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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

#31

Post by jimbokun »

dusted wrote: post #15
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…

An interesting point of view. Practically, I agree with you, that FU wealth is probably the most realistic way to achieve the freedom required for some personality types to achieve happiness. I am unfortunately one of them, intellectually, I've conclude the same for myself many times over, and have been unable to change my view on this, as much as I'd love to find peace in my sitaution and enjoy life (tm). What's har…

> you can't be rich in any traditional sense of the word, without someone else being relatively less well off.

I was with you up until here.

The total amount of wealth in the world is constantly growing, and you can positively influence it's creation, by introducing new efficiencies or new goods and services that didn't exist before.

In many ways, the wealth of the average person living today is much greater than kings and emperors living centuries ago.

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

#32

Post by ghaff »

artemonster wrote: post #14
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…

how is it possible to save 2.5 mil from salary? I am from upper 5% in germany in terms of salary, and I can only manage to save ~10kEur/year, while maintaining decent lifestyle. An order of magnitude lower than you'd need to retire with such a sum after 20 years or so. How do you do that? Genuine question

I can't speak to Germany, but in the US saving from a good but not extremely high-paying job over the past few decades, investing prudently but not too conservatively, maybe having a few moderately good stock wins from RSUs/options or otherwise, having bought and paid off a house in a not outrageously expensive area, gets you into that range. Depends of course on how you spend your money, educational expenses for kids, etc.

In any case, it doesn't require winning the startup lottery or having a $400K salary at Google.

ADDED: ~$2m + paid-off house is the sort of range people (typically engineers, non-software) I've had discussions about "targets" with have in mind.

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

#33

Post by yboris »

Feels like there's an elegant solution to it all: chase the money, but also give it away to cost-effective charities.

I've been giving at least 10% of my income to charities for about a decade (a pledge I signed along with thousands of other people at https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/ ).

From this perspective, you're still earning a lot, it's just that you choose to give a fraction of it away. It's not the same as earning less. Plus, giving to research-proven interventions that help others feels like the most meaningful thing I do with my life.

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

#34

Post by bumby »

pyrrhotech wrote: post #10
nicoburns wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So 99.99% of the world can't be happy? Don't you think it's quite selfish of you to prioritise achieving this for yourself over allowing a greater number of people to have a more reasonable level of wealth?

I shouldn't speak for everyone. For me personally, I was happyish during my career but I'm definitely much, much happier now that I'm wealthy and retired. And it's not a short term buzz, I've been retired for 2 years and the feeling hasn't worn off. I know it sucks we don't have unlimited resources for everyone in society to be free and 100% happy. Maybe someday we will with full automation. In the meantime, most peo…

>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)

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

#35

Post by kranner »

dusted wrote: post #15
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…

An interesting point of view. Practically, I agree with you, that FU wealth is probably the most realistic way to achieve the freedom required for some personality types to achieve happiness. I am unfortunately one of them, intellectually, I've conclude the same for myself many times over, and have been unable to change my view on this, as much as I'd love to find peace in my sitaution and enjoy life (tm). What's har…

> you can't be rich in any traditional sense of the word, without someone else being relatively less well off.

Even if that were true, all of your gain in wealth doesn't have to come out of a single individual's pocket. If you make something (e.g. an app) for which a lot of people pay a very small amount, presumably because they get some value in return, it seems a fair deal and leaves everyone else very marginally poorer, and not unfairly. If you consider the value they have gained from using your product as a form of wealth, then no one is poorer at all because you have created wealth.

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

#36

Post by lordnacho »

He says he has no real interests, but actually he's doing reasonably interesting things to make a living. In a way he's already doing what he wants for a living.

If he had a bajillion dollars, might he be doing other things? Sure. But that doesn't mean his only interest is money, it's uncertain whether he'd be doing a variation of the same things. Seems plausible he'd do a video about what it's like to be mega rich.

People who are only in it for money are often doing quite mundane things. Would I have stopped my paperroute if I had loads of money as a kid? Yes. Would I stop coding altogether? Probably not, I like it.

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

#37

Post by bavell »

nicoburns wrote: post #21
the-dude wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> though I know opinions vary here Why are you reacting so heavily on a quite balanced comment?

Do you really think "my only interest is money" is a balanced comment? I don't see how this even makes sense. If you didn't have other things that you wanted to spend the money on then it wouldn't be much use.

They never said that, you're putting words in their mouth. They said their main focus was money and that they're not speaking for everyone.

Yes, that's a very balanced comment. You are the one who is being unbalanced.

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

#38

Post by DennisP »

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…

Congrats. Level achieved: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdfeXqHFmPI

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

#39

Post by quaffapint »

boltzmann_ wrote: post #24
artemonster wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how is it possible to save 2.5 mil from salary? I am from upper 5% in germany in terms of salary, and I can only manage to save ~10kEur/year, while maintaining decent lifestyle. An order of magnitude lower than you'd need to retire with such a sum after 20 years or so. How do you do that? Genuine question

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

Don't assume that's most of the US. Most of it is nothing like those numbers and for those with a mortgage and family , saving much of anything can be challenging.

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

#40

Post by dusted »

jimbokun wrote: post #31
dusted wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An interesting point of view. Practically, I agree with you, that FU wealth is probably the most realistic way to achieve the freedom required for some personality types to achieve happiness. I am unfortunately one of them, intellectually, I've conclude the same for myself many times over, and have been unable to change my view on this, as much as I'd love to find peace in my sitaution and enjoy life (tm). What's har…

> you can't be rich in any traditional sense of the word, without someone else being relatively less well off. I was with you up until here. The total amount of wealth in the world is constantly growing, and you can positively influence it's creation, by introducing new efficiencies or new goods and services that didn't exist before. In many ways, the wealth of the average person living today is much greater than kin…

Don't miss my very last paragraph. :)

To elaborate:

The total AMOUNT of wealth is growing, and its uneven distribution makes my point even more obvious.

Explain to me how you'd expect to get the following services in a "everyone has FU money with no robots doing the work": Car repair, lawn mowed, anything built, groceries checked out, actually, anything at all.

The only reason these things work is because there's enough unequal distribution that _someone_ has to do something they don't really want to do, in order to give someone else something they'd like to have.

The traditional job is something that nobody wants to pay for doing, but almost everyone want to pay for having done.. In order for anyone to DO that job, they have to be poor enough to accept trading in their time for money.

I'm super lucky, as I'm almost doing the same thing at my job as I'd be doing in my free time, but I still take money for it, because, after all, I'd be writing slightly more interesting (to me) code if it was my hobby. It's just that my hobby won't make me rich, because my hobby is not in trying to turn a profit on my hobby.

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