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I Feel Like I Have No Real Interests; My Only Interest Is Making Money

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Re: I Feel Like I Have No Real Interests; My Only Interest Is Making Money

#131

Post by BoorishBears »

ghaff wrote: post #85
BoorishBears wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone talks about how US tech salaries are inflated values because they don't include the cost of healthcare, a lack of guaranteed PTO, etc. I like feel they're actually under-inflated (at least for comparing high paid workers in both places) because of equity. The company I work at has rallied many times over 100% since I joined a bit over a year ago. I could sell my equity and "semi-retire" 30+ years early, work…

>Everyone talks about how US tech salaries are inflated values because they don't include the cost of healthcare, a lack of guaranteed PTO, etc. In all fairness, if you're working for a public tech (and many other) companies, you probably have good health insurance that's at least subsidized and 3-4 weeks of PTO which may not be great by European standards but isn't nothing. (Though admittedly increasingly shared wit…

Yeah I didn't touch on that because some people argue it's still not enough, but if you're in the top 5% of earners in the US (which the poster above is in Germany) I think the difference in perks isn't as great as people play up

Re: I Feel Like I Have No Real Interests; My Only Interest Is Making Money

#132

Post by finnthehuman »

exabrial wrote: post #4

Seek discomfort. Go help at a homeless shelter or local food kitchen. The problem is you've insulated yourself from the reality others live in. There's a lot of good you can do when you have resources.

I don't think that's quite the advice they need. For any outcome short of dropping everything to rededicate their life to charity full time, the author will still have all the same questions about direction and priorities in their professional life.

I can share from my own experience (and from talking with the friends I've made along the way) dedicating your time and resources to charity volunteering is a fulfilling force, but never ultimately so. It doesn't stop whatever is really gnawing on your soul about direction in life. Those things have to be understood and addressed directly.

Re: I Feel Like I Have No Real Interests; My Only Interest Is Making Money

#133

Post by mewpmewp2 »

piva00 wrote: post #112
pyrrhotech wrote: post #6

I felt like that until I got to around $2.5 million liquid net worth. Now I still like money, but each additional dollar is starting to show diminishing marginal utility. Though of course I'm still trying to grow my net worth, it's no longer the main focus of my life, especially now that I'm "retired" from my main career at least. I split my time between gaming, running, reading, socializing and working on my trading…

> I think while you don't have "FU money" it's important for money to be the main focus of your life. You don't have freedom if you don't have a lot of money and you can't be 100% happy without freedom, at least in my experience, though I know opinions vary here. The thing is that not everyone can or will achieve that. If we know that, what's the main drive for others to do that? We don't live in a system where this…

That would be an extremely sad thing for me at least. Knowing that I would have no way to become truly free. Free as in I don't owe anyone my time. Maybe others can accept it or are forced to accept it. I just can't. But people of course are different.

Currently I just can't wait to reach that state. Sometimes I'm counting days even. I could never be happy/relaxed as long as I am forced to work, or forced to work under someone.

With regular work, I think I am saving around 70% of my total compensation, but I am also finding ways to do side-hustles. Hopefully I can hit something that will help me reach passive income or otherwise I will be dependant on my career compensation. So as long as I haven't achieved that state I will keep trying and spend most of my time trying to reach this state.

Re: I Feel Like I Have No Real Interests; My Only Interest Is Making Money

#134

Post by SummerlyMars »

barneygale wrote: post #79

This has to be the most pathetic piece I've ever seen on HN. Having no interests at all would be preferable.

I read the post as the author being in some amount of distress and wanting to change. These sort of comments read to me as deriding someone who is suffering in order to make the comment writer feel good.

"Haha, look at this bad person! He's hurting and he _wants to change!_ Let's mock him!"

Re: I Feel Like I Have No Real Interests; My Only Interest Is Making Money

#135

Post by akhosravian »

artemonster wrote: post #52
boltzmann_ wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> germany That's why, just check how tech is pay in USA http://levels.fyi

these numbers are crazy

Those numbers are real and it’s why tech hubs are both very expensive and worth moving to.

Re: I Feel Like I Have No Real Interests; My Only Interest Is Making Money

#136

Post by bumby »

pc86 wrote: post #125
bumby wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, what timeframe were your working years? My concern is that "investing mostly in equities" (assuming a decent percent of growth stocks) can be the deciding factor if you happen to hit a good bull run but potentially disastrous if your market timing is off.

Time in the market >>> timing the market. Even the absolute worst luck gives you perfectly acceptable returns on 30-35 year timelines. Multiple orders of magnitude better than a savings account, for sure. Time and time again the best approach for highly compensated people who don't want to actively manage their finances is to put a chunk of every paycheck into a broadly diversified range of index funds and forget tha…

Except we mere mortal humans have the added constraint of limited time.

Meaning if you were planning on retiring during one of the long sideways or downturns your required "time in the market" may have just been extended by a decade. The impact of that depends on the unique time constraints of the individual and how well they addressed risk exposure.

Add to that, most economists don't think the long-term market returns will approach the past returns. Most now think 6% is reasonable, when the past was 10%-12%. This extends the horizon further unless you are willing to increase risk exposure by selecting higher growth stocks.

Re: I Feel Like I Have No Real Interests; My Only Interest Is Making Money

#137

Post by pc86 »

bumby wrote: post #136
pc86 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time in the market >>> timing the market. Even the absolute worst luck gives you perfectly acceptable returns on 30-35 year timelines. Multiple orders of magnitude better than a savings account, for sure. Time and time again the best approach for highly compensated people who don't want to actively manage their finances is to put a chunk of every paycheck into a broadly diversified range of index funds and forget tha…

Except we mere mortal humans have the added constraint of limited time. Meaning if you were planning on retiring during one of the long sideways or downturns your required "time in the market" may have just been extended by a decade. The impact of that depends on the unique time constraints of the individual and how well they addressed risk exposure. Add to that, most economists don't think the long-term market retur…

Future returns could certainly be less. But all we have to go on is what's happened so far. In the past even the worst entry+exit points are acceptable for retirement if not astounding, if you've saved something like 15% of your income for age 30-65 (I forget the exact numbers but that's more-or-less close to it). Yes, some people have to choose between cutting their standard of living and retiring on time, and retiring later for the expected standard of living. I'm not sure what we can do to change that? Like you said, we have limited time and everyone's situation is different. Go onto any of those retirement income calculators and compare the person who starts saving in their mid-30's but maxes everything out to the person who starts saving with their first job out of school and gradually increases from $100 or $200/mo.

Your comment was that equity investing can be disastrous if you hit the timeline wrong, and my only point was that unless you're speculating or are only in the market for 5-10 years, that has never happened. We have no way of knowing if that will happen in the future or not, but there's no reason to believe that we're going to see decades of middling or negative growth. There's really no other option if you want to have a real retirement unless you plan to just rely on whatever government assistance you can get.

Re: I Feel Like I Have No Real Interests; My Only Interest Is Making Money

#138

Post by bumby »

Swizec wrote: post #119
bumby wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> at least to a degree more money = more happiness Except the research shows marginal “experiential” happiness (as opposed to “reflecting” happiness) occurs much, much lower than your threshold. To this point, both you and the comment you’re responding to could be right (although I’m not sure about their tone that you have a duty to give money away)

The problem with those studies is that they’re based on cashflow. Yes more cashflow doesn’t increase experiential happiness after a point. But it turns you into a wage slave. Turn off the cashflow and everything collapses. Wealth gives you happy levels of cashflow regardless of working for it right now . Hence it creates freedom. You won’t be more happy by having wealth, you’ll be more reliably/resiliently happy.

You're right that they focused on income (not quite the same as cashflow but it's a good point).

What was interesting is that above a certain income, life satisfaction actually began to decrease. I wonder if there is a similar corollary to wealth.

Re: I Feel Like I Have No Real Interests; My Only Interest Is Making Money

#139

Post by pc86 »

SamBorick wrote: post #16

I used to feel this way. Paradoxically, I've found that completely ignoring income/clicks resolves this problem. Here's what happened to me: 1. Try and make 'the optimal thing'. Something easy to create, and so lucrative that I won't have to make anything else again 2. flail like the author describes 3. decide that no amount of money is worth feeling this way (or otherwise burnout via your method of choice) 4. make n…

I think this is good advice if your goal is side income along with your high-paying tech job, or perhaps a lifestyle business where you earn enough passively to sit on a beach or ski more often than not. Personally that's where I am (the former) and most programmers who want to "make money online" probably are, too.

It's certainly not where the people who want to found a "startup" in the PG sense of the word, or be the CEO of a massive company, are. And (also paradoxically) I think most of them are probably in the same place the author is. Even if they have hobbies and passions, their #1 passion is probably "making more money."

Re: I Feel Like I Have No Real Interests; My Only Interest Is Making Money

#140

Post by mstipetic »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #62
mstipetic wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany is not set up to have people get rich from a salary. Everyone has a comfortable life, but it's very hard to get "rich." That's one of the reasons I left Germany

Out of curiosity what do you do and where did you move?

I run magicsandbox.com. Right now moving to all remote, still weighing options but might settle back in my home country (Croatia)
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