tl;dr - I agree with the article. Get shit done to make yourself happy. When reading a few responses here, I'm taken back with the comment "It's easy for you t

tl;dr - I agree with the article. Get shit done to make yourself happy. When reading a few responses here, I'm taken back with the comment "It's easy for you to preach, you don't have kids". In real life, I heard similar sentiments. I'm having a hard time trying to understand the feeling when people said such things. Having kids is a choice, no? The same thing with living über-minimalistic life. People who don't have kids may have serious problems too. Me and my wife, we don't have kids. But what we do have in terms of problems: 1. Selfish, arrogant, and wasteful parents. We helped them a lot and never received a single thanks. They love to have elaborate parties even though they are broke. 2. A 14 years old sister. Amazingly selfish little brat, complete disconnect between what she wants and what our parents could provide. Fucking android for 14 years old, what for? I cannot imagine her coding up some android app. I don't have a million dollar and far from it. When I was 26, I swallowed the "American Dream" Kool-aid bottoms up and really needed that 1 million dollar: We bought a big house, with .25 acre land. We owned 3 cars. I did all the stupid things that can only happen if you own a house: upgrading HVAC, kitchen, etc. etc. Only 1 thing I did that wasn't stupid: paying for wife's school. Now, we don't own TV, 1 car, 1 couch, < 700 sqft apartment, 2 cats, and 0-10 minutes commute. When we went through the transformation, crazy things happen. My sisters respect me a lot more. When they want superfluous things and I said no, they listen far more than they ever did. Crazy things happen with the parents too. They listened, twice, when I told them about the elaborate parties. Not needing money empowered me far more than money ever did. And I'm quite sure that I'm not unique in that regard. My future kids won't have lawn to run around or the latest apple gadgets to pimp around. Their life won't be govern by money. This plan may or may not work, my real life friends would be the judge of that. To drive my points further, unrelated to my life story, several tech co-founders have told me directly. "The best time to raise money, is when you don't need money". Extra brownie point: To buy freedom into United States (the easy way), you really need a million dollar. http://bit.ly/9RItQM http://bit.ly/9RItQM