I went and did the other side, living nontraditionally and trying to be what I wanted.
I just applied for a regular job. Because to be honest, it’s gonna be pretty sweet having a fat bank account, even if it’ll take till I’m 50 to have FU money.
My current hypothesis is that the team is all that matters. The work can be the most boring, crud-type work. As long as you’re working with people you like on something vaguely interesting, who cares?
20yo me would be mortified to hear myself say this, but the chances of either of us influencing the world is quite small. I’m happy I threw all of my effort into doing something I wanted, but my honest answer is that you’re not really missing out on much.
Relax and enjoy yourself. Most days, I end up wishing I’d had kids 5 years ago. It was nice to prioritize myself, but you can’t prioritize a family you never focused on building.
(I had no idea I even wanted a family or that it was important to me until about… 29?)
I guess my point is, the “relax and enjoy yourself” mentality isn’t so bad. No one will probably remember us the way they’ll remember pg. But I’ve helped thousands of devs directly, whether in DMs or by contributing code, and I think I only care whether those folks might remember me.
So that’s the area you can really make an impact: on the people around you, in your day to day life.
Maybe I’ll wake up in a few years and realize this is a terrible mistake, but that seems unlikely.
Amen. I’m a sober alcoholic, and if I died tomorrow I’d be content knowing that I did at least one worthwhile thing with the time I had: I helped another alcoholic, a 23 year old man who tried to kill himself shortly before I met him, get sober and start working and move out of his mom’s basement and stand up straight and look other people in the eyes and then go and help a few other people stop drinking.
Not a single professional accomplishment is within an order of magnitude of that level of fulfillment. Just help one f*cking person become more than they thought they could be and you’ll die happy—why didn’t they tell us it was this simple?
That brings up an old memory for me: I used to work as a lifeguard at a pool for three or four years as I was going through uni. Nothing glamorous in that work, it's just very loosely managing young males showing off in front of young females. Except this one time some kid jumped in the deep end and whilst he surfaced, he couldn't reach the top of the side of the pool in order to stay at the surface, he was clutching at the side with that unmistakeable, wide-eyed panic face. I reached down, pulled him out, and he ran off to his mum / friends / whatever, I never saw him again. Was a three second interaction from seeing it to him being back on dry land.
Possibly the best thing I've ever done in my life, and it was in my late teens. I get satisfaction from my intellectuality and general smarts, but for it really brighten my soul, it has to positively affect other people.
The bottom line is a demanding bitch and no matter how much you give it will ask for ever more. A positive change in a fellow human being is intrinsically, life-affirmingly satisfying; even just a single-serve in a lifetime.
I also have a similar memory as a teenager swimming in a river. A young boy was on his own, with only his face above the water, with said wide-eyed expression. I asked him if he needed help, he managed to say yes, and I pushed him to the river bank. He ran back to his family.
I heard his mum giving out to his older brothers for not watching him. There is a good chance that young boy would have run out of energy and slipped under the surface with no one noticing. It's a nice thought that I may have saved his life and also saved his family from all the grief and guilt that would have caused. I doubt he remembers it - not that it matters.
If you like these life-saving type of experiences, I encourage adrenaline sports. Whitewater kayaking, big mountain skiing, etc. Having done these for years I can say there are opportunities every season to save a life and to have my own saved by someone else. It is exhilarating.
It's an interesting fact that one could save many lives by donating to charities and yet wouldn't feel quite the same way about it. Clicking "donate" on a screen and filling in credit card details isn't as thrilling an experience as yours even if it achieves no less.
Charities aren't appealing not just because you don't feel as connected to outcomes, but because we know many of them pay out big paycheques to execs and other overhead to the point where barely any of our donations are put to good use.
Maybe just being cynical about it, but if I help out at a soup kitchen I know I'm helping people, when I donate I am just getting a tax credit and boosting a charity's executive bonuses.
There's actually an entire field called Effective Altruism [1] that's dedicated to researching which charities put donations to good use - and there are quite a few of them [2]
Also, overheads like executive bonuses don't _necessarily_ mean that the charity is ineffective [3]
I don't think it's about being cynical and more about proximity. I'm not as pessimistic about charities. We don't get the same good feelings helping people we don't know for the same reason we don't care about all the people that is suffering right now.
On this note, my parents have been in contact with a African woman for years who they helped via one of those child sponsorship programs. Shes an adult now and literally yesterday she called and texted my Mom via her own funds and everything. It doesn't seem like a petty thing after all.
This nicely encapsulates why our society sucks. Helping people you can't see doesn't provide the self-congratulation dopamine hit, thus people don't do it.
It makes a lot of sense. There’s two types of depression (though their names elude me). There’s depression where there’s something wrong with your brain - and despite having a great life, your brain makes sad chemicals instead of happy ones. And then there’s depression where you feel sad because your life is missing purpose and meaning. Ie, being the person you are with the life you have, depression is a healthy response.
Most depression is the second type. So I’m not surprised giving people purpose shows great results. It would have for me, too.
Not saving life but I directly and indirectly help dozen of people get into top companies. It's an amazing feeling when you see someone success because of you. To some extent, I felt like I'm reliving the offer experience over and over. In a way, I changed some people life and I felt oddly content.
When we do a selfless act we experience the joy from our soul – that's what we're truly are: an eternal, complete drop in the infinite ocean of pure consciousness. Our ego (which makes us feel that we're separate from others) binds us in layers and layers of conditioning, of labels and engages us in selfish acts, which only brings suffering and stress. Read about this discourse from Buddha to understand what we're missing – The Fruits of the Contemplative Life: https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/DN/DN02.html
I suspect different people probably did try to tell me versions of that, but it’s very hard to learn deep feelings from hearing other people talk or reading their words as compared to living it yourself. You can read about others’ heartbreak but you learn from your first few breakups. You can read about having kids but nothing prepares you for the deep feelings of parenting.
Maybe being doomed to repeat the learnings others have had is part of the point?
The whole society seems designed top down to keep us fighting and arguing, live at the expense of others is the mantra. It seems it took a lot of engineering to get us this far from our natural state of caring. The Chinese seem to indoctrinate with a slightly different model where you are to believe society comes before the individual.
The sensible model seems rather obvious: One has to organize their own show before one is of [much] use to others. Until that time one should give the others the opportunity to help you with that and be grateful. Its not an embarrassment if you plan to do the same.
There has been a cost to individualism no doubt. There are a few culutures where, generally, the community comes first.
I think you can cultivate that in a small way though, by taking part in volunteer programs in your community. I know it's a cliche recommendation but if you are feeling like we lack community then it's probably just because of how easy it is to separate yourself from it.
Because it has an intangible effect on GDP. Our culture optimises for creating obedient worker drones who will capitulate to authority. Fostering empathy for others and leading children to a life of fulfilment conflicts with establishment incentives.
> No one will probably remember us the way they’ll remember pg.
The older I get, the more the whole "legacy"/impact issue seems overhyped; pg (and everyone alive today) is not going to be remembered for long either; perhaps 2 more generations, and it's a wrap. No one is remembered forever. That thought keeps me rooted firmly in the present and on the immediate impact I can have.
I have never been into poetry, but both versions of Ozymandias (Shelley's[1] and Smith's[2]) deeply resonated with me. I wholly agree with you, your impact, and your legacy, is with the people around you, in the here and now.
I've always found this goofy copypasta version of the poem to be really funny, because even in the silly voice it assumes, it still manages to capture something of the essence of the piece. Even as written here, that last line has a certain power and resonance:
I met a traveller from way the hell off
who said: two gigantic, fucked-up rock legs
be out there in the middle of goddamn nowhere
right next to them covered in shit some kinda big face
looked pretty pissed & upset & whatnot
all damn covered in words
“yo ozymandias here, this my shit”
“better than your shit, get fucked buddy”
not much else tho, just sand
shitloads of sand all over the place
This is all broadly true, but the fact that 'Ozymandias' is frickin' Ramesses II does undermine the message of the poems a bit. Or more generously, it adds another level of depth to the point that someone's future fame can't easily be predicted by looking at their current fame.
But even Ramessess II is not really "remembered" by more than a tiny handful of people. Most people who recognize the name know nothing about him, and most would never come up with the name unprompted. Most knowledge about him is lost.
We know him in the very abstract, not all much different to how we know the Ozymandias of the poems.
To the extent that being remembered after your death matters at all, then absolutely, yes. To go back to the original point of comparison, many more people know Ramesses II now than have ever heard of Paul Graham, and this is when pg is still alive and probably near the all-time peak of his fame. There's a relatively small, but not that small, number of people who can name some of Ramesses II's monuments or other achievements without looking them up. And there are many millions of people who are vaguely aware that he was one of the GOAT Pharaohs, and that was more or less the core objective of all the monument-building.
I mean, who knows what random selection of events will cause someone to slip through the crevasse of history into the future. Imagine being the fossil that is found and paraded as the missing link between our species and the one that roams the earth 100,000 years from now, and Ramesses II nowhere to be found...
I didn't find a mention of him making a mistake in this article, but I think I read somewhere a while ago that the numbers he wrote on the tablets had some error somewhere.
> My current hypothesis is that the team is all that matters.
Man. One of the worst jobs I've ever had was working as a paralegal in a law office, but I had two friends there that made it so much fun. We'd send each other emails making fun of the attorneys (obviously a risk but the IT person was a friend), joking around, talking about the future, sending dumb memes and getting hammered after work.
After that, I got my first dev gig working with one of my closest friends, and it was a blast.
Now I'm working for a company doing really cool stuff, but I don't really know the people I work with and it's sort of a cold environment, and I feel like I'm stagnating. I really, really think there's something to what you said. They're not bad people, not by a long shot, and maybe something will develop, but the camaraderie I had at the law office gig was special, and I miss it.
My goals have narrowed: be a good father and husband, serve my community in whatever way I can, write fiction when I can. I think that's good. I also don't hold it against myself that I had loftier, maybe unrealistic, goals when I was younger. People change.
Ha, yeah. My past self would be horrified by what I wrote. But he also got into a lot of student debt and couldn't talk to girls, so. What the fuck does he know.
I smiled at "changing the world". It's very funny we think about the world as if it needed changing, had the ability to change in a lifetime or that it was remotely interested in our own opinion of it.
It's probable most people in the world, the majority being Chinese and Indian, would strongly disagree with what you think it should be. If not, it's the africans and the europeans who would.
I have a huge amount of agency in my life, simply because I can live with little money, enjoy obeying and building stuff in teams, can be useful and accept sacrifice, so I moved across the world to work in investment banks and it's striking how similar yet different people are, and hows silly 20-something are in speaking of changing "the world".
Something I hear a lot around me that I also apply a lot is to "pick your battles". There are things that are pointless to fight over, others you can and must. And you see the frustrated spinning around behind you on detail why you slowly but surely build the bigger picture.
Start by changing your hometown, already a feat :D
Just curious - why/how did you decide to have kids at 29?
I can see mostly disadvantages to having children. Perhaps a nice highlights reel, but the daily grind sounds miserable. Having a cat seems like a much better deal. This sums up my sentiment: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/baby_vs_cat
You seem to have a different opinion, so I wonder if it is just a matter of preference of if your perspective is very different to mine?
You don't deserve those downvotes. I think you ask a great question!
I chose to have kids, but one of my best friends chose not to have kids. I sometimes regret it (though never seriously), he deeply regrets it. He had a lot of cool stuff and got to travel the world for many years, which I always wished I could do too. He was always doing fun stuff, even as simple as going on beer runs on the weekend (literally the club he was in would drink beer and go running. They had a blast). In his early 50s his wife was diagnosed with terminal cancer. During that period both he and her went through profound regret. She would pass on nothing, and he would be completely alone when she was gone.
I also firmly believe that there is a level of growth/maturity that you can't reach without going through the crucible of kids. I have never met a person who didn't say that having kids was one of the hardest things they ever did but helped them grow and see life in a different way like nothing else could.
Also don't forget the Michael Scott reason for having kids: they can't say no to being your friend[1]
I've got a 14 month year old. The daily grind is relentless. But it's not miserable. I've watched a tiny helpless creature turn into a curious little person who can walk around and play with things, who gives me big smiles and hugs when he sees me, who takes real joy in such stupid things (current obsession: bike helmets). It's hard to quantify why that's a good thing - much like to many of my friends the idea of voluntarily spending an evening writing software that's different to the stuff I do at work all day also seems completely crazy.
Sure, there's low points, but there's also high points every single day.
But how did you decide that this is what you wanted? It is a big, life-changing decision to make. Did you wake up one morning and think, 'you know what, having a child would really make my life a lot better'? Or had you been looking forward to becoming a parent from an early age, and were just looking for the right time?
E.g. I certainly didn't even think of it when I was 16 - I was dreaming of other things. Nothing much changed at 25. In my 30s, I am only considering it because it is part of the 'life script' and 'now or never' kind of situation, not because I can't wait to do it. Was it different for you? In an ideal world, I would maybe do it when I'm retired in my late 50s and 60s. I.e. I would prefer to skip children and go straight to grandchildren.
It's an interesting question - I'm not sure there was ever a lightbulb moment. I think I've always thought "I will have kids some day" - even as a teenager. How much of that is just following the societal norms I don't know. I enjoy playing with kids though - maybe that contributed to that feeling. I'd say by the time I was 26 or 27 I was fairly sure I wanted kids soon (helped by being in a stable long term relationship). I was 29 when my son was born.
One thing you become aware of quite quickly when you start seriously looking into kids is that the biological realities are much harsher than society leads you to believe. Having kids when the mum is much over 35 gets really difficult really quickly. Once I realised that, knowing that I did want children eventually, it made the decision to expedite things easier. I decided I'd rather make the leap sooner than regret it.
I don't think it's a very logical decision though - interestingly I think a lot of the people I know with children today were quite impulsive and of-the-moment in their early 20s. The more sensible ones haven't had kids yet - perhaps because it's hard to make a reasoned decision about it.
For me it played a big role that I wanted my kids to have grandparents for as long as possible, since I lost mine relatively early. Also the other way around, for my parents it is nice to have grandchildren now too.
Sure, these are valid considerations once you have decided to have children. It is the 'how' and 'why' of even deciding to have children that I am curious about.
I mean, were you in your early 20s, grinding leetcode, thinking "can't wait to become a parent"? Or was it more of "I want to have had children when I am 65, so even though I'm not over the moon about it right now it is what it is, I'll just go with it"? Or "all my friends and relatives are doing it, so it never even occurred to me that I had other options"?
The closest thing to "reasonable" I can remember about wanting to have kids was about introducing a few more reasonable creatures into the world, something like preventing the "Idiocracy". :)
In general, I did have an innate plan to reproduce at some point in the future from early on (my 20s), potentially because of social norms (then again, my sister didn't), or maybe because of my ego (I'll be bringing smarter-than-average, decent-physical-specimen humans into the world, even though by the time I had kids, I learned that "reasonable" and "empathetic" are probably more important).
Thanks! To me it sounds like a TON of effort, a HUGE change for a very long time - for an ego thing.
Now if, say, my wife wanted to handle 90% of the work, with me primarily responsible for breadwinning and little else - a 'traditional' family - I could understand making such a big decision on what looks to me as very weak reasoning. Because then it wouldn't even be THAT big a decision to me anymore, as MY life would not be changing all that much.
But assuming a true 50/50 split in responsibilities? And wife feeling the same about all these things as I do? To me, much much stronger reasons are required than what motivated you, as you would be changing your life completely, with no going back, committing for a very long time. Not to mention the HUGE financial commitment (say goodbye to financial independence and therefore being able to do independent research/projects in the future). And that's the best case scenario of healthy, not-too-unreasonable children.
You've quickly become judgemental — which suggests that your question was not really honest, but rather argumentative, looking for support of your position — just saying how it appears! ;-)
People do a lot of things I consider "romantic": fighting for freedom, fairness, human rights... They only benefit them in the long run, and many not even benefit from them directly. I've done my share as well.
It's the same with kids. You asked about reasons to decide to have them, not about what I am getting out of it (you were very explicit in responses to others about how you didn't care about how they decided on "when", for example).
I fully expected that I will develop relationship with my kids that will overcome everything, and so far I have! Which is why I was willing to dive into the huge time, money and effort investment after the initial reasons! But it was not the reason to have them.
You are perfectly allowed to spend the same effort on building relationship with others, and it might or might not (I have no idea) get you the same satisfaction I get from interacting with my kids.
To further clarify, the "ego" thing was a bit overstressed — my point is that I was hoping to bring better-than-average human beings into this planet, and "my ego" is my explanation for why I believe they'd be better-than-average.
My wife originally wanted to, and like you, I was... reticent. My feelings at the time seem similar to yours here.
All I can say is, having a solid partner -- one that I can absolutely count on, and believe in -- helped me unwind. I was able to set aside my original concerns and think long-term.
Here's where we may differ: I've always loved playing with kids. There's something magical about seeing them learn things, interact with the world for the first time, and to just screw around and enjoy life without the normal adult concerns. After all, when you're a kid, you have endless time and all you want to do is play. Chilling with kids and playing games with them has always appealed to me.
There's also a stigma attached to that, when you're a male. If I was female, lots of people would feel "Oh, that's cute!" but when you're a man, I inevitably felt like I should hide that aspect of myself. After all, everyone knows that it's dangerous or creepy for older men to hang around with kids, right?
It wasn't till my wife's sister had kids of their own that I was able to get over this. Once they got to 2yo or so, it all clicked for me. I remember playing the "colors" game with Eloise -- she was quizzing me about the different crayon colors, and it was so cool to watch her learn about orange. I don't remember exactly what she learned, but it was sort of an "aha" moment of orange being halfway between yellow and red.
From then on, I was sold, and decided I wanted kids of my own. Wiping their butts and being woken up with screams will just be a part of the process for me, and I won't mind at all. (Easy to say that now, I'm sure.) But, for example, you probably feel the same way about cleaning out the litterbox for your kitty; an annoyance, sure, but it's a labor of love.
That labor of love is a strength for me. It's what allowed me to ultimately be fine with abandoning my old (current) way of life and return to "the daily grind," as people might like to call it. My wife and I have been trying to have kids for a couple years, and haven't had success. I always felt like, well, whenever the kids come around, I'll go get a traditional job and be family guy. But then one night, I realized "You know, IVF is hugely expensive. I could go get a job right now, and we'd save up enough to get it done within just a few months."
It wasn't an easy decision, but once I made it, it was easy to follow. I want some kiddos to teach things to, hang out with, and occasionally learn from. My motives are no more complicated than that.
You'll feel differently. If you're young, all I can say is, expect yourself to change over time. The only thing you can count on is that how you feel today probably won't be your feelings forever.
If you're less young, then there's really nothing wrong with not having kids. There's a stigma against that too, which I think is bogus. It's simply a question of what you want out of life.
By the time http://www.paulgraham.com/kids.html came out, I was nodding along with that entire essay. Perhaps it'll help elucidate some of the feelings here. But a simpler way to put it is, "one day something activated in my brain -- some kind of primal instinct -- and from then till now, the desire to have kids has been a source of strength."
Thanks, this makes the most sense. However, I do wonder if there is a difference between playing/teaching nieces and nephews that you can hand back any time, and doing it all the time. Kind of like the difference between visiting a place as a tourist and actually moving to live there.
I would probably want to 'borrow' some relative kids for 2-3 weeks while they go on holidays, and see how the whole thing works - not just the fun parts - before I would be willing to commit to it. I do not mean you here, but it always surprises me how lightly people - otherwise very careful and responsible - take the most important and consequential decision of their life.
> I do wonder if there is a difference between playing/teaching nieces and nephews that you can hand back any time, and doing it all the time.
I think you're right about this.
Just remember, it's totally fine if you decide you don't want kids. It's usually a bad idea to feel pressured into it.
I'd be curious to hear what you end up choosing. Feel free to shoot me a DM on twitter or email me, even if it's a few years from now. (But only if you'd like to, of course.) Also, if you want to chat more about this sometime, definitely reach out; this topic is quite interesting to me.
I just applied for a regular job. Because to be honest, it’s gonna be pretty sweet having a fat bank account, even if it’ll take till I’m 50 to have FU money.
You will never have FU money working a regular job.
15 years ago a young engineer i worked with overheard me say "getting rich is a pretty easy formula if you are patient."
he came to me later and asked me to expound. i told him "the formula is: spend less than you make and invest the left over. you do that long enough and you'll become wealthy."
i also told him "from what i can tell, it will happen so gradually that you'll barely notice a difference in your lifestyle. you will just realize one day that you are part of the maligned upper-crust but noone around you will know that."
he called me 2 years ago to let me know that he took my observation to heart and he's now in the millionaire club. he also said "the books say i'm a millionaire, but i certainly don't feel like it."
his next million will be much easier to get now and he just turned 40.
I have followed this and am on track to having a nice sum when I decide to retire. I look at that pile. Divide it by what I make now per year. That number is the number I could coast and not have to 'worry' about money with 0 change in lifestyle. I then add that to my current age and figure out where I should run out when I am old. That number is currently not far enough along for my liking. I am also doing ridiculously better than many of my peers on this. As many do not even understand that many companies give you money to put money into a 401k.
Realistically though back when being a millionaire meant 'retire immediately' things were much cheaper. You could get a car for 3-4k. Now a similar car would be 30-40k. You could say 'oh but that car is so much better'. That is true, but this 10x is mostly true across most goods I have found. I think many do not realize what a number inflation did on everyone in the late 70s and very early 80s. So many of these 'sayings' are still around but their numbers off by a factor of 10.
A car that you could buy for a few thousand today is much more capable than the cars people bought for a few thousand in the past.
New cars are status symbols or toys. I never understood how people could trade a human's full time salary for a car. People take old cars to work every day for a small fraction of the cost.
American lifestyles have inflated much more than the price of comparable goods. Average home size is way up over time, people prepare less of their own food, people buy fancy big cars with lots of horsepower and unnecessary capability.
I would complain about iphones and big TVs but in reality- the only things relevant to most of our budgets are our insistence to compete for the hottest real estate and new cars
I was hesitant to use the car example exactly because of this argument. My point was if you wanted a new car you paid 3-4k. Now a similar new car would be 30-40k. Oh sure it is all around a better car. You can however see the same approximate scale in many goods. Such as food and big ticket items (like refrigerators, lawn mowers, etc). What made cars much better is better manufacturing allowed by the use of computers (both in the manufacture and in the car). Adding a few dozen controller nodes does not add nearly 30k to the value of a car. Most of that is inflation. Before the inflation hit in the 70s my parents bought a home for about 14k. Last time I looked if they wanted to sell it was around 120-140k. I have not looked but I would take a guess that a 'used car' price would scale depending on model and usage with current used car prices and age of the car.
Conspicuous consumption of goods is a interesting argument and probably worth talking about. But my point was scale and inflation.
> New cars are status symbols or toys. I never understood how people could trade a human's full time salary for a car. People take old cars to work every day for a small fraction of the cost.
It's not that simple. If nobody bought new cars, where would the used cars come from? :D
And their prices would go comparatively up.
So basically, they are just like everything else that you can get cheaper (which is, really, everything). Eg. you can get a comparable laptop for 1/2 the price most likely (maybe not with new M1 macs, but in a few years). Or the phone.
What is the point of this story? This will objectively never happen for anyone with a ”regular” job, I.e. anywhere within 1 standard deviation or less of the median income.
Also, counting a home’s net worth in assets does not make sense to me unless you can afford to greatly downsize at anytime and the market is liquid.
Having $1M (or even $2M or $3M) 40 years in the future is not FU money. Not to mention that if you are unemployable anyway due to old age, you do not need to say FU to anyone in the first place.
That's just nonsense advice. The entire point of retirement savings is that at some point you can stop working. FU money is just about timing. You can change that timing.
1. Reduce outgoings. It's easier to have FU money if the amount you need to be able to say "FU" is smaller, because you've perfected the art of living on a little less than most. Most people's outgoings grow to meet their incomes: resist that. You don't need to recycle everything you touch and grow your own food to make good headway here.
2. Take your age, halve it. That number is the percentage of your gross income you should be putting away each month into retirement and savings if you haven't started already. Yes, it's hard at the beginning, so have it happen automatically through employer deductions (common in the UK for pensions, not sure about elsewhere), or on payday move a %age automatically into a savings or investment account so you get used to living without it. I still struggle to do this but am getting better.
3. Learn about compound returns a little more. $500 a month at 8% (typical market returns recently), and over 10 years gives you back $92k - a $32k profit on the $60k you put in. Whether that's FU money is dependent on whether your outgoings are $50k/year or $150k/year. Keep going for another 10 years, and you're not far off $300k which isn't bad for the $120k it cost you. Think you can keep going into your fifties and do another decade? $750k off the back of a $180k investment. Is this not FU money yet? You're the problem, not the regular job.
Your chances of having FU money working a regular job are far, far higher than having it any other way. It's just too many people are trying to retire in their 20s and not getting it: that's not a very likely outcome, no matter how hard you work or how smart you are.
Is this not FU money yet? You're the problem, not the regular job.
I think we have very different ideas of what "FU money" means. FU money is literally enough to be able to do what you want. It's being able to stop asking "Can I afford this?" because you definitely can. It's being able to stop making a choice between two sports cars because you can afford both. It's being able to buy the exact house you want because you can approach the current owner and make an offer they'd be stupid to turn down. FU money is literally the ability to say FU and do something anyway when someone says you can't.
Having enough money to retire a bit earlier if you live a relatively simple life and save a lot is not FU money.
$750k off the back of a $180k investment. Is this not FU money yet?
$750k is barely the down payment on a nice Bay Area family house. Of course it isn't FU money. You're not saying "FU" to anyone if you're also saying "I can't afford the house I want so I'll choose a more reasonable one."
I agree with this definition. A lot of factors go into it - how much cash you have in your bank account, how easy it is for you to pick up a new job, etc. Having "FU" money doesn't mean you have to quit your job at the slightest transgression, but rather you are not desperate for the paycheck and can thus stand up for yourself. This in itself is liberating!
At the very beginning of my career I worked in the lab for 36 hours straight trying to finish a project on a tight deadline. I didn't have any "FU" money at that point obviously. If someone asked me to do that today, there would be no way! I wouldn't quit over it necessarily, but I would still be OK financially if I was fired for saying "your deadline is ridiculous!"
Of course it isn't FU money if you insist on buying outrageously overvalued cars and real estate. There is no limit to the amount of money you need to play that game to receive increasingly marginal returns. You can be a small time billionaire and fool yourself into thinking you don't have FU money because you'd have to make sacrifices to buy that yacht you've been eyeballing
> FU money is literally the ability to say FU and do something anyway when someone says you can't.
I always thought FU money was enough money that you can say FU and not do something when someone says you have to. That is, enough money to retire (get fired) on a whim. Of course, even by that definition, 750k isn't FU money unless you're single in a LCOL area (or fairly close to a predictable death, I guess).
My personal criterion for FU money is 3mm. This is fairly achievable, market willing, if you have make six figures.
>Your chances of having FU money working a regular job are far, far higher than having it any other way.
in the U.S working a regular but relatively high paying job like developer should give you FU money right about the time that you start to experience health problems that will then eat into that FU money leaving you nothing.
There's a reason the song is Birth, School, Work, Death without any FU inside the comma separated list.
> Learn about compound returns a little more. $500 a month at 8% (typical market returns recently), and over 10 years gives you back $92k - a $32k profit on the $60k you put in.
You might want to update your models. If interest rates will remain at 0 (or get negative like in Europe), you'd be lucky with 0-1% return.
There are plenty of asset classes which are quite safe and return >5%. Saving money in a "savings" account was never a good idea (outside of an emergency fund).
You can, if circumstances allow. Have no debt, make a software engineer's salary, and live on half of it. Put the rest in mutual funds. Repeat for some number of years and your investments' passive income eventually surpasses your budget, at which point you're free from the rat race.
The part people find unpalatable (and sometimes impossible, depending on circumstances) is the "live on half of it" part (but even if half is impossible, it's still worth investing what you can).
I'm not even making US software money and my budget says I can reach FU money (which, to be clear, means matching my current low-budget lifestyle, which is why it's achievable) in 5 years if no other major expenses come up.
I did decide to prioritize charitable giving because of the reasons elsewhere discussed about service being its own reward, but that only pushed it out to ~11, which is still a couple decades earlier than the typical retirement age.
Plus, when I'm gone, I can pass that income generator on to someone else and free them from the rat race, giving the next generation an even better headstart than I had.
That's a great goal, but you're confusing simply having money with having FU money. They're not the same. The "FU" bit is important. It means something.
To be honest, even your strategy there sounds tremendously flawed because you're assuming that you'll even want to live that life. What happens if you meet someone, get married, and have a couple of kids after you 'retire'? Suddenly your retirement fund is nowhere near enough. A simple example - how do you pay for your kids to go to college? You think you've got "FU money" so surely you can do something as straightforward as saving your kids from college debt. What if they're brilliant and get places at Stanford? Is your 'live on the interest from half the earnings of 11 years as an engineer' going to cover $500k in 20 years time? Of course not. You'd need to dip in to the capital, and then your whole retirement plan falls apart.
Having FU money, as opposed to just plain simple money, means you will be able to afford all those things and more besides because you are genuinely FU rich. You don't get there by having a normal job, even if it pays a lot and you can invest half your income. That just gets you a nice middle-class retirement, which is lovely, but you won't be rich.
The obsession of Americans with "how do you pay for your kids to go to college?" is truly bizarre to my non-US eyes (I am living in the US). They are adults when they go to college, there are merit-based scholarships, sports scholarships, they can work some, maybe I could loan some money. If you cannot afford Harvard or Stanford, don't go to either. I did not, I did fine, and I would not contribute with my money to those institutions.
I got zero money from my parents after I turned 17, and the bare minimum before that, and I would have felt inadequate as a young adult if I had taken money from them, which they did not have in any case. Exception exists (e.g. disabilities).
> Is your 'live on the interest from half the earnings of 11 years as an engineer' going to cover $500k in 20 years time?
Most people won’t ever be able to do that, no matter how much they save of what they earn.
Also, cost of living is another huge factor here. Housing isn’t always as expensive as it is in the Bay Area, and some countries have good (even sometimes great) free education. Heck, in some, you are paid to attend the top schools.
FU money isn’t about being rich. It’s about being able to keep living the life you want even in the event you were to tell your boss or the world to fuck off.
So… in this… everyone’s goal would be different, and yours is not his?
If my kids wanted to go to a half-million dollars university, I’d just burst out laughing and ask them how they expect to pay for that. If they were to reply that they expected me to, I’d probably laugh them out of the room.
Well in that case you're saying FU to your children instead of the bank that's loaning them college money. If you had actual FU money you'd be able to pay...
FU money isn’t about being able to satisfy every whim and hold up to anyone else’s standard.
Almost nobody in the whole world can afford to send their children off to a $500k college.
Not even after saving up half of everything they’ve earned across their entire life. I don’t care much about holding myself up to such an unreasonable standard.
Noboxy in the world is entitled to expect anyone else to pony up such an amount of money for them either.
If I can
- put a roof over their head,
- clothes on their backs,
- feed them well every day,
- provide them a good health insurance,
- send them to school
- and afford one or two extra-curricular activities
- as well as one or two vacations, preferably abroad, a year,
I’ll have more and be able to provide them with more than most people ever had, have and expect to be able to in their entire lives.
If I can do so without ever needing to work again, it absolutely is enough for me to tell any employer to go find someone else to do the job and please don’t let the door hit them on their way out.
To me, anything more is an extra nice to have that I don’t owe to anybody.
You appear to have a different point of view. That’s fine. To hold yourself to a different standard. That’s okay too. It’s your life.
You also seem to have a hard time grasping that different people have different needs, and to consider that everybody else should abide by your standards.
As a matter of fact, France raised it’s tuition fees for foreigners, in part because their universities were seen as suspiciously not expensive enough.
Which I totally get, but find hilarious nonetheless.
I believe FU money is not about how much you earn, it’s about how much you save vs. spend. I can afford to stop working for more than a year, even though I’m not 25 yet, I would gladly say I have FU money. It’s because I don’t spend much.
The recipe is simple.
If you spend 50% of what you make, then you only have to work 50% of your life.
If you spend 10% of what you make, then you only have to work 10% of your life.
Turn off all sources of marketing and watch your free time and savings swell.
I wasn't discussing lifestyles, I was discussing the meaning of the term "FU money". Otherwise, I could say that with a good 17 seconds flat in the 100 meter dash I'm well on my way to the Olympics.
One key difference is that my wife is a badass React engineer. She's a more capable dev than I am in many respects -- perhaps most of them.
With her salary covering life expenses, my salary will be going straight into the bank. That means I can aim as high as I want; the higher, the quicker we'll hit that $1M mark. I estimate somewhere in the 10 to 15 year range, which also happens to coincide nicely with the (unfortunate) transition toward management as you get older, since that tends to come with yet more pay boost.
$1M isn't a lot. But it's FU money for us, because we have simple tastes. Fooling around with electronics, traveling wherever we want, having a multi-floor house; these things are doable on much less than a mil.
So you're right. I won't be buying a Tesla on a whim. But I won't want to.
We're immensely privileged as software engineers to have this kind of leverage. Most people -- the vast, vast majority of the world -- don't lead such comfortable lives. I intend to exploit that privilege to the fullest, in order to build the best life possible for my kiddos.
Then watch as they screw it all up, ha. But I'm fine with that too.
That depends entirely on your salary and your lifestyle. If I made some of the numbers that HNers throw around I'd have FU money in less than a decade.
One of the best comments I've read in a long time. The importance of a steady paycheck is underrated, especially for peace of mind.
I'm in a point of life that I actually long for easy and laid back CRUD-style jobs where one can do everything easily, quickly, be productive and also work a reasonable amount of hours and can stop thinking about work after signing off.
I recently had to start a new front end using just jquery (customer requirement) and oh boy, I felt so much productive compared to react/angular
I can totally relate to this. The most valuable thing I have retained from all of my previous jobs has been the relationships many of which are ongoing.
Once I realized this it occurred to me that instead of trying to optimize for accomplishment I need to optimize for these relationships. This changes the game.
This also explains an economic paradox. Why does our compensation go up when we switch jobs?
The reason is because each job switch opens us up to new opportunities to build relationships.
> My current hypothesis is that the team is all that matters.
That's me 6 years ago. After having invested too much on the type of work/mission and found that this was not it.
From the past 6 years and 2 companies where I tried this hypothesis, I can say that the work _structure_ (chaos, or hyper-bureaucratic, or anywhere in between, going either way) and the work _mission_ do matter a lot too in the end. It's an intricate balance.
The work _structure_ mandates how your team will jell, or dismantle, over time and tasks. The thousands of paper cuts due to the transformations from start to scale to profitable and compliant can really turn mad the unprepared.
The work _mission_ mandates how much/long you will endure the paper cuts.
But yes, the team and the people is still what you should invest on: that's the only area where your loyalty matters, if only because that's only there that you can find reciprocity.
The company, the structure, the mission are just some paper fiction that pay and pass; and there's thousands of them.
Moreover, these days, most of the missions (in IT at least) are even more ludicrous compared to the existential challenge that's ahead of us.
So yes, we better relax, enjoy the people around us in the settings we have, be nice and do what's sensible to do.
I started a family early and clawed my way up the income ladder until I mostly make enough to support my 6 kids and wife.
It's been tough, but I wouldn't change it.
I try to concentrate on helping where I can. I think our mission is to try and make the world just a bit better for at least the people around you. Do good and avoid creating hurt in the process.
Could you elaborate on what living non-traditionally looked like for you? What was your thought process going off script, and what made you decide to change course back to a regular job?
I just applied for a regular job. Because to be honest, it’s gonna be pretty sweet having a fat bank account, even if it’ll take till I’m 50 to have FU money.
My current hypothesis is that the team is all that matters. The work can be the most boring, crud-type work. As long as you’re working with people you like on something vaguely interesting, who cares?
20yo me would be mortified to hear myself say this, but the chances of either of us influencing the world is quite small. I’m happy I threw all of my effort into doing something I wanted, but my honest answer is that you’re not really missing out on much.
Relax and enjoy yourself. Most days, I end up wishing I’d had kids 5 years ago. It was nice to prioritize myself, but you can’t prioritize a family you never focused on building.
(I had no idea I even wanted a family or that it was important to me until about… 29?)
I guess my point is, the “relax and enjoy yourself” mentality isn’t so bad. No one will probably remember us the way they’ll remember pg. But I’ve helped thousands of devs directly, whether in DMs or by contributing code, and I think I only care whether those folks might remember me.
So that’s the area you can really make an impact: on the people around you, in your day to day life.
Maybe I’ll wake up in a few years and realize this is a terrible mistake, but that seems unlikely.