
I quit working full-time years ago–here’s why I recommend it highly - prostoalex
http://qz.com/241043/i-quit-working-full-time-years-ago-heres-why-i-recommend-it-highly/
======
chrisacree
Where is the value in this article? The author tells us he likes to relax and
so doesn't work full-time, therefore no one should.

Beyond stating the obvious of having more free time, he never really states
any benefits of working part time. And he doesn't mention the hardships the
undoubtedly come with it like lower salary and how they might be abated.

Overall, just feels like a brag about how great he is.

~~~
chime
I might be the odd one here but I don't think this article was about the
practicality of working part-time but rather a motivator. Here is the key
point:

> When we were done, they took me to chai, and asked me about my life in the
> mountains, my time in theater. “I can also say ‘I want to go and live in the
> mountains.’ But who will let me?” one of them asked.

> “Remember this,” I laughed, “you need no one’s permission to be yourself.”
> When I got back, I read The Top Regret again—”I wish I’d had the courage to
> live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”

It is a weird coincidence that this is the exact debate I'm having with my
wife right now. I make more than enough for us to live well and I'm trying to
show her how wonderful her life can be if she goes part-time or quits her job.
I've told her that she can finally do all the things she really wants to do -
more time to spend with our newborn, joining mommy groups, more time to
exercise, cook/eat healthier, time for hobbies etc.

She keeps coming back with her worries of future career prospects, financial
problems in case I can't work, her prestige in her line of work etc. I counter
with the fact that she was the valedictorian of her medical masters class with
numerous open job offers with no expiration date, how we can buy sufficient
life/disability insurance, how she can continue to work part-time or teach an
advanced class or two if she wants to remain involved in her profession
without a lapse.

For me, this would be the dream. I'd love to work half as much as I do but I
can't because of finances. She CAN work half as much without worrying about
finances but she is still afraid of the major change. Frankly, it is just too
alien of a concept for her. I would never force her to pick a specific path so
all I can do until she makes up her mind is to offer her suggestions and paint
a picture of what life could be if she picked the unconventional path.

~~~
zellyn
Hmmm. You're writing this as if being a stay-at-home mom is pure bliss. It's
not. It _is_ completely wonderful to spend a lot of time with your children.
But it also has a huge cost in adult self-actualization and development. Some
of that is completely silly (the way our culture values people who work more
than those who don't, or who are experts at projecting a sense of workplace-
type competence). But some is completely legit: striving and succeeding in the
adult work world can also be rewarding and exciting. From our experience,
looking after a kid leaves _very_ little time for hobbies.

That finances thing is a pain... same situation here :-)

~~~
chime
Of course it isn't. I've been consulting from home for past 5 years myself and
there is good and bad in any option you pick. I keep bringing up part-time
because of the self-actualization reasons. I am just saying look into non-
full-time possibilities because being away from the baby all day is already
stressing her too much.

------
mgkimsal
> Here’s Carlos Slim, the world’s second richest man: “We should be working
> only 3 days a week.”

So... why doesn't Carlos Slim, as chairman of several large companies,
restructure them to be 3 day work-week environments? Surely as someone who is
about the richest man on the planet would be able to have some influence in
the companies he owns/manages?

~~~
ohmyiv
The author linked to an article in his story:

"To a certain degree, Slim has been applying this train of thought to his own
businesses. According to the Financial Times, Slim's phone company Telmex has
implemented a system where workers on a collective labor contract who joined
the company in their late teens can retire before they reach 50, and can
continue to work for full pay four days per week."

While he could probably be doing more, he is working on it.

~~~
vacri
Working for three decades continuously for one company in the prime of your
life to "retire" (scare quotes intended) at 80% hours for normal pay is a
pretty half-arsed attempt at addressing the spirit of the concept.

~~~
omouse
It's hard enough to explain to people that we should only be working 5hrs/day,
can't just dive into it right away.

------
mkcarlos
Coming up next: "I quit being poor - here's why I recommend it highly"

~~~
vln
These are radical ideas. I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

~~~
visakanv
"I was born into favorable circumstances. 10/10 would be born into these
circumstances again, highly recommend."

------
ux-app
I've been working part time for just over 4 years now. It is the single best
thing I have done for my mental health in the last 10 years. I have a mid-week
weekend (Wed and most of Thu off) and it is awesome. I have no plan to go back
to full-time. I've also convinced my wife to do the same next year.

Of course there is less money coming in. I've decided to reduce my rate of
consumption to compensate for this. Eating out was a huge money sink in the
past. $100+ restaurant visits are out of the question now, which is fine
because I'm living a semi-retired life, and cooking is less a hassle and more
a slow pleasure :)

I got tired of trading the best hours of the day and the best years of my life
away for what amounted to trinkets. I've decided to optimize time over money.
It helps that my material needs are modest.

~~~
csvfa
Do you have a flexible employer or do you work for yourself? How do you
balance the career opportunities that would have come your way if you were a
5-day-a-weeker versus the gain in time and mental health?

~~~
ux-app
I'm an ex programmer now working as a high school teacher. I wont pretend that
the flexibility possible in a school environment applies universally.

In regard to career advancement, I'm a realist. The primary effect of going
part time is reduced pay. The secondary effect is slower career advancement.
I'm OK with this.

Another way to frame this is to imagine how great your career advancement
would be if you were a 7-day-a-weeker. Most people draw the line at 5 days. I
decided to draw the line at 3.5. It's a personal decision that I haven't
regretted for a minute.

------
s3cur3
Lots of mocking going on in the comments, and I'm not sure why.

If you're a software developer in the first-world, you're making, what,
$75k/year or more? If you spend wisely, you can live quite comfortably on
$30k/year, at least before housing costs.

Personally, my plan is to work full-time for the next ~10 years, putting every
dime above the $30k/year mark into my mortgage and my retirement fund, and cut
back to part time after that---I'll own my house, and with a couple decades of
compound interest, my retirement fund will be set, too.

Most people in our position won't do this, though---they choose a higher
standard of living (a new car every three years, a house at the very highest
end of what they can afford, etc.) over working less. If that's what you want
to do, that's fine---but don't pretend it would be _impossible_ for you to cut
back.

 _That 's_ what I get from the article: the author's suggesting you do
whatever it takes (including living on less money) to work less.

~~~
gregd
What makes you think the only other option to your lifestyle is choosing a
higher standard of living? I have 4 children from two different marriages. I
didn't choose a higher standard of living.

Living off of $30k/year here in Oregon is a fucking pipedream for a family of
4.

~~~
j2bax
I definitely don't know the circumstances that lead you to having 4 children
from two different marriages, but was it someone else's choice to do that? I'm
sure you wouldn't change bringing your kids into the world. I just had one and
despite my costs and life priorities changing a lot, I can't imagine not
having her! If your priority before having kids was financial independence,
you probably would have made different decisions and held off on the kids and
possibly the marriages, no?

~~~
gregd
No, having children was my choice. I'm speaking more about the assumption that
the OP had with living a higher standard as the alternative to what s/he was
doing and that you could live comfortably off of $30k/year.

I feel like most of the statements about how much someone can live off of,
should be preceded by whether they're single and what part of the world
they're living in..

------
jasonkester
Interesting to watch how quickly people are dismissing this as something you
need to be ultra-rich to pull off. You don't. If you're reading this, chances
are you can do it.

That's right. _You_ can do this.

I think my bill rate is pretty realistic for a developer, and I can more than
sustain my family working four 8-hour days (so I do). You only need to make
25% more than the average joe to pull that off. And seriously, if you're a
developer and you're not making >100% more than the average joe, you really
need to go have a talk with your employer about the current state of the
market. So yeah, all of us make enough to do this.

No need to scrimp. No need to be the CEO. The math just plain works out.

Incidentally, the author is right. Even taking one extra day off per week has
had a huge effect on my quality of life and overall health. I get outside a
lot more, play with the kids a lot more, don't seem to get sick at all
anymore, and come in to each week completely fresh and actually missing work a
bit. It's cool.

I still kick around the idea of dropping down from my current 4 day weeks to 3
or even 2 day weeks.

------
branchless
Wow this article is annoying.

> rising productivity would make part-time work an option for all of mankind.
> We haven’t got there yet

Yes we have but corporations are not passing this on. Plus the other side of
the coin is land prices are set by income after food/heating/clothing so any
rise in productivity is immediately captured by land owners.

If LA became 20% more productive and it were passed on to workers it would be
passed on to landlords. We need full land reform.

I agree we should work less but this guy should spend less time dreaming and
some time acquainting himself with Henry George.

~~~
redblacktree
> We need full land reform.

What does this mean to you?

~~~
branchless
Land value tax so that productivity gains do not go to the land owners. And
with this an end to a tax on labour. This way lies true freedom.

~~~
redblacktree
You seem to have stated the goals but not the means. How do we achieve such a
system? Higher property taxes? How will they be distributed?

------
crimsonalucard
This is one of the shitty things about capitalism. Super rich people. They are
free riders who get so unrealistically rich that they no longer need to
contribute anything to the economy. They just sit on their asses, "grow" their
wealth and develop perverted philosophies on life.

No single man on earth has the strength or intelligence to create an economic
contribution that justifies this sort of wealth. The super rich achieve their
wealth off the backs others.

~~~
crdb
It depends on the location.

Here's a different point of view: Carlos Slim has so far been relatively
unable to compete in the US. Some people argue that he does well in countries
like Mexico because in those places, he can run a monopoly (like his telecom
company) or oligopoly with price fixing power, generating large margin at the
expense of his customers (who don't have much of a choice in the matter).
Thus, his business has plenty of reserves for things like 3 day workweeks - at
the expense of the population, in exactly the zero sum game you describe.

But when you look at modern American billionaires like Steve Jobs or Bill
Gates, they made their fortune by working intensely hard and smart in very
competitive markets, and inventing or making available to the mass-market
products that created billions of dollars in value. It can definitely be
argued that a single individual can create billions of dollars of new wealth,
and not on the "back" of others - there's a lot of very wealthy early
Microsoft and Apple employees out there, and billions of dollars of value
created for its customers over the last couple decades.

~~~
witten
Not disputing the hard work, but at key points in Microsoft's history, they've
held and exercised tremendous monopoly power, generating large margin at the
expense of their customers.. Just like Slim's companies in some respects.

~~~
crdb
Right, but the difference is that their monopoly was in a created market, vs
Slim's which is the definition of a bad monopoly (sole supplier of a utility).
Their margin was the reward for the creation of something new, not taking a
cut on a natural resource. But I agree that it's not black and white -
companies lie all over the spectrum (you could argue that Slim is getting paid
for the effort of putting out a telecom network in Mexico).

A clearer example is Google: it has an effective monopoly on search, but it's
not because it has lobbied Washington to stop people from using other search
results, it's because it was the best search engine, spread like wildfire, and
kept the market ever since. People use Google not because there's no other
(legal) search provider available, but because it's still the best way to find
things on the internet.

Because of this instinctive understanding of the value created, it's much
rarer to see Brin and Page criticized for their wealth.

------
Jemmeh
This article felt like the "Rich Friend Who Travels All the Time" CollegeHumor
video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZk1WHJ_fwo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZk1WHJ_fwo)

------
johansch
Regardless of the money aspect: I've found that for (semi?) introverted people
like myself, working is essential in avoiding becoming a shut-in.

Part-time work would be ideal, but there are few interesting part-time
positions available...

~~~
contingencies
Try more drinking, social sports or travel, especially long distance cycling
which forces you to meet many people from in-between places you'd normally
never see.

~~~
crxgames
Coming from a former super introvert, as sad as it may be, drinking is how I
finally learned to be social. It totally forces you to meet and interact with
people you otherwise would not. However, I still have my days where I'm 100%
done with all of humanity. But, who doesn't?

------
ericcholis
One consistent counterpoint and life motto that I like to strive for is: don't
spend valuable time doing work you don't like. There's plenty of happiness to
be had working, and that passion can bring great joy. One doesn't have to
lounge around or act on a whim to find comfort.

In particular, my wife works a "normal" 45+ hour work week at a job she loves.
Every evening is filled with stories of her day, and she exudes happiness when
she tells them. She also gets to challenge herself with real-world problem
solving. She's always moving and thinking.

Now, do our jobs take us away from our other passions? Of course! We'd both
rather be climbing mountains that sitting indoors. But, there are comforts of
life that we've chosen to give ourselves. Those comforts come at a cost,
either in time, location or money.

I'd argue that it's better to find what makes you happy and determine what the
cost of that happiness is.

~~~
platz
what kind of job does your wife have?

~~~
ericcholis
Physical therapist with special needs children.

------
xacaxulu
So much negativity on this thread! I'd rather figure out what this guy did
right and take steps to implement some of those things into my life. It's easy
to take pot-shots at people and harder to admit that someone might have found
a better/more interesting way to live than you.

~~~
crimsonalucard
Nobody likes negativity, especially on HN. But rather then explicitly condemn
the negativity and be excessively positive for no reason, why not analyze why
people feel negative?

Believe it or not, negativity can be justified. And although wealth is a
controversial topic I believe that an innate feeling of unfairness that most
people feel towards the super rich exists because it actually is unfair. This
feeling of discontent has toppled empires and changed entire economic systems.
It is worth it to explore this negativity rather than suppress it.

>I'd rather figure out what this guy did right and take steps to implement
some of those things into my life.

It is not physically possible for everyone to live this way. No single man has
the intelligence or strength to contribute enough GDP to the economy to
justify such wealth. If you want to live like him you must exploit the labor
of others. In short to be rich sometimes you must do things that will promote
feelings of negativity in other people.

------
jmkni
BRB telling my boss I'm not working full time anymore

~~~
ux-app
Not sure if you're being facetious or not. If you're really interested in
working part time then just ask. The worst your boss can do is say no. I've
been part time on and off for 4 years and I've made the permanent move to PT 6
months ago, and I'm positive that I'll never go back to full time work. I was
also unsure of how the conversation would go with my boss. It went something
like this.

Me: Hi boss can I work part time?

Boss: OK.

If he said "no" then life would go on.

------
figushki
Listening to Dave Matthews sounds like work to me. You'd have to pay me to do
it.

------
M8
_" Here’s Carlos Slim, the world’s second richest man: “We should be working
only 3 days a week.”"_

Why does everyone omit the number of hours Carlos is suggesting? Hint: it's
not 8-9 hours.

Anyway, it's all cool, as long as he doesn't want to use any of the tax-payer
funded public services.

~~~
Quanticles
3 days for 12-14 hours a day would be nice - does he think those should be
M/W/F or T/W/Th ?

~~~
Touche
Speak for yourself, I'm tapped out at 8. I can work on side-projects for an
additional 2 or 3 some times, but that's not work.

------
heynk
Wow, why such negativity here? I'd guess it's because it's a rich person
saying it, which I get.

Do we really need to cite the benefits of working less?

~~~
reedlaw
Why assume he's rich? Maybe living in the mountains is cheap. Maybe he saved
before moving there. There is some choice between working/consuming less and
working/consuming more. He's advocating the former.

~~~
thefreeman
Well, he took a year long honey moon which he spontaneously decided to extend
into 6 years. I don't think your average person could pull that off,
regardless of how cheap it is to live there.

Also the fact that he literally doesn't address how he can afford to to this,
which is the __first __thing on most peoples mind, also indicates that he is
so wealthy he is out of touch with reality.

------
dudul
Did I miss the part where he explains how he makes a living and provides for
his family?

~~~
ohitsdom
Seriously. I have very similar feelings as him- that as a father I want to be
home with my wife and kids as much as possible. Right now my work week is
pretty close to 40 hours, and I consider that a big success compared to most
people I know. But my career goal is working towards more flexible working
hours, and hopefully less total hours with higher profitability. But it's a
dream, and I'm not sure how realistic a dream it is.

"No one is stopping you from living in the mountains!" sounds like it's trying
to be empowering, but how do you afford it? Then how do you come back into the
job market ~5 years later and look attractive to potential employers?

~~~
gregd
It's because having money (being _rich_ if you will) alters your brain
sufficiently enough to forget the common plight of plebs.

There are quite a few things that are stopping me from living in the
mountains: rent, food, gas, car payment, insurance, to name just a few.

------
nodata
Next up: feeling hungry? I highly recommend you eat something.

and: Low on cash? Simply win the lottery.

------
moron4hire
I'm a freelance software developer. I work "part time" in the sense that I
work only 20 hours a week on paying projects. I could work 40 hours a week, or
more even, but I choose to work only 20 hours so I can work on other things of
my own design. I do _not_ spend the time "in leisure", though I enjoy the work
so much that it's practically the same thing for me.

The Bill Watterson quote drives me up a wall. I can't imagine doing nothing.

I live in Washington DC with my wife. I make slightly more than she does
(though with taxes and her benefits it probably comes out even), and she made
enough before meeting me to buy her own condo here in one of the most
expensive areas of the country. I charge only about half of what other
consultants with my experience and skill set charge. Neither of us makes six
figures. Just shy, but not quite. Combined, our AGI was just under 200k.

By almost all accounts, we're "rich". We went on three international trips
last year. We went on three other mini-vacations that were only possible
because I can work from anywhere. I'm working two 40 hour weeks here this week
and next, just so I can have a big chunk of extra cash that I can play with--I
think of it as reverse-vacation, I get to choose to work more for spells of
time. I'm buying a gaming laptop with it, and some parts for my desktop. I
could afford it without the "overtime", but this way I don't even have to
think about the budget. We also put in quite a bit of money to our retirement
funds, and have excellent health insurance.

How is this possible? I know couples making $500k between the two of them that
don't get to go to all the amazing places we go to, because they're constantly
worrying about money. It's because, for the rest of the year, we live in our
means. Three international trips _was_ in our means. Computers and electronic
toys whenever we want them are in our means. If they weren't, we wouldn't have
done them. We pay ourselves first (retirement funds). We don't have a house
larger than we need. We don't have multiple cars (I don't need a car, so we
have only one. Our great credit has meant that it's nearly paid off after two
years, at an APR that has been less than inflation). We aren't fashionistas,
so we don't drop money on clothing all the time.

Long story short, we just don't go into debt. The only real debt we have is
the mortgage on the condo. We work her travel mileage card, so most of our
flights are "free", in a sense. We just don't overspend on recurring expenses.

A $350/mo car payment doesn't sound like that much more than a $300/mo car
payment, but it adds up! That's $600 in one year that you could have spent on
a graphics card, or on a longish flight, or on a nicer hotel, or on a rental
car instead of buses.

A $2800/mo apartment rental doesn't sound like that much more than a $2500/mo
apartment, but it's $3600 a year! That's a brand new, uber powerful gaming
computer every year. And you don't even need to buy it every year.

The recurring expenses in your life are a lot more expensive than you think
they are. They are a hell of a lot more expensive than most of the expensive,
one-time purchases you'll want to have in your life. Who needs a large house?
Who needs 4 cars in a household of 2 drivers? Who needs a gigantic minivan or
SUV for _one_ kid? My parents drove my sister and me around in a coupe for
most of our lives, making us squeeze past the front passenger seat to get in
the back.

Even if you're living alone, you could get a roommate, or an efficiency
apartment. You don't need a lot of stuff. I'd like to get rid of some of my
stuff, and I don't actually have a lot. What do you use on a daily or weekly
basis? I submit that there is nothing you'd use on a monthly or yearly basis
that you can't rent more cheaply than own.

Don't chase after high-paying jobs if they require you to drive somewhere.
Cars are expensive, gasoline is expensive. So many people here drive an hour
one-way to get to work. It beats up their cars so they replace them every 5
years. They feel like they have an image to maintain so they buy BMWs and
Lexuses. Every 5 years, another 45 - 60k for the car, probably 10k in
gasoline, probably another 10k in maintenance. Call it an extra 13k a year, to
drive to work. No job is offering 13k more to come to the office. I make
slightly more now, part-time, than I ever did full-time driving into office. I
could be charging twice as much as I am now, and I could be working twice as
much. But I choose not to, because it's easy.

We'd have even more if I could convince her to move out of DC. I'm thinking we
move to Pittsburgh, get a place _slightly_ larger than our tiny condo, she
quits her job, rent out the condo, sell the car, and we have more take-home
than we did before.

Everything is so easy when you don't have debt. Yes, we are "rich", but for
the types of skills that people on HN have, you should easily be able to
achieve our sort of rich. Because our sort of rich happened because we first
lived within our means and got out of debt. Once we got out of debt, it was
easy to start holding out for the darling opportunities. When you don't have
debt, you aren't desperate. You don't have to take just any job that comes
your way. And when you don't _have_ to take just any job, you don't _have_ to
move into a new place right away, you don't _have_ to buy a new car right
away. It's all connected. Poor decisions in one place explode into bad debt in
lots of other places.

~~~
klibertp
> Everything is so easy when you don't have debt.

A couple of days ago the current President of my country was asked what should
one do if he had a hard time finding a job, finally got rather low paying job,
but he'd still like to start a family. He answered without a shred of
hesitation that such people should borrow money from somewhere, effectively
becoming indebted to some bank for the rest of their lives.

It's a very common mindset, people are being trained to believe that living
with a huge debt is a perfectly normal thing. It isn't. Just as you say all
you need to do is to live within your means and rationalize your spendings a
bit. It's surprising how many things can be "within your means", even with
very little income, if you're willing to do some work on your own.

I was way poorer than I'm now for most of my life, but I was never indebted to
anyone. Instead of borrowing money I've learned to live making around $200 a
month. That's of course another country, another currency and another economy,
but to put things in perspective: that's less than one tenth of average income
here. I learned to fix things that broke, learned to make things of my own,
learned to recognize when something is worth its price and when it's not. I'm
almost 30 now; I earn twice the average salary now, but I still make (some)
furniture of my own, I still repair things around the house myself and I still
don't buy the most expensive things "just because".

I don't know about economy and such, maybe it really is beneficial for most
people in the economy to borrow money and live way above their current means,
but on a personal level taking on a debt looks like an economic suicide.

~~~
snowwrestler
Debt is a tool--a really powerful one. Leaving it out of your financial
toolbox can be quite limiting and make it harder to achieve financial
stability. Most people do so out of a vague unease about it, rather than a
full accounting for their risks and opportunities.

Yes, taking on debt is a risk, but it is far from the worst financial risk you
can face, because it is predictable and often tax-advantaged. If taken on for
the right reasons, it can provide leverage to achieve returns that would
otherwise be unavailable.

For example, using mortgage to purchase property when you are young provides
more time for compound appreciation of your property. And at least in the
U.S., people who earn college degrees when they are young have average
lifetime earnings improvements well in excess of the typical student loan
costs.

~~~
moron4hire
>> If taken on for the right reasons...

Most people don't take it for the right reasons. They take it because they've
been told to. And they aren't doing anything towards enhancing their
understanding of debt.

For example, lots of people will go into debt to go on international trips. We
structure our travel on our credit card and pay it off right away because it
pays us to fly again! But most people don't have that system in place, they
run up the credit card debt and then take 6 months to pay it off. I just plain
hate the idea of paying for something today that I used up yesterday.

And I don't think the emotional impact can be overlooked. Even if you can make
an argument to me that it would be "smart" to carry a transient purchase as
debt (and I know you're not going to try to, I'm just making a hypothetical),
I'd still feel bad about it, and that bad feeling is going to have a real
impact on my quality of life.

Before I was finally out of debt, I paid off my student loans before I paid
off my car (when I had a car) because even though the APR was higher on the
car, I could pay off the student loans sooner. It's a snowballing effect. It
felt like an accomplishment and it helped me maintain my frugality.

Telling someone with $30k in credit card debt (I know several people like
this, it's not that uncommon these days) that they shouldn't run a balance on
their credit cards isn't helping them. You've not told them anything they
don't already know.

But maybe they don't already know that they don't have to have a big house.
That's the intention of my story, to try to jolt people out of their half-
waking state. People aren't perfectly rational beings and it's probably stupid
to expect them to be so. But there are simple rules of thumb that I think
people can take to heart that will improve their overall outcome much better
than telling them "you need to consider and be careful with the debt". People
work much better with all-or-nothing measures, rather than measures that rely
on subtlety and restraint.

It's probably why no-carb diets work out better than calorie counting. It's
not because carbs are particularly unhealthy, it's that people can't constrain
themselves to the small portions necessary to count calories while eating
complex carbohydrates. I know I can't. So what makes more sense? To repeatedly
fail at exercising restraint? Or to succeed at a slightly less efficient plan?

Even taking on a mortgage is most of the time a bad call for most people. They
live in the house for 5 to 10 years, then move before they get even close to
realizing the potential of the property. Then, instead of getting a similar-
sized place, they get something larger, something that fits inside their
paycheck. Even if they sold their previous house for a net profit, they just
roll that over into the new house. The net effect is that they are constantly
renting from the bank.

That only makes sense if the mortgage costs less than rent for a similar
place. If it doesn't, it's smarter to rent a place and sink the difference
into a fund for buying a place when it does make sense to buy. But most people
aren't going to keep track of their finances like that.

~~~
snowwrestler
The general form of the problem is poor understanding of personal finance. I
just think that reflexively avoiding debt is more of a symptom of that problem
than a solution.

For example, the idea that "taking on a mortgage is most of the time a bad
call for most people" is just not supported by the data. About 65% of the
homes in the U.S. are owned, and most of those are households that are
financially stable. Even in the depths of the financial crisis, well under 10%
of homes entered foreclosure each year (i.e. 90+% were stable). And there are
national correlations between homeownership and positive things like income,
academic achievement, lower crime, etc.

------
dfar1
Carlos already made his money and now he just wants to enjoy it. There's
nothing wrong with that. But that reality is not true for most people.

I am truly jealous of the people that have enough just to get by, spending
most of their time outdoors, traveling and getting to know new people and
cultures.

------
goodcanadian
You know, I would probably choose to work half time for half my pay, but very
few interesting jobs allow for that. I don't know if it is cultural or what,
but employers expect people to work 40+ hours per week and don't really make
provision for other schedules.

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benbou09
When you are starting your career, it's quite hard to work part time because
of the lower wages and the peer pressure. With more experience, it's really
worth reconsidering the balance between work and money.

The problem is that money is currently the universal standard for measuring
success. There are many more dimensions to success and in fact, everyone
should build their own model of what constitutes success, including things
like spending time with your family, reading a good books and so on.

------
panjaro
Shouldn't the new technologies and inventions give us more time ? Then why do
we work more despite having machines that do most of the work for us? What is
the use of it?

~~~
vacri
Until people can agree to let strangers benefit from their bounty, society
will demand people work for their bread.

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jkaljundi
It is true that any well-qualified specialist, at least any developer, could
work 4-day 8-hour workweeks if they'd wanted. And do that while keeping a high
standard of living. You might need to choose the city and area to live though,
but that's all.

------
igvadaimon
From the article I understood they guy lived 6 years in Himalayas without any
money?

~~~
pharke
He never said 'without any money', from the tone of the article we can assume
that he has already made all of the money he will need to continue his present
lifestyle. This is simply another one of those articles promoting the idea
that there's enough room for everyone in the top 1%.

------
vermooten
smug git

------
comice
is this a satire?

