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This shows the author, his father and grandfather had the wrong end of the stick. His grandfather, wanting security, had traded his time and independance for s
by brc 16y ago
This shows the author, his father and grandfather had the wrong end of the stick. His grandfather, wanting security, had traded his time and independance for security, and got neither. His father, wanting to ensure he had both security and longevity, got neither. The author, apparently seeing this as a failed experiment, walked away from it.
What he failed to realise that neither his father or grandfather ever got control over their situation. The continually worked for money by trading their precious time for security. It's that which made them unhappy, not the actual money.
The author, to me, is making the fundamental mistake of thinking that you have to work 40 hours a week for 40 years to have 'money', so the choice is between working like a dog or having nothing, not realising that their is another way. Can money set you free? Of course it can, but not if you're trading your free time for your money.
For most people, it is a choice between security of income and freedom to spend your time as you want. The most secure people on the planet are prisoners, but they don't have the freedom to do what they want. If you're prepared to accept a less-secure income (by being risky, ie, startups) then you're going to gain the benefits of freedom when/if it does work out.
Bottom line : if this guy's Dad had cashed out at a younger age and spent the last 20 years of his life doing things on his own terms, he wouldn't have died an unhappy man in a short retirement.
- starkfist 16y agoThere are few career paths where one can "cash out."
- brc 16y agoRight, so choose one where you can. That's my point. Don't bash your head against a bank wall for 40 years and then think you've wasted your life. In other words : you can't sell a job, so why spend 40 years working at one?
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- barrkel 16y agoWhat are you going to do after you "cash out"? Work can be a source of purpose in one's life. I don't believe in this idea, that seems implied in your post, that bliss lies in comfortable unemployment.
- brc 16y ago>What are you going to do after you "cash out"? Whatever you want! Start another job, go trekking, work for a charity, write poetry. The original article questions whether money can get you freedom, the answer is : yes it can! The ultimate freedom is choosing to do things each day because you want to, not because you have to.
- barrkel 16y agoYou can start another job, go trekking, work for a charity, write poetry, etc. without needing to cash out. Just do it now. No need for money, if that's what you really want. Your life is made up of what you are doing right now, not what you think you're going to do sometime in the future.
- chc 16y agoYour comment reads to me like an extremely long variant of "Let them eat cake." You really need to explain how working for a little while and then "cashing out" was a viable option for these men that they simply chose not to exercise.
- rortian 16y agoYeah with the added constraint that it was a pension that the Dad retired with.
- kragen 16y agoI would agree with you if you were talking about coal miners or supermarket checkers, but the one guy was a dentist and the other guy was a banker. Even 80 years ago, dentists and bankers made more than three times as much money per year as regular people. If they couldn't retire after one-third the normal career length, maybe the fault was not in their stars, but in themselves: perhaps a failure of frugality?
- Tichy 16y agoOr the people who make just one third are just even poorer. I have an income in the top 10% of my country, yet my feeling is it is only sufficient to scrape by in a moderately convenient way. Certainly not enough to retire early. Like to buy a house or apartment, I would probably still have to take a 30 year credit.
- kragen 16y agoPretty much everybody has the feeling that their income is "only sufficient to scrape by in a moderately convenient way". In the end, of course, they're all wrong: no income is enough to keep you alive. What good does homeownership do you once you're dead? You're comment points out very effectively that this is an illusion. I'm sure you're aware that the other 90% of the people in your country are also at least scraping by, even though many of them have an income that is a fraction of yours. Do you suppose they spend all their time missing the conveniences you take for granted? Unless those conveniences are things like access to surgery and adequate food for their children (do you live in Zimbabwe?) probably not. So consider whether the conveniences that account for the discrepancy between their scraping along and your scraping along are really worth the inconveniences required to buy them. If you're like 90% of people, you never will consider this seriously — because if it wasn't crazy, everybody would be doing it, right? — until it's time for you to retire.