7 ms·

Just yesterday my fiancee told me about her day: A relatively healthy looking (and his chart agreed) 41 year old guy walked into the clinic with a severe heada

by sndean 10y ago

Just yesterday my fiancee told me about her day: A relatively healthy looking (and his chart agreed) 41 year old guy walked into the clinic with a severe headache around 10am. By around 4pm she had to tell his family he was likely brain dead. Because of this and other things she's seen recently, we're planning more trips. See the Seven Wonders of the World. I've only left this timezone a few times before. And we've both spent the first ~30 years of our lives in school... rethinking how much weight we've been putting on things.

hkmurakami 10y ago
In 2013, I nearly died from getting hit by a car. I was 28. In 2014, a friend died in a car crash, a victim of a drunk reckless driver. He was 27. In 2017, my college roommate died in a lake accident. He left behind a wife and 6 adopted children from Africa (he was a man of God). He was 32. As others have noted, life is often long and investing in our future financial wellbeing is a prerogative. But sometimes life gets cut shockingly short. Take some withdrawls from the fruits of your hard work with those you love from time to time; don't save all of it for a future that sadly might not come for some of us.
- fictioncircle 10y ago
  Yep. As Tech folks, honestly, we should just save up FU money and then stop worrying.
  - hkmurakami 10y ago
    What's FU money to you? It can reasonably be anywhere between $200k~$20M.
    - xyzzy4 10y ago
      It can be $50k in India and other developing countries.
      - jogjayr 10y ago
        > 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.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
        ido 10y ago
        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.
        sfifs 10y ago
        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.
        ido 10y ago
        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,+India/Chandigarh,+India/ 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.
    - Kluny 10y ago
      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).
      - bjelkeman-again 10y ago
        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/ https://fortnine.ca/en/how-dangerous-are-motorcycles/
      - hkmurakami 10y ago
        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.
        Kluny 10y ago
        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.
    - fictioncircle 10y ago
      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.
  - thomasahle 10y ago
    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?
  - mulmen 10y ago
    You don't get FU money by "saving up".
    - Gargoyle 10y ago
      You certainly can.
    - PenguinCoder 10y ago
      How does an average (non start up, non stock Rsu, person get FU only without saving up?
      - rhexs 10y ago
        https://www.bogleheads.org/ 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?
      - mulmen 10y ago
        You don't, that's the point.
    - rhexs 10y ago
      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. =) )
- finkin1 10y ago
  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.
  - jvreagan 10y ago
    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.
    - wry_discontent 10y ago
      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.
      - voidhorse 10y ago
        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"
      - 10y ago
- AnneDev 10y ago
  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.
  - scholia 10y ago
    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....
    - JoshTriplett 10y ago
      > 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.
      - uiri 10y ago
        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.
        sk5t 10y ago
        To quote Kate Tempest, "We die so that others can be born, we age so that others can be young."
        naasking 10y ago
        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.
        10y ago
pmarreck 10y ago
> And we've both spent the first ~30 years of our lives in school I... oh boy. My advice and opinion (feel free to disagree!) is not to do this. Life is too short to spend 1/3 (or 1/2, or all of it if you die too soon) in school.
- peter303 10y ago
  Depends on what you want to do if you had enough time and money to do anything. Imwould spend time learning and discovering things.
  - NotSammyHagar 10y ago
    I was so happy in grad school. Got my first real paying job when i was almost 30. It worked out well for me. I was damn slow to finish that damn diss, but now I'm on top of the world. :-) Everyone has a different path in life.
- compiler-guy 10y ago
  I loved school while I was there. So I didn't feel like attending was missing out on other things. Now the opportunity cost is sufficiently high that I'd rather do other things, but still. No regrets for me for my years of post-graduate education.
- pmiller2 10y ago
  My years in grad school were some of my happiest years. I would go back again if it didn't mean forgoing the ability to ever retire.
themodelplumber 10y ago
That's quite scary. Can I ask what the patient's condition was?

by sndean 10y ago

hkmurakami 10y ago

In 2013, I nearly died from getting hit by a car. I was 28. In 2014, a friend died in a car crash, a victim of a drunk reckless driver. He was 27. In 2017, my college roommate died in a lake accident. He left behind a wife and 6 adopted children from Africa (he was a man of God). He was 32. As others have noted, life is often long and investing in our future financial wellbeing is a prerogative. But sometimes life gets cut shockingly short. Take some withdrawls from the fruits of your hard work with those you love from time to time; don't save all of it for a future that sadly might not come for some of us.

fictioncircle 10y ago
Yep. As Tech folks, honestly, we should just save up FU money and then stop worrying.
- hkmurakami 10y ago
  What's FU money to you? It can reasonably be anywhere between $200k~$20M.
  - xyzzy4 10y ago
    It can be $50k in India and other developing countries.
    - jogjayr 10y ago
      > 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.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - ido 10y ago
        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.
        sfifs 10y ago
        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.
        ido 10y ago
        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,+India/Chandigarh,+India/ 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.
  - Kluny 10y ago
    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).
    - bjelkeman-again 10y ago
      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/ https://fortnine.ca/en/how-dangerous-are-motorcycles/
    - hkmurakami 10y ago
      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.
      - Kluny 10y ago
        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.
  - fictioncircle 10y ago
    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.
- thomasahle 10y ago
  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?
- mulmen 10y ago
  You don't get FU money by "saving up".
  - Gargoyle 10y ago
    You certainly can.
  - PenguinCoder 10y ago
    How does an average (non start up, non stock Rsu, person get FU only without saving up?
    - rhexs 10y ago
      https://www.bogleheads.org/ 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?
    - mulmen 10y ago
      You don't, that's the point.
  - rhexs 10y ago
    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. =) )
finkin1 10y ago
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.
- jvreagan 10y ago
  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.
  - wry_discontent 10y ago
    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.
    - voidhorse 10y ago
      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"
    - 10y ago
AnneDev 10y ago
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.
- scholia 10y ago
  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....
  - JoshTriplett 10y ago
    > 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.
    - uiri 10y ago
      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.
      - sk5t 10y ago
        To quote Kate Tempest, "We die so that others can be born, we age so that others can be young."
      - naasking 10y ago
        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.
      - 10y ago

pmarreck 10y ago

> And we've both spent the first ~30 years of our lives in school I... oh boy. My advice and opinion (feel free to disagree!) is not to do this. Life is too short to spend 1/3 (or 1/2, or all of it if you die too soon) in school.

peter303 10y ago
Depends on what you want to do if you had enough time and money to do anything. Imwould spend time learning and discovering things.
- NotSammyHagar 10y ago
  I was so happy in grad school. Got my first real paying job when i was almost 30. It worked out well for me. I was damn slow to finish that damn diss, but now I'm on top of the world. :-) Everyone has a different path in life.
compiler-guy 10y ago
I loved school while I was there. So I didn't feel like attending was missing out on other things. Now the opportunity cost is sufficiently high that I'd rather do other things, but still. No regrets for me for my years of post-graduate education.
pmiller2 10y ago
My years in grad school were some of my happiest years. I would go back again if it didn't mean forgoing the ability to ever retire.

themodelplumber 10y ago

That's quite scary. Can I ask what the patient's condition was?