With that kind of money I reckon you would be better off just hiring someone to either share the workload or bring in a skill set that you don't have yourself.

You can spend relatively small amounts of money that will improve your own productivity but your future earnings are very much limited by your own abilities.

Actually, starting up a digital agency might be the way to go? Like, he can learn from his colleagues. He also makes a return on investment.

Imagine this: you hire one UX designer, one marketeer and one dev guy (not in the US but in The Netherlands you could do this). You yourself oversee their projects and learn from all their skills. Even if you lose $40K per year, that's okay because you'd pay that money anyway for education.

It doesn't have to be one UX designer, one marketeer and one dev guy either. You can also think of other things that you might want to learn that synergize well with each other.

@OP: if by any chance you go through with a variation of this idea, feel free to shoot me an email. I'm curious how it would play out. Also, in certain cases I'd love to be the dev guy :)

Email is in profile.

This is a great answer.

I think I would do something similar (or pay for help with a side hustle to work on alongside investing in myself through course/deliberate practice). I am not sure which areas I would focus on though.

If I ever get my hands on $200k, I will hit you up!

> your future earnings are very much limited by your own abilities

Exactly. I thought it would be an interesting framing to see how people would invest in their own abilities. Specifically I was interested in what areas HN folk think it would be worth improving their abilities in

Pay off your highest interest rate debts first.

Next, I would:

- buy / do things that improve your sleep

- physical therapy (to learn proper way to carry your body)

- gym membership

- hire someone to declutter your home

- go on a non-extravagant trip to a destination that is wildly different than what you're used to

- buy an instrument and take music lessons

Paying off the debts first is a great move many would overlook!

I like the focus on health/sleep too - thanks for the response

But the way to maximize your future earnings IS to learn how to invest properly. Your own two hands are only going to generate so much.

So you'd be best off finding a mentor and then using the 200k as your "learning" money.

It is, I totally agree.

I was more trying to frame it in a way to understand the areas of ability/experience that HN folk think will be lucrative to get good at for the future.

I like the mentor idea! Thanks for the response

It's not what you know it's who you know. Upgrade your wardrobe. Learn to schmooze. Join a golf club, a yacht club, an underground sex club, or a country club. Get a sinecure job as an executive vice president. Profit.

Go to the Stanford Business School. Learn to schmooze. Stanford has a golf course, with classes for students. Date and marry one of the students. Make lots of contacts. Hang out at the various startup groups and the D-school. Attend the biannual Y-Combinator Demo Days (Sept 6 and 7, 2023). Hang out with the VC's that circle the Bus school. Visit the Computer History Museum for inspiration.

Love all these!

Hire someone to help market side projects

I think this is a great answer. Hiring people to help you with the aspects of creating successful side projects that you don't already know and getting them to teach you how to do it would be great for future earnings

1. healthy food and exercise equipment, might as well build a cheap home gym.

2. learn sales. get into a saas sales role.

3. build income stream number 2 while employed.

4. once earnjng 2.5x of my salary on my side hustle, quit the job and double down on my biz.

5. i dont know yet, i havent planned that far yet.

Love this response. I agree that investing in some sort of side hustle would be a good path to take

OP here. Thanks for the answers folks, really interesting

If I ever get my hands on $200k I will let you know how I get on!