7 ms·

Hoo boy that's a lot of over-privileged suggestions right there. "hi, millennial who is working full time to make rent, now is the time to start your business!"

Hoo boy that's a lot of over-privileged suggestions right there. "hi, millennial who is working full time to make rent, now is the time to start your business!", "Why not take your family around the world?" It's a nice idea and the site works pretty well on mobile, but it sort of grinds my gears.

ff317 8y ago
Actually all of these things are more achievable than you think. I have a relative who has a family of 5 (as in two adults and three young kids) and they've managed to travel the world the past several years on a high school teacher's salary. It's all about your priorities/tradeoffs and how much work you're willing to put into it. They lead a very no-frills budget-restricted life, keep very minimal possessions, put effort into finding overseas teaching jobs in low cost-of-living areas, finding dirt-cheap travel deals, and honestly I think the kids getting all this early travel and cultural exposure is probably a big net win (vs e.g. prioritizing things like buying them the latest video game consoles and fashionable clothing, etc). You could say the same for starting most small businesses. There are loans available to get up and running if you have a solid business plan and don't have awful/ruined credit, and many viable businesses can be "pay my bills" profitable fairly quickly. You won't make as much excess cash as getting on the corporate treadmill and doing well, at least not earlier on, but you do reap the rewards of being your own boss and learning a suite of skills that's much rarer, and over time even the small business world can eventually become quite lucrative if you want it to be.
- pjc50 8y ago
  > all of these things are more achievable than you think Perhaps one of them is achievable, but only at the cost of a very high level of focus - and giving up on the others. Travel is certainly a lot easier to achieve when you're young, and in many places cheaper (e.g. Interrail tickets, which I would recommend to anyone looking to see a lot of countries in a short time)
  - theossuary 8y ago
    I think that's the point of the application? This is advice from older people to their younger self, so a lot of it won't resonate with you (your nothing like them). Find the bits that do, and try to gain a bit of perspective from them
    - gowld 8y ago
      At the same time, advice from people who have unrealistic regret at missing out on all the options they didn't pick isn't very helpful. Life is a series of choices. Saying yes to everything is impossible. Good advice is for ideas are short-term sacrifices (at least in perception) for long-term payoff, not for grasping at everything desirable.
- captainbland 8y ago
  Well, first, getting to the point where you can maintain your lifestyle (even a relatively modist one) requires taking on quite a lot of financial and personal risk. Like the kind of risk that may exclude you from being able to buy your own house for the foreseeable future (already a challenge for many), or could drive you to living hand to mouth. The problem is at the average end of the income scale and lifestyle today, risk isn't just this nebulous, financial thing: it's not even an effort in the present risk, or the risk of emotional vulnerability - it's the risk of your next decade or longer being blighted with excess debt and possibly dependence on the state or family or whatever assuming even that you're lucky enough for those things to break your fall. In many places if your personal business fails after you quit your last job, you're voluntarily unemployed so, woops, too bad! Not to mention people who cannot just give up everything because they have dependents and all the rest.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  >It's all about your priorities/tradeoffs and how much work you're willing to put into it. They lead a very no-frills budget-restricted life, keep very minimal possessions, put effort into finding overseas teaching jobs in low cost-of-living areas, finding dirt-cheap travel deals... So how is their retirement plans coming along? >...and honestly I think the kids getting all this early travel and cultural exposure is probably a big net win (vs e.g. prioritizing things like buying them the latest video game consoles and fashionable clothing, etc). That seems to be a loaded assumption. I've known people who spent their entire childhood traveling, and rather than culturally rich they just couldn't fit into any culture - they were inappropriate and had difficulty functioning in a North American lifestyle due to having a mish mash of wordly exposure which has proven to be pretty career limiting. They can tell neat stories about their time in South America, but can't figure out why people don't want to hear outright that their ideas are dumb. There's this assumption that the more you travel the more well rounded you'll be, but you've just been you in more places, doesn't mean you'll be a better person.
  - mLuby 8y ago
    > So how is their retirement plans coming along? Someone has been watching too many financial planning commercials. And is assuming life expectancy will continue to outpace retirement age a few decades out. And struggling with the close-minded back home after travel isn't a good reason not to do it.
    - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
      > is assuming life expectancy will continue to outpace retirement age a few decades out. Here's the thing - if you can save enough, you can retire when you want, regardless of retirement age. I don't believe life expectancy will decrease, and I definitely want to be able to enjoy my golden years without working.
    - zrobotics 8y ago
      >>And struggling with the close-minded back home after travel isn't a good reason not to do it Why is traveling now considered such an absolute good that it is impossible to criticize it, or to assume that it will automatically make people more open-minded? The parent posters point was that traveling won't make everyone well-adjusted and open-minded. I find it silly to claim that everyone will benefit, there surely must be some people who won't benefit. Taking the parent's post in good faith, I find it reasonable to conclude that yes, in my experience there are people who, after extensive travel in their youth, experience difficulties adhering to local cultural standards. For a neutral example, I find the American puritanical reaction to sex & nudity frankly stupid, but it would be unwise to ignore these aspects of the culture.
ben_w 8y ago
Datapoint: an ex of mine is from a family which did this at the insistence of her mother. Her dad got a job in Bangladesh and that’s how they left Washington DC. They were only there for a few years, but followed it with a few in Paris and a few in Kenya (and in her case, a few in NI and England). Yes, this adventure started in the mid-90s and lots has changed since then, and yes both parents have degrees; but if you’re going to take your family around the world, it’s not your currrent pay that matters, it’s what you’re offered in the place you’re going to.
- autotune 8y ago
  Unless, of course, you can keep your current pay by working remote for a Bay Area company and move to Cheapsville, McFlyoverState for a few years and save enough to do whatever you want.
  - ben_w 8y ago
    If you can work remotely, then you can save up while exploring the capital cities of any $-poor nation instead of wasting good years in the overlooked areas of a rich one.
subcosmos 8y ago
Peter Griffin, is that you?
keiferski 8y ago
"If there's one thing I wish I could do to improve HN, it would be to detect this sort of middlebrow dismissal algorithmically. Unsophisticated people read an article like this and think: Gosh, I better eat honey for breakfast! People a little more sophisticated think: Hey, this is anecdotal evidence! Yeah, we know that. But is that the most interesting thing one can say about this article? Is it not at least a source of ideas for things to investigate further? The problem with the middlebrow dismissal is that it's a magnet for upvotes. The "U R a fag"s get downvoted and end up at the bottom of the page where they cause little trouble. But this sort of comment rises to the top. Things have now gotten to the stage where I flinch slightly as I click on the "comments" link, bracing myself for the dismissive comment I know will be waiting for me at the top of the page." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4692598#up_4693920 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4692598#up_4693920
- soared 8y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 (2007)
- DKnoll 8y ago
  Could one not argue this comment itself is a middlebrow dismissal? I don't think it makes sense to discredit comments just because they're not positive.
- captainbland 8y ago
  I see where you're coming from, I'm not usually particularly good at farming for upvotes I just commented what was on my mind at the time. I think the solution to this isn't algorithmic, however, it's to say something that is genuinely more interesting than the middle-brow dismissal so that people upvote that instead.

ff317 8y ago

Actually all of these things are more achievable than you think. I have a relative who has a family of 5 (as in two adults and three young kids) and they've managed to travel the world the past several years on a high school teacher's salary. It's all about your priorities/tradeoffs and how much work you're willing to put into it. They lead a very no-frills budget-restricted life, keep very minimal possessions, put effort into finding overseas teaching jobs in low cost-of-living areas, finding dirt-cheap travel deals, and honestly I think the kids getting all this early travel and cultural exposure is probably a big net win (vs e.g. prioritizing things like buying them the latest video game consoles and fashionable clothing, etc). You could say the same for starting most small businesses. There are loans available to get up and running if you have a solid business plan and don't have awful/ruined credit, and many viable businesses can be "pay my bills" profitable fairly quickly. You won't make as much excess cash as getting on the corporate treadmill and doing well, at least not earlier on, but you do reap the rewards of being your own boss and learning a suite of skills that's much rarer, and over time even the small business world can eventually become quite lucrative if you want it to be.

pjc50 8y ago
> all of these things are more achievable than you think Perhaps one of them is achievable, but only at the cost of a very high level of focus - and giving up on the others. Travel is certainly a lot easier to achieve when you're young, and in many places cheaper (e.g. Interrail tickets, which I would recommend to anyone looking to see a lot of countries in a short time)
- theossuary 8y ago
  I think that's the point of the application? This is advice from older people to their younger self, so a lot of it won't resonate with you (your nothing like them). Find the bits that do, and try to gain a bit of perspective from them
  - gowld 8y ago
    At the same time, advice from people who have unrealistic regret at missing out on all the options they didn't pick isn't very helpful. Life is a series of choices. Saying yes to everything is impossible. Good advice is for ideas are short-term sacrifices (at least in perception) for long-term payoff, not for grasping at everything desirable.
captainbland 8y ago
Well, first, getting to the point where you can maintain your lifestyle (even a relatively modist one) requires taking on quite a lot of financial and personal risk. Like the kind of risk that may exclude you from being able to buy your own house for the foreseeable future (already a challenge for many), or could drive you to living hand to mouth. The problem is at the average end of the income scale and lifestyle today, risk isn't just this nebulous, financial thing: it's not even an effort in the present risk, or the risk of emotional vulnerability - it's the risk of your next decade or longer being blighted with excess debt and possibly dependence on the state or family or whatever assuming even that you're lucky enough for those things to break your fall. In many places if your personal business fails after you quit your last job, you're voluntarily unemployed so, woops, too bad! Not to mention people who cannot just give up everything because they have dependents and all the rest.
SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
>It's all about your priorities/tradeoffs and how much work you're willing to put into it. They lead a very no-frills budget-restricted life, keep very minimal possessions, put effort into finding overseas teaching jobs in low cost-of-living areas, finding dirt-cheap travel deals... So how is their retirement plans coming along? >...and honestly I think the kids getting all this early travel and cultural exposure is probably a big net win (vs e.g. prioritizing things like buying them the latest video game consoles and fashionable clothing, etc). That seems to be a loaded assumption. I've known people who spent their entire childhood traveling, and rather than culturally rich they just couldn't fit into any culture - they were inappropriate and had difficulty functioning in a North American lifestyle due to having a mish mash of wordly exposure which has proven to be pretty career limiting. They can tell neat stories about their time in South America, but can't figure out why people don't want to hear outright that their ideas are dumb. There's this assumption that the more you travel the more well rounded you'll be, but you've just been you in more places, doesn't mean you'll be a better person.
- mLuby 8y ago
  > So how is their retirement plans coming along? Someone has been watching too many financial planning commercials. And is assuming life expectancy will continue to outpace retirement age a few decades out. And struggling with the close-minded back home after travel isn't a good reason not to do it.
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    > is assuming life expectancy will continue to outpace retirement age a few decades out. Here's the thing - if you can save enough, you can retire when you want, regardless of retirement age. I don't believe life expectancy will decrease, and I definitely want to be able to enjoy my golden years without working.
  - zrobotics 8y ago
    >>And struggling with the close-minded back home after travel isn't a good reason not to do it Why is traveling now considered such an absolute good that it is impossible to criticize it, or to assume that it will automatically make people more open-minded? The parent posters point was that traveling won't make everyone well-adjusted and open-minded. I find it silly to claim that everyone will benefit, there surely must be some people who won't benefit. Taking the parent's post in good faith, I find it reasonable to conclude that yes, in my experience there are people who, after extensive travel in their youth, experience difficulties adhering to local cultural standards. For a neutral example, I find the American puritanical reaction to sex & nudity frankly stupid, but it would be unwise to ignore these aspects of the culture.

ben_w 8y ago

Datapoint: an ex of mine is from a family which did this at the insistence of her mother. Her dad got a job in Bangladesh and that’s how they left Washington DC. They were only there for a few years, but followed it with a few in Paris and a few in Kenya (and in her case, a few in NI and England). Yes, this adventure started in the mid-90s and lots has changed since then, and yes both parents have degrees; but if you’re going to take your family around the world, it’s not your currrent pay that matters, it’s what you’re offered in the place you’re going to.

autotune 8y ago
Unless, of course, you can keep your current pay by working remote for a Bay Area company and move to Cheapsville, McFlyoverState for a few years and save enough to do whatever you want.
- ben_w 8y ago
  If you can work remotely, then you can save up while exploring the capital cities of any $-poor nation instead of wasting good years in the overlooked areas of a rich one.

subcosmos 8y ago

Peter Griffin, is that you?

keiferski 8y ago

"If there's one thing I wish I could do to improve HN, it would be to detect this sort of middlebrow dismissal algorithmically. Unsophisticated people read an article like this and think: Gosh, I better eat honey for breakfast! People a little more sophisticated think: Hey, this is anecdotal evidence! Yeah, we know that. But is that the most interesting thing one can say about this article? Is it not at least a source of ideas for things to investigate further? The problem with the middlebrow dismissal is that it's a magnet for upvotes. The "U R a fag"s get downvoted and end up at the bottom of the page where they cause little trouble. But this sort of comment rises to the top. Things have now gotten to the stage where I flinch slightly as I click on the "comments" link, bracing myself for the dismissive comment I know will be waiting for me at the top of the page." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4692598#up_4693920 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4692598#up_4693920

soared 8y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 (2007)
DKnoll 8y ago
Could one not argue this comment itself is a middlebrow dismissal? I don't think it makes sense to discredit comments just because they're not positive.
captainbland 8y ago
I see where you're coming from, I'm not usually particularly good at farming for upvotes I just commented what was on my mind at the time. I think the solution to this isn't algorithmic, however, it's to say something that is genuinely more interesting than the middle-brow dismissal so that people upvote that instead.