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Having a hard time getting over being not rich

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Re: Having a hard time getting over being not rich

#12

Post by fluxon »

IMHO you have a comfortable cushion, and some time to make careful, thoughtful decisions. Some professional financial planning could set you up to relieve yourself of some worries. Having done phase 1 (acquiring retirement money), you can take some time and assess what you love in life, or to explore what that means. Phase 2 might be family, or it might be personal growth, or it might be an adventure, or investing, or maybe as simple as a soul-searing eye-widening scary-ass meeting with either Paul Graham or Mark Cuban. Something to consider. Short term, though, the sincere, hopeful recommendations by others here that you look into discreet professional counseling to break your logjam and apparent depression, and to help you make your way from phase 1 to whatever your next phase is, are not wrong. You might need the therapy after meeting with Graham or Cuban. Best wishes for your breakthrough.

Re: Having a hard time getting over being not rich

#13

Post by grownseed »

Like many others here have already pointed out, the money you have is considerably more than most, me included. But that's beyond the point.

Thinking this is the sort of thing that'll make you happy, is in my opinion exactly why you are not so. From my view, which took me time and effort to understand and appreciate, you cannot become happy by longing for things, but by being satisfied with the things you already have, be them material or not, and I'm sure you've got more than you think. This might sound cliche, but I truly believe happiness comes from within.

In fact, out of personal experience, I can tell you I've never been as happy as I am now, and I'm pretty damn happy. I got rid of most of my things and worked hard at not being attached to things in general. I'm lucky in that I don't have any debts, nor do I have any savings.

I try to value the little, simple things. Things that don't have a price tag or can't be quantified, things I don't feel like are a source of comparison or competition, things that I can talk about with other people that engender simple wonder and excitement, not loathing and envy.

Think good conversation, a nice piece of music, the smiles of the people you care about, the pride your mum has when she can make you your favorite dish once in a while, etc. None of these things essentially cost money, they simply cost a human investment, time and empathy.

You're probably right in saying that none of the comments here will get you out of your situation. Ultimately, the only person who can do that is yourself. Thinking the world is your problem is assuming the world should care about you more than you care about it or yourself. Love yourself and who you can be, not the digits on your bank receipt, your social standing, the brand of your car, the caviar you could have on your plate or any of that subjective crap.

Lengthy, soggy life lesson over :)

Re: Having a hard time getting over being not rich

#14

Post by andygates »

beginagain wrote: post #6
sekm wrote: post #2

Hmmm. Given your financial situation I don't think your problem really has anything to do with 'not being rich'. It just sounds like you're depressed about something. Why not consider donating a portion to a charity? If anything it may absolve yourself of some responsibility regarding your cynical outlook? Be the change you seek :)

It really has everything to do with not being rich. A million dollars is not rich. 100 million is. When you have a million, you make passive income of 60-70k per year. When you have 100 million, you make passive income of 7 million per year (but probably much more), which gives you almost 600k per month. You can do anything and you really don't care about saving money at this point, so you can spend all of it. As opp…

"A million dollars is not rich."

How do we mark threads as trolling, again?

Re: Having a hard time getting over being not rich

#16

Post by gexla »

It seems to me like you don't want to be rich so much as you don't want to worry about running out of money. I imagine a lot of people with a decent amount of money feel that way.

Personally, I kind of like the hustle and fight at the bottom, but it can get tiring.

Money doesn't buy happiness. It only buys you time and the raw materials to be happy. Again, I think your issue might be the thought of losing what you have and that's eating you up. You still have to worry about retirement. You still have to watch your budget. You don't want to have to worry about these things.

Obviously if you want to hit 100 million you have to scale big. Since you are afraid of losing money, you would probably need to go a similar route as someone with little to no money. You couldn't hire a bunch of people and you couldn't get into something capital intensive without investors. Going web / app is one way to go. You could hit the scale with little investment. Rather than hiring employees, you would probably need to get someone on board with you to handle the software side of things.

You could do a sort of arbitrage. If you want to feel rich, come to the Philippines! On 160K per year (or even 60K) you could do pretty much what you want. If you come up with an idea, you could hire developers for $800 / month. Minimum wage in much of the country is around $6 / pay and a lot of companies find loopholes to hire people for less than that.

Maybe go to the mecca of web / apps (San Francisco) and get out, meet people and strike up some conversations. Get a notebook and write down ideas or even just general thoughts. Get that brain working. Creativity is a muscle, it needs exercise before it starts working. Find like minded people. Float the idea of grabbing a sweet party pad in a cheap place like the Philippines or Thailand. Get a maid or two to keep the place clean and cook (or to run to pick up food for you from local restaurants.) Then just build, build, go out on the town and then come back and build some more. You pay for everything (you could probably swing this on just your passive income) and your team gets some sort of stake (maybe even co-founders.) If you need help, hire local developers for cheap. When you have an MVP (and maybe even customers and a solid plan rolling) then come back to SF and pitch to everyone you can. Who knows, maybe you could find some investors and use that money to keep going rather than your own. If it totally doesn't work, go back and try again.

Maybe this is naive or not realistic, but sounds like a good plan to me. ;)

Re: Having a hard time getting over being not rich

#17

Post by mcv »

beginagain wrote: post #6
sekm wrote: post #2

Hmmm. Given your financial situation I don't think your problem really has anything to do with 'not being rich'. It just sounds like you're depressed about something. Why not consider donating a portion to a charity? If anything it may absolve yourself of some responsibility regarding your cynical outlook? Be the change you seek :)

It really has everything to do with not being rich. A million dollars is not rich. 100 million is. When you have a million, you make passive income of 60-70k per year. When you have 100 million, you make passive income of 7 million per year (but probably much more), which gives you almost 600k per month. You can do anything and you really don't care about saving money at this point, so you can spend all of it. As opp…

> It really has everything to do with not being rich. A million dollars is not rich. 100 million is.

100 million isn't rich, 10 billion is.

Look, there's always going to be someone richer. Only one person in 7 billion gets to be the richest person on the planet. Stop staring at the top, and consider the over 99% of the world's population that's a lot poorer than you.

You are easily in the richest 1%. You are rich. You've made it. If this doesn't make you happy, then maybe you should change your outlook in life and do something totally different.

Have a long vacation, travel around the world. Maybe go see all those places and people that have it a lot worse than you. Go build houses in Africa. Find some people worse off than you and make a difference in their lives. Quite likely that will make you feel a lot better.

Re: Having a hard time getting over being not rich

#19

Post by marketer »

"There are three gates leading to this hell — lust, anger and greed. Every sane man should give these up, for they lead to the degradation of the soul." - Bhagavad Gita

There's a great movie about happiness on Netflix that I'd recommend: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1613092/

Ironically, some of the happiest people are the poorest. Wealth is a weak indicator of happiness.

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