
Your Most Valuable Asset Is Yourself - yarapavan
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/15/your-money/your-most-valuable-asset-is-yourself.html?_r=0
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jweak
How very American. With your 10 hour work days + 3 hours commute, you should
totally take a side job. Why not work the 10 vacation days too?

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donkeyd
> find a side gig if you can make time

Nobody can make time. You can only spend time differently.

Time is your most valuable asset, because once you die you have none left.
Make to most of the time you have, because once your time is spent, there's no
way of getting it back.

You could be dead tomorrow, having more money in the bank won't make a
difference then. Having spent time with you loved ones will make a difference
to them, because they will have the memories.

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mgraczyk
I agree with your premise, but your last point doesn't make much sense. Your
loved ones would also get the money. Maybe they value the money more than the
memories they shared with you.

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donkeyd
Yea, I thought of this too while I was writing it. It's a very personal matter
probably, but I've often heard that people on their death beds are more
concerned about not spending more time with loved ones than not earning enough
money. So I chose to write it as is anyway.

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lmm
I've always wondered how honest such statements are. Even if you'd actually
enjoyed work much more than family time, wouldn't you tell your family what
they'd want to hear under those circumstances?

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will_pseudonym
Why not tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you God to your
loved ones in your last moments with them? Don't they deserve that?!

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dagw
_Don 't they deserve that_

Of course not, unless of course they happen to be assholes. Tell them what you
think they need to hear to make a terrible situation as bearable as possible
and try to help them have a loving memory of you. Confessing your 'sins' on
your deathbed just to ease your conscience without any thoughts of the
consequences is an extremely selfish and narcissistic act which does nothing
to help your loved ones.

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eli_gottlieb
Nobody said that the whole truth consists of "sins". Might we guess that you
feel guilty for something?

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brenschluss
Interesting idea, but underwhelming lessons: "invest in education and
training, take side jobs, push back retirement".

I personally subscribe to the genetic optimization/hill-climbing strategy:

To make sure you don't get stuck in local optima, make sure you're time-to-
time riskily choosing what may seem like short-term losses, and injecting a
healthy degree of randomness/mutation in your process. Over time, your degree
of risk and randomness should slowly decrease. Even so, you may find that a
boost of randomness/mutation/risk may be necessary even during later stages of
life.

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jdimov10
I have a better idea. Fuck "financial planning", fuck retirement, fuck all
these people who think they know what's right for you and live your life NOW.

Be irresponsible. Be EXTREMELY irresponsible. Work less. Play more. Struggle
less. Enjoy more. Save less. Live more. Comply less. Create more.

You don't "earn" your way to wealth and you don't "save" your way to wealth -
the maths just don't work out! You can only ever play your way to wealth.

~~~
canicode
Can you explain how the "maths just don't work out"? I'm pretty sure saving IS
the way to wealth for the overwhelming majority of people.

This honestly sounds like it's straight from one of the Facebook posts with
clouds in the background.

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marcosdumay
Mid and lower class people won't get rich by saving their salaries.

In fact, it's not unusual that the entire earnings of a work-life of a mid-
class worker do not add up to something that would make a person rich, even if
100% of it is saved.

The other side of the coin is that mid-class life is pretty good, most of the
GP advice will lead to poverty much more often that it'll lead to wealth, and
the one important piece that is "create more" comes by responsible working.

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jdimov10
"Responsible working" is how you make other people rich.

Having fun and playing ("irresponsibly"), expressing your true essence, is the
only way to create ANY lasting value.

It is also the only way to create any wealth. The OTHER (much more common) way
that people get wealthy is by capitalizing on what others have created. Which
is fine with me (I'm all for the wonders of capitalism), but I prefer creating
my own wealth.

~~~
canicode
Most people get wealthy by working for other people. Depending on what you
call wealthy. 1-2M in investment accounts and a paid off home is very
affluent/wealthy to me.

Also, to say those people aren't creating wealth is very offensive.

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lazyjones
I liked the title (expecting advice to take care of your health), but was
disappointed by the "you are your job and your net worth" mentality. By that
measure, family, happiness, personal relationships are all distracting
liabilities and should probably be avoided. Or perhaps maximizing one's wealth
isn't a worthwhile goal after all and it's fine to reach a certain level of
financial security - as a means, not an end?

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danharaj
I think it's really gross to consider anyone an investment, a piece of 'human
capital'. I read a book recently by Wendy Brown, _Undoing the Demos_. It's
about how modern ideology tries to redefine human beings in this way: You are
capital which appreciates in value and gives you return on investment. All
other definitions of what a human being is ought to be subordinate to this
definition: Human as political creature is less important than human as
economic investment. Human as member of society is less important than human
competing in the free market. I found Brown's observations disturbing yet
plausible, but I never expected to see these pernicious ideas flagrantly
advocated in a mainstream newspaper.

It feels like the void is trying to suck my soul out of my body when I try to
think this way.

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laotzu
I wonder about the linguistic difference between the terms "human property"
and "human capital". One is synonymous with "slave" and one is synonymous with
"employee" and yet "property" and "capital" are virtually synonymous.

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kogepathic
> dcotors

> Tradtiional

Come on, NY Times, seriously? Is this the quality of journalism these days? At
least run a spell check on the article before you hit publish.

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muzakthings
Honest question, why does anyone care about spelling errors? They aren't even
grammatical errors; we know what they intended.

I'd rather they make spelling errors than factual ones, and I'd rather we
focus on teaching kids problem solving rather than memorizing sequences of
letters.

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solutionyogi
Thanks to software, it is extremely easy to not have spelling error. So if
they can't achieve this simple thing, how can I trust them to get the facts
right which requires significantly more effort? For an author I don't know, a
spelling error is a huge negative signal for me personally.

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hellofunk
Agreed. Journalism is about words. That's it. Words are the sole instrument in
print journalism (excluding photojournalism). If the words are wrong, then the
instrument is out of tune. No matter how great the musician, if he can't keep
his instrument maintained, then how are we to trust his abilities at music in
general?

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trymas
TL;DR: to make this work - IMHO you must also be 'money oriented'.

I would like to say that this is not always true ('invest in yourself' and
expand your bank account in such way).

Basically you must be 'money oriented'.

Looking into my university, there is a whole spectrum of people, who are all
invested in them selves more than 99.9% people in my country. But there are
professors who have some successful businesses, and also lecturers who are not
'money oriented' and just like academia, and there are some not so lucky
people, who maybe had some bad twists in their life, suffered depression,
etc., and just live a basic life.

It is probably to find something similar with people who are not so 'invested
in themselves'. There some well established folks and not so well..

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isolate
tl;dr

Step 1: Get a piece of paper.

Step 2: Work your ass off.

Step 3: Never retire.

Pretty sure society has been drilling this into us since preschool, but thanks
for the reminder.

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bertr4nd
I'm genuinely curious -- do many people with salaried jobs really have a "side
hustle"? I'd feel a bit guilty working on a side project for money when I'm
being paid as a fulltimer.

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trgn
I wonder the same. I rarely side hustle for money doing tech stuff, mostly
because I don't have enough mental energy left over after a full day of day-
job work.

I suppose for side-hustles it may help doing something that's somewhat removed
from your day job. Rental property comes to mind. It's fairly rote, it's
social, you can put in as much/little elbow grease in it as you like (barring
the rare emergency), but it does generate modest income, it's usually more
than just a "hobby".

A friend, who doesn't work in finance, is really into the stock market, spends
a lot of time on researching companies. That's a kind of side-hustle too I
suppose.

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sixpence
Many people doing this are not doing it _after_ a full day of work, they are
doing it _during_ their day job.

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cousin_it
Don't teach poor people how to outcompete other poor people. Instead, teach
them how to cooperate.

~~~
dagw
That sounds like a terrible idea if you're rich person... ;)

~~~
laotzu
>Now, what does all of this mean in this great period of history? It means
that we've got to stay together. We've got to stay together and maintain
unity. You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in
Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing it. What was that? He
kept the slaves fighting among themselves. But whenever the slaves get
together, something happens in Pharaoh's court, and he cannot hold the slaves
in slavery. When the slaves get together, that's the beginning of getting out
of slavery. Now let us maintain unity.

-MLK, last speech the night before assasination

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pitt1980
[http://radicalpersonalfinance.com/my-plan-for-how-i-would-
be...](http://radicalpersonalfinance.com/my-plan-for-how-i-would-become-a-
millionaire-with-a-minimum-wage-job-at-walmart-rpf0043/)

buried link in the story, seems more interesting than the story itself

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golergka
Why do comments here critisize this article as if it was life advice, when
this is not life advice, but life advice purely from investment standpoint?

Is a concept of "advice purely from a certain standpoint" too complex for HN
comments?

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laotzu
Life advice from an investment standpoint is life advice

~~~
taurath
Monetary investment is not equivalent to life investment.

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J_Darnley
Thanks but that asset is pretty worthless here.

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dschiptsov

       s/Asset/Startup/

