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I got rich on the other hand (2019)
- fractionalhare 6y ago> When I finished telling my friend this story, he asked for more. I said no, that was it. He said, “No, what about when you sold your company?” I said no, that didn’t make a big difference in my life. That was just more money in the bank. The difference happened when I was 22. Yeah I think I get what Derek is saying. However if I was his friend, I would also be unsatisfied by this answer. It feels like Derek should know what he's asking and is being obtuse. Likewise > It’s not how much you have. It’s the difference between what you have and what you spend. is in a real sense very true, but it's also vacuous. The more you have, the less effort is required to have a big difference between what you have and what you spend. In my opinion Derek's friend was probably framing this question in the sense, "How did you end up with so much?" and not, "How did you end up with such a great burn rate?"
- gameswithgo 6y agoHe knows he is being obtuse. Its the guru mentality.
- fractionalhare 6y agoI think he's being obtuse too :). The guru mentality is a good way to put it. It also drove me nuts when Dumbledore gave a thought-provoking non-answer to Harry when he asked, "Is this real or is it happening in my head?" There's a time and a place for Enlightened perspectives, but if my friend answered me the way Derek did I would find it kind of patronizing, personally.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- j45 6y agoSmall lessons once learned are what often underpin the big lessons and achievements.
- Moodles 6y agoI don’t mean to be rude but I am genuinely confused why this is interesting? The author is saying: “to be rich, save more than you spend”. Isn’t this obvious?
- andi999 6y agoHe said'the moment you save more than you spend you are rich' this is not obvious (and not true). Really rich means if a unsuspected big expense (medical bill e.g.) you can afford it.
- Moodles 6y agoI know. Also saving $0.01 after all expenses per month isn’t great either. I at least gave the benefit of the doubt and thought maybe he meant FIRE and the 4% rule eventually. But still, this is all kind of obvious and the story doesn’t seem particularly profound. Maybe I am missing something.
- andi999 6y agoThere story is later in life he got really rich, but if people ask him about it he gets into guru mode and claims he was rich before. Mildly interesting for the arrogance.
- renewiltord 6y agoHe's the guy who built and sold CD Baby. The way he did that is actually quite interesting (including the odd ownership structure he had to navigate) and he has lots of interesting things to say. But few people say only interesting things. And when generally interesting people say some incredibly boring things, people treat them as still interesting in some weird afterglow of the other things. So this post is entirely halofied by his other stuff. This is self help guru shit. Which is fine, right? He's writing the blog perhaps for himself and we may not be the intended audience. But that's what it is.
- Moodles 6y ago
- aerovistae 6y agoI'll be honest this is a stupid story. He's sharing a three bedroom apartment with two roommates. There isn't some beautiful moral to be taken here. what about when you have a family? What about when you have children? What about when you have a medical expense come up? Insurance is very expensive. I hate these anecdotes that imply that you can just live simply in the United States and be happy. So much is left unsaid. Maybe this guy wants to live an ascetic life, but most people don't. I understand that the idea of spending less can apply on varying scales, but this implication that you can just give up the material world and be a musician making minimum wage and be happy is silly.
- gabereiser 6y agoIndeed the story implies it’s just you. The moral of the story is sound but unrealistic in today’s economy.
- paulryanrogers 6y agoEspecially since most people end up with a significant medical expense. Being poor doesn't cover even mediocre care in large parts of the US. Or want a family or just have kids then the lower end of independent finances is much higher.
- zemo 6y ago> He's sharing a three bedroom apartment with two roommates. that was before he made a company and then sold it for $22m.
- aerovistae 6y ago.... Which the story implies had nothing to do with his later happiness.
- zemo 6y agoyes. the point is that fuck you money is a lifestyle, not a number.
- breck 6y agoMy one question: how did he make it to 22 without any debt? I had $5,000 in the bank at 18, but at 22 I was about $50K in the hole because of college. I know I shouldn't have worried about it because monthly payments were low and interest was low, but it felt crushing, and if I was saving $6k per year like he did, it would take me 12+ years to have "$12k in the bank and be free".
- sjg007 6y agoScholarships maybe?
- Beaver117 6y agoCommunity college can shave off two years of tuition. Not staying in dorms and instead commuting from home can shave off thousands of dollars in rent. Working part time is enough to pay for the rest, unless it's a private college with enormous tuition.
- xapata 6y agoMany people don't go to college. It's also good to remember that those who do go to college wind up with (on average) dramatically more wealth, regardless of student loans.
- wolfgang42 6y agoStereotypically, these “I got rich early, anyone can do it, all you need is grit” blog posts have an unstated “...and wealthy parents.” This one seems to be no exception; the author’s parents had a family business that could casually loan him $20,000 to record an album <https://sive.rs/mistake https://sive.rs/mistake>. Eating peanut butter sandwiches for three meals a day is a lot easier if you have that kind of safety net to fall back on.
- ericmcer 6y agoReductive gibberish. It would be more accurate to say once you are earning more than you spend while spending as freely as you want you are rich. Maybe he forgot that eating pb sandwiches all day doesn’t feel real rich.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dilap 6y agoThat's cool as long as you don't care about having kids, a spouse, a house, ...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- anonunivgrad 6y agoUnlike most stupid takes, this one is actually enraging. He is mocking everyone out there who is not a millionaire like him. Everyone who has kids and wants to give them a good life and is struggling to make it work financially.
- eli 6y agoSuch helpful advice to the people living paycheck to paycheck. Just spend less money! Why didn’t they think of that?
- baobabKoodaa 6y agoPerhaps if more rich people would explain it to them, it would help them understand.
- projectileboy 6y agoRelevant: https://web.archive.org/web/20030812081806/http://klausler.com/cargo.html https://web.archive.org/web/20030812081806/http://klausler.c...
- projectileboy 6y agoUntil you get sick. Or your loved ones get sick. Or any of a thousand other things happen for which our society has no safety net. Make more than you spend is indeed very good advice. But the bullshit stories that the wealthy tell themselves about themselves never cease to amaze me.
- vagrantJin 6y agoI'm amazed most people in the US are so concerned about healthcare costs, it factors in when calculating relative wealth. What is going on there?
- projectileboy 6y agoPeople with health insurance in the US typically get it through their employers. If you get sick enough to miss work for extended periods of time, you get fired. People will say “that doesn’t happen!” Happens all the time. Or they’ll say “but COBRA!” Sure. And without a job, you’ll be making those large premium payments.... how?
- holdenc 6y agoThat first feeling for true financial independence is different for everyone, I guess. For me it's having enough to pay for unexpected medical bills and children.
- mattbee 6y agoI enjoyed Derek's writing while I ran my own business, but he's forgotten the difference between having millions of dollars in the bank and living comfortably, and living hand-to-mouth with the tiniest of buffers. He's literally confused the two. This bit is impressively tone deaf: Once I had $12,000 I could quit my job and become a full-time musician. I knew I could get a few gigs per month to pay my cost of living. So I was free. I bet loads of musicians knew that in January 2020 too! (also what freelance musician can get good US health insurance?)
- baobabKoodaa 6y agoThe headline is incorrect, the article is not a story about how the author got rich.
- influx 6y agoWeird he left out the fact his dad lent him money to start the recording: https://sive.rs/mistake https://sive.rs/mistake
- theobeers 6y agoSetting aside the merits of this blog post, someone needs to chime in with the relevant Dickens quote: "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery." https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Micawber_principle https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Micawber_principle
- blindm 6y agoI don't get his analogy of 'sleight of hand'. If anything, sleight of hand is fooling yourself into thinking you are rich, when in all probability you are not, whatever 'rich' may mean to you, because it's not all about money. 'Some people are so poor, all they have is money' as the saying goes. Also: certain monetary events in life do not automatically make you happy, as your foundation for that wealth has to be fundamentally sound. If you can't handle $1000 of disposable income correctly, then you can't handle a million.
- annoyingnoob 6y agoI guess we all have different things that make us happy. Is life about amassing cash? You need to decide what happiness means to you. Its good to have goals. Its good to make plans to achieve your goals. What that means is different to everyone.
- paulryanrogers 6y agoTrue yet by 'rich' most people mean a buffer above bare essentials large enough to weather most storms and indulge in some personal pursuits. Being one accident or medical bill away from homeless isn't what most people consider wealthy.
- smg 6y agoI would tweak the definition of rich provided by Sivers Having more money than you spend for a year is not enough is not enough to be 'rich'. You want assets where you will always be able to generate more money than you need spend for every year that you live. I think people read Siver's blog because he got to this tweaked definition of rich. This article does not seem to acknowledge that reality.
- cortesoft 6y agoI feel like people take the idea that an obsessive pursuit of more money won’t make you happier and then extrapolate that money has zero effect on your happiness. This simply isn’t true. The amount of money you have plays a role in your happiness. Of course, the marginal value of a dollar will change immensely depending on how many dollars you already have and your stage of life, but it is a factor. It also really matters how much you have to sacrifice to make that extra dollar.
- 1970-01-01 6y agoI don't think he answered his friend's question very well. All he did was describe how he made it to a point where he didn't need to worry about very small costs. That isn't "getting rich" in my definition, but merely becoming middle-class.
- deeblering4 6y agoInteresting how many comments here bring up the inability to live modestly as a freelance musician and have health insurance in the US. Amazing that this status quo is so widely accepted. And that pursuit of art for happiness and income is frowned upon (or deemed too risky). Meanwhile people are willing to waste their youth in unhappy menial jobs in order to have health insurance. Why shouldn’t people be able to pursue art as work and have a doctor?
- rufus_foreman 6y agoBecause I don't want to pay for both my doctor and your doctor so you can pursue art. If that's the deal, then I'll go pursue art too. Now we both need to hope that there are plenty of progressives out there who will go do real work so they can pay for our doctors, comrade. And not get mad at us wreckers who spend all day pursuing art.
- deeblering4 6y agoHate to break it to you but you (and your employer) already do pay for someone else's doctor. That’s how insurance works.
- rufus_foreman 6y agoHate to break it to you but what's being described is not insurance. Insurance would be, "I work at a job and a pay a premium each month to a company that will cover my costs if I get sick". The situation being described is, "I quit my day job to pursue art and can't afford the premium, but I still want someone to cover my costs if I get sick". That's not how insurance works.
- deeblering4 6y agoMy point is that if you want to pursue a non W-2 job, you are on your own for health insurance in many/most states. “art” could very well be freelance programming. With that in mind, how does widening the insurance group to include all (taxed) Americans make the situation worse for the average household? AFAICT the only folks who benefit from the “I don’t want to pay my neighbors Dr. bill” argument are the insurance companies.
- barnacled 6y agoI think there's something to this but Derek is falling into a couple traps here - first the trap of good, pithy writing, and secondly assuming everybody else has he has. I absolutely accept that learning to live frugally and no longer make the same old mistakes with money is a huge advantage. It's amazing how that can compound and no longer having to worry about money is very freeing. But then there's the whole 'and never had a job again' bit and the implication that his further success was either immaterial or just an inevitable consequence of having saved some money or maintaining a surplus - obviously not the case for very many. It's very well written and pithy but, like much of PG's writing, leaves you feeling like hands have been waved like windmills.
- asciimov 6y agoI don't know who this person is, but this is a story that can only be told by a rich person, or someone who's family has money. How do I know, because he isn't worried. You see when you are poor, or have been poor, you have this persistent worry that something bad is on the horizon, that the good times are going to come to an end. It take real privilege to not have worry when you are just barely scraping by.
- dorkwood 6y agoWas his plan to do the same few gigs a month for the rest of his life? Into his 70s and 80s? What if something happened to his hands, and he could no longer play? I'd actually love to quit my job now and only do enough work on the side to break even every year. But I wouldn't be able to sleep at night knowing my life was a ticking time bomb that could blow at any second.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y agoMy family is big into the whole financial independence thing, albeit at a much higher level of spending than this person. I think it's great to have such conservative needs, but I'm not sure it's practical for most people.
- mattnewton 6y agoI'm glad Derek never felt anxiety after he had saved up 12k, but I am sure that's uncommon. The article comes off as extremely condescending to me as a result, which I am sure wasn't meant but I am having a hard time not feeling.
- SMAAART 6y agoMost people misunderstood the spirit of the story. There's another story on HN's frontpage today, that is highly related and correlated to this one: https://www.outsideonline.com/2401643/life-lessons-97-year-old-lobsterman https://www.outsideonline.com/2401643/life-lessons-97-year-o...