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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

#61

Post by mellosouls »

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…

I think while you don't have "FU money" it's important for money to be the main focus of your life

You may feel very differently when you are looking back on your life near the end of it.

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

#62

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

mstipetic wrote: post #44
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 is not set up to have people get rich from a salary. Everyone has a comfortable life, but it's very hard to get "rich." That's one of the reasons I left Germany

Out of curiosity what do you do and where did you move?

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

#63

Post by hprotagonist »

demygale wrote: post #45
hprotagonist wrote: post #9

“Don’t be cross, uncle!” said the nephew. “What else can I be,” returned the uncle, “when I live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas! What’s Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in ’em through a round dozen of months presented dead…

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? —Mary Oliver, Summer Day https://www.loc.gov/programs/poetry-and-literature/poet-laur...

“So, friends, every day do something/ that won’t compute.” — Wendell Berry, Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

https://www.context.org/iclib/ic30/berry/

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

#64

Post by dusted »

kranner wrote: post #35
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. 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 p…

Look at how much money people in silicon valley earn on average, then check how much it cost to live there, they're all rich by my standards, because I live in a rural area in another country.

What they can do with their wealth where I am is _VASTLY_ different from what they can do where they are. They're basically median wealthy among themselves, and they still have to go to work like everybody else, the numbers they're pulling seem impressive only at first.

I'm not talking about being fair or not, only that for the current economic system to work, you need equality of resources. I'm not saying it's a good thing, just, it's how it works. I'm all for changing that, I totally expected it to have been figured out already by the time I reached adulthood, but there are no flying cars (1)

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Where-My-Flying-Car-Memoir-ebook/dp/B...

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

#65

Post by InitialLastName »

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've struggled with the same issue. The keys, as I've learned them, is to a) get to a place where you can invest up front in reducing your cost of living in the medium-long term, b) run like hell from the hedonic treadmill of trying to keep up with your peers' poor financial decisions, c) look carefully at what parts of your "decent lifestyle" make you truly happier, which parts are performative, and for which parts you can replace spending with effort without a loss of quality (for example, you can learn to cook very nice food, at a much higher quality than you will get at a restaurant for much less money; there's also no better feeling than feeding your friends).

Keep in mind that the lifestyle changes you make now pay off more than double, by helping you save faster, by having those savings accumulate interest/earn you money, and by reducing the amount of money you need to sustain retirement indefinitely.

Finally, make compounding growth your friend, not your enemy. Kill debt ASAP, and start socking away as much of your money as you can in a growth-bearing account. If you can reliably save 50% of your income in an account that beats inflation by 4%, you can support your lifestyle indefinitely on growth after 17 years.

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

#66

Post by friendlybus »

We need to work for a sabbath that relativizes work across all classes and gives us a joyous reason to celebrate. Work and escapism alone makes Jack a dull boy.

Impostor syndrome is likely grasping at wind. Nobody's going to tell you, you're in a valid life position. That validation is not graspable, because it's not coming.

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

#67

Post by BoorishBears »

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

Everyone talks about how US tech salaries are inflated values because they don't include the cost of healthcare, a lack of guaranteed PTO, etc.

I like feel they're actually under-inflated (at least for comparing high paid workers in both places) because of equity.

The company I work at has rallied many times over 100% since I joined a bit over a year ago. I could sell my equity and "semi-retire" 30+ years early, working when/if I feel like it and not eat really into my savings

It wasn't some grand plan to join a company that would do well during a pandemic, but I did intentionally choose a public company since saying in the tech sector has exploded would be an understatement, and I wanted equity in that.

I'm guessing a lot of people who joined FAANG companies in the last few years are all probably sitting on enough to start thinking about that.

There are those who feel this is a bubble and not sustainable... maybe? But the way I see it is, even if this is the bubble before the next dot com era-style bust, it's better to have a position in it provided by my work and cashing out along the way, than not and end up losing my job anyways.

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

#68

Post by Cthulhu_ »

lukas099 wrote: post #46
pastacacioepepe wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So are you saying that since the big majority of people in the world will never get to your kind of net worth (2 mil++) they will never have real freedom? Glad that we agree, that's what I believe too and that's why I strongly hate capitalism. You aren't free at all unless you have enough capital to stop being forced to take any job offer just to survive.

You don't have to have that high of a net worth if your spending is lower. You only need to save 25x your annual spending to retire. If you only spend $30,000/year, you only need $750,000 to retire.

"only"; it's a very privileged position to be in if you are able to earn so much and spend so little to be able to head in that direction.

Personally, after spending most of the past decade in substandard / 'affordable' student housing, I'm now very comfortable with owning a house and making ends meet at the end of the month. I've got enough savings to keep afloat for a year if I somehow lose my job, and I even have some in the stock market because savings account interest is trash at the moment (iirc because of European money lending policy, causing cheap mortgages, causing low savings account interests, and causing climbing house prices from both low mortgage interest rates + investments in real estate).

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

#69

Post by cortic »

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

Not the OP, but this is an interesting question; So you'd have to save at least 72k per year for 35 years. That would put you on the 45% tax in my country so you'd have to make 131k to be left with 72k after tax. Maybe +30k to live on, assuming you commute out of the city. So OP should be on something above 161k.

In the US the OP would be in the top 3% of earners, top 4% in the UK. Even if you are in the top few percent you still have to spend most of your life working to be 'free' for a bit at the end of it.

Of course if you are inside the top 1% you could probably get away with a 10-15 year sentence. Where the average wage is generally life with a few years of poverty like freedom at the end.

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