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Ask HN: What would you do with your life if you solved the money problem?
If you had a guaranteed, lifetime stream of steady income - say $100k a year, inflation adjusted - what would you do with your life? Would you still work? On what? Spend all day hacking on projects you loved? Do a startup? What kind of startup? Write a novel? Read on the beach?
Related questions have been asked on YC, but I don't think this one has, and I'm quite curious to find out what people will say.
Here are some things I might do:
1) create a series of educational games to teach math and science, based on the idea that math is actually additively fun to learn if you do it right ( example: sudoku).
2) Do another startup ( not sure exactly what the field would be, probably something software or web related )
3) Do research work in robotics, computer vision or AI.
4) Start a political party based on the idea that instead of changing specific politicians we need to alter the constitution to change the incentives by which our leaders make decisions.
5) Write books about history and/or economics
6) Start a city
How about you?
- wheels 18y agoWorking on hard stuff is in my bones, but it'd be nice at times to be able to live in a la-la land where monetization was completely irrelevant. If I, say, "solved the money problem" in the sense that Paul usually uses the term, i.e. had a few million piled up, I'd probably get a small team together to rethink the way that music composition on computers is done. Start with a lot of research and interviews about how composers actually build up a piece and just build the best system for expressing musical ideas. I'd like to get around to that someday. It'd be cool being able to ignore the fact that it's a small, poor customer base. ;-) The fact that computer interfaces are still designed to mimic tape recorders or wire cabling is a embarrassing.
- bokonist 18y agoThat'd be cool. One music related pie-in-the-sky project I would like do would be to create software that could in real time give my voice the timbre of a rock star. I'd change a setting and switch from Axl Rose voice, to Bono, to Robin Wilson.
- wheels 18y agoWell, the thing there is that you'd have to re-synthesize the voices, wave-shaping wouldn't be enough, so what you'd basically want is a vocoder. The problem, of course, is that synthesis of human voices isn't advanced enough to handle those kind of dynamics, so the problem where you'd end up focusing is on voice synthesis.
- menloparkbum 18y agoThere is a research group at Cambridge (Oxford??) that is working on a problem like this.
- menloparkbum 18y agoI've done this - you've got the right idea in solving the "money problem" first. ;-)
- mwerty 18y agoWork on riskier ideas with bigger payoffs (financial or otherwise).
- nazgulnarsil 18y agoI would run an experiment to figure out how long it would take me to get tired of sleeping with gold digging models.
- mroman 18y agoMe too, and I would do it in a non-industrialized country (South America/Eastern Europe) which would save me money, and possible lawsuits/BS. ;)
- nazgulnarsil 18y agoIbiza :)
- mroman 18y agoGood choice mate, and allow me to add Argentina, The Czech Republic, and Poland.
- tc7 18y agoWake up earlyish, work in a small garden office with the windows open and the crisp fall air streaming in, break for lunch on patio with my wife, read a book, go on a walk in the countryside. I dunno. I think I'd like it, though. I'd still work on things, but I feel like the pressure would be released, so I could work on indie adventure games and not have a nagging conscience telling me to do something that will make money. I do want to write my novel. And create a board game. And a stop-motion animated film. And take up painting and drawing. And travel a lot. Wow. In the meantime, I'll pack up here at the cube and head home. Then I'll come back Monday and do it again. Yayyyyy.
- esja 18y agoI'd work for the political party you started in point 4.
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- tdavis 18y agoI'd do the same thing with my life that I'm doing with it now. I'd just like to do it in a slightly more modern apartment that doesn't contain a futon. That's about it.
- bps4484 18y agoI'd teach. Math, science, or computer science to high school aged students. I really think teaching is fun and fulfilling, you just don't get paid well at all. I'd also read a lot.
- nazgulnarsil 18y agoi agree with this. recently I've been thinking about what to do when i retire. I know i'll get bored eventually. I think returning to school and getting a teaching degree and then working part time as a teacher would be fun and rewarding without too much stress. Ideally teaching math/science at a community college.
- kleneway 18y agoI don't know - I tried teaching for a year thinking the same thing, and while it was rewarding, it was way stressful.
- vaksel 18y ago$100K/yr is really not that much now. I mean if you think about it the only difference between 50K and 100K is a slightly bigger house, a slightly better car and a slightly better vacation. A lot of programmers make close to that already
- bokonist 18y agoMy question was, if you could get that salary without working, what would you spend your time doing?
- vaksel 18y agoget another job, since that amount is not really enough
- kaens 18y agoGive me $100K/yr and I will make one hell of an effort to change society in a positive way. To be blunt - fuck having a better car or larger house for myself, fuck spending $100K/yr on me.
- sutro 18y agoYou're going to start a city with $100K a year? You must have mad city-building skills.
- andyking 18y agoHey, it worked on SimCity!
- bokonist 18y agoI did indeed play too much SimCity as a youth :-) Perhaps I will share my plan for starting a city in a future post. I'd like to find out if the HN community thinks it could work.
- shimon 18y agoI'd be interested to hear more about this. I think there are some significant opportunities to make cities better (maybe by starting new ones, maybe just by working with our existing ones in new ways). And a lot of the ways technology has changed our lives recently has affected what we need and expect from a city, including things like: - knowing our neighbors - usable mass transit - energy efficiency - interaction with government It's the sort of area that I think has a lot of opportunity in it, but that opportunity isn't clearly something that could make you rich. So as a general area of focus, I think it'd be well worth a hacker's attention. P.S. If you think cities, architecture, and the community shaped by those things are interesting, you should definitely read "A Pattern Language" by Christopher Alexander et al. It illuminates a lot of what goes on in cities and buildings in a very concise way, and will probably give you ideas to improve your home and environment.
- songism 18y agoI have a habit of overestimating the capabilities of modern technology, but I really don't understand why more of the underlying processes of our civilization aren't automated (e.g. food production, food transportation, food preparation, human transportation). Maybe the problem is history. Maybe, if we were given the chance to start over and plan a brand new city from the ground up, we could eliminate a lot of unnecessary elements that currently occupy a lot of our time and energy. Would it be possible -- with our current technology -- to build a giant, self-sustaining field of photovoltaic modules? Thousands of automated machines and robots could maintain and repair this system. Massive amounts of free power could effectively fuel a developing city. And if our basic needs were taken care of, we could each start to focus on what matters to us, instead of what merely ensures our survival. I think it's about time for us humans, collectively, to move past worrying about having enough money for food and a place to live.
- robg 18y agoQuite honestly, the most freeing moment in my life was when I realized I had already "solved the money problem". That is, I knew I could be happy and could survive doing exactly what I was doing. Every decision since then has been an effort to do more of what I most liked doing (and conversely less of what I didn't). The only problem now is how to find time to do it all.
- yan 18y agoWhy aren't you doing some of those things during your free time right now? You certainly don't need money to create a series of games or research robotics in your free time. If you're not doing it now, what makes you think you'll do it if you are relieved of the job obligation? I find that flaw with myself: come up with reasons why I'm not doing what I really want to be doing. I'm trying to overcome the friction of day dreaming and start actually doing something. These thought exercises are cute, but in the end, counter-productive.
- bokonist 18y agoI am doing some of these things now. The reason I asked this question is actually somewhat related to #6...
- tptacek 18y agoGet a good night's sleep.
- pavelludiq 18y agoI have no idea. I only know that its not going to be boring.
- jcapote 18y agoI'd open up PARC again.
- rsayers 18y agoWith nothing holding me down to a specific location I think I would travel most of the time, "live" in a certain part of the world for a time before moving on.
- thingsilearned 18y agoI'm going to move to Argentina and build a sailboat. Its been my goal for 3 years.
- andreyf 18y agoHave you started?
- simplegeek 18y agoGo back to school and finish my degree first. These days I really want to go back to school despite I've a good job. More I work without a degree more I realize I need to learn more. But then again I'm getting married soon. Ah, well......
- RobGR 18y agoAre you sure that going back to school, and finishing your degree, will address the "I need to learn more" problem ? You may need a degree to address a particular social issue, like not being able to be promoted in a particular organization, but presumably you would not have that need if you "solved the money problem". What if you picked a particular topic and set out to self-study it, but instead of the usual "buy a text book, read one chapter, and never follow up" fail method, you found a small group of similarly interested people who agreed to meet regularly to discuss and provide mutual encouragement, pursued it that way ?
- simplegeek 18y agoyou found a small group of similarly interested people who agreed to meet regularly to discuss and provide mutual encouragement, pursued it that way ? Well, thought about that. Unfortunately, where I live it's not easy to find like-minded people who are willing to meet regularly and provide mutual encouragement. Moreover, one thing that I really miss about school is the social life. I almost don't have any friends I can count on. I mean I've friends but number is relatively lower than someone who went to school for four years. Besides, for some reason I really miss the energy and atmosphere of a school. But your point is taken, and for most of my life I've self-studied and it worked well.
- RobGR 18y agoWhen I suggested the group meeting thing, it was because the social aspect of college is very desired. I think it is also not as good at today's universities as we would wish. The students seem very perceptive to social status, and a lot of energy seems to go into reassuring people about social status, and preparing for job searches. I would suspect it is easier to find a group of like-minded people than you think. If you do this right, you will start with some subject and 5 or 6 interested people, maybe half of whom make it to the weekly meeting in a coffee shop or somewhere. You will pick up a few more interested people who happen to listen in to the group's discussions. Keep careful track of eveyone's emails, and at some point pick a new subject and send an email around to everyone, and see who shows up. This is can be done even in small, out of the way, non-college towns. It's kind of like running a "salon" in ancient Greece or 1700s Paris, or a coffee shop in 1600s/1700s London. Someone has to keep track of the social network, so that people who drift out of the meeting group are eventually brought back in when a more interesting topic comes up. You might occasionally pick a topic just to bring in more people. I think I good one would be to read a chapter of Stephenson's The Baroque Cycle every week, google / wikipedia every character so you know all the inside historical jokes, and then meet and discuss. On campus, the students are too busy to do the type of social interaction that supposedly makes college valuable -- we think of getting tossed at random into a roommate situation with someone from a different culture and social class, meeting life long friends at random in the library and future business partners in lab groups, etc. But a lot of the college social scene seems to be devoted to making sure you don't accidently meet up with anyone of a different social class, or at least assuring the parents that the student won't; clubs are strongly tied to a student affairs bureaucracy and create positions like secretary and treasurer for people to put on their resumes, as much as do stuff; and the students are busier than those of us that work full time, and have even fewer independent activities and hobbies.
- 3KWA 18y agowhat I am doing now with a tad more surfing :P
- fgimenez 18y agoNoble Causes: -Be a high school teacher for math and computer science (a la lockhart's lament) -Start some form of programmers without borders to see how tech can help those in 3rd world nations -Write as much free medical software as possible (I.E. PACS servers and dicom viewers for MRI's. OsiriX already does this for mac, but nobody has even come close for windows or linux) Eccentric Causes: -Put a paintball turret on a golf cart, have a mad max style race with buddies -Build a rocket with an autonomous guiding system. Seriously, fricken rockets with computer vision on their heads. -Write stock picking software based on my own random math theories like Ed Thorpe did (Which was very well recounted in "Fortune's Formula) -Surf more. I already get about a day a week, but I'd like to up it to 4. -Related to surfing, tap into publicly available weather data to write software to predict swell sizes. FFT here I come! -Build a poker server with an API for bots. Pit humans against AI. A billion more things to put here... [Edit for weird markdown formatting]
- lux 18y agoWell, I've got one album recorded and another written (need to rehearse with a band again to record this one), so I'd get back into pursuing a music career. My lawyer actually made me promise my next "startup" would be my music, so I guess I have to now... I'd read a LOT more (classics and non-fiction mainly), get back into Muay Thai (planning on starting again this fall anyhow, money permitting), donate some volunteer time instead of just money, and travel. I'm interested in studying chess too. After all that, I'd most likely start another company. What else could I do? ;) In reality, I love the challenge of starting companies, and there's nothing like going from zero to success to prove to yourself you can (even if I had a safety net next time!).
- lux 18y agoI'd consider going into teaching too, if for nothing else than to try to be different and make a difference (Alan Bloom or John Gatto style maybe :).
- ph0rque 18y agoI'd probably work on molecular nanotechnology... in my spare time, I'd try to solve poverty.
- tyler 18y agoHack.
- froo 18y agoIf personal money wasn't an issue, there are a couple things I would do I guess. - I'd more than likely hack/work on projects that I thought would contribute to society in a meaningful way rather than trying to do something for profit. - Spend more time doing the things I enjoy, perhaps take on a significant hobby project that wasn't work related - I'd probably also help my mother out a little more too. - Maybe contribute a little of my time directly to community related projects, like volunteer work in something I found meaningful. Sounds kind of strange, but I guess overall I'd like to be able to give more of myself to others and make much more of a positive impact in other's lives; sounds kind of tree-huggerish I know.
- mpk 18y ago1) I'd spend a year writing a web-app to teach mathematics and physics, open-source it, run it on my own servers and lobby to have it used in high-school education. 2) I'd put more time into promoting awareness of Humanism and showing people that morality isn't restricted to the belief that an omniscient police agent is judging your every move. 3) I'd try to get NATO to play nice with Russia and after that get China on board as well. A USA/Russian/EU/Chinese block should be strong enough to stop nuclear threats and have the added bonus of getting us to Mars faster. 4) Having brokered world-peace and ensured continuity for all mankind, I'd chill out, read Ceasar's De Bello Gallico in Latin, master Bach's violin pieces at solist concert level, learn Russian and Mandarin Chinese, polish my French and grow awesome grapes for delicious wine.
- qaexl 18y ago(1) Practice martial arts 4hrs a day, and travel around the world preserving some lineages that are disappearing this generation. (1a) I want to meet some Khampas (1b) I want to meet some of my teacher's teachers in Taiwan. (1n) ad nauseum (2) Set up a lab where I can play and build AI models, specifically relating to OpenCyc and neural networks, using Google news as training data then feed it people's RSS feeds and blog posts. Run the whole thing on the cloud and see what else I need to get it to start messing with people. (3) Collect a huge library and read. Lots. Both non-fiction and fiction. (3a) Get to the point where I can consistently beat the top Go software and can hold my own near the top kyu rankings. Then go back and read through history books with the skills I acquired from playing Go. Figure out if people make different strategic decisions based on whether they played Go or played chess. Maybe write a book about it. (3b) Study all of Joseph Campbell's work, and identify the top active, modern myths operating on modern social psyche, both overt and hidden. Distill it and write something similar to Neal Stephenson's Primer (from Diamond Age). (3c) Write a series of short stories in English using themes from classic wuxia theater (martial art fantasy stuff, like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and embed in there how to survive high school with your sanity intact. Then slip it out in the wild. (4) Write a mobile MMO. (5) Learn Ancient Chinese, maybe take a crack at Sanskrit. Dig up some old stuff and figure them out.
- kicker 18y ago#1 grabbed my attention. I'm doing it right now in my spare time. Email me at be288@yahoo.com if you want to trade some ideas. It'd be fun to talk about it with someone else with the same idea. Most people I tell this to stare at me like I'm a purple cow.
- comatose_kid 18y agoRandomly visit message boards posing rhetorical questions.
- steveeq1 18y agoEasy, I'd travel the world with my laptop and write code on the road. Hopefully code that would change the world.
- laut 18y agoThat's what I'm doing these days. The big changes haven't happened yet... but hopefully it will come.
- Prrometheus 18y agoI'd work for the Seasteading Institute full-time.
- streblo 18y agoI'd do what I've always wanted to do: -Buy old houses and fix them up and put them back on the market -Buy a few bars and small restaurants to manage -Write short stories and maybe a novel with the hopes of getting them published -Once famous, go back to my alma mater and teach a class on something I think I'm good at Of course, I plan on doing this anyway. Some of it might have to wait, the market being what it may, but you have to stay optimistic.
- nickfox 18y agoWhat ever you would do is what you should do.
- yters 18y agoStart a big family and be the best parent I could, and not give my kids a dime unless they earn it.
- known 18y agoIf I were you, I'd start a political party.
- iuguy 18y agoSpend every waking minute making my wonderful wife, who puts up with my stupid hours, travelling away from home, stress, lack of organisation and everything else that would turn mere mortals away ludicrously, deliriously, cartwheel-turning happy.
- arthurk 18y agoThe same things I'm doing now.
- paraschopra 18y agoI hate wishful dreaming!
- kaens 18y ago1. Buy a warehouse, convert it into living / productivity space, a large room for any one "type" of productive activity (read: making stuff). 2. Contact everyone I know who is passionate about whatever it is they do, and inform them that they can live here, as long as they're productive and clean up after themselves, etc. Focus on people I know who are into green technology, and people that are just generally awesome. 3. Spend the rest of my life learning, implementing, and creating awesome stuff with other people doing the same. I personally would be making music, implementing an mmo where the npcs learned from their surroundings and the actions of past npcs, and were controllable by a human at the individual and group level, learning and working with electronics - making effects pedals and similar, and researching and implementing ways to use technology to improve the average humans existence without totally raping nature. 3.1 Try to set up more places like that. EDIT: I wrote out a bit of an extrapolation on this idea, you can see it here: http://kaens.blogspot.com/2008/09/what-i-would-do-if-i-had-100k-per-year.html http://kaens.blogspot.com/2008/09/what-i-would-do-if-i-had-1... if you're interested.
- AndyKelley 18y agoAwesome, can I live in your warehouse when you get it built?
- kaens 18y agoProbably. I'm sure we'd (you, me, and other people living at the space) probably want to meet you first though.
- plinkplonk 18y agoPhil Greenspun says "Ask a wage slave what he'd like to accomplish. Chances are the response will be something like "I'd start every day at the gym and work out for two hours until I was as buff as Brad Pitt. Then I'd practice the piano for three hours. I'd become fluent in Mandarin so that I could be prepared to understand the largest transformation of our time. I'd really learn how to handle a polo pony. I'd learn to fly a helicopter. I'd finish the screenplay that I've been writing and direct a production of it in HDTV." Why hasn't he accomplished all of those things? "Because I'm chained to this desk 50 hours per week at this horrible [insurance|programming|government|administrative|whatever] job. So he has no doubt that he would get all these things done if he didn't have to work? "Absolutely none. If I didn't have the job, I would be out there living the dream." Suppose that the guy cashes in his investments and does retire. What do we find? He is waking up at 9:30 am, surfing the Web, sorting out the cable TV bill, watching DVDs, talking about going to the gym, eating Doritos, and maybe accomplishing one of his stated goals. " :-D Source: http://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/early-retirement/ http://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/early-retirement/
- qaexl 18y agoTrue. The kind of things you want to accomplish if the money problem is solved should be things you are already working on; solving the money problem should just make accomplishing it faster.
- matthewking 18y agoId sail around the world, and just enjoy life. The ultimate goal is always to break free of the confines of modern life, and live life as it was intended. Note: No that doesn't mean getting naked ;P
- maxklein 18y agoI'd be building robots. I've never wanted to do anything else.
- fallentimes 18y agoWhatever the fuck I wanted, which is the true beauty of it. :)
- HeyLaughingBoy 18y ago$100k/year isn't that much. I barely get by on that, so I'd first have to sell the farm and move farther out to find a place that would be affordable at $40k/year. Easy to do if I don't have to limit my commute distance which is the main reason my current place costs so much (well, that and I didn't want to buy a 100 year-old house). Then: - Raise money so I could do research in medical devices: barriers to entry are all about money in this field. - Start a company offering software services to the medical device/pharma/healthcare industry - Robotics research with a focus on elder care or construction assistance - Raise s few goats and a pair of cows (already have horses and chickens) - Farm software (already looking at this on) I'm in the medical industry and I'd love to start a business in this field if I could afford to. At least with 100k/yr I'd have the time to raise the amount of money it would take.
- viggity 18y agotwo chicks at the same time
- andreyf 18y agoBuild the GUI of the 21st century :)
- mistermann 18y agoI kinda thought I had it solved, I had a 1 million portfolio, which is more than enough for me to survive on, as long as you pay attention to what happens in the world economy and markets, since I knew everything we are now seeing was coming, and was making 20%+ per year I though I had it all figured out. Until I got server, -70% in 2 months. So my personal advice is, never think you are too smart. If if you know you are correct, and you are in fact correct, it doesn't mean you can't lose your shirt.