I think this is a hard balance for a lot of people. It certainly is for me.

If I really think about it, all I have is this moment, right now. The past is just an idea arising in my mind in this moment, and so is the future. Yet, the future I want often depends on making sacrifices in the moment. Clearly, saving all my money and never doing anything fun isn't the answer, and neither is being high on drugs 24/7. The answer to 'living the good life' must be somewhere in the middle, but where exactly? The balance of 'actual experience' (e.g. sitting on a beach getting wasted) vs 'remembered experience' (e.g. hitting up museums and experiencing culture) seems hard to navigate. I feel like I can't really trust my feeling/intuition here, because my brain is bad at correctly predicting what will actually make me happy. There needs to be some principle I can defer to, but I don't know what that would be.

I'm curious how other people navigate these murky waters.

For me my children are everything. They will be the only ones (hopefully) living in about 60 years remembering me. Spending time with them while having a good time seems like a good investment. Making them good people with lots of love to give to others is my life goal. Giving love and knowledge to others is my second.

I've always thought of it this way (since my 20s or so): 1. If I died today, would I have any regrets? 2. If I live to be 100+, would I be a burden on society?

I make decisions with the goal of being able to answer no to both of those questions. I'm in my mid 40s. I don't always get it right, but I feel the thought exercise is very helpful.

I don't think it's a good idea not to have regrets. Maybe your definition of regret is different than mine. I value my regrets tremendously. One cannot learn and grow without making mistakes, and there's no reason, as far as I can tell, to suspect that regrets aren't a zero sum game. If you do thing A, then you've lost the time/money/opportunity to do thing B.

I consider a "regret" something that I would actively go back in time to change. As of now (25), I would say I have none.

Now, that doesn't mean I haven't experienced mistakes, learned from them, and grown as a person. It's just by the time the latter two happen, I no longer would want to go back in time to change what had originally happened because it's defined me so integrally as a person.

A great example for me is high school, which objectively sucked. At the time, I had a million regrets but over the years, I learned a lot from them and turned parts of my life 180 degrees around in university based on the things I learned in high school. When someone asks me if I would go back and change anything from high school, my reply has been a flat "no" for a few years now.

I look at it quite simlarly, and I'm 38. It isn't that I don't wish I had done things differently, it is that I did the best I could at the time. I learned things I wouldn't have learned otherwise. Some of this is things like dealing with my ex, after a suicide attempt and major mental health diagnosis.

But alternatively, I fully like my life. Had I taken a different path, I might not have this life. (I might be happy with whatever I wound up with, but I'm happy I'm where I am).

> But alternatively, I fully like my life. Had I taken a different path, I might not have this life.

This is exactly what it is. I'm sure that, had things gone differently, it would have all worked out in the end, but life is all about happenstances. If a certain chain of events hadn't happened, I wouldn't have met some of my best friends, or gotten the jobs I've gotten, and I value what I have today tremendously.

This is a great comment and shouldn't be downvoted.

Great point.

I always remind myself of an LCD Soundsystem lyric every now and then: "I wouldn't trade one stupid decision for another five years of life"

My friends die a couple at a time each year so it's a constant reminder of things. The worst part is, I was trying to write out a list like yours, and I just can't remember everyone that already died.

It depends how old you are. If you're 25, that's a horror show. If you're 85, it's pretty normal.

By a certain age, most of the people you have known or even met will already be dead. Calculating that age is left as an exercise for the reader....

> If you're 85, it's pretty normal.

It's a horrifying tragedy no matter how old you are.

Don't ever let it become "normal". It's a problem we'll fix someday. Do what you can to make "someday" come sooner rather than later.

Why do you think that immortality is not just desirable but also inevitable?

Death is part of life. The older you get, the more people whom you have met are dead. I don't think that viewing it as a horrifying tragedy is particularly healthy.

> Why do you think that immortality is not just desirable but also inevitable?

Regarding "inevitable": There's a huge amount of uncertainty about when we'll manage to cure mortality: many people alive today would hope that it'll happen during their lifetimes, but I honestly don't know if it'll happen 20, 50, 100, 150, or 300 years from now. But I would argue that there's far less uncertainty about if we'll manage it, and I don't see any reasonable support for the idea of the problem being entirely and eternally intractable. Assuming humanity itself manages to survive, it'd be shocking if thousands of years from now we hadn't fixed it.

There's no obvious reason why any particular problem of biology would be somehow completely intractable, to the point that no amount of time could ever produce a solution. There's no obvious reason to believe that there's an unbounded set of such problems. And there's no obvious reason to believe, as a matter of physics, that it's somehow impossible to run a human mind on anything other than fragile biology, given enough computing power.

Regarding "desirable": for exactly the same reason we seek cures for every other affliction that plagues humanity. Do you consider cancer a good thing? Heart attacks? Strokes? Alzheimer's and other degenerative diseases? Would any reasonable person look at one of those and say "that's fine, let's keep it, we should force people to keep experiencing that"? The general consensus seems to be that we should fix all of those. So what reasonable person would look at the whole set of all possible causes and say "at least one of those should keep existing, people should keep dying"?

Minds are incredibly precious, and it's always a tragedy to have one less, no matter how many more we have.

> I don't think that viewing it as a horrifying tragedy is particularly healthy.

If one of your foremost goals is to fix it, accepting it is counterproductive.

I agree with everything you've written, but from a personal mental health perspective, it makes sense for most of the population to accept it. That is, until it's certain to be fixed in their lifetime.

That's a self-defeating proposition; the more people accept it, the less likely it is to get fixed within their lifetime. The more people object to it (and do something about that), and the more broad cultural acceptance exists for a solution, the more likely it is to get fixed. Imagine a world where all the memes, mindsets, and casual empty aphorisms about death didn't exist; how much more urgently might people treat the problem in that world?

That said, it's also the kind of concept that needs some amount of introduction and background, to avoid "future shock".

To quote Kate Tempest, "We die so that others can be born, we age so that others can be young."

That which is natural is not necessarily good.

It also seems like special pleading to suggest that it's a tragedy a young person to die but not an old person. Just because we're desensitised to it doesn't make it ok.

Yep.

As Tech folks, honestly, we should just save up FU money and then stop worrying.

This sounds like the opposite of what was suggested? You might die the day you have saved up that money.

How about stop worrying now and save up slightly more slowly?

What's FU money to you? It can reasonably be anywhere between $200k~$20M.

25x your annual expenses, after you've paid off your major debts such as mortgage and student loans. For me, $500,000 will do the trick, since I don't intend to stop working when I hit FU money, just switch to lower paid jobs that are less reliable and more fun. I'll get there when I'm 45 or so, according to the current plan (which involves frequent long overseas vacations and buying fast motorcycles in the meantime).

If you drive the fast motorcycles as well as buy them, you may not get there. Be careful out there!

"The average Canadian motorcyclist is in 13.5 times more danger than a car driver" https://fortnine.ca/en/how-dangerous-are-motorcycles/

That might work for your life plans, but someone else might have a strong desire to be married, have multiple children, perhaps care for their elderly parents, etc. The manner in which they want to provide may also vary.

So I don't think it's as simple as "get FU money then stop" because you really do need to think hard about what you hope to earn in your life, to what end, and how it trades off with other great things in your life.

No, you're quite right. FU money in 18 year is what will happen if nothing else changes in my life - and it's a better outcome than the unplanned alternative, which is chained to a job and broke in 18 years. But there are lots of other alternatives. I hope to get married and have a family, and my partner will probably contribute as much as I do or more to our shared savings. We might come up with some new goals together. But whenever I meet that person, I hope to bring more than debt to the relationship.

3+ years worth of expenses so you don't need to worry short of some massive disaster that leaves you unemployable.

Assuming you are reasonably disciplined you can do that pretty quickly.

It can be $50k in India and other developing countries.

> It can be $50k in India

Errm...no. Using the 4% rule, that works out to living on $2k/yr. It's not going to be a comfortable life and definitely not in any of the larger cities or towns. Which is where you'd want to be if you want to have a "modern" lifestyle, with healthcare, reliable electricity, internet, running water etc.

In a city like Mumbai (admittedly, the most expensive in India probably), $12k/yr (post-tax) will just about get you into a Western-comparable lifestyle; decent-size rented apartment, access to cultural events and social life, public transit + taxis/auto-rickshaws, decent healthcare, healthy food + eat out once in a while, some domestic help etc (keep in mind I'm not including savings in this, so a local person who's still working has to earn a lot more or spend a lot less, in order to be able to save). Using the 4% rule that translates to $300k. Also keep in mind inflation in India overall is also much higher than in most Western countries. It's been in the 5-7% range for many years.

I've only spent a couple months in India as a tourist, but if I was to move there I would actually not prefer one of the mega cities like Delhi or Mumbai just because of how polluted they are (among other issues such as crime).

Some of the nicer himalaya hill stations seem like a better idea for a retirement destination.

> but if I was to move there I would actually not prefer one of the mega cities like Delhi or Mumbai just because of how polluted they are

I feel you. I grew up in Mumbai but I don't live there at present. The pollution seems to be worse every time I visit; I think it'll get worse before it gets better. Violent crime isn't that much of a problem in Mumbai in my experience (I've heard Delhi is pretty bad).

> Some of the nicer himalaya hill stations seem like a better idea for a retirement destination.

Can't say I haven't considered that also. Though a lot of them (eg. Manali) are horrible tourist traps. I guess it might work if you can build up a social circle there and you prefer outdoor activities (hiking, climbing, rafting) over city attractions (art, theater, restaurants and bars). And the Internet is going to be very slow. And every time you want to travel it's going to be an 8+ hour train or bus ride to the nearest major city airport. And even then $2k/yr is not going to be enough (unless you live like some of the poorer than median locals). So it's really not for everyone.

If you could see yourself retiring to a remote part of say Wyoming or Montana (comparing just the relative isolation), then you might have the right personality to make a success of it.

Only difference being that remote parts of Wyoming or Montana are a lot more remote than most himalaya hill stations. There is literally nowhere in India that's as far removed from other people as remote parts of the US or Canada.

Sure... until you want good medical care, or want to watch a play or that latest Oscar winning "art" movie... or even moderately interesting work at which point one of the mega cities is your only option.

Well if we're talking about retirment you don't need to find work. What you say is otherwise true but for me the only real argument is medical care, and if it's not an emergency you can still travel a couple hours to the nearest major city[1] to get the rare treatment.

If you're not retired or working remotely I would never suggest living in India or anywhere in the third world for that matter - making money is so much easier in the west.

[1] random example: https://www.google.de/maps/dir/Shimla,+Himachal+Pradesh,+Ind... almost every Indian town will have a major city within a couple hours' distance, the country is very densly populated.

You don't get FU money by "saving up".

Well, no, you don't get FU money at 30 by saving up. 40s to 50s? Possible if you are frugal and responsible with money.

(Or retire at 30, start a blog about retiring early on a rather small amount of money, then pull in 400K+ a year in ad revenue. =) )

How does an average (non start up, non stock Rsu, person get FU only without saving up?

https://www.bogleheads.org/ and you absolutely have to save up. If you don't want to save, play the lottery / be born into a fortune / build a time machine and work at Apple right before the iPod. What did you expect?

You don't, that's the point.

You certainly can.