Quitting the rat race • Hacker News Board

Re: Quitting the rat race

#431

Post by hi41 » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 1:13 AM UTC

notch656c wrote: post #20

dinobones wrote: post #12

I am in my mid 20s. I have about $200k saved and I think about quitting everyday, even though it would probably be disastrous for my career. I look up and I see colleagues in their 40s-50s. 20-30 years of experience in the industry, with the performance of their RSUs they probably easily have $2m+ net worth. I really don't understand why they don't quit. Just a naive example: Buy a cheap house ($250k) and live off of…

If you have kids and quit while your family is used to the standard of living there is a good chance a divorce is in the cards. You will then owe 20% (pretax, 30% post tax) of your "imputed" salary for the kid, as well as possible alimony. If you don't come up with 20% of your generous salary you git tossed in a cage, even if the kid only needs a tiny fraction of that for a decent life. For many it's impossible to st…

I don’t understand the logic behind this. A man can lose his job then how can he make court ordered payments for kids and wife? And then putting the man behind bars is detrimental to society because a divorced man would be experience depression and likely lose his job. Punishing such a man is not good for society.

Re: Quitting the rat race

#432

Post by antihero » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 2:36 PM UTC

mmaunder wrote: post #140

antihero wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was in that office today, weird eh

Haha. I was at 1 to 5 Cabot Square. The Friday pub gatherings were pretty epic. One Friday I got seriously drunk and swam across the dock, banged on one of the old barges parked on the other side and swam back. Canary Wharf security was waiting for me. A colleague pretended he was an off duty cop from Manchester (he had the accent) and talked them out of detaining me. And that was pretty early on in the evening. Have…

Ha! Off there again in a minute. I’m a contractor who’s onboarding, so I walk in, talk to literally nobody and sit on floor 8 doing your thing for a while then leave, is kind of surreal.

Re: Quitting the rat race

#433

Post by balaji1 » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 10:49 PM UTC

prawn wrote: post #426

balaji1 wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, it may not be a decline. But more of humanity is being pulled out of evolutionary stressors and forced into the same artificial stressors. There is clearly not enough incentive to bring a bigger portion of a population towards a [somewhat subjective] better quality of life. This might be the polarization inherent to human nature. So far we have done well to curb and mitigate crime, risky events, etc. Maybe the…

I'd be interested in stats about negative social behaviours (say household burglary, graffiti, etc) and how it relates (or doesn't) to home ownership. Is behaviour significantly different if someone feels a sense of ownership and belonging in a community?

Ownership and responsibility will be good in general for young folks. If youngsters were expected to be stewards, instead of being innovators and trailblazers and millionaires, it will be easier to belong.

Land and home ownership has become harder, financially and psychologically, even for middle class and above.

However the negative behaviors you mention is mostly younger people and they will not usually be owning homes by themselves. So your home ownership hunch might apply to the family of such actors; extrapolating, the general social fabric around potential negative actors is the realistic indicator. Which is a much more complex problem.

Re: Quitting the rat race

#434

Post by rubicon33 » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 2:37 AM UTC

seanbarry wrote: post #415

rubicon33 wrote: post #14

Posts like this frustrate me. "I'm quitting! But I'm not telling you anything about how I plan to pay for life." The message mostly resonates with me, right up until they leave out the most crucial part of the post. How do you escape the rat race, and still pay for things like health care, food, rent, etc. Even if you're making $100k+ a year, those costs aren't insignificant. No how do you handle them making $0k a ye…

Hey, author here. I understand your criticism. Please see this comment where I've hopefully answered your questions: https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=34426360&goto=item%3Fi...

Thanks for clarifying! And good luck to you, I think you're making a hard but correct decision.