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I am rich and have no idea what to do

vinay.sh

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Re: I am rich and have no idea what to do

#341

Post by fragmede »

movedx wrote: post #322

Just a thought I’d like to share: the finish line to “Fuck you money” (FUM) isn’t even remotely close to the $60m mark. It’s not even beyond $100,000. Once you have no debts nor a mortgage, and you have $100k in savings, you have FUM, because suddenly you need $25k a year to live well. I say this as a member of this community, who are (generally speaking) relatively well paid folk in IT. If you have a partner in life…

You need healthcare, you need an emergency fund, you need elder care, retirement. College fund for your kids. if you get hit by a freak meteor and become mentally/physically disabled, you're not going to be able to make $25k/yr.

For it to be FUM is enough to live off the interest at 4% withdrawal for the rest of your life. At an estimate, it takes between $250k and million dollars to get through a case of cancer. You're not getting through it on $25k/yr after you get fired because you can't work because you have cancer, and you won't be able to afford lawers to fight getting fired either.

$25k might be enough for a twenty year old with no responsibilities who can still eat dollar store ramen, but it's not enough for someone with responsibilities past subsistence eating.

Also don't forget inflation.

Re: I am rich and have no idea what to do

#342

Post by voidhorse »

Surprise, surprise, money and "success" are not the keys to happiness.

Sorry to be a bit harsh, but it's both hilarious and sad to me that people like this exist (people, who, no less, have the gall to call other human beings "NPC"s yet would be helpless and have no idea what to do in life were it not for the world telling them to follow the facile pursuit of extreme wealth—hah!) It's no wonder software is infested with technology that is, at best a hyper niche, lucky market fit that really doesn't need to exist and will not be remembered in a decade and at worst of products that are outright societal ills.

Well, such is life when we encourage people to be narcissistic, mindless, money-seeking drones instead of socially aware, emotionally intelligent, and caring human beings.

I'm happy you are finally on the way to reflection OP, but it really does depress me that there are so many "intelligent" people that seemingly don't bother to think about or question the motives of the socioeconomic system at large and whether or not the life the system is suggesting they pursue is really a meaningful one. Apparently for some it takes getting incredibly lucky (and hard work, let's not ignore that, but luck is a key component here too) and incredibly rich to even begin to start engaging in the level of self-reflection that scores of nameless barflies, poets, and yokels were capable of hundreds of years ago.

Re: I am rich and have no idea what to do

#343

Post by giraffe_lady »

goalieca wrote: post #266
akamaka wrote: post #145

> I should work for Elon and Vivek at DOGE and help America get off its current crash to defaulting on its own debt I’ve got an idea: take some good economics courses so that you learn how government spending actually works.

I think you missed the point of DOGE. This isn't a problem about navigating and optimizing a complex bureaucracy, it's to call out that massive bureaucracy exactly where it comes at a high cost and little, perhaps even negative, value. This is a managerial problem and a political problem at its core. We should all be rooting for them to succeed and table their findings, in plain speak for all the public to see. Then…

That is transparently not the point of it at all. Musk in particular is a proven self-interested liar and there's no reason to believe his stated intentions here. It's another right wing campaign to dismantle the parts of the state that benefit anyone other than investors.

Re: I am rich and have no idea what to do

#344

Post by robocat »

EGreg wrote: post #74

You know what I got from this story? DOGE already processed a lot of applications and set up the signal chats etc. This guy applied and right away heard back, because he has millions of dollars, good reputation for having a large exit, and he "reached out to some people and got in". I simply applied in the way they asked -- DMming them on Twitter -- the very next day, submitting a link to my resume, background and co…

> Capital matters. Connections matter. Timing matters. Substance doesn't matter as much, sadly

Your conclusions are based on your own stereotypes - I'm not surprised that you feel your application experience validates your own stereotype.

You seem to not know anything about their selection criteria, so you can't jump to conclusions on their criteria based on your sample of one.

I would guess: (1) the DOGE guys want business people, and (2) the guy knows how to talk the right language and how to sell himself.

I am of course presuming you are not running your own business and that you perhaps don't have the same level of skill in marketing yourself.

Re: I am rich and have no idea what to do

#345

Post by VirusNewbie »

lbrito wrote: post #40

Peak, peak HN. "I am rich and yet find it to be unfulfilling and not the ultimate goal of human existence" and yet, "I am a big fan of capitalism" and repeat wholesale its most puerile, naive ideological propaganda mantras (see his about page) which are meant to justify _exactly_ that. Bud, seems like you have some more thinking to do if you think those two positions are perfectly congruent.

I'm far from rich, but my life is good and I love capitalism. So, I'm feeling pretty congruent.

Re: I am rich and have no idea what to do

#346

Post by codetrotter »

j4coh wrote: post #3

Same situation, I truly empathise because it really does seem to take a lot of purpose out of everything. What I’ve found is that you need to replace money/salary/financial success optimisation (assuming you spent a lot of your life and energy to this point focused on these, much like I did) with something else totally unconnected with being measured in that way. For me, I am focused on proving myself as a guitarist…

> I’m doing part time consulting, mainly for people I worked with in the past who have started companies, just to scratch the tech itch

How do you pick you hourly rate? If a friend of yours of the past came to you and asked you to consult for him, and your friend offered you say $80 USD per hour, would you find it offensively low? For someone who doesn’t have a lot and wants to hire consultants for their small projects, I think offering $80 USD per hour is not bad. But I’m curious to know how that amount feels to a potential consultant if the consultant already had a lot. Or do you prefer taking a percentage of shares in your friend’s company as pay? Or something else?

Re: I am rich and have no idea what to do

#347

Post by voidhorse »

nooneevencares wrote: post #299
cj wrote: post #73

I don’t think his problem is money. I think his problem is his identity (founder of Loom) suddenly disappeared. Now he needs to develop a new identity. This is especially difficult for single founders without kids (in the sense that people with spouse/kids already derive much of their identity from those 2 things). Selling a company isn’t all that different from going through a divorce (in the sense that your identit…

Probably needs to develop a soul first. NPCs don’t actually exist outside of video games, those are real human beings. Not sure what to do with all that wealth? Try asking one of those NPCs… spend a day with each one of them, learn what being human actually is

Yep. I don't understand why the technological community accepts essentially sociopathic tendencies as long as your idea (regardless of what that idea is) is rewarded by the capital system. It's pathetic.

Re: I am rich and have no idea what to do

#349

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #241
akamaka wrote: post #145

> I should work for Elon and Vivek at DOGE and help America get off its current crash to defaulting on its own debt I’ve got an idea: take some good economics courses so that you learn how government spending actually works.

You don't have to have a PhD in macroeconomics to have useful policy insights. For example, I wish someone could convince my city to stop planting a specific high maintenance tree on my street that constantly clog sewers and crushes cars. Policy is far from perfect and there is plenty of room for improvement.

Assuming that you are correct, you have observed (a) one or more problems (b) a proximal cause of the problem(s) (c) a potential solution. Congratulations!

None of that can be said for making a facile observation about US government spending.

Re: I am rich and have no idea what to do

#350

Post by maroonblazer »

JansjoFromIkea wrote: post #312

Perhaps I missed something, but from what I saw none of his attempts to do something new seemed to involve any kind of genuine efforts to improve the lives of others... Bit amazing that wasn't even something he would consider.

Yeah, I was going to comment that doing volunteer work in some form could go a long way towards curing what ills him. Surprised that that wasn't even mentioned in TFA.
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