Agreed. I also grew up poor and now live comfortably. Having my own place with no roommates (or mentally ill family members screaming at me) brings me a lot of peace. Being able to just uber somewhere when I have an appointment but feel too tired to take public transit for 45 minutes makes my life easier. There are a lot of problems in life that you can make disappear (or simplify a lot) by throwing a little money at them. You can remove a lot of stress factors. Money gives you more freedom to choose what you want your life to be like.

The flipside is that I know very well that, if I'm in an anxious mindset, my brain will find things to worry and be unhappy about. I know being a multi-millionaire wouldn't bring me bliss, but... Being able to work on my own projects, as much as I want, whenever I want. That would be fucking awesome.

The most precious thing money can buy is freedom. Any more money than that and it can become a burden. The tricky part is the sweet spot, you have to find it, be aware of it. Ah, and yes, just where that spot is so depends on everything that it won't be the same for more than one person.

Essentially, money is freedom. It's a wonderful, marvelous experience when you can suddenly turn your problems into expenses.

I recall reading that sweet spot is around $150,000 per person.

I often hear the “money isn’t everything” platitude from people who already have it. It’s gatekeeping.

See also: “You don’t REALLY want to be promoted like I was—it’s so much more stress and work. You should be happy as an individual contributor!”

I like to say, money can't buy happiness, but it can keep at bay a whole lot of the kind of grief and worrying that comes with just scraping by.

Thanks for digging this up!

It's also embarrassment at success, rather than deliberate gatekeeping. It holds a lot of people back, too...

The bit about being promoted - I said that. And then after a couple years I quit and went back to being an individual contributor... management is not for everyone.

EDIT: Maybe I should say, not every promotion is a positive step...

"management isn't really a promotion" from people who went into management and saw their responsibility (and compensation) very quickly outpace the people stayed as corporate code monkeys.

This 100%. I also grew up poor and having a certain amount of money alleviates a ton of problems and people don’t realize how taxing day to day survival can be in the modern economy with not enough. It is pure survival mode until you reach a threshold.

I don't really get your point. First of all, this isn't an "article." It's a story about one founder and one company. It's not supposed to be a middle-of-the-road case study on building startups.

Nowhere in the story does he suggest that being poor would be better than being rich or that having financial security isn't objectively better than the opposite. He's basically saying that the downside of his wealth is living a life without purpose because he can afford to do nothing all day, and how he misses the feeling of having a purpose to wake up to.

Even if you aren't extremely rich, I think most people can relate to that feeling. The reason why the story resonates is because it's a reminder that money does not buy purpose more than anything else.

> First of all, this isn't an "article." It's a story about...

I hate to be pedantic, but "article" and "story" are synonyms.

> The reason why the story resonates is because it's a reminder that money does not buy purpose more than anything else.

I think it resonates purely because it's a "human" story but, again, I really don't think anyone seriously thinks money brings happiness or purpose. Essentially, the story argues against a manufactured strawman. What the story does, imo, is minimize the hard work that went into his million-dollar venture while at the same time hinting that his small fortune might actually be a detriment, not a boon.

I mean, you criticized a human interest story for not being something like a business school case study for how to build startups. My counterpoint was that human interest stories aren't meant to do that.

> I really don't think anyone seriously thinks money brings happiness or purpose.

I was commenting on the purpose piece of the message not happiness, and no if this was another "money didn't bring me happiness" piece I don't think it would have resonated as much as it did. Maybe we've all finally learned that above a certain threshold of wealth you won't be any happier, but to see a man feeling a bit lost without purpose despite creating so much wealth for himself (and not having inherited it) is surprising, which is why this is resonating.

Even Naval said a few weeks ago "Money does buy happiness, if you earned it," which is clearly not really true in this case. He missed the fact that money can actually remove purpose from your life, whether it was earned or not.

Source: https://twitter.com/naval/status/1165866280181628928?lang=en

> My counterpoint was that human interest stories aren't meant to do that.

That's a fair point, maybe I'm looking at it from too much of a "startup-y" perspective.

I agree with your gist here, but once upon a time I was drinking beer in SF with a guy who was among the first dozen or so engineers at YouTube. He was a multimillionaire because he happened to be doing more or less the same thing I had been doing at about the same time, getting paid about the same, not shouldering any particular risk -- but he happened to be doing it at a company that Google bought. That really made me think.

While this might not be the case for the author here, I think in the startup scene (and thus for the HN audience) it's not all that uncommon for people to go from "very well paid engineer" to "FU Money" overnight and for reasons not related to their actual engineering prowess or effort.

>(2), they provide comfort for those that don't have the drive/luck/privilege of getting there by arguing that "hey, money doesn't make you happy!"

That's not too far off.

First, beyond a certain point (more easily achievable than a $600 million exit), money really don't make you more happy.

Second, it's not like building such a company or performing some great achievement (whether sports, arts, science) is some necessary part of being a human, and those that didn't or don't "have the drive/luck/privilege of getting there" are failures.

>But at the same time, can we not kid ourselves? Money makes life much easier than the alternative.

Which is neither here, nor there, regarding such cases as in the article. You don't hundreds or even tens of millions for that. A million or a couple millions are more than enough.

>I'm reminded of a (2008 crash) documentary I saw years ago where a banker says: "I grew up poor, and now I'm rich; trust me, I'd rather be rich."

Perhaps this is more of a preoccupation/conditioning/fear for those that grew up poor / much poorer? Or rather, for some of those?

If one is brought up in comfortable middle class / upper middle class, they can be quite satisfied with much less material success and without some huge financial fallout like in TFA.

Somebody who had lived through poverty though, might develop some need to overcompensate in excess.

I agree that if I read the article the way you did, I would find it condescending. I think part of what makes the article interesting is an implied counter-argument to this point you made:

"If you're like me (and I think most HN'ers are), you continue building stuff in spite of the overwhelming odds. That's the real lesson here. Trying, failing, trying, failing, and doing this over and over, even though expecting a different outcome is technically insanity."

So you are doing it, perhaps, for the sheer pleasure and joy of building, experimenting and using your mind.

If that is the case, then when you actually make the payday, the article argues you may be robbed of this in the future. In the article, the entrepreneur lost his motivation because it seemed pointless to struggle and build after the payout.

Its not just that money didn't make him happy, but that it reduced the prior satisfaction he had in building.

Note that this is not inevitable. We know of entrepreneurs (Gates, Jobs, Zuckerberg, Musk etc) who continue to work very hard after they have become wealthy.

Yes. And this isn't really "overnight". Overnight millionaires are those who win the lottery or a TV show. That tends to vanish quickly. This guy built a business, the very opposite of overnight.

"Money doesn't bring happiness" is upper class shorthand for "incomes above six figures in the US don't provide significant marginal benefits in terms of personal satisfaction and overall happiness".

Money is obviously pretty great to have. The point of the cliche is to caution people about making too many sacrifices to chase millions.

I think if happiness was a function of money, then it would very much look like the sigmoid / logistic function. You have a linear region where there's a very dramatic relationship between money and happiness (a $100k salary makes life so much easier than a $30k salary), but there's very small difference at the different ends...a $5k salary will not improve your life much over a $500 salary, even though there's an order of a magnitude in difference - just in the same way that $50MM won't make you much happier than $500MM.

And this is something I feel is important, because people tend to compare extremes. It's always poor vs rich

All the research I’ve seen basically points at happiness having a fairly straightforward logarithmic relationship to wealth.

So it’s not true to say “money doesn’t make you happier”, it just gets you less marginal happiness per increment of income (research on wealth is less clear, but wealth can be converted to an income stream).

I agree with your premise on the higher end but a $500 and $5000 salary are dramatically different. You won’t go hungry on 5k if you are frugal while $500 could kill you.

I'd imagine that people in most western countries on either salaries would also receive some kind of welfare benefits to supplement those kinds of low salaries.

I really dislike that the saying is "money doesn't buy happiness." In German it is much more sensible: "Money alone doesn't make you happy." Which emphasizes the role of money as part of the formula.

"Geld allein macht nicht glücklich", (for the curious). Aber, es hilft sehr ;)

"They say money doesn't buy happiness. It buys a jet-ski. Have you ever seen someone frown on a jet-ski?"

-Daniel Tosh

Spot on. People also don't realize that spending money effectively is a skill. $1000 bottles of champagne are for those that lack creativity with how to deploy their capital. Those of us who practice conscious spending can derive significant joy from money.

Out of curiosity, can you give some examples of spending money effectively?

Nice property, investing in an interesting and potentially business venture, buying $1000 fundraising tables with local politicians, buying an artist you like who has potential to become collectable, buying a car and learning how to maintain it, home or garden upgrades, a degree in something you are interested in, .

Happy to help you spend your hard earned dollars ;)

Healthy delicious food, investing in one’s community, subsidizing ethical sourcing of materials, local craftsmanship, business opportunities that create value for others, education, unique life experiences

>Money makes life much easier than the alternative.

I don't think that's true. If it were, you wouldn't see these companies fundraising 9+ figures and then still failing to turn a profit and crashing and burning. It didn't make anything easier for them. If anything, it made it harder because the management got overconfident.

Makes life easier for you personally after an exit / liquidity event.

Not related to funding of a company, that's a whole different ball game.

Net assets, and net income, make life happier for companies.

What you describe is cash flow, which is often necessary, but not really analogous.

It’s like saying “access to low interest rate 30 year mortgages makes life happy”, which might be true if you’re looking for a mortgage, but isn’t really generally applicable.

Thats not at all how any of the mechanism you're talking about works. The alternative OP speaks of is having no money. Everything gets more difficult if you lack any of this resource.

That also isn't true as long as you retain the ability to obtain money. Or just have rich friends you can mooch off of. Either one of those seem to work for a lot of people.

Now if nobody around you has any money, that might be an indication of a serious problem, but still in that case a little bit of economic knowledge can go a long way.

> retain the ability to obtain money

Still not the same as having no money.

I really don't know what you want me to say. If the problem actually is "no money" then there are many solutions to that. Whether you find them acceptable is a different story. But my point is that often that really isn't the core of the problem.