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A great cartoon but wasn't this posted just two days ago with the exact same title: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6303776
A great cartoon but wasn't this posted just two days ago with the exact same title: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6303776
Ironically, with the peer pressure to seem happy, in a collective definition, the result is more or less the same: few people are brave enough to break out of expectations and live according to their personal values.
1. Unattainable or unsustainable for the vast majority of people.
2. Not as good as it sounds on paper.
3. Economically infeasible.
Otherwise we would all be cartoonists.
EDIT: Maybe I'm not 'getting it'. Considering that other HN thread on the front page where everyone complains about contrarianism, I have to wonder if theres something fundamental here that I'm not seeing.
I wish more people in software followed this kind of advice. I see posts about air hockey or ping-pong tables and fully stocked mini-fridges as if that is an acceptable replacement for ones free time and best creative years. Are we children, so easily fooled by the shiny, bright candy in the checkout aisle? Worse yet those who take the corporate-ladder type jobs at a big corp like MS, and sacrifice their friends, fam…
Most kids, the moment they grow up will rather like you pay for their college fees, take care of them while they are settling down and you leave them a good inheritance.
May be small kids would like you spend time with them, but even teenagers are smart enough to understand the importance of financial priorities in life.
>>I live an ultra-frugal lifestyle and am already planning an exit from my day job in the next decade, to retire before 40.
I don't know how you propose to come back home so early, practically do nothing on the side. Don't start a business on your own. And yet save your way to becoming a millionaire(Which I can tell you as a some one saves and invests very often, that's just not possible).
Have you planned for medical emergencies, rising house rents, inflation and many other routine problems which come regularly in ones life etc?
>>People like Bill Watterson, Cory Doctorow, and Richard Stallman are on to something. They are actually enjoying life now - Are you?
There are two kinds of enjoyment a human being can experience. The pure philosophical kind of enjoyment of sitting on grass and sleeping under a tree. The other one is partying on a yacht.
Both have their own fun.
The recent research by Princeton, et al. on the effects of poverty on the mind nailed what I go through daily. Now I'm learning to program in hopes to fix the problem (later, when I've spent a year learning to code) that most affects me day in, day out.
Most people have to get married, have kids, prepare and pay for medical bills, pay rents or loan installments, send their kids to school and live life like other humans around. So you can't really sit the whole day under a tree play lego with your kid. Sooner of later you will run out of money and then the kid will itself want you to go out and work.
Our ancestors didn't write Ant and Cricket stories for nothing.
Working hard, and then savings and investments matter. Looking back the happiest families I see around with their kids doing well are generally kind of ones where parents worked hard and made sound financial decisions in the past. Which now takes care of their health care bills, post retirement expenses and nearly everything else.
So unless, you don't want to run into trouble when you are old you have to earn well enough right now.