Unfortunately, for me and for a lot of people, I don't think there is an intersection of things I would be willing to do for free and that can make decent money (or livable money, for that matter).

> You can buy a lot of stuff with money, but you can't take it with you when you die.

Well, you can't take anything with you when you die :)

There is a certain minimum amount of money you need to be comfortable. How much money that is depends a lot on where you live, but it also depends a lot on your values. There isn't one point where you can choose to be free -- there are several and some of them are surprisingly low, monetarily. Most people choose not to be free. It's very interesting.

Sorry. Can't find it. It was really interesting, though. I found a similar article here: $500K and scraping by - https://www.financialsamurai.com/scraping-by-on-500000-a-yea...

It's interesting how they justify $23K a year for food for a family of 4. But the thing is, I know lots of people who spend that kind of money on food and can't imagine being able to spend less.

https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/03/29/killing-your-1000...

of course, that´s a lot of rice, noodles and beans (not that there´s anything bad with those, but I´d get bored).

For lunch it's always a lunch box during the week with the ubiquitous rice. However, there will be Japanese pickles, usually a stir fry, or left over dinner. We always have some meat or fish in the lunch box, but only something like 20 grams or so -- just for flavour and texture. I try to make dashi maki tamago (a rolled omlette). There are lots of preprepared things we add as well (some of which we buy, some of which we make). Things like hash browns/tater tots, potato salad, crunchy vegetables cooking in a sweet soy sauce sauce, etc, etc. The main shape of a Japanese lunch box is 1/2 of the box is rice, 1/4 is some main dish, 1/8 is some accent, and the remaining 1/8 is either fruit or pickles. The sizes are small so it's easy to get variety over the week. On the weekends, we will occasionally go out for lunch, but usually for ramen (which only costs us $5-7 each including tax and no tip -- advantages of living in Japan).

Then for dinner we have tended to adopt a kind of tapas style of eating -- which is common in Japanese izakayas (think pub). So we make 4 or 5 small dishes and nibble on them (usually with some beer or Japanese sake). My wife will spend time in the evening to make some of these dishes ahead for the week. I usually take over the kitchen on the weekends and make European style foods (though, normally "poor" people's foods like stews, etc) We often use the left overs in the lunch boxes.

One thing is that we eat very little meat/fish from a N/A perspective. Even when we eat yaki niku (Korean style barbeque), each of us will eat a maximum of 150 grams of meat each -- and that includes some beef, some pork and either a sausage or a bit of chicken. The rest is vegetables. Sometimes we'll have a piece of fish for dinner, but it's just a small piece and also just one of the 4 or 5 dishes that we have for dinner. Meat is not a main dish, ever. It's just an accent.

We don't often have desert, but when we do it's almost always seasonal fruit. Virtually every month where we live there is a new fruit coming into season. We don't eat fruit out of season -- we only eat local fruit. This means that we really look forward to it coming out and we just to buy it. Cherries are always hard because the season is only about 2 weeks!

When I worked at the high school here, the school nurse told be that the Japanese don't really do the "food pyramid" thing. Instead they recommend that you have 14-15 different foods during the course of the day.

You can see that we don't go out to dinner much: Usually 5 or 6 times a year and it's a really special treat when we do. But it's nice because the food around here is so great that it's a pleasure to cook with it.

I think the money mustache guy has it right: avoid optimising your time for work and instead optimise it for enjoying doing things for yourself. Get your calories from inexpensive things (we're mostly getting calories from rice, veg and fat). Then you can add variety, but the key is to have a lot of variety in small portions.

Just my 2 cents, anyway. There are lots of good ways to live and I don't mean to say that other ways are worse than this. It's just that you can spend a small amount of money, get a large amount of variety and not eat a large number of calories.

Having said that I think London is a terrible place to live on a low wage.

Despite the horrible commute, living outside of London and commuting in improves your standard of living pretty dramatically IMHO. If we ever go back, I'm thinking of living even a few stops further out: you pay exactly the same amount of money on housing and transportation (the housing market is efficient), but you get a much nicer house -- at the cost of time...

Although, I say that... This year we stayed in a friends house in Millwall for a month and my commute was worse than from Watford (although a heck of a lot cheaper). So even being in Zone 2 doesn't guarantee you a good commute.

It's easier to not spend a million bucks than to make a million bucks.

I love cities and fine food, but eventually I realized how much I was paying for the privilege and decided I wanted out. A cheap house and a garden go a long ways.

What ways do you have in mind?

Strangely while Facebook, Amazon, Netflix Google haven't been invented, Apple is here. Also strangely me too, but with long dark brown hair instead grey.

Like today Apple and a bunch of other high status companies are highly sought after employers of note. And just like today overwork and burnout their highly skilled workers and then toss them out like yesterdays trash.

Work for Apple, Microsoft, IBM and Intel they said. Make a name for yourself. Work on stuff other people think is exciting they said. Nope I said. And I've been happy enough over the last 35 years doing stuff no one else really cares about for companies and clients no one's ever heard of.

End of the day, No Name Corps money is just as good as Googles and Apples. Sure there is less of it. But the difference you paying for with lack of control and stress.

Edit: There's always someone faster, slower, richer, poorer, healthier, and sicker than you.

If there is one thing growing up in the bay area has taught me it's this.

Took a job on the basis of "it'll look great on your CV". Most stressful job I've ever endured.

Went back to working for less-well-known, smaller places... night and day difference.

And I'm nowhere near the Bay area ;)

"Its just a fucking job" indeed!

THIS! made my day!

I've lost a lot of friends and recognize that life is way too short to not be putting as much time as possible toward something you find totally compelling. The stock answer is contentment and "happiness."

The most content person I've ever met was a flower cart man in Belmopan, Belize. Probably made $100 a week at most. He knew all he wanted to do was bring beautiful flowers to people and give them a smile. He had a point in life. Sure he had kids, but he knew that they would move on one day and do their own thing, and he wanted to be known as the best flower man in Belize so he got up early to start and worked late.

This pervasive idea that "it's just a fucking job" is ultimately a milquetoast cop-out. Spend your hours doing something that has impact to you.

> I've lost a lot of friends and recognize that life is way too short to not be putting as much time as possible toward something you find totally compelling. ...

> This pervasive idea that "it's just a fucking job" is ultimately a milquetoast cop-out. Spend your hours doing something that has impact to you.

Why can't "raising a family" be the totally compelling thing you do that has impact on you? The "point of your life"?

I'm not saying that is me, but I think the people that choose that are making a perfectly rational choice.

These are independent autonomous humans who have their own goals - so what happens when they deviate from the things you wanted them to do?

I have three kids and I can tell you right now, there is nothing straightforward that you can plan out with respect to outcomes. It's gonna be a crapshoot, and the best you can do is just do your best and hang on.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Men (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/6312/6312-h/6312-h.htm)

It seems to me that no person is in a position to judge whether another has found the thing that they should be shaping their life around. As much as we like to assume they are, humans aren’t rational creatures and activities that appear completely pointless from the outside can be incredibly meaningful to the one doing them.

It's just a fucking job, yes, we make other people rich, yes, but it's also the kind of job that I wanna do. I also don't commute, and also have more time to meet with my daughter compared to most dads, and I really glad about this term.

Hackernews points mostly.

- Annie Dillard