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Ask HN: 27, accidentally became wealthy, lost drive. What should I do?

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Re: Ask HN: 27, accidentally became wealthy, lost drive. What should I do?

#73
post #56

Find a good therapist. Seriously they can help you through this way more than strangers on HN. Oh and congratulations on the wealth.

This is the best advice, with which I fully agree. Therapy and taking care of your health in general should be first priority.

Re: Ask HN: 27, accidentally became wealthy, lost drive. What should I do?

#74

Consider getting involved in some IT area for which you have passion in a nice project (probably open source) and set a fixed amount of time you at least and at most spend on it per-week or bi-weekly and try to keep it. It also has the benefit that if you somehow lose you money you still have qualifications to show to get a new job even years after you finished you degree. Assuming software engineering is you passion…

Also be careful for most people 7.5 Million Euro seems like an endless amount of money and if you keep a grounded living style it is. But it's also easy to spend for vanity. Like people with more then that ended up accidentally going bankrupt due to bad spending patterns. (Or just bad luck with investments.)

Re: Ask HN: 27, accidentally became wealthy, lost drive. What should I do?

#75
now you have one less thing to worry about

get yourself a wealth management company

don’t tell anyone besides your advisors

pay yourself a modest salary that pays the bills

decide what you like doing regardless if you had the money or not

do it

lastly, realize how fortunate you are, how many people you could be helping even with a miniscule amount of your fortune (you don’t have to, but you could)

Re: Ask HN: 27, accidentally became wealthy, lost drive. What should I do?

#76

7.5M euro is not a lot of money. It's a decent amount of money to have to start doing something useful with it...or burn it all away.

It's more money than most Europeans will make in their life, especially after taxes.

Re: Ask HN: 27, accidentally became wealthy, lost drive. What should I do?

#77
post #20

This is normal. You will get used to it, and you will likely bounce to your personality before the windfall. You have solved one problem in life that most people never solve, and that puts you in a very small group. However, the rest of the problems are still there. The need to work for money can no longer distract you from them. You still need human connection and purpose. You still will age, have to worry about you…

s/EFT/ETF

Re: Ask HN: 27, accidentally became wealthy, lost drive. What should I do?

#78

Your priorities and goals have likely changed from earning a living to finding meaningful and fulfilling work and leisure. When was the last time you traveled overseas? Had a girlfriend? Developed a product or service that had an impact on society? Took up a new hobby that you enjoy? Once you refocus on creating a new life, you’ll likely find your drive and ambitions returning.

This seems wise.

I have no credentials whatsoever being rich, but I do have some experience having major plans diverted, and I would like to chip in that it's good to keep in mind it's not strange to get this sort of psychological impact from such a significant change to your life conditions and plans.

From where I sit it looks like you can afford to take your time about this more than ever before. Protect your bankroll and don't make any hasty changes to lifestyle. I suspect you'll have to re-examine what you really value the most, and suddenly you have one less excuse for not attending to that at the best of your ability, but as I understand it, the direct impact from suddenly getting wealthy (or deadly sick, or unexpectedly healthy, and so on) is basically pretty transient and people tend to soon come back to a similar set-point as before once they have adjusted their expectations to the new conditions. What could give a much more lasting impact is changes to habits or environment made while under the influence, so trying to exercise some care to make those judiciously seems in order.

Fundamentally, congratulations and good luck with it!

Re: Ask HN: 27, accidentally became wealthy, lost drive. What should I do?

#79
Rest up, you have a lot of work ahead of you my friend. If crypto has been your only investing gig, you're going to have plenty to do researching how the pros diversify their wealth. It can't hurt to visit the bogleheads forum as a first pass, maybe even ask that community what they would do in your situation.

7.5 million is a lot, but it can disappear just as fast.

Re: Ask HN: 27, accidentally became wealthy, lost drive. What should I do?

#80
post #20

This is normal. You will get used to it, and you will likely bounce to your personality before the windfall. You have solved one problem in life that most people never solve, and that puts you in a very small group. However, the rest of the problems are still there. The need to work for money can no longer distract you from them. You still need human connection and purpose. You still will age, have to worry about you…

Yeah this really resonates. It's like for most of us, money is a motivator that distracts us from dealing with the problems or issues that are always there anyways. We are bred to believe if we just solve the money issue, everything else will fall in line. And becoming rich is a great way to realize how much of a myth that is.
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