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Ask PG & other successful folks: how did your life change after FU money?

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Re: Ask PG & other successful folks: how did your life change after FU money?

#31
post #6

In the short-term, my life was much worse. I spent a lot of really painful time struggling to come to grips with my situation. After that was over, things went pretty much back to normal. There's now a low-level fear all the time of losing all the money (something PG's written about recently) and I'm constantly worried I've invested it badly. I didn't make any dramatic life changes so people don't really treat me dif…

Did you tend to worry a lot before you had the money? You mention the misery is consistent. Is worry part of that.

I think coming into money is pretty much like losing a limb or experiencing a tragedy. After a certain period of time, the person who has experienced the tragedy goes back to where they were, mentally, before the tragedy. Same with lots of money, eventually they return to their norm.

Re: Ask PG & other successful folks: how did your life change after FU money?

#32
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I've found though - girls don't care about the money in the bank. Wherever you are meeting girls, I want to go there. My experience in an NJ bar a week or two ago: I was talking with a coder friend of mine about my job. This was a geeky conversation with words like "latency", "queues" and "atomic operations", as well as "lost $BIGNUM in half a second", rather than a manly conversation about "parachuting int…

This is a great point against living in NYC metro area. I doubt you'd suffer this in Boston (Academia seems to be the dominant life form), SFBA (tech; a trader would be a lot less sexy than the founder of a tech startup even pre-fu money), or Seattle or Portland (environmentalism? art? food?).

That's mainly NJ guido-style greed.

There are definitely areas of NYC where the predominant culture is, "are you doing something interesting/neat/cool" instead of, "are you working for Goldman Sachs;" be it art, programming, music, technology, food, whatever. The key, of course, is to make what you do sound sexy ;).

In some areas, dropping an employer name like Goldman might even get you scorned.

Re: Ask PG & other successful folks: how did your life change after FU money?

#33
post #16
post #7

Be prepared for it mentally and emotionally before getting FU money. It's not dissimilar to winning the lottery. Most of you reading this site is either working extremely hard to get FU money or has it already. If you're not prepared for it, it will just amplify your worst nightmares and habits, and there's a good chance the meaning of many things in life, including life itself, will disappear. Plan for a use/purpose…

I'm not sure why someone would downvote you. Having a journey _is_ key, and this is why "FU money" would be useful. Given a lucky $5,000,000 lottery win, many people on HN would probably have a chance to leave the day job and finally take a shot at accomplishing their dream (perhaps building the next amazing geo-tagging-social-network, or opening a store, or whatever it might be.) Without a dream, people will just sp…

There are a ton of stories of lottery winners who blew the lot in surprisingly little time, and have literally nothing to show for it.

The problem seems to be if you suddenly have x money, you start to live as if you have 10x.

Re: Ask PG & other successful folks: how did your life change after FU money?

#34

The more I think about this -- really think about it -- the more I become convinced that anonymity and a small amount of recurring income, along with a reasonably-frugal life, is probably the best outcome in life. EDIT: Just to clarify, I'm not saying to be poor. I'm saying that the more your income becomes visible -- past just having a low-key life -- the more it gets in the way of things, both for you and your fami…

A room of one's own and GBP£500 a year? Now where have I heard that before.

Re: Ask PG & other successful folks: how did your life change after FU money?

#35
post #33
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why someone would downvote you. Having a journey _is_ key, and this is why "FU money" would be useful. Given a lucky $5,000,000 lottery win, many people on HN would probably have a chance to leave the day job and finally take a shot at accomplishing their dream (perhaps building the next amazing geo-tagging-social-network, or opening a store, or whatever it might be.) Without a dream, people will just sp…

There are a ton of stories of lottery winners who blew the lot in surprisingly little time, and have literally nothing to show for it. The problem seems to be if you suddenly have x money, you start to live as if you have 10x.

I hear a lot of people saying this. Do you have any data points links for the same?. Just curious.

Re: Ask PG & other successful folks: how did your life change after FU money?

#38
I think about this all the time.

I didn't make "FU money" from an exit, but rather from the ongoing success of a couple of online businesses, which have been earning me far more than I know how to spend. When this started happening, my initial reaction was to be perplexed, because I no longer had a financial motivation to get up in the morning and work. Money had been the most salient part of my motivation for as long as I could remember.

But I found that I still wanted to work, and it took me a while to understand why. It turns out there are lots of other good reasons to create useful things that people will pay for, like self expression, connecting to others, a sense of achievement, and a feeling of contributing to the world. The money was still nice but became secondary. Still, it allows me the luxury of working on interesting things that I think people will like, even if I doubt I'll ever make much money from them.

I found that the main challenge of being rich is finding a way to spend the money in a way which contributes to my happiness, rather than detracts from it. This is harder than it sounds. The most obvious way to spend money is to buy an oversized home. But this is a really bad idea. First of all you have to spend a lot of time maintaining that home. But most importantly it will likely alienate your (presumably not so rich) real old friends who are still working daily to pay off the mortgage. How will they feel about inviting you over to their condo when you live in a palace?

The solution I found to the "friend alienation" problem is to spend money on personal experiences rather than visible possessions. You can eat out at fancy restaurants, travel the world and enjoy the best shows without your friends knowing what you're up to, at least not in detail. It really helps if you have a spouse and/or children that you can do this with, since they can make these experiences all the more fun.

BTW this also neatly dovetails with recent research on happiness:

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/02/10/happiness.possessio...

The one rich guy possession I'm allowing myself to buy is a second home in a foreign country that I like to visit often. This will (hopefully) make those visits less hassle and more enjoyable, and again, none of my close friends need to know.

And yes, I worry about losing the money a little, and have taken a self-propelled crash course in personal wealth management. But luckily I find the subject quite interesting anyway, and I don't let myself lose any sleep over a couple of percentage points in yield. In the long run, we all die anyway.

To summarize, getting "FU money" been a net benefit in my life, but it took a lot of careful thought and planning to ensure it worked out that way.

Finally if anyone out there who's suddenly landed FU money is feeling a little disorientated by their new situation, I highly recommend reading "Escape from Freedom" by Erich Fromm, which is a wonderful book about the psychological and existential challenges that freedom brings.

Re: Ask PG & other successful folks: how did your life change after FU money?

#39
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a ton of stories of lottery winners who blew the lot in surprisingly little time, and have literally nothing to show for it. The problem seems to be if you suddenly have x money, you start to live as if you have 10x.

I hear a lot of people saying this. Do you have any data points links for the same?. Just curious.

Not any hard numbers on % of lottery winners or anything, but stories in the papers are common:

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/813314-top-5-lottery-winners-who...

http://loanscreditcards.co.uk/tag/uk-lottery-winners/

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