
Ask HN: What is your solution to Micheal Seibel's thought? - bsvalley
&quot;For many people, the longer they work at a big company making a large salary, the higher their personal expenses rise, and the lower their chances will be of starting a startup, even if that is their eventual goal.&quot;<p>How would you tackle this problem? I am in this exact scenario and indeed, Micheal is right.<p>(source: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.ycombinator.com&#x2F;why-should-i-start-a-startup&#x2F;)
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nostrademons
I actually haven't observed this in my own life - I saved a pretty consistent
80% of my take-home compensation the whole time I was at Google, and my
lifestyle now is basically the same as when I moved to California 8 years ago.
I know a handful of other people in the same position, as well as a fair
number of people whose expenses _did_ creep up to meet their income.

The common behavior among the people whose expenses didn't creep up: they
_decided_ , at an early age and when they were still poor, what sort of
lifestyle they needed to make themselves happy, and they didn't deviate from
that, regardless of whatever other messages society sends them.

Or in slightly different terms: build your lifestyle up from zero and default
to "No" when asking yourself "Do I need X?", rather than working you way down
from your current income and defaulting to "Yes" when asking yourself "Can I
afford X?"

Another side benefit of this approach is that it makes you immune to
advertising & scams, and tends to result in a lot less clutter around the
house. If your answer is always "No" unless you've sat on any decision for at
least a month, then everything that involves convincing you to open up your
wallet isn't going to get very far. (The downside is that you don't develop
much of a trade sense of what people will pay for, because you personally
won't pay for anything, which is a whole other sort of problem if you want to
found a startup.)

~~~
bsvalley
Living to work vs working to live. In your scenario I can see how you've
dedicated 8 years of your life to your employer. Would we really value "time"
in this case? 8 years is a lot of time living to work, getting all these perks
not spending any money at all. Not investing in real estate, etc. I feel like
you're living the entrepreneur life while being a full time employee at
Google.

It's a great backup plan to invest in real estate, build a family and enjoy
traveling once in a while. I don't want to wake up at 50y old single with a
large bank account. Cash isn't worth anything today.

~~~
nostrademons
It was actually only 5.5 years, the remaining 2.5 I've been working on a
startup (or 10). I agree that time is more important than money.

And for those 5.5 years, there wasn't anything more exciting than working at
Google. Once there was, I left and did it instead. I wasn't living to work, I
considered my work and my life to be part of the same inseparable whole.

(There's also a point here about not letting other peoples' definitions of
what's exciting or worthwhile influence you. I'm sure there are many people
who will say "How sad that the most exciting thing in your life is working for
a gigantic megacorp!" That's fine - they aren't living my life. I actually
thought that the scale of the computing power and complexity of algorithms
available to me was fascinating, and I joined them because I wanted to peek
under the hood and contribute to what they were doing, not because I needed
money.)

[Edit: your comment was edited slightly after I replied, not sure if this
makes any sense anymore. But responding to your edited version: if cash isn't
worth anything and you don't want to wake up with a large bank account, then
what's the problem? You _aren 't_ going to wake up with a large bank account
when you're 50, which means that you're living exactly the life you want to
live.]

~~~
bsvalley
In that case, that makes total sense.

