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Building a vision of life without work (2015)

livingafi.com

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Re: Building a vision of life without work (2015)

#251

Post by gonehome »

opportune wrote: post #208
gonehome wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't seem like a huge surprise: https://samharris.org/podcasts/254-mating-strategies-earthli... It can come out in different ways, but I suspect it's not that divorced from the above. It's not very attractive to be unemployed and not very ambitious. Maybe the introspection of why is missing, but I suspect that's the reason.

See this is still blaming the problem on some kind of externalized illogical other you aren’t willing to understand (just replace “partner falling for Instagram lies” with neckbeardy EvPsych) rather than empathizing with the other person’s opinion. Like if your partner directly tells you they are unhappy because of XYZ, rather than thinking it’s stupid/some part of how the woman brain works (eye roll), it seems prett…

I think we agree more than we disagree and you're being more hostile than necessary.

> "it seems pretty clear that not doing anything to fix XYZ - in this case working again and living more luxuriously - is being a bad partner."

Yeah - and the why is the bit I was getting at. They have a core value disagreement here, it's likely to be a common one given sexual selective incentives and behavior. I'm not making a moral judgement, but that's likely the truth.

It also sounded like she didn't want to work again - it's unclear if she wanted them both to work, or just for him to work. The podcast I linked is pretty good, men and women often cheat for different reasons, but her motivation here is a pretty textbook example.

His comments are also in the context of her cheating on him and a breakup, so unsurprisingly skew negative.

Re: Building a vision of life without work (2015)

#252

Post by CleverLikeAnOx »

kerkeslager wrote: post #87
kevinwang wrote: post #5

This person also posted an amazing, unvarnished update recently (about 5-6 years later): https://livingafi.com/2021/03/17/the-2021-early-retirement-u...

The subtext of many of the responses to this post is a self-congratulatory "I knew all along that his plan was unrealistic". It seems like the thing people like about the follow-up post is that they think it confirms their worldview. If we actually listen to the original author instead of looking for confirmation of our own worldviews, the author tells a different story. He says, (this is a copy-paste quote): "The in…

Furthermore, his plan didn't fail per-se. I am sure he was aware that he may have to go back to work if life threw him curveballs. It did, so he did. He had some of the best years of his life, he had some bad years. He is still doing financially well. That's as good as most people get working or not.

Re: Building a vision of life without work (2015)

#253

Post by CleverLikeAnOx »

sevagh wrote: post #120
kevinwang wrote: post #5

This person also posted an amazing, unvarnished update recently (about 5-6 years later): https://livingafi.com/2021/03/17/the-2021-early-retirement-u...

2018: life was perfect with my perfect partner until my perfect partner left me 2021: life is perfect with a new perfect partner who's never going to leave me unlike my previous perfect partner 2023: any guesses?

Do we need to be this reductive? He was happy in a relationship but then it got bad and fell apart. That happens, alternative lifestyle or not. I don't see why this implies that his next relationship is unlikely to work out.

Re: Building a vision of life without work (2015)

#254

Post by borski »

stouset wrote: post #250
monktastic1 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One of my biggest problems with FIRE discussions is how much they reinforce the idea that retirement is a prerequisite for achieving happiness. This leads a lot of FIRE-minded people to double down on jobs they hate that consume too much of their time and energy, only because they think it will better enable them to be happy later. On the FIRE subreddit, anyway, they're very clear that: 1. It's the FI part that rea…

"Build the life you want, then save for it" has become the mantra of these subreddits as of late, which I think is a much better approach than the "live and eat like a college student so you can live and eat like a college student for the rest of your life but without having to work" that it used to come across as.

This was what always turned me off from FIRE stuff, and I’m glad to hear it’s changing. I’ve seen so many friends go down the path of “convince myself it’s okay to be absolutely miserable for 10-15 years so that I can continue to do that forever but without someone paying me to be miserable” and it is extremely sad to watch, and often very hard to convince someone not to do.

Re: Building a vision of life without work (2015)

#255

Post by dheera »

awithrow wrote: post #192
dheera wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you get 2.5M in an IRA if they only let you put in 6K a year? Can you buy dogecoin in an IRA?

If you had a 401k when leaving a job, you can roll that into your IRA. A 401k has much higher limits

so you can put upto 401K into an IRA when you leave?

Re: Building a vision of life without work (2015)

#256

Post by scarby2 »

nradov wrote: post #232
balfirevic wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they might be better off scaling back to a sustainable 40hr/week job 40hr/week is the unsustainable part.

That's only 24% of your time most weeks, even less on weeks when you have holidays or vacation. What's unsustainable? In fact many people have done it their whole adult lives, which makes it sustainable by definition.

> That's only 24% of your time most weeks, even less on weeks when you have holidays or vacation. What's unsustainable? In fact many people have done it their whole adult lives, which makes it sustainable by definition.

It's significantly more than 50% of the time that's available to me, by the time you factor in the things that i do because of work it's getting to around 70%.

Not that many people have done it their entire lives in the way we do today. Now we have the majority of millennials with 2 people trying to do a 40 hour week along with all of the other things that need to be done. I would argue a 40 hour work week + extras is great if i'm not cooking, cleaning, doing much childcare etc.

If we look back at pre-industrial humans we'll see that the striking thing is quite how much time they spend not doing anything productive.

Re: Building a vision of life without work (2015)

#257

Post by GavinMcG »

GavinMcG wrote: post #64
vessenes wrote: post #32

I find the FIRE folks very interesting. If you read the followup post at https://livingafi.com/2021/03/17/the-2021-early-retirement-u... you will find out that this lifestyle isn't for everyone, or for everyone's partners. One thing I think the FIRE folks can miss is the sense of worth, improvement in personal power and confidence that comes from struggling. Struggling could be making things, building a business, lea…

I agree. The author blamed his former partner's unhappiness—in her own words, a feeling like they weren't "going anywhere," like there was no "forward progress," like there was no longer a "sense of momentum"—the author chalks all this up to a "pressure to keep up with the mythical Joneses" and to the idea that she is simply "wired to be like everyone else ." It takes him a year and a half to realize that maybe goals…

As a side note: I think the author probably is still getting it wrong on a certain level. He concludes that "[t]he most important cog in the machinery of my personal happiness turned out to be a simple one: Having a wonderful partner." This exemplifies an unhealthy relationship with boundaries and a disposition toward codependency.

To be fair, he also acknowledges that "money doesn’t make you happy. People do. Connections and relationships do. Purpose helps, too." Those are all true. But going so far as to make someone else "the most important cog" is problematic, as the author had a chance to learn. Making someone else responsible for your personal happiness puts an enormous amount of pressure on them, and infidelity is a predictable (though morally wrong) reaction to a relationship of dependency.

The author still doesn't "get it" looking back: his "one regret" is that he "didn’t take [his] partner’s initial unhappiness more seriously." But he describes how seriously he did take it: "I encouraged her to explore her own life and find activities and goals that would help her feel better. I suggested therapy and offered to go with her. I was clear that if she wanted to go back to work I was eager to support her in this. I wanted her to do anything that might help."

He concludes: "my suggestions and support weren’t enough — I never could figure out what she wanted or how I could help." But this is just more of the same problematic dynamic re: boundaries. It wasn't his job to fix his partner or to make her happy any more than it's fair to make the other person responsible for his own happiness.

On the other hand, he's currently "not so much worried about a life without work as I am a life without meaning or purpose or love" and making those "exist in harmony, and without a ton of financial stress." And that's about all any of us can hope for. I hope he stays focused on finding meaning (outside having a particular person feel positively about him!) for the long haul.

Re: Building a vision of life without work (2015)

#258

Post by temp8964 »

throwaway675309 wrote: post #230
temp8964 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point is that even with material support, people still need to live with spouse and kids, and having a regular work (not necessarily work for someone else), to have a happy life. Yes, modern technology and economy makes it easier for you to live alone but it does not change the basic human needs. Eventually you will need a spouse (same or opposite sex), not just for the money, not for the sex, but for the i…

Lot of Buddhist monks would disagree with you pretty strongly. I think you are projecting your own needs/wants/desires and I get that, it's hard to get "out of your own head"... so to speak.

How is common needs of human being my own needs? How is Buddhist monks a good argument here? Whenever someone makes a general statement in psychology, it never excludes exceptions.

Re: Building a vision of life without work (2015)

#259

Post by siva7 »

codesternews wrote: post #88
zoba wrote: post #67

I was 2nd employee at a unicorn startup and have been on a work-hiatus for almost a year. Now, I live amongst Amish people in the country. My biggest insight has been a mindset change. Previously my underlying approach to life looked like: "I will do X which will enable me to do Y so that I can finally do Z." I now approach my days with "What will make me happy?" This is an experiment I'm performing. A structured lif…

What are you doing on HN?

i've likely asked myself that question many times since the inception of HN

Re: Building a vision of life without work (2015)

#260

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

sunshineforever wrote: post #241
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Previously my underlying approach to life looked like: "I will do X which will enable me to do Y so that I can finally do Z." I now approach my days with "What will make me happy?" Great insight that is worth repeating. One of my biggest problems with FIRE discussions is how much they reinforce the idea that retirement is a prerequisite for achieving happiness. This leads a lot of FIRE-minded people to double down…

I would feel like a king with 20k a year and so I am trying to find the right degree to work 3, maybe 2 days a week to be able to achieve this? Any suggestions?

If you find anything let me know. Of course here in the US the nigh-insurmountable problem with part time work is that you won't get health coverage at an affordable rate.
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