For me that doesn't sound solid as well. Inflation compounds too and black swan events of your life show up occasionally. In your 20's you earn so little that you can't save much, and just 10 lazy years into your career you'd be earning so much that you'd be saving many times more than you were earning in your 20s. If you don't burn stacks of cash to warm your soul, as you accumulate more knowledge and expeirience, money just starts accumulating on their own once you reach a certain age if you remained mobile and just went where their are paing best.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reframe this critique: This should be the point of civilization and society. We should be working to free everyone to be able to go surfing when able. I dislike that some people get to be "privileged" enough to be able to do so as much as the next guy, but I also dislike when people act like it's wrong to aspire to this. The problem isn't that this is bad advice; the problem is that our civilization currently prevent…
The point of society shouldn't be that everyone is so hedonistic the highlight in their day is surfing. If you're a mother or a father, if you have a church to go to, if you have relatives, if you're part of a political organization or a community you can't just make your own schedule. This isn't bad, it means that you're an adult. If everyone lived this Peter Pan lifestyle we wouldn't have anything you'd call a civi…
…and?
I feel like there is wisdom in "Make hay while the sun shines." When you're young and unencumbered by responsibility and family, when your cognitive abilities are at their peak, when your energy is endless, when your body is strong and healthy, when your knees work, and your fingers can type without arthritis: that's the optimal time to work and earn. Min-max that salary and stay healthy. Due to compounding interest,…
> I'd have played fewer video games, traveled less, and relaxed on the beach less. This seems totally opposite of what old people say on their death bed. You sound so obsessed with money here. My guess is your probably very wealthy relative to the average peer and your too naive to realize it. You have to keep telling yourself this philosophy to justify not wind surfing in Bali. You think your gonna wind surf when yo…
No.
> You think it's smart to spend your 'non arthritis' fingers on coding?
Yes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here’s an interesting thought experiment for you - if you could trade 20 years of your life for 10 billion dollars, would you? Just step in a room and walk out a billionaire. I have yet to meet someone that would accept the offer. So if you do the math, they value their time at a shockingly high rate. I’d argue, trading the best years of your life for an early retirement is the same proposal. Steve Jobs would have gi…
> if you could trade 20 years of your life for 10 billion dollars, would you? Just step in a room and walk out a billionaire. i think it depends on which 20 years are taken - the old ones, where you're unable to anything anyway, or the young ones, which you'd need to enjoy that 10 billion?
I feel like there is wisdom in "Make hay while the sun shines." When you're young and unencumbered by responsibility and family, when your cognitive abilities are at their peak, when your energy is endless, when your body is strong and healthy, when your knees work, and your fingers can type without arthritis: that's the optimal time to work and earn. Min-max that salary and stay healthy. Due to compounding interest,…
Life is short. As soon as you have kids you're teleported forwards twenty five years.
I’m glad I got wasted and partied in my youth. I’m glad I travelled and saw different countries. I’m glad I dated a bunch and fell in love with several women. I’m glad I held a few jobs through most of that and have the career I do now. I’m glad I’m with my amazing wife and our two young kids bring joy and light into every day. I’m glad I sunk a bunch of time/money (once) into buying and fixing up a place.
A lot of these responses seem to imply it’s either/or. That’s not the case at all, and indeed I’d say doing any ONE thing for your life, even if it’s laying in a hammock on a tropical beach, gets boring after a while.
Mix it up. Variety is the spice of life. Savor the world in this one life you have. I’d say the one rule is not to F-up so badly you can’t recover from it.