Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bennettnotes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 214 posts

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

#71

Post by newbie578 »

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...

Wow, that is truly a beautiful quote. Thank you!

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

#72

Post by _dibly »

dx87 wrote: post #29
nicoburns wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 said that they aren't only focused on money now, and that they care more about doing things they enjoy, pretty much the opposite of "my only interest is money". You should read the comment again, since it looks like you rushed to call them selfish without even understanding what they said.

Well they qualified that statement with 'I literally have enough money not to worry about it and now my interest is in the things I spend my money on' so I'm not sure if that disqualifies what GP was saying. It's easy to say you're not solely focused on money anymore when you have enough money to never worry about your financial security again.

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

#73

Post by bumby »

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…

My personal opinion is this only captures one third of what most people need to be happy. To paraphrase people much smarter than me, I think people need to meet the needs of 1) mastery 2) autonomy and 3) purpose.

Being financially free can certainly help with #2 but I don't think it inherently addresses the others.

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

#74

Post by conductr »

I suffer this too. For me, it’s all tied up in my definition of “success” and not wanting to be a “failure” according to similar definition. I don’t impose it on others, just myself, I actually really admire people that have fun playing sports, have a deeper need for socializing, or other hobbies. I never had time for it, but even then I’m lying to myself. I never prioritized it would be more accurate.

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

#75

Post by [deleted] »

silly-silly wrote: post #50
jimbokun wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>In many ways, the wealth of the average person living today >is much greater than kings and emperors living centuries >ago. I dunno man, I'm average and can't afford N wives, have someone do my dishes, clothes, own and tend thousands of hectares of land for me, father 12 children. Maybe i'm reading about different kings than you do.

[deleted]

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

#76

Post by BoorishBears »

pietrovismara wrote: post #28
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

You just can't. And that's how it's supposed to work. Only a very small minority of the population can reach that kind of worth. It's the foundation of this system, no matter if the baselines grows, there will always be rich and poor.

The person you're replying to says they're in the top 5% of earners in Germany, I feel that's closer to the small minority than most

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

#77

Post by HEmanZ »

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

In the USA top 5% income is about $300k USD[1]. With the relatively low tax rates, I would expect you can take home at least $200k (depends on the state). Like the original poster said, it's not that hard to live off of $50k in most of the US (even in the bay or NY, but you live like a college student). That leaves savings of 150k USD/yr from one source of income. Many families have two working professional adults and can almost double these numbers. Add in investment returns and $2.5 mil becomes a very achievable goal. I know a lot of people in their 30s like the poster and am closing in myself, it is not that uncommon in the US tech community.

[1]https://www.investopedia.com/personal-finance/how-much-incom...

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

#78

Post by dusted »

jimbokun wrote: post #59
silly-silly wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In many ways, the wealth of the average person living today >is much greater than kings and emperors living centuries >ago. I dunno man, I'm average and can't afford N wives, have someone do my dishes, clothes, own and tend thousands of hectares of land for me, father 12 children. Maybe i'm reading about different kings than you do.

But I bet the quality of health care available to you exceeds the imagination of those kings and emperors. The probability of fathering 12 children, if anything, is probably inversely proportional to your wealth, these days. Not sure owning and tending thousands of hectares of land has much utility in and of itself. It was a proxy for generating wealth, like someone owning a lot of equities today. But the question is…

>But I bet the quality of health care available to you exceeds the imagination of those kings and emperors. This raises the question of what should be included in the definition of wealth.

That king probably had one or more personal doctors, people they more or less owned, whose sole purpose and responsibility was their well-being.

Even if the efficiency of that person might have been low, it's certainly a lot more than being able to rent an hour of a doctors time.

Also, I have a color TV, which no king at that time have, but is that technological progress really wealth?

By that definition, starving people with cellphones are still wealthy.

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

#80

Post by astura »

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

High salary and/or low expenses, invest the difference.

Most of that 2.5 million probably came from either interest or capital gains (which compounds). I've only been saving for a bit less than a decade and my increase in net worth for the last few years was greater than my total salary (before tax) the same year. [My salary is extremely low compared to Bay Area.] I save 40% of my after tax income.

Post reply on HN