Once you get there, you have to face reality: while being poor leads to unhappiness, being financially independent does not lead to happiness either. Don't believe me? Look at billionaires out there; do all of them look like happy and well-adjusted people to you? Not naming names.

And that's why wealthy celebrities repeat again and again that "Money doesn't buy happiness". It's because they know from experience that it really doesn't help all that much.

That said, a lot of people who get rich, because status is their real motivation, are shocked by how horrible society still is. At first they get hooked on the drug of high social status, but then they learn to see through the flattery and realize that nothing has truly changed, and they’re just as miserable as before. It tends to take about two years, in my observation, for the “new life energy” to wear off. Money teaches you that there isn’t some “better” society to aspire to. The people “up there” aren’t the supervillains Redditers imagine billionaires to be, but they’re not better either.

My daughter is autistic and when she started to learn how to read social cues she realized that her so-called friends didn’t actually like her, which I suspected myself but never had the chutzpah to say, and it made her angry. Getting rich has a similar “learn what people are really about” curse.

I've been the young immigrant who arrived to a foreign country with the clothes on his back and whatever fits in a suitcase; occasionally splurging by buying used clothes at a thrift shop and buying a slice of cake at the supermarket once a month. If anything, I was probably happier then: healthy and hopeful for a better future. Now I'm in significantly worse health and rather jaded.

Thank you for sharing your own experience.

Sure, they are just people like you and me. Doesn't mean their mere existence isn't evidence of a major flaw in our implementation of capitalism. Our society is becoming far too stratified. Healthcare should be a right at this point in our society's development, it's a stain on our country that we still carry on with a system that works for nobody except health insurance CEOs.

Besides, someone creating more wealth than you do does not hurt you.

And I wonder what's behind that rhetoric twist in your second sentence. Was that on purpose or do you not even notice?

Because no, somebody creating more wealth than me does not hurt me by itself (I might even benefit!). Somebody accumulating and being able to command more wealth than me can hurt me, among other reasons because it gives them political power, which they can wield to hurt me and others. Inequal wealth accumulation taken to its logical extreme is undemocratic because it violates the principle of one person one vote.

(Some wealth accumulation is okay. There's room for nuance here.)

Example, please.

The rich don't have to be eaten, just constrained from exercising their worst excesses.

A 'right' shouldn't depend on someone else's labor.

"it's a stain on our country that we still carry on with a system that works for nobody except health insurance CEOs"

I do agree that we need to get rid of the middleman. Replacing it with another one (the government) is a mistake and leads to the same inefficiencies.

Common procedures should be charge directly to the patient. These prices will be forced to go down as there will be actual competition. This won't work in cases where the surgery is rare, and insurance will work here. This will cut most of the bloat out of of health care and reduce the costs for everyone.

Lasik eye surgery is a good example of this. It's not covered by insurance. A decade ago, it was $10,000. My parents just got it a year ago and paid less than $1,000 out of pocket.

Greetings from europe where healthcare is free for everyone.

Yeah, but it let's you suffer in relaive comfort which is the most that anyone can realisically strive for.

If you have never met a person who is content with their life you may benefit from expanding your social circle. There are sincerely happy people out there.

I had > 1m at one point. It was enough not to work. It wasn't enough to experiment with random things without risk. Couldn't buy a house in NYC,SF,LA,Seattle. Would just have to go back to work. Couldn't start a business for a project that required 10-20 people. Couldn't really start co-working space for 20-40 people at current rent prices without feeling like I'd probably just be throwing away a few hundred k.

What I could do is travel. Could also live anywhere for a few years.

OTOH, if I had F.U. money, I would do those things and more. I might hire people to do them. There are 5 to 10 apps I'd like to see exist. Would be happy to pay some people to make them and make them open source, if I had FU money. Would love to start a tech-interactive-art museum the size of at least most major museums in big cities. Would consider funding startups.

I have one friend, x-coworker, that picked a different path than me and made lots of $$$ (no idea how much). But, they invest in startups. Goal is to invest $1 million a year. They visit startups and pitch events once or twice a month. They also have a personal project. Otherwise they travel with their S.O. and visit their adult kids around the world.

Sure, there's no lack of things that one can do with money. But would you be substantially happier? That's the issue at hand. Do you look at people with exorbitant wealth and see unlimited happiness? Do they appear to be in a permanent state of contentment and satisfaction?

Win the lottery or sell a company? Invest most of it, and allow yourself a "raise" you can permanently sustain every year.

It will do far more for you than raising your expenditure once, as you get used to it and return to near your baseline happiness very quickly.

    > Would love to start a tech-interactive-art museum

I get what you mean, but having enough not to work is the definition of FU money. It means you can just drop your things and leave when the boss demands you something you're not willing to do.

If you want to tie it to a single scenario I'd say it's taken on a meaning more like 'I'll do what I want to you/your business/parking because I don't care about paying to sort it out if I'm sued'. Parking where I 'can't' & paying the 100x fine seems better to me than finding where I 'can' and paying the 1x ticket sort of thing. Not to say everyone's morals would have them act like that, but illustratively.

I am sure it can be different for everyone, people see the World differently.

You are still you, your problems are still there, you are still bound to a slowly decaying body, there's no GAME OVER banner and credit roll proving that you have won the game of life. Because you haven't. Hah.

You can of course keep yourself entertained with all sorts of stupid stuff that doesn't actually matter. Or you can accept that there are still only a handful of things that bring people contentment, and you don't need to be financially independent to do any of them. I'm talking about bland obvious stuff like spending some time with loved ones (including pets and plants), going out for a walk in the park, etc. Unsurprisingly, a ton of retirees do just that. It's not because they are old and can't do anything else, it's because they have finally figured out what works.

And it's not like doing five times as much of that stuff is going to make you five times happier, either. Anybody with a full time job can carve out some quality time instead of arguing with strangers online.

If you have a 9 to 5 then you're waking up at sunrise and going to bed some time after sunset. You're probably commuting, getting out in the world, chatting to people even if it's just the colleagues, Starbucks drive through, supermarket checkout clerk, that sort of thing.

If you have retirement level money and you're alone there is absolutely nothing stopping you from waking up at 2pm, sitting on your computer playing World of Warcraft ordering takeaways, not going out for a walk or seeing the sunlight, getting slightly more depressed each day in a spiral.

There's also nothing stopping you from going out drinking every day or every other of the week, shrugging off the hangover then hitting the next one. And so on and so forth.

People easily underestimate how much their sense of well-being is related to simple things like just going for a walk in the sunshine every now and then or eating properly.

I find that having a daily schedule and trying to stick to it helps. Also, going for small quality of life improvements, trying things out to see what works and what doesn't, such as a different pillow, or replacing some foods with alternatives.

Having free time forces you to deal with all the emotional baggage you have accumulated over the years and it's a bit much, too. I was obsessed with saving money so that my family wouldn't struggle if I became unable to work; as a result, I didn't process the reasons why I had that fear in the first place. My dad became severely disabled when I was in college and it was a very traumatic experience for my family.

The irony of the situation is that by the time I earn the money my kids will grow up, leaving me a sad lonely man.

For example, even between my two children I noticed that with the second one I've had sleeping issues, while with the first one I couldn't understand what "sleepless nights" everyone talks about. Like, a newborn kid at night sleeps 50 minutes out of every hour and so did I at the age of 25, being fresh and well rested in the morning. Didn't work as well at the age 31. Can't really imagine what it must feel after 40. And in general I would prefer healthy sleep over money and time.

> I think it's better than lack of energy and stamina. At least that's what I extrapolate from my experience so far

I had children late --essentially retired when my second was born at 40-- and I completely agree: it would have been better to have the last kid before we turned 35. You made the right choice!

If it is sleep I guess one potential way for me to deal with it is that my partner goes to sleep earlier, e.g. 9pm and I go around 4am or later, which is what we kind of already do anyway since I am such a night owl. We also sleep in separate rooms, so we could potentially have both deal with the baby at different times. Not sure if anyone has done anything like that?

Still I feel like there's a huge difference between having to work vs having knowledge that you have enough that you can sustain a healthy and comfortable lifestyle without having to work, and therefore can opt to choose exactly what you want to work on rather than what might pay the most.

It may be the case that once I reach complete and comfortable financial independence it will not be all I expected it to be, but right now I don't see myself not appreciating the hell out of it, however I am sure plenty of people have thought they would be happy when reaching X goal and they either weren't or it was fleeting. I do have to say that so far I have come a long way from where I used to be from what I consider a hopeless position.

But there is a difference in my view whether you can walk in the park knowing that you don't have any potentially stressful responsibilities and problems coming up or you are walking in the park and excited about working on a hobby project of yours since you can 100 percent focus on that.

I never understood that kind of argument. Your kids will have decaying bodies just the same. You're only recreating what you're trying to escape, in somebody else.

That might mean you cannot travel the same way in retirement that you did in your 20's. That doesn't mean you still can't enjoy it, just that you need to take things slower and be gentler with your body.

And I say this as somebody who really did not want the responsibility of raising children.

Wait, you don't?

Do you have less than 24 hours a day to do things?

1: https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2208661120

Zen monks have attained this understanding without the need to make the money first however.

It reads to me as being critical of the assumption that being rich makes you happy.

This is reflected by many people who became rich and self destructive.

Money removes unhappiness and raises you to a baseline, but after that it doesn't provide extra happiness in and of it self.

As it is, I am acutely aware of my privileges as part of a household with two IT-based incomes and not too many worries, and that the world being what it is right now is giving rise to so many uncertainties that I wouldn't dream of abandoning this unless I had a really big bag of money like the author.

Pretty much everyone says this, but surprisingly few people actually seem to succeed at it when push-comes-to-shove

Ask a wage slave what he'd like to accomplish. Chances are the response will be something like "I'd start every day at the gym and work out for two hours until I was as buff as Brad Pitt. Then I'd practice the piano for three hours. I'd become fluent in Mandarin so that I could be prepared to understand the largest transformation of our time. I'd really learn how to handle a polo pony. I'd learn to fly a helicopter. I'd finish the screenplay that I've been writing and direct a production of it in HDTV."

Why hasn't he accomplished all of those things? "Because I'm chained to this desk 50 hours per week at this horrible [insurance|programming|government|administrative|whatever] job.

So he has no doubt that he would get all these things done if he didn't have to work? "Absolutely none. If I didn't have the job, I would be out there living the dream."

Suppose that the guy cashes in his investments and does retire. What do we find? He is waking up at 9:30 am, surfing the Web, sorting out the cable TV bill, watching DVDs, talking about going to the gym, eating Doritos, and maybe accomplishing one of his stated goals.

Retirement forces you to stop thinking that it is your job that holds you back. For most people the depressing truth is that they aren't that organized, disciplined, or motivated.

I worry that I don't have enough of a life outside of work to make retirement fulfilling, and actually, I don't actually mind working if I'm completely honest. I just never liked the stress of needing a job.

Lack of desires is the first canary in the coal mine of a decrease in mood.

As much as it sounds empty those who are able to distinguish between a 500$ TV and a 5000$ one have a very fine tuned sense of desire which doesn't collapse at the tail end.

Being unhappy because you are homeless is not the same being unhappy because some woman doesn't treat you like she would do a man who looks better than you are just two different things.

I think he needs to get closer to himself. I think he's on the right track.

I’ve seen a lot of people have random outlier success they didn’t earn and it seems to have the same effect as what most people get out of their careers: crushing failure they didn’t earn. By 50 or so, everyone figures out:

* it was almost all random. * the things that seemed so important were not. * working for money is a waste of time for almost everyone. * you can count your real friends on two hands, whether you’re broke or a billionaire.

It’s surprising how the paths converge. There are differences, and the rich version of alienation is better than the poor one, but the mindset this society leaves people with is remarkably stable. No one feels like they won, which is why Musk and Trump are so full of rage at everyone. Either the gods shut you out or you are forced to find out that the gods never existed.

No. Chance doesn’t fall evenly. It falls more often on those who work.

Thinking that Trump is full of rage is missing the forest for the tree. It’s a forest of journalists who are full of rage that this race and gender unapologetically exists, who try to depaint Trump as full of rage. It’s a forest of selfish crowd who wants the fruit of the labor of the second half of people, who complain that Trump is selfish.

Looked at the tree. Missed the entire forest. Not surprising that you think people are struck by a lightening to become billionaire.

Chop chop chop, back to work, quit being jealous.

But hey, you choose what you do with the cards you’re dealt with, you still don’t choose in what kind of crossfire or revolution you were born in in. Even if you are my fellow citizen, relative or own mother, you may have chosen to commit war crimes like displacing populations, hating on whites, voting for islam, making us live under occupation, and not showing human traits. I didn’t.

My only choice was to keep doing my duties, providing wealth and safety to those around me, and explaining them the consequences of their actions.

Nothing else I can do. That was an awful life, thank you. Maybe one day you’ll wake up, look up for success measurements of your choices, and think: “Damn. We could have avoided all that. We could have saved that guy and that guy.”

Or not. Your choice not mine.

I think the simple reason that no one feels like they've won is because we're not biologically wired for that. Like all living things, we've evolved to struggle for survival in a harsh environment. Of course modern civilization has separated us from that harsh reality by layers upon layers of human systems and supply chains, so we apply the same instincts to games of our own devising. There's nothing actually wrong with this though. The problem comes from the belief that "winning" will make one happy. The reality is ones drive leads to engagement and perhaps accomplishment, but it can't answer the why. That is something every person with leisure time needs to work out for themselves.

Unless you have a schizoid personality.

I am asking because you said you like developing people. My persistent experience in life for almost 20 years post college has been nobody wants to develop me.

I am not in tech but I am generally interested in the area if it can lead me to greater independence and more interesting work.

I like jobs that are intellectually engaging and ideally somewhat physically active.

Right now I am working in a mechanical role.

Sometimes I like the work but more often than not I find that good problem solving ability is not valued and the pay is dismal vs. what people earn in tech.

I have a BA in economics but unfortunately have never used it. 37 years old.

I find that people I talk to with chronic job dissatisfaction have a difficult time taking risks, because despite not liking their current circumstances, the unknown can be scary.

There are known pathways to work in tech or other fields, such as coding camps or community college. It becomes a question of what you're willing to sacrifice to make that happen. Would you move to a new city? Go back to school? Give up your evenings and weekends? Usually, some kind of risk needs to be taken, and there's always a path forward if you look.

I didn't graduate college until I was 29, and now that I'm in my mid-40s I can say that while every risk I took didn't pay off, it was in the taking of risks that has left me feeling satisfied with where I am.

https://www.hashtagyourlife.com/stories/dog-rusty-nail

I'm not the OP, but instead just a person who thinks they might be of help. Caveat emptor and all that :-).

Success is what we define both in and of ourselves. Some use material measurements (money, titles, assets, etc.), which are intrinsically relative and thus ephemeral.

Another definition is establishing a sustained environment of happiness. This includes addressing immediate physical needs, such as a place to live, sustenance, and the like. More than that is finding happiness in how we live each day.

> My persistent experience in life for almost 20 years post college has been nobody wants to develop me.

While some may give tips and/or pointers as to how to develop oneself, IMHO, much like happiness, development comes from within. Seeking wise counsel is always a good call, but no one can develop another. All anyone else can do is give perspective from their own journey as it relates to you - mine is you have identified options above which are appealing, so pursue them as if no one else is going to anything to make it happen.

> I have a BA in economics but unfortunately have never used it.

You still have it and one never knows when the education we have helps out until it does. ;)

The last time I was able to hire an American with a will to learn and an adjacent degree was over a decade ago.

Is that really possible? I have often thought that the only person that can develop you, is you.

Sure you might get some good advice from some people, maybe a helping hand, a business loan or grant etc. but I don't view that as development.

Your biggest asset is you. Don't be reluctant to use it.

You talk about this like this is trivial, but it's the kind of material help that would make a difference for almost everyone who is currently not doing what they want in life

Yes, no one can teach you to self-actualize. People's material circumstances are rarely a result of inadequate self-actualization or agency, despite what the self-help industry would like you to believe.

Most "high-agency" people who succeed started out with either adequate resources to at least support themselves while they tried stuff, reliable backup plans (like living with supportive family), or help in the form of stuff like grants or startup funding. People who don't have that need that, regardless of their mindset or abilities. There are exceptions who got incredibly lucky, and they are a rounding error among rounding errors. That is the world we live in. There are ways to engineer a world where this is less the case, but at least in the US, we seem to choose not to move in this direction at every opportunity, and freak out when even minor forms of the security necessary to act with agency take hold for large numbers of people (See: The business world's hysterical reaction to COVID relief)

I'm not sure the high wages in tech are going to last, universities having been minting new CS graduates like there is no tomorrow. Alongside that demand appears to be flagging. I'm sure you remember enough from your BA to know what the result of that is.

Yeah. The entire blog post (to me) gives the strong impression that the author is an extremely self centred, selfish... er... prick.

Maybe they'll learn to be less that way over time, and hopefully their ex-girlfriend learns to avoid ungrateful people.

In my opinion, this is the big take here

When you have enough money to not work, it becomes very lonely fast

All of a sudden you have tons of time, but no one to share it with. Everyone is busy, mostly with work (also, most people probably can’t afford the same things you can)

If you could coordinate to stop working at the same time as your significant other, and a few friends, then you at least would have a group to plan and do stuff with

One of the biggest meanings we can find in life, is the feeling of belonging

OP seems to be going through a belonging crisis. Trying to figure out what group he wants to belong to

Lol. His name is in the URL, and it doesn’t sound white.

Yeah, definitely white: https://www.google.com/search?q=vinay+hiremath&btnG=Search&u...

Crazy how that was not that long ago in historical terms.

But he was Sikh (Indian Indian), and arguing his proto-Indo-European ancestry qualified him. He was ‘acquitted’ of being ‘white’, and case thrown out. Really interesting case, actually.

Some pretty nasty stuff in there from the plaintiff about his revulsion too and not wanting to marry the ‘lower castes’ (and some argument regarding Mongoloids) to help quantify him as ‘white’ in case you get too sympathetic.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Bhagat_Sing...]

OP found himself alone rather fast and without truly realizing it was happening

He’ll probably get over it at some point, will find a group to belong to and redefine his identity along the way

Neither situation is intrinsically better or worse, just different and subjective to each one of you

Between the three of you, I'd take none.

I haven't made enough to not work but once my US immigration was sorted out (H1B isn't very leisure compatible), I took a year off to rediscover what all passed me by when I was working.

This was a lot of alone time, but not true loneliness.

For example, I would set up lunch with a friend, they would bail due to work emergencies or something but I would go eat there anyway.

Quickly learned to go to a place where multiple people were scheduled anyway, like heading to Berkley for a tech talk on Byzantine block chains or vector search algorithms, hoping something would interest me.

> OP seems to be going through a belonging crisis. Trying to figure out what group he wants to belong to

The first three months were a strange struggle with my Ego, because a large part of my "Get up and do things" was the belief that what I had to do was very important to others and the whole world stops if I stop moving. To get through the waves in life without feeling self pity about it, I honestly felt my work was what made the sun rise and the rain fall.

Suddenly, my self importance was shot to pieces immediately.

I wasn't important anymore, what I did wasn't important to others but only to me. All the years of sacrificing my own wants (not needs) suddenly felt dissonant.

Plus a lot of activities aren't cumulative in the way work is - cooking dinner today does nothing for dinner tomorrow, there's no way to add up that to something.

Work is particularly rewarding because it checks those two boxes for me - it adds up to something, slowly every day, plus what I do is important to others in way where they want you to succeed (unlike say training for the SF marathon, where it's all "I could never" from people who could, but don't want to).

Eventually, I went back to work, but now I drink that workahol in moderation.

I would think if one were rich, and you knew who you wanted to spend time with, you could simply buy their time through various means. Pay some bills, get them a more relaxed job with more time, pay for vacations for them to go with you etc.

Instead, people in such position should probably go out and join associations which distribute food to those who need it. At least they'll see that they're doing something good to improve others' condition and would probably feel better.

To add to this, the 'modern' use of the word 'millionare' started in 1850 (discounting first use in 1719 in France which was not in the context of 'rich' we know).

When you adjust for inflation, a comperable purchase power today would be an equivalent of having net worth of $250M. Anything below that and you aren't even a 'true' millionare. ($1 USD in 1850 is roughly ~$250 USD in 2024, taking 3.2% average historic inflation rate).

So, author, you are not even rich, still work to do ;)

    In 1850, the US was home to 19 millionaires. But the years following the Civil War had seen a considerable increase in membership of that exclusive club. By the end of the 1890's the number of millionaires in the US had swelled to more than 4,000.

Thanks in anticipation.

Just wanted to let you know, for unknown reasons this statement really resonated with me, thank you.