Coming at it from a different perspective, I did something similar to this by saving money on a US salary and then moving to a low cost of living country. I spent years at a time not working or even thinking about how to make money. I think almost everyone has felt the pain of financial and social obligation, but very few people have experience a total lack of such obligations for years at a time which leads to things like fantasizing about FU money.
I can tell you that for me personally I don't think it was ideal. Yes, at first the freedom is exhilarating, but it doesn't last forever. There were two big problems. One is that you feel disconnected from society. This is hard to explain but being outside of normal social structures you lose a sense of context and meaning to your actions. Second is that when you don't have any social or financial pressures it's hard to avoid the path of least resistance. It's very easy to fall into bad habits, just watching youtube, reading reddit, bad diet, etc.
I would assess myself as someone who would be less susceptible to these problems. I consider myself a fairly self-motivated person and definitely an introvert. But after several years it starts to weigh on you.
Today I work in an office. There are often times when it's hard and I have to deal with things I don't want to. But I still think it's better than when I wasn't working. I think if I never had the experience of not working I would probably only see the downsides of office life as the upside is quite abstract and hard for me to articulate. I don't think this is something unique to me, I think it's human nature to want social structure and this naturally comes with social obligations. But for most people not being constrained to social structures was never an option anyway so they underestimate how much it affects their happiness.
I work remotely and live in a low cost of living country, but find that's not very true for me. I always have my own projects and hobbies to work on, and I love working on them whenever I want to. I feel pretty motivated and fulfilled with that, so I don't get the feelings you mention.
Not having a job can sometimes feel like you don't have a long-term purpose, but I think that's mostly because we've been used to working, rather than any intrinsic thing. Besides, I don't know why having a long-term purpose at work is any more fulfilling than a long-term hobby.
I think the original post referred more to the social impacts of the situation to which I can relate to. You can indeed work on your own projects/hobbies but I find it's harder to find people to connect with if your situation is so different.
> You can indeed work on your own projects/hobbies but I find it's harder to find people to connect with if your situation is so different.
Aren't we just in a transitional period? Digital nomads are fairly normal by now, even though they're (currently) a minority. A growing number of countries have visas and residencies for these folks and this group organizes special events all the time.
Well, there's always a healthy option in the middle. I'm not exactly up to speed on what the pay is like in the USA (which is where I presume most of the users here hail from), but getting at least $3-4k is enough to work remotely from some place like Thailand or a small European country. You still get the benefit of a traditional-ish social life, where you "go" to work every day, talk to people and then have some time to go out. Except that salary that would get you a passable living in London, Seattle or whatever other expensive city you inhabit, could get you much farther in a poorer country.
I do realise that this only applies to those who CAN work remotely but that seems to be a large chunk of the userbase for HN.
With $3-4k you can live more than decently in 99% of Europe. Sure, it might not get you very far in the most expensive cities like Geneva, but otherwise you can can have anything between a very comfortable and a very lavish lifestyle. This is subjective, after all a luxury car or a top of the line Mac are just as expensive wherever you go. But for the amenities of regular life you really shouldn't worry about missing out on much when living in Europe on that kind of money.
More than comfortable if you don't have kids and don't expect to have your own flat. I live in London, and probably spend around £1200-1500/month total. Which is more than what some of my friends earn.
That amount in London is a bit of a problem if you live close to the city center due to housing prices. So you can either live close, not having the overhead of commutes, or live far away and then be better off financially but have the inconvenience of a commute.
Or a big EU country, just not a in a city. In Spain(/Portugal) you can live like a king (villa, swimming pool, huge garden, cars etc) on 3-4k/mo. And if you are an 'ok' coder, 3-4k/mo is not very hard to get remotely.
Send me an email (see my profile on HN) and let’s see. But for anyone else ; reliability is a huge issue. People do resume driven dev and job-hop; as a company you really do not want people like that. I would like people who want to work for some amount corrected with inflation for 20+ years. And the people who want that really have no issues finding work. The depressing ghosting when someone finds something for $1 more is the reason why most people think it is hard. I do not want those people and never did (company running for over 25 years).
You don't even have to go to Thailand, there are plenty of minor towns in western countries that are very cheap (usually because there aren't any good local jobs).
I wonder when it'll shift that people that can do remote work move to these towns specifically for the lower cost of living.
In my circle of friends who do usually work remote, there are a few that want to move to more rural areas. The number one concern is availability of broadband, which is just terrible in Germany. Further down is friends/family not being close and possibly sticking out very much. I don't think remoteness is an actual issue (because there really isn't remoteness anywhere in Germany, it's very densely populated, and saving a lot on rent & co might well offset the cost for a few hours of driving every other weekend to meet friends.
I also live in Germany! We're in Berlin and we only moved here in 2013 so we dont really care about the family/friends angle (we have no other relatives in Berlin & all of our friends here we've made in the last 7 years, so we could probably make new friends elsewhere easy enough).
You also don't have to go rural, there are plenty of mid sized towns with cheap housing prices (and often a university and/or other cultural institutes, like Halle or Cottbus).
My main concern is that while we don't really standout in Berlin, in a smaller town we will be considered more "exotic" & especially for our kids I'm afraid it will translate to mobbing in school.
> There were two big problems. One is that you feel disconnected from society. This is hard to explain but being outside of normal social structures you lose a sense of context and meaning to your actions. Second is that when you don't have any social or financial pressures it's hard to avoid the path of least resistance. It's very easy to fall into bad habits, just watching youtube, reading reddit, bad diet, etc.
This strikes me as an extraordinary failure of imagination. There are other communities that have nothing to do with money, and other activities that have nothing to do with work, or sitting at home on the internet.
I'm living in my van currently and once I finish pay off my debts, I'll have few expenses. I spend my time rock climbing and volunteering, and both these have communities around them that I'm deeply connected with. My goals these days are around rock climbing, guitar, and helping underprivileged people in my community gain more agency over their lives. I'm in better shape and eat better than most of my friends who work more than I do.
Sure, doing nothing isn't very enjoyable. So maybe when you quit your job, don't do nothing.
it’s true it indicates a failure of imagination, but i wouldn’t be so quick to make a personal indictment.
i, too, have been financially independent for the past year. past employer IPO. modest take.
for the past couple months, i’ve struggled with the same issue described by the OP.
for me, it’s a challenge of community. i spent so long living the silicon valley engineer lifestyle, along with others on that same track.
now, i find myself without community. in college, i dated liberal arts majors who live in co-ops, prioritize relationships, etc. i know they’re all out there in the world living out the type of life that remains a projection for me.
it just feels challenging to jump out of my self and my habits to start living a very different type of life.
this is my daily task. i understand it’s in my hands. my responsibility.
but feeling the acute challenge on a daily basis, i understand where the OP is coming from.
The decisions I've made in my life which I've looked back on the most positively were ones that were far outside my comfort zone, and I'm not going to pretend I did that on my own courage. In every case it's been because someone gave me a kick in the pants. Call it a "personal indictment" if you wish, but the intentions aren't to hurt the person, it's to motivate them.
>> There were two big problems. One is that you feel disconnected from society. This is hard to explain but being outside of normal social structures you lose a sense of context and meaning to your actions. Second is that when you don't have any social or financial pressures it's hard to avoid the path of least resistance. It's very easy to fall into bad habits, just watching youtube, reading reddit, bad diet, etc.
This strikes me as an extraordinary failure of imagination. There are other communities that have nothing to do with money, and other activities that have nothing to do with work, or sitting at home on the internet.
> I'm living in my van currently and once I finish pay off my debts, I'll have few expenses. I spend my time rock climbing and volunteering, and both these have communities around them that I'm deeply connected with. My goals these days are around rock climbing, guitar, and helping underprivileged people in my community gain more agency over their lives. I'm in better shape and eat better than most of my friends who work more than I do.
> Sure, doing nothing isn't very enjoyable. So maybe when you quit your job, don't do nothing.
If you're up for it, I'd very much like to hear more about the concrete steps you took to get where you are. Or some blog posts (haven't checked the link on your profile yet, so maybe they're already there?).
But what I can say is that your suggestion is just really fucking difficult to put into practice. For me, at least. While I've got a bunch of issues going on that legitimately do make all of this difficult, a more general problem is that I've found it so much easier to go and live in a van than I've found it to shed the behaviors that have defined me for almost a decade. There's progress: I'm at least noticing how much of what I do day to day just doesn't make sense anymore, but actually changing my behavior as a result of these observations has proven much more difficult than I expected.
Yeah, I apologize if I came across as saying this is easy: it's definitely not easy. I'd also be interested in hearing ways in which you've been successful in changing your lifestyle.
Getting into rock climbing has been huge for me. It's given me long-term goals, a community, fitness, and challenges to overcome that I care about.
I've also done a good job of removing addictions from my life. I don't have a Facebook account, and largely haven't gotten involved in most social media. In a sense, my biggest failure is that I'm here: detaching myself from social media has proven to be the biggest challenge in removing wastes of time from my life. There's some payoff here, but compared to the time I put into it, it's not a net gain.
I've also invested a lot of time in developing fewer, but deeper relationships. My friends now are people who show up for me and I show up for them and we're honest with each other (brutally so, in some cases). This is why a lot of my posts on HN get downvoted; I've come to believe that attempts to soften negative feedback just cause it to not be heard--it's kinder to be a bit harsh than to understate problems.
Volunteering has been a big thing for me, although I'm less involved right now (focusing on adjusting to some big life changes I've made). Helping other people has given me a big sense of community and purpose.
> Yeah, I apologize if I came across as saying this is easy: it's definitely not easy. I'd also be interested in hearing ways in which you've been successful in changing your lifestyle.
So far it's been really difficult. I don't want to excuse it by arguing that my (high-functioning) autism and OCD/anxiety issues make it really difficult to make changes in general, but they do play a role.
That said, your experience sounds solid to me and I've actually been really interested in rock climbing specifically. Any way I could ask you for advice/input outside of this public forum? If yes, you can find my email in my profile.
EDIT: I'll add that it's the volunteering part that makes me want to talk more. My late teens up until my mid-twenties were defined by various forms of volunteering, and I seriously considered becoming a 'professional' volunteer (priest/monk). so it's close to my heart but far away from my current-day practice.
EDIT2: for the benefit of anyone reading along, zen, mindfulness, and taking all my problems less seriously and focusing on fundamentals (diet, exercise, friendships) have had the most positive impact by far! Therapy too, for the stuff that all the previous stuff can't fix (and crucially, not giving up after the first therapist who only made my situation worse. finding a therapist you 'click' with is, as far as current knowledge is concerned, the best predictor of effective therapy)!
It may be a failure of imagination but it is far from extraordinary unfortunately. It is a rare situation which receives little training, thought, or societal institutions. For millenia following was largely the only viable defeat essentially. Even nobility who became divorced from occupying duties had the same issues with use of idle time. The "Gentleman Scientest" or successful activist/reformer or similiar people who used their time wisely were the extraordinary ones even among the already extraordinary very small pool of privledged idle rich.
I can only conclude that failure of imagination is unfortunately not only ordinary but the default.
I could have written this exact comment. Hits the nail on the head. There is something unique about working in a job, collectively - with other people - on something that imbues your work with purpose. It doesn't feel like if you give up tomorrow, it was all for naught, because someone else will pick up the baton. I have a feeling this communal work is to some degree evolutionarily baked in.
> Coming at it from a different perspective, I did something similar to this by saving money on a US salary and then moving to a low cost of living country. I spent years at a time not working or even thinking about how to make money. I think almost everyone has felt the pain of financial and social obligation, but very few people have experience a total lack of such obligations for years at a time which leads to things like fantasizing about FU money.
While I haven't fantasized much about that, I'd say the past half decade has been very similar to what you describe.
> I can tell you that for me personally I don't think it was ideal. Yes, at first the freedom is exhilarating, but it doesn't last forever. There were two big problems. One is that you feel disconnected from society. This is hard to explain but being outside of normal social structures you lose a sense of context and meaning to your actions.
Thanks a ton for putting that into words and making me feel less isolated about having similar feelings! In my interactions with family and friends, I often felt guilty somehow about not sharing their day-to-day concerns. I was relatively frugal generally, but I'd just buy whatever I wanted. Going to a supermarket with them was frustrating and somewhat embarrassing, because they'd hunt for the cheap stuff. Or sometimes they'd 'indulge' and their indulgence was something that just wouldn't register for me as anything noteworthy if I'd be shopping by myself.
We'd talk about future prospects (a number of them working in the 'service industry') and I would hide the fact that for me these issues were not on my mind at all. Not because I'm rich by any means, but because I get messages and calls from recruiters on a weekly basis, and could potentially make more in three months than they would in a year.
> Second is that when you don't have any social or financial pressures it's hard to avoid the path of least resistance. It's very easy to fall into bad habits, just watching youtube, reading reddit, bad diet, etc.
My 'saving grace', I suppose, has been a constant desire to keep learning and an anxiety-driven need to 'stay up to date in my field'. But I definitely lost a lot of my 'fire' and self-improvement and goal-setting once I was good enough to just get work without even looking for it.
> I would assess myself as someone who would be less susceptible to these problems. I consider myself a fairly self-motivated person and definitely an introvert. But after several years it starts to weigh on you.
Same here. I've had an unusual life and had an unusual amount of freedom to be an auto-didact and develop skills that will probably allow me to be 'okay' no matter what (barring life's usual curve-balls). As much as I don't want to complain about that luxury, there's a weird feeling of isolation that results from it. A sort of "what's the point when nobody around me shares my (privileged?) concerns?" as well as a sense of "I feel I have an obligation to use this unique privilege for good but I don't know how". In my case, anyways.
> Today I work in an office. There are often times when it's hard and I have to deal with things I don't want to. But I still think it's better than when I wasn't working. I think if I never had the experience of not working I would probably only see the downsides of office life as the upside is quite abstract and hard for me to articulate. I don't think this is something unique to me, I think it's human nature to want social structure and this naturally comes with social obligations. But for most people not being constrained to social structures was never an option anyway so they underestimate how much it affects their happiness.
Not putting your choice down at all; it's often entered my mind, I can't help but feel like somehow that would be a kind of defeat. Sure, lots of it is probably good, but maybe there's a creative way to get all that without the downsides? Is that maybe the challenge to face?
Again, no judgment. I've never been less happy than I've been since I reached my situation of 'freedom' and the guilt over not feeling really happy and content about it. I have often considered just getting a 'regular' job again.
I'm 31 and have never had a job. I started freelancing when I was 18 - more by necessity than by choice - and continued doing that throughout my six years of college.
There is something to be said about having "unordinary" experiences - it cuts you off from your peer group. My part-time freelancing through college meant that I was often too busy to do the things college kids do - party, join bands, etc.
Later, when I started freelancing full-time, my friends would talk about their bosses, applying for jobs, building up careers, etc. and I would just nod my head and attempt to understand but I couldn't. I've never had bosses - or even bad clients - and my idea of career has basically evolved into a series of gradually better/bigger gigs and projects.
I'm very independent person and can get by perfectly fine being completely alone. But I imagine that someone more extroverted and social than me would have felt a little too alienated living a life so different than their peer group.
When the pandemic struck earlier this year, a couple of my key clients dropped their budgets or held off on decision making. So I took that time as a "break". This devolved into eating too much, working out too little, and sleeping at odd hours - all great stuff for a week or two, but extremely grating after a month.
It's a romantic idea - a life without boundaries or bosses - but it's not something everyone is cut out for, nor is it something I would recommend everyone to follow.
I can't answer for the parent comment, but after working just when I wanted to for 20 years (onsite at Google and Capital One were the only exceptions in a 20 year period), I finally decided to really retire March 2019 (except I still write).
My diet is even better now because I have time to cook real meals following a hybrid of Dr. Fuhrman/macrobiotic diets. I bought weights, and hike/walk an average of 90 minutes a day, and except for worrying occasionally about how family and friends are doing with covid-19, life is peaceful and fun.
One thing that I think is vital is having goals. For me that is spiritual development and studying specific tech, programming languages, etc. I have been an artificial intelligence practitioner since the 1980s but I have very little experience with probabilistic programming, graph models, etc. My goal for the next year is kicking my knowledge up a few levels. These are the only goals I have, and that is enough for me.
I've heard this before but I don't trust it. Is it just a statistical measure? If so I think it's way more likely they're retiring because they're ill.
My wife and I have probably hit a point where if we really wanted to we could cash in and probably just go the grid for the rest of our lives. We're not rich, but we've put together a plan where it would be possible to do this if either of us ever really said "fuck it".
The anxiety really comes when we start thinking about old age. Where dipping back into the workforce if we needed to is not really possible and unexpected expenses are likely. So I guess it's keeping to the grind to build as much of a safety net for those days as we can until we really decide to pull the trigger.
We both know enough people who are "independently poor" and seem to make it day to day without too much fuss in the short term. But almost all those same people we know end up in catastrophic financial emergencies over the longer term due to unexpected expenses they can't surge their finances to meet. For us it just means we don't put as much away for retirement for a paycheck. For them we've seen evictions, garnished wages, divorce, ruined credit, bankruptcy, and so on. It's a vicious cycle that starts with being relatively expensive and ends up being ruinous.
Sounds like old age medical expenses is the biggest fear - have you all considered emigrating to a country with govt provides healthcare to address that possibility?
Due to family (wife and in-laws), probably South Korea. As per the recent COVID-19 situation, and some minor personal experience, their health care system is quite good and efficient. Housing isn't unreasonable by our standards (but it can be expensive for some people), food, transportation, internet access, etc. are all relatively cheap, high quality, and plentiful. We also have a built in network of family and friends there so we could get situated quickly.
Spain is in consideration as well due to universal health care, low cost of living, great food and climate, and a big expat English speaking community. However, it's generally harder to get some Korean food stuffs that my wife and I would enjoy and we don't know the language, culture or territory as well.
Thanks to covid, I have experienced how it must be to not have fu money.
I'm not entirely sure why, but many companies are now hoping to take advantage of the rise in unemployment by trying to lock in highly skilled workers at a low salary. The way those job offers were presented, it seemed like they were feeling like my savior in a shining armor for offering job openings in these challenging times. But they were asking for lots of experience, unpaid overtime, yet offered less than what I currently make for part-time. Their main argumentation point was that it's better to be underpaid than to be unemployed.
I assume that that's how most people who don't have fu money are treated, because they are not in a situation that allows them to negotiate. But of course, accepting such an offer might prevent you from accumulating a safety deposit in the future.
Maybe the best way is to go with Aladdin: If you don't have anything, act like you own everything.
That is what people usually call the law of supply and demand. Your salary is not a function of your skill but of how rare they are on the market relative to the number of job opening.
Judging from the number of offers I got in recent weeks, it seems the number of job openings currently is higher than before. Shouldn't that drive up prices?
If those openings stay open for a long time, perhaps. In the short term it says more about how many people are looking vs how many people they've evaluated/interviewed/hired/rejected.
Thanks for pointing that out :) I completely hadn't thought about the rejection rate as a factor. But given that I rejected them, too, maybe there's so many openings purely because they are bad offers.
More generally - take the best job you can, then keep looking and take a better job when you find one. Hopefully you'll end up looking a long time before you find a better one (meaning that your current job is relatively great).
I think this applies always, regardless of the pandemic.
I can't know what the poster was thinking obviously ... but what I took the comment to mean was, within the context of the actual article, they were happy that they now have FU money .. and absolutely can say "no".
Then the comment was them imparting a personal story framed by what they assume the employer's thought process was. And how they were happy to be privileged enough to have reached FU Money.
The fact that you say "it seems nobody is being forced in to anything" I think is kinda missing the point of the (imho substandard whingey) rant the posted link actually was. I mean, it articulates (poorly) how people are/feel forced in to accepting such situations.
Yes, you perfectly explained what I was trying to say. With enough distance and financial safety, it is easy to be rational and reject such an offer. But I can understand how people might become irrational and accept such an offer, despite it being objectively not too good.
Two can play that game, leaving the second there is a better offer is a just way to reward companies that are taking advantage of the current climate.
If you don't have a safety net though, the companies are right, it is better to be underpaid than unemployed (assuming the payment is still higher than any unemployment benefits you can get).
A more charitable way to look at it is that there are many companies that need programmers but can’t afford market salaries anchored by mega corps who make their money by outlying economies of scale.
Not saying that’s the truth of the matter, but it’s a perspective you might consider on a case-by-case basis.
I agree in general, but I should have made it more clear just how low some of these offers were.
If their full-time salary is too low for me to keep an average apartment in a slightly rural village, then I'm not sure who can do the work and have a normal life. Kids living in their parent's basement? But they would lack the requested experience...
Good article - Everyone needs to learn the amount of money that they need to become independent. As the author says, it can be as little as a couple of dollars in some situations for some people. Learning about the concept of financial independence really made a big positive impact on my career as it allowed me to walk away from toxic work situations.
I feel like being poor has lost a lot of its negative stigma.
These days I find myself casually letting people know that I'm poor in order to get more favorable treatment.
There are so many highly skilled poor people these days that there is not so much stigma around it. Being poor is basically a natural state for the vast majority of people in their 20s to 40s. My ex-colleagues often discuss how little money they have and how hard they struggle to find jobs. This is a totally normal conversation.
It's always been a totally normal conversation, at least where I live (the UK), for the last few decades.
I had a colleague who complained that he couldn't reasonably be expected to live on his pitiful salary, which turned out to be £80k (about $120k, adjusted for inflation).
When I was living in the US, I used to enjoy hearing people talk about "being rich." (To understand this circumlocution, the reader must understand that they're all "middle class" over there.) The most egregious instance was when I was talking with someone in a VIP tent, watching her pro jumping her horse over fences in a competition. She'd made some kind of comment about how she was different from the people she had just been talking about, "because they have money." When I asked what she would do if she had money, she replied that she wasn't sure, but maybe she would "get a jet."
I don’t know if this is tangential or completely related to this article, but at some point I realized the greatest thing I could have was the freedom to change everything about my life at any given moment. I realized that unless I had that freedom, I was never really free. Now, every choice I make is colored by question: if I make this choice, what choices do I lose? How can I make a choice that keeps me from losing any choices.
The unexpected side benefit of this is that if I’m ever in doubt of what I’m doing with my life, I am free to consider changing things, and if I don’t, then I know that I am doing exactly what I want to do. It’s a way to contentment that is almost objective.
By limiting yourself to choices that do not cause loss of choice in the future, are you still free to choose anything? You value this freedom so much that you limit the choices you can make significantly only to retain this freedom, but unless you "cash in" that freedom at some point to make a choice without restrictions (which will probably limit your freedom of choice in the future) you are living with a limited choice-space just the same.
I really sympathize with this and feel this way too although sometimes I feel paralyzed by too much choice, and that can make it harder to make "big" decisions, like buying a house, etc.
When life gives you lemons, do everything you can to sell them at a profit so you don't have to touch those nasty yellow fruits ever again. Congrats to the author for gaining independence and forging her path out.
I briefly experienced "freedom" for a few months where I just stopped paying my bills(no expenses). This was dumb later on eg. cc law suits/tanked credit score. But I had the ability to do so(friends/cheap housing/internet access). I learned how to build full stack websites, I was chasing the dream(high traffic ad-revenue based websites). Meanwhile was in the process of failing out of school/fear of how I would pay my student loans. It was great because I had no reason to do anything eg. get up by 9AM/pay a bill at this day. I could chase some rabbit hole and just keep going even if my sleep pattern was flipped. I could sleep 16 hrs straight.
But yeah I'm going for FiRe I'm still broke af despite making a lot for my area. But I'm at least glad I am in this industry/aware of a lifestyle like that.
edit: I would not advise screwing up your cc haha... it's too bad I didn't learn that till later/too late.
> I also really like the scene in Titanic where the rich guy tries to buy his way into a lifeboat and gets told his money won't be worth anything at the bottom of the ocean.
In reality of course, first class passengers were more than twice as likely to survive as third class ones.
In reality of course, first class passengers were more than twice as likely to survive as third class ones.
I'm reasonably sure that's because the gates to third class were locked to keep them off the decks and not because first class passengers were successfully bribing staff to let them onto the life boats. So, for me, it doesn't diminish the power of the scene.
The original piece that this was based upon was written at a time when my bank account was locked up for a month by creditors. I was homeless in downtown San Diego, surrounded by modern wealth, and the only cash I had access to was change found on the street and sidewalk as I walked around during the day.
A similar vignette would be a story I remember reading about a plane crash where they ended up burning large quantities of cash to try to avoid freezing to death in the snow-covered mountains.
I was enduring something extreme. It was a tremendous head fuck and I was doing my best to wrap my mind around it. It wasn't easy to come up with similar examples from literature to which other people might relate at all and people tend to think I'm exaggerating when I talk about the facts of my life. They think I'm being a drama queen to state things that happen to be true for me and try to convey what it's like to experience it.
I remember being in a women's day shelter and someone else who was homeless was waving about a five dollar bill and I had no money and no means to get any money and I don't know how to describe how bizarre that was that even other homeless people were so much more comfortably well off than I was that they didn't feel some need to hide that five dollar bill and protect it from the other poor people around them.
And it's like "Just how can anyone in the US be so extremely cut off from money like that in the midst of so much wealth?" But there I was.
And I'm not the only person who is invisibly cut out. Plenty of people can walk past the table where America lays a feast for some, but not others, and they aren't invited to partake and if they touch it they will go to jail for theft. A lot of those other people are People of Color and they serve the feast, but aren't allowed to eat any of it.
The barriers that keep people out are weird and "magical" in that they are invisible and intangible in certain important ways and they run deep. And all these years later, I still don't know how to speak of it effectively as is clearly demonstrated by the numerous scoffing comments in this very discussion.
No, that's a complete myth, probably propagated by the Titanic movie. Third-class women (& children of course) were MORE likely to survive than a male in First-class.
First-class men were about twice as likely to survive as third-class men, and first-class women were about twice as likely to survive as third-class women.
For those that are interested, here are the survival rates, broken down by men/women/children in first/second/third-class/crew: https://www.anesi.com/titanic.htm
"'On 14 April 1912, Benjamin Guggenheim, Solomon’s younger brother, found himself on board the Titanic, and, as the ship started sinking, he was one of those who helped women and children onto the lifeboats, withstanding the frenzy, and at times the brutality, of other male passengers. Then, when his steward was ordered to man one of the boats, Guggenheim took his leave, and asked him to tell his wife that ‘no woman was left on board because Ben Guggenheim was a coward’. And that was it. His words may have been a little less resonant, but it really doesn’t matter; he did the right, very difficult thing to do. And so, when a researcher for Cameron’s 1997 _Titanic_ unearthed the anecdote, he immediately brought it to the scriptwriters’ attention: what a scene. But he was flatly turned down: too unrealistic. The rich don’t die for abstract principles like cowardice and the like. And indeed, the film’s vaguely Guggenheim-like figure tries to force his way onto a lifeboat with a gun.'
Now, here come the interesting questions. When the scriptwriters did rule out the inclusion of this scene, did they do so because they thought the audience would consider it implausible? Because they themselves despised the rich so much that they did not want to concede even one of them the moral high ground? Because they feared their movie would be considered capitalist propaganda, if they included Ben Guggenheim as a hero?"
Thanks for writing an important piece. I had shit hit the fan before and wound up in being a begger that thought they could not choose and getting burned and being a begger that made hard choices and sacrifice for a long term goal. There is a lot we can do without to end vicious cycles of being vulnerable and being preyed upon. I completely agree with your comment of clarification that you to sort your shit truly out you must be choosey
The article though is not advocating to live in poverty, but rather to live with just the right amount of FU Money to be able to make free choices. After this threshold the perspective if one is rich of poor becomes one of mindset and not so much based on the superficial metric of one's net worth.
This is fair if you think freedom is the most important thing. Having more money has real objective benefits and most people are fine with giving up some freedom to have those benefits.
It’s understandable why a regular member of society would feel that way - but as someone recently wanting to go the entrepreneurship route I have a different take
I wish I could live on the bare minimum and not mind doing things like living off food stamps and clipping coupons, and had a partner in the same mindset. That would open up so many options and increase my runway so much!
But as it is, I’ve never had to go through that and would never want to put my partner through that, so I have to make do with a higher minimum bar
My experience with various donation-themed money collectors is they don't go far without active promotion. The problem I had with Ko-fi is they run right through to your PayPal account, and PayPal likes to flag payments through Ko-fi as requiring shipping. After a while I had to manually set "doesn't need shipping info" on every one, and it wouldn't release the funds for weeks. It's easy to get people to send by PayPal because PayPal is easy, but Stripe requires getting a card out. Donations cratered the moment I turned PayPal off.
As much as Patreon frustrates me for a long list of reasons, it's low-pain on both ends since it handles the link between payment and your bank account. The numbers are smaller, but people stick around and don't expect anything extra from you. Even if they pick a benefit-having tier.
I made an account on Buy Me A Coffee, but it seemed like a less refined Ko-fi and I wasn't sure if I missed something.
Given that the link was broken, I am thinking I may put it back on various sites of mine as an option and see if it works. I still don't have enough income yet and having more payment gateways seems to open up options for people to pay how they prefer.
I prefer PayPal for tips (and Patreon for something I can count on at the start of every month), but if that means some people aren't tipping who would if there was another payment gateway, then I am leaving money on the table. That's something I can ill afford to do given how cash strapped I routinely am the last half of every single month.
The main problem with this blend of "liberating experiences" is that they are all fine and dandy when you're in your 20s and 30s.
When health concerns start to kick in and your ability to generate income is hampered by the fact that you've decided to pay no attention to your career then that's where the consequences of your decisions start to catch up with you.
It's like those hedonists who choose to spend their life up to their late 20s/early 30s chasing parties while either living off someone else or barely generating any income suddenly need to realize they are powerless to address their basic needs.
You speak of health concerns down the road, but I have concerns over the health of my soul right now. I do not want to get to old age and realize that I've just been doing pointless shit for money my whole life, just to stay safe, meanwhile building someone's stupid dream instead of my good dream.
Where are those advertising campaigns I worked on so hard, putting in extra hours to hit the arbitrary deadlines? Gone, forever forgotten.
Where is that loan lifecycle management application I put so much effort into? How has it helped the world? It hasn't. I helped someone else funnel money into financial instruments.
When someone asks me what I did with my life, will I say that I helped a brand sell more product? That I did very thorough testing of ad delivery components to ensure that the tracking was reliable? That I helped increase conversions by 30% by optimizing the UI?
I don't think getting more help with health issues down the road is a worthwhile tradeoff for all this. It sounds like fear-guided. Yet medical industry cannot help with most situations when body is already damaged. They can only help with symptoms, and often poorly. Having seen relatives through it, I would like to avoid it as much as possible.
Many health issues are developed from not enough sleep, over-work, and over-stress. I believe that if I am careful, I can actually live longer AND better by not sacrificing my health for jobwork. I really like that quote by IIRC His Holiness the Dalai Lama, which goes like this: people trade their health for money, then try to use money to get their health back. I don't want to live that life.
It's nice to have enough time for a party or two, it's unhealthy to not go to one occasionally, IMO.
> You speak of health concerns down the road, but I have concerns over the health of my soul right now. I do not want to get to old age and realize that I've just been doing pointless shit for money my whole life, just to stay safe, meanwhile building someone's stupid dream instead of my good dream.
That's where the hedonism road leads you, but whose trip just takes you 20 to 30 years instead of 60 or 70 or 80.
The ant and the grasshopper fable was written down by Aesop over 2 thousand years ago. This isn't new. Just because you come up with an excuse about "soul health" that doesn't mean that you aren't volunteering to enter a world of pain by neglecting your livelihood and ability to generate income.
And please do realize you do have influence over your career. If you chose to work on uninspiring projects them... Don't, and instead search for projects that you feel are more rewarding. Demand for skilled developers is so high that anyone remotely competent has to fend off recruiters lining up to pay salaries that are way above any nation's median wage.
You've then misunderstood what "FU money" means. It doesn't mean you disregard money, on the contrary. It means you have enough money to make the choices you're happy with. Most common case being you don't have to do work that makes you unhappy. I think this was laid out in the article well enough.
In the same vein "FU paperwork" should mean you have powerful enough paperwork to disregard some annoyances in life. It does not mean you can skip doing paperwork.
>>In other words, I had a degree of independence and agency that you normally only see in the Jet Set -- people who get called independently wealthy -- or comfortably well-off retirees. I had more control over my time and my life than your typical working stiff.
No offense, but I would not attribute any sense of freedom or higher degree of control in one's life to receiving alimony. What happens if/when the ex-spouse prematurely dies or has their bank account hacked?
>> At one time while I was homeless, relatives helped me deal with some of my financial drama
>> I was able to resist such pressures and make decisions for myself, including moving my bank account at a later date on terms that made more sense for me, because I had some maneuvering room in the form of food stamps and knowing where I could get a free meal or free clothes. Food stamps didn't cover some essential nonfood items that we needed and couldn't get from a homeless services center, specifically peroxide and plastic cups, but we made more of an effort to get better at finding change on the street and we used that to buy those essentials at some local "dollar" store.
This article is a good example of a "First World Problem". Before jumping to conclusions, let me explain. There is world of a difference between being homeless in a first world country and a third world country. This article completely discounts that. Food stamps, bank accounts are something 'poor' can only find in first world countries.
>> Join reward programs, clip coupons, etc.
>> Check Reddit for pertinent subreddits for meeting your needs cheaply.
To access Reddit you first need a device AND an internet connection AND you need to be literate.
>> Ultimately, I concluded that being able to choose wasn't really about money per se but was about maneuvering room. Yes, having sufficient resources helps, but making choices in life and exercising free will is not directly related to how much or how little money a person has. It helps if you have some confidence you won't starve or otherwise experience catastrophe, but that isn't about money per se.
It completely discounts any family members that may be disabled and maybe completely reliant on you for making ends meet. Have you ever seen a slum?(if not, then you probably won't get the point). This doesn't even touch the surface of what real problems most of the world in poor countries face. I don't blame the author for she has probably not been to a third world country but I do not agree with the above points.
I'm disabled and the primary provider for my family of three, which includes two disabled sons. I absolutely didn't want to be poor. I'm still poor and I hate every minute of it. I wish desperately that I had more money and I am doing all in my power to resolve my problems and this has been true for years.
"First world problem" or not, being homeless in a first world country is still a very real problem. Among other things, people who are homeless die at much younger ages on average than people who are housed.
People who experience homelessness have an average life expectancy of around 50 years of age, almost 20 years lower than housed populations.
So homelessness is literally killing people. I do what I can to provide useful information, both for those on the street/at risk of homelessness and for those interested in finding effective solutions. My knowledge comes from first-hand experience -- having spent nearly six years homeless -- as well as formal education on the topic of homelessness.
For the record, I'm a woman. So I'm a "ma'am," not a "sir," if you want to know the correct term with which to express your contempt while pretending to be respectful.
Thank you for writing. Please don't be offended by what I am going to say.
So, what you write about yourself is only proving gp's point. Amount of social support you receive is on par with 1-st world countries. Which of course doesn't mean you are not poor and your situation isn't tough. In most ways, you are not priveleged.
It is just another dimension of poor that gp is talking about. Where watermelon is not a cost-effective measure, but a luxury.
Sounded strange and offensive, but your perspective sure sounds strange to others.
I'm not offended. I will note their remark was edited after I replied and I have no idea if you saw the original. My remark was not edited.
Sometimes, if you don't see the exchange "live" as it happens, you don't really know what people were reacting to and when people edit their own comments and don't annotate the edits as such, it can cause replies to come across weirdly and make no sense to people reading the comments later.
I feel like initial responses understood why I replied the way I did and later replies didn't. I can't help but suspect the unannotated edits are a factor in that shift.
I've hardly slept. I'm trying to step away from this discussion because I feel I've said plenty and there's probably little upside but lots of downside to me continuing to react to things on too little sleep etc.
I am not discounting the fact that you have problems in your life. I know what it means to be poor because I have been poor in a 3rd world country.
>> People who experience homelessness have an average life expectancy of around 50 years of age, almost 20 years lower than housed populations
There are kids literally dying because they don't have access to healthcare.
>> formal education on the topic of homelessness
There are millions if not billions of people who can't read or write their names.
I am not blaming you for your situation, life can be difficult sometimes and it literally sucks to be in that position despite of all your efforts. I can empathize with your situation but I simply cannot agree with certain parts of the article.
I dunno why your being so harsh. It's not a competition on who who had the most dreadful circumstances. FYI, the average life expectancy in Papua New Guinea is 64. Homelessness, even in a first world country, is objectively a bad situation to be in regardless.
I am thankful to the author for sharing her reality with me. I appreciate her lucidity which is a huge asset I think.
>> Ultimately, I concluded that being able to choose wasn't really about money per se but was about maneuvering room. Yes, having sufficient resources helps, but making choices in life and exercising free will is not directly related to how much or how little money a person has. It helps if you have some confidence you won't starve or otherwise experience catastrophe, but that isn't about money per se.
I am not being harsh just highlighting the fact that there are a lot of implicit assumptions being made in the article wherein most of the population of the world in poor countries simply don't have the freedom to do so.
The piece states pretty early on that it was being written for a forum I run on Reddit called Gig Works. It is aimed primarily at Americans looking for alternative work arrangements and at people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness in the US because they are twice exceptional or have other barriers to regular employment.
It promotes the idea that not only can beggars be choosers, they need to be if they are ever to resolve their problems. This was a theme of my first homeless blog that was written while I was in actual fact homeless. (I'm not currently.)
I've been on Hacker News for eleven years, so some people recognize my name and know some of my back story. A previous version of this article, which is no longer available to the public, did surprisingly well a few years ago. Since it is no longer available, I reposted the updated version because I figured it might be of some interest to some people here.
I have two sons who tend to be pretty literal and as children they would say things like "You are too heavy for me to pick up -- unless we are in water or if we were on the moon...etc." Most people aren't that literal and I gave plenty of contextual cues in the piece as to whom I am trying to speak to.
You are rebutting a phantom argument where, in your mind, I am speaking to people who literally cannot read my words due to a combination of lack of internet access and lack of literacy and lack of knowledge of the English language. Most people don't think that's a reasonable argument to make since it's a pretty obvious fact that my blog post isn't being written with the idea that those people will be reading the piece and taking any advice from me.
About a third of Americans have not paid their rent/mortgage this month. There is a global pandemic on and articles are predicting that upwards of 20 million Americans will be evicted between now and September.
It may not be anything you care about because there are people in worse straits, but it's a very big problem for the US currently.
I'm in no position to help illiterate people in third world countries who have no internet access. I am in a position to help Americans who find themselves in dire straits all of a sudden due to a global pandemic or due to personal factors unrelated to the pandemic.
Those are the kinds of people I hope to reach. There is zero intent to lecture illiterate people in third world countries who lack internet access. That is so far outside of my intentions, that it "goes without saying." So it wasn't said.
> if you want to know the correct term with which to express your contempt while pretending to be respectful.
I didn't hear any contempt at all in what they were saying. Nothing like it. I was disappointed to read that, as you usually stay respectful, but that crosses way over the line well into Please don't do this on HN territory.
It's not exactly an implicit assumption. The message was only intended for those who can receive it. Otherwise we get into a weird situation in which humans are trying to communicate with jellyfish through waves and light patterns to get them out of poverty. The message clearly wasn't meant to save every single living being from poverty.
I find it very easy to understand where parent commenter is coming from. Even though this may not be obvious, this is very much a competition. A competition for attention, for emotional support, or simply for validation. And when you've experienced the neglect, being ignored by society and generally the experience of homelessness or any other terrible circumstances, and see someone with better circumstances getting support and help, it should naturally lead to a feeling of anger, unfairness (whether conscious or not).
This is what's happening here. Also, all the comments complaining of "whataboutism", "not true scotsman" and so on show a profound lack of empathy with this commenter. You're complaining that this commenter is not showing empathy to OP, when no-one is showing any empathy to his (or other people's) harsher circumstances.
You must be misunderstanding the nature of poverty if you think so. Someone with better circumstances is by definition getting better support and help than someone with worse circumstances otherwise their circumstances would not be better. The more help you get the richer you are and there is no upper bound to that but if you don't get enough help that's when you are poor. I like the literacy example. Someone who learned to read and write at a school received more help than someone who didn't go to school. Now extend this to high school, university and all the job experience you got during your career. Someone who has gotten more help is not always deserving less help, especially if they can use that help to support themselves and free up or contribute resources to help others.
If you think this is a zero sum game then diverting that attention to someone else will not solve poverty. One person will become poorer, the other will become less poor. The "real" loser is one who believes in zero sum thinking.
Even in a first world country:
1. Be homeless.
2. Have diarrhea
3. Try finding a bathroom. Don't forget that many people in populated cities are going to take one look at you and prejudices are going to shoot up.
Now throw in Covid.
Welcome to hell.
Being homeless is excruciating no matter the country.
People get literally murdered simply because they are homeless and for no other reason. Health problems that would be readily and easily treated if you were in housing turn into medical emergencies on the street.
I'm well aware that correlation does not imply causality. But I also know for a fact that homelessness helps shorten lifespans.
And in the US, even if it were the case that we simply dump our dying on the streets instead of providing hospice, that would be plenty atrocious right there. And we do, in fact, do a certain amount of that. But that's not the entire explanation for the statistic.
Homelessness alone is only a small factor for that drop in life expectancy. Lack of social bonds is probably way bigger (of course, you probably don't end up homeless if you have strong bonds). There's ample research and evidence showing the lowered life expectancy of housed people with few social connections.
I wrote a different piece on the same site that talks about homelessness as social death.
Homelessness is not and has never been purely about a lack of physical shelter. Articles on the topic routinely make a distinction between "homeless" and "unsheltered homeless."
Plenty of homeless people find shelter for the night. So being literally out in the weather all the time is not, per se, the entire definition of homelessness and it never was.
There are many, many ways in which lacking a home -- a fixed address with a sense of belonging -- negatively impacts health.
There are obvious direct effects that real estate ownership has on health. Homes provide protection from extreme heat and cold. They provide protection from.rain and pollution. They provide a relatively clean environment
Most homeless people are forced into the equivalent of leaving their bed sheets out for people to walk over all day long, then wrapping themselves up tightly in those bed sheets each night, while also eating food that has been thrown away.
>To access Reddit you first need a device AND an internet connection AND you need to be literate.
That's an incredibly low barrier. Homeless people are merely people without homes. Compare the cost of a smartphone and mobile internet to how much you would have to spend on rent to cease being homeless. Let's be extremely reckless and just get an iPhone Xs plan for $60 per month including 20GB worth of data. Even the most expensive option is basically less than 10% of my rent. It's easy to find a prepaid smartphone for $200-$300 that will be equally useful as the iPhone, last you at least 6 years and you can charge the balance up by going to a retail store where you can simply pay with cash.
Although I agree that literacy is priceless it's probably not 100% required with a modern smartphone. You can probably use voice commands and watch videos and listen to podcasts.
>This doesn't even touch the surface of what real problems most of the world in poor countries face.
Poor countries only have themselves to blame. The real problem they face is primarily the result of government incompetence or corruption and conflicts between countries. In a globalized world prosperity is coming to everyone that is embracing it.
Slums are the result of the poor showing their willpower to pull themselves out of their misery but they are usually prevented by government policy to make their dreams come true. Tent cities in San Francisco are truly worthy of being called slums because their root cause is exactly the same.
I personally think your argumentation is weird. (Don't feel bad about this) You classify homelessness in the US (or any other developed country) as a "First World Problem" because it does not compare to "true poverty" experienced in "truly poor" countries. The implication is that we should be glad that poverty in the US is this "insignificant" but therein lies the paradox. If it's truly insignificant then why should homelessness/poverty as we know it exist at all? People somehow think that the poor should suffer as if they have received a punishment that they badly deserved but yet the poor should also feel good about themselves because it could be even worse. All of this is merely a justification to not help anyone. What you are doing is the same thing you accuse the author of doing. The author isn't thinking about people poorer than her but what about you? Are you thinking about people poorer than you (such as the author)? No, you aren't, not even after reading one article from a poor person.
This so much. It felt so weird that this person was talking about poverty and blogging/reading on the internet at the same time.
Few poor people in the third world would know what blogging even is, forget about even wasting precious resources like time, money for a smartphone and an internet connection just to read/write some ideas which few are ever going to read and you won’t be making anything out of.
This feels like being written by a person who knows that she’s writing for people who like to think about the idea of poverty living, but haven’t experienced it much first or even second-hand, only knowing about it from the news or glossy donation pamphlets.
While I don't disagree the 'real' poor can choose the alternative and agree with GP, I think you also have a very fatalistic view of 3rd world poor. I have family living in the '3rd world' and even there the poor have phones. Sure they are 20 dollars, 10 year old models running android 5.0 or something, but they still check facebook and whatever. They aren't probably blogging but they also read websites/blogs
I do agree with you on that aspect; in fact the proliferation of cheap smartphones and providers like Jio means that a lot of people are able to get their hands on actually decent hardware and a good internet connection if it is in their reach. Which is a great thing! In fact most of the tips mentioned is pretty much what a lot of people do in 3wc too, just replace Reddit with WhatsApp groups.
The issue here is that this is being given as advice, when a lot of this is standard operating procedure which comes semi-automatically for most people in this situation (this I do know, because you need hustle to even survive poverty in a third world country). Most people have multiple jobs by default; it’s not a discussion of if you can leave your day job here, it’s about how many jobs you can cram in a day, and that too without even the possibility of “maneuverability”. A mobile phone and an internet connection in such a situation is a rather significant investment even if it is widely available; it’s not something you can just get without thinking too much, which is what I feel the post reads like. While yes, the internet connections have become so good that you can watch YouTube videos for entertainment, few will be doing that without checking their daily limit caps first, and do it only when there’s nothing else to do. If you’re thinking of blogging/videos, you’re already thinking of it as an investment, if at all you reach that point. And this comes only when a person has escaped poverty, and has at least some sense of stability.
Add to it the plugs of Hacker News and Patreon at the bottom, and things start feeling very dissonant. Which is why I wrote about the potential target audience of the post.
Have you been to Africa? Or even rural India? The fact that you have access to HN means that:
1. You are able to afford to connect to HN
2. Are privileged enough to be able to read it
3. Your family also has the ability to do 1 if not 2
And let's assume for a minute they do have phones and an internet connection, which in itself is an egregious assumption(the real poor are the ones who don't even have phones). What are they going to do with their phones if they are unable to read half if not most of the internet?
Not rural india but africa yes. Family there. Not all countries are bad, but I saw some that are quite horrible. Saw people 'bathing' in puddles in the street as to not pay for water. Saw slums where 6-7 live to a zero-bedroom 'house' (I wouldn't call that a house in most parts of the world). Family works with local schools and institutions to make sure kids have food.
But I can say, even in those situations, most has a cheap-ass phone with internet. Sure, not 5g to watch HD movies or whatnot, but they could talk with people and go to facebook
I fail to see the point you're trying to make. This post was written by a homeless person in a "first world" country so the target audience is people in those countries. Nobody is obligating whomsoever you consider "third world" to read or follow her advice...
It doesn't feel that weird to me, but there's a reason her blog would resonate with me in particular.
I was homeless myself, briefly, half a lifetime ago. I ended up dedicating my life to coding free and open-source audio DSP software, which I do to this day under the name 'airwindows'.
Part of my motivation for this choice is a determination to give functional tools to a community that may have artistic ability and the ability to learn audio production skills, but can't come up with the money to do this using cutting-edge hardware. CPU cycles are impossibly cheap, ESPECIALLY if you are able to do functional work on 'last year's' computers, which is why I take pains to code stuff that doesn't require current computer systems (particularly significant on Mac OSX, which deprecates stuff like mad to render older systems nonfunctional).
In my opinion, you should be able to not only blog, but do a professional grade mix on a digital audio workstation using only a cast-off semi-working laptop from years ago that somebody no longer needed. Your bottleneck would be monitoring: professional quality speakers and amplification are harder to come by that way, but even then modern advances in class D amplification and a bit of ingenuity go a long way (I run a subwoofer where the speaker part was insanely cheap, because I used cardboard builders tubes for enclosures, capped on both ends by inexpensive woofers, and doubled for more cone area)
With intelligence and effort it is more than possible to break the link between access to capital, and potential performance. You can compete on the grounds of ability and quality and increasingly remove access to capital as a gatekeeping mechanism.
If you don't do that, one might conclude that poor people are lower quality and not capable of worthwhile things.
One resource that my work does NOT address is mental attitude: I can make a person think, 'I now have the tools to pursue audio production' by giving the tools, but I can't make a person think, 'I can step back and think about life and the world I'm in, outside the narrow lens of capitalist status seeking'. It's nice that Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Google employees and trust fund kids can view life outside the immediate struggle to not die: I think that's very civilized and laudable, in a way it's the whole point of being human. This blog about 'FU, Money' is an alternate path to the same goal.
Alexander: Greetings, I am Alexander of Macedon. If you be the philosopher they call the Dawg, let me know your wish, and I shall grant it.
Diogenes: Before your shadow fell on me, I had been lying in the sun. Step aside a pēchys or two, and I'll resume.
In The Dispossessed, the anarchist Shevek is surprised to find that his political polar opposite, Atro, has a kindred soul:
> "In some ways he was totally incomprehensible to Shevek — an enigma: the aristocrat. And yet his genuine contempt for both money and power made Shevek feel closer to him than to anyone else he had met on Urras."
I can tell you that for me personally I don't think it was ideal. Yes, at first the freedom is exhilarating, but it doesn't last forever. There were two big problems. One is that you feel disconnected from society. This is hard to explain but being outside of normal social structures you lose a sense of context and meaning to your actions. Second is that when you don't have any social or financial pressures it's hard to avoid the path of least resistance. It's very easy to fall into bad habits, just watching youtube, reading reddit, bad diet, etc.
I would assess myself as someone who would be less susceptible to these problems. I consider myself a fairly self-motivated person and definitely an introvert. But after several years it starts to weigh on you.
Today I work in an office. There are often times when it's hard and I have to deal with things I don't want to. But I still think it's better than when I wasn't working. I think if I never had the experience of not working I would probably only see the downsides of office life as the upside is quite abstract and hard for me to articulate. I don't think this is something unique to me, I think it's human nature to want social structure and this naturally comes with social obligations. But for most people not being constrained to social structures was never an option anyway so they underestimate how much it affects their happiness.