On a side note, I thought I stumbled on to Financial Times. This was the first article I read in NY Times in pink canvas.
America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable
431–440 of 475 posts
Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable
#432I grew up on less than $10 per month for all expenses, including food, clothing and shelter. Now I'm worth $2MM+ at age 40 and an executive at Silicon Valley. I also have an Ivy League MBA. Money doesn't buy happiness, but it does solve for basic anxiety that arises when you don't know where your next meal is going to come from. There are things in life that money can't solve for, such as genuine love of a person, mental health, kid's health, family ego clashes.
Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable
#433Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable
#434Earlier quoted context omitted.
What you put on your tax return every year doesn't really reflect your actual wealth. Even in tech most people top out at ~$200k-$250k base salaries but you may vest and accumulate millions in stock RSUs that you don't sell in a given year.
Don't RSUs show up on the W-2 as income though (even if you don't sell them)?
They do; RSU vesting is a taxable event. It's counted as ordinary income based on the fair market value at the time it vests and taxes are due immediately. Companies tend to withhold a percentage of the shares and sell them to cover your tax burden.
Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable
#435I just don't understand this at all. If you can earn a million a year, do it for 3-5 years, never have to work again, and pursue your passions in life. I think the problem for most workers is the lifetime of toil, not the meaninglessness of the work. I'd happily dig ditches for 8-12 hours a day for 3 years if I knew I was completely financially independent with millions in the bank that. Actually, I'd rather do that…
People say these things all the time, but I always wonder how you'd actually feel if you did the 3-5 year work and saved that 3-5 million you earned. My guess is with most people, you get that 3-5 million and you're going to want more. I'm not saying you specifically, but people in general. And a clarification, I'm not thinking it'd be because you're around wealthier people which would make you want to spend more to…
I think it's not just competing with other people. In many cases, spending more money really does get you stuff that's better quality. And then you discover that you can spend more and get things that are even nicer. Not just show-off nicer, but better design, from better materials, that last longer and age better. Real quality of life improvements. I suspect that a lot of people would find that hard to give up.
Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable
#436Earlier quoted context omitted.
>what world are these people living in that you can't give up a job that you hate because you can't afford to live on 500-600k. The one where you lock into a mortgage and a car that assumes a $1.2M salary to keep ahead of. It's really easy to let your lifestyle expenses balloon, especially in a high-COL city where minor increases in living space/amenities can end up costing large amounts of money.
To consume $100k a month we need a $10-20 million dollar mortgage (50-100k/mo depending on years and rate). I have to assume a few cars, dining, etc would probably end up being $10-20k/mo so the mortgage is probably around $15 mil. So in NY or SF you are looking at something like a 1-2k sq/ft 2 bed 1 bathroom shithole apartment. Not so luxurious after all really.
Yeah, Manhattan real estate is something like $1600/sqft and SF is $850-$1200 unless you want something in one of the fancy new high-rises. $15 million will buy you 12,500 square feet haha. Just check Zillow.
Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable
#437Earlier quoted context omitted.
All you really need to know is that developed nations are home to the highest levels of human affluence that have ever existed, at all levels of society. And yet they have the lowest fertility rates ever measured. So low that they are not sufficient to maintain population size. But if you go even further, you'll see that fertility actually declines with income in developed nations. It's not until you get to the top s…
> It's not until you get to the top several percent of income that fertility starts rising again. Yes, that's what I meant. You could argue about the significance of the top percentage rise in fertility, but if anything, it shows that fertility is constrained by lack of resources in a significant way as well as education specifically.
If fertility is constrained by lack of resources, the why do poor people in the developed world have more kids than middle class people?
Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable
#438I think we're focusing on the wrong thing here (broadly), which is mocking the guy making $1.2m a year. Yes, that's a lot of money, and almost all of us (myself included) struggle to see how to spend that money. But at the same time, I feel some empathy for that guy - he's increased his expenses proportionally and he feels trapped doing something he doesn't enjoy with no end in sight. I know I've moved my expenses up…
"Lifestyle inflation" doesn't necessarily just mean nice vacations and fancy cars - education expenses for children are often a huge part of it. In the major coastal metros, living in a great school district or paying for an equivalent-quality private school is a tremendous expense. Parents also feel pressure to save enough to send their children to the best college or university that they can get into, which can be…
I feel like parents who obsess about the Ivy League track to success also tend to delegate raising of the child to the school. I would argue that a well raised child with a good enough education stands as much a chance of success as an Ivy educated child. Unfortunately there's no objective way to measure and compare the two.
Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable
#439- He had received an offer at a start-up, and he would have loved to take it, but it paid half as much, and he felt locked into a lifestyle that made this pay cut impossible. “My wife laughed when I told her about it,” he said. Sounds like a good wife to me, and this "pay cut" is making 500k-600k instead of 1.2 million, what world are these people living in that you can't give up a job that you hate because you can't…
In my experience, for men it's usually some combination of women, children, addictive substances and "stunting" that finds guys in that situation.
Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable
#440Earlier quoted context omitted.
Almost in the -exact- same boat, as if I could have written this comment myself. My favorite job, by far, was landscaping. Being outside all day, getting sun and exercise, and seeing your completed project were all very rewarding/valuable. I was in great shape, left work at work, and had no problem sleeping at night. It just doesn't pay well. I find working at computers all day rather depressing, at times pointless,…
The closest thing to a middle ground I can think of is FIRE-ing and going back to work as a landscaper, or a carpenter, or whatever. You can not "need" to work financially, but still have to/want to have a job. The key is it can be any low or even non-paying job that you want.
Some of the happiest people I've met are retires that work part time in jobs like you mentioned. They get to feel productive but not have the same level of pressure and hours that people that work full time and are living paycheck to paycheck have.