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Aiming to make a few millions (presumably in savings) before you are 35 is extremely ambitious and will most likely not happen. Why set yourself up with such a

Aiming to make a few millions (presumably in savings) before you are 35 is extremely ambitious and will most likely not happen. Why set yourself up with such a goal, and how do you know it will even correlate with happiness in the end? You are much better off developing a specialty that you enjoy. Money is a side-effect of happiness and persistence.

newjersey 4y ago
> Money is a side-effect of happiness and persistence. A million is a lot but my first reaction to your comment was this is something only wealthy people can afford to say. Especially in the US where we don’t have universal healthcare. Just typing this made me realize I need concrete, achievable goals though so I appreciate your comment. I am not the gp but this is something I expect a lot of us need to work on. Something like: 1. What are my financial goals? 2. Is it realistic to have those goals? 3. How do I know if I am on track? If not, what can I do to correct my course?
- Ntrails 4y ago
  Personal views entirely... Money is largely a product of working, but broadly uncorrelated with time or effort. If you think this is untrue, try working a minimum wage job or two for a while. This shouldn't stop you working hard for returns. but it should offer a reality check. Money doesn't buy happiness, but it can remove stressors. However realistically this is linked to income-outgoings / debt. Earning a lot but being highly leveraged and living an expensive lifestyle ends up not being much less stressful. I may work until I'm 70. I may be dead before I'm 50. I don't want to be miserable today in order to live a mythical good life in the future. So I plan assuming the most important thing is being content day in day out. I guess I have a high discount rate. It's not obviously right!
  - xpe 4y ago
    Using a discount rate is a decent start, but it is a vast simplification of how people think. If we want to make it a little more nuanced to capture more of the human condition, I would suggest: 1. Allowing one's discount rate to vary with age. 2. Varying the time horizon. Exponential decay probably doesn't map very well to how people think across different phases of life. For many people, their discounting may change roughly as follows: - When you first pop out, life is only the present. - When young, e.g. 2 or 3 years old, kids may want things very soon, within seconds, minutes, maybe hours. - Young'uns start to understand money. They might look towards saving for their first bicycle. Now time horizons look more like 1 to 12 months. - As people start to develop educational and professional goals, they allow more deferred gratification: preparing for their career or buying a house. This horizon might be around 1 - 10 years. - Somewhere in a career, people might start planning 5 - 50 years out, often for for kids and retirement. - As people approach their end of expected lifespan (or face a life threatening illness), they probably care a lot about: -- personally, living in the moment. This might mean checking off the bucket list as well as high quality relationships -- financially, allocating money away from themselves towards emphasizing long-term, inter-generational goals, like providing for their family or donating to charity. These goals have 20+ year horizons. - The ultra wealthy have the means to create charities with 50+ year time horizons via an endowment.
  - throwaway98797 4y ago
    there’s a midwit meme here do things that are good ultimately no one knows when we will expire balance is hard and sometimes it’s nice to look back and say oh i worked so hard for nothing but the experience of working hard and that’s okay too we all end in the same place “nothing is good or bad, thinking makes it so”
urthor 4y ago
My circle of friends has three self made 8 digit millionaires in their 20s. I've honestly been slacking. I don't think I can do it in 1 year. 5 years is perfectly possible. We live in the golden age of computer science entrepreneurialism. Venture capital has never been easier to get. The low hanging fruit is largely still unpicked. And, with full remote, hard working highly capable talent has never been easier to hire (hire Europeans, they're overeducated and underpaid). IMO, not starting a business in the next 5 years would be remarkably foolish. Just have to write a 35 page business plan, get it reviewed by capable people, have a good idea, and execute.
- JackFr 4y ago
  > Just have to write a 35 page business plan, get it reviewed by capable people, have a good idea, and execute. Last word in that sentence doing a lot.
  - adhesive_wombat 4y ago
    "Have a good idea" isn't exactly lounging around, either!
  - pdntspa 4y ago
    Step 1: Collect underpants Step 2: ????????? Step 3: Profit!
    - HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
      Depending on whose underpants they are, you may not need a Step 2...
- wombatpm 4y ago
  Venture capital was never easier to get. Be careful, past performance is no guarantee of future results
- smcl 4y ago
  If that's what will bring you happiness, then don't let anyone stop you. However I just want to give you a little nudge, to think about if you really have no time outside this pursuit of wealth to enjoy yourself. You're only young once :)
jstummbillig 4y ago
Why would not achieving the goal correlate with happiness? Aiming for something high only is a problem, when you tie your happiness into getting there. I find the reaching alone very fulfilling. As a side note, finding and focusing on developing a speciality that I enjoy is a lot harder than making a lot of money. For me at least.
- brabel 4y ago
  Happiness is not something you achieve by fullfilling some dream. What counts is the day-by-day, or "the journey"... once you get there, trust me, it will just feel pretty empty after perhaps a day or two of excitement, and you'll just have to find a new "dream". Just enjoy the little things. Difficult to quantify but I bet that watching a football match where your team wins (if you're a football fan, and obviously through no action of your own other than just sitting there watching) makes you feel much happier (for a few hours) than any dream you could fullfill by your actual actions. Doesn't make sense, but yeah, humans don't make sense a lot.
  - urthor 4y ago
    I mean, I really really do enjoy coding. It's just so fun to do something where knowing stuff actually changes people's lives every day. I'll be happy along the way regardless I'd say.
  - jstummbillig 4y ago
    I (mostly) agree – which makes the reply somewhat confusing. Am I missing the contradiction or did you maybe misread my comment?
    - brabel 4y ago
      A comment doesnt' need to be a rebuttal. I was expanding on the topic.
- coldtea 4y ago
  >Why would not achieving the goal correlate with happiness? Because that's what usually happens with such "bet my life on it" goals on something that affects most of your daily efforts for years. This is not a "I'll learn to play guitar this year" kind of resolution.
frognumber 4y ago
1) I constantly set ambitious goals for myself and fail. That doesn't make me less happy. 2) Happiness isn't my goal in life. It's not a healthy goal either.
- Thiez 4y ago
  I'll bite: what do you consider healthy goals, and why isn't happiness amongst them? Not sure if you were going to go there, but lets skip the 'on a permanent heroine IV' interpretation of happiness.
  - frognumber 4y ago
    I find setting "happiness" as an explicit goal reduces my happiness. A good book -- more mainstream than most of these comments -- is "Man's Search for Meaning" by Frankl. It has been listed as one of the ten most influential books in the US a few decades ago, although has fallen somewhat by the wayside in recent years. I believe the core thesis. It's worked well for me. Leading a meaningful and purposeful life, having good relationships, helping people, doing interesting things, learning, and growing tends to be a more effective path to emotional well-being than searching for happiness. To answer your question directly: My high-level goal is to leave the world a better place than I found it and to have a positive impact on the lives around me.
  - throwaway98797 4y ago
    not op but i aim for peace which isn’t joy i find pleasure to be destructive (sugar, sex, booze, drugs) so i’ve been aiming for peace which isn’t happiness but it is pleasant without causing me to crave more of it where joy or dopamine rush always makes me want moar
    - frognumber 4y ago
      My experience is similar but different. Sugar, booze, drugs, video games, social media, television, etc. are destructive. Those are unnatural things which are engineered to give a dopamine rush. I've been healthier in periods of my life when I did. Going "clean" is stressful, but lands me in a healthier place. I can't usually do that because of family and social ties. The odd item on your list is sex. Sex -- in the context of a permanent, stable relationship -- builds social bonds and helps emotionally regulated. Studies show that too.
ilyt 4y ago
Frankly the answer is expensive hobbies and/or hobbies requiring space. And "Money doesn't buy happiness" is only said by people who have enough of it to not worry. Yeah "money is not everything" but I'd be able to do more things I like if I had house and spacious garage. But that's $$, $$$ if I also want to live in place with reasonable commute
- wil421 4y ago
  Average home price in the US is $375k. If you add a $100k-$200k to that price, a SE should be able to save and afford a house. My hobbies take up a lot of space so I understand what you want. We had to move out of an in town location to get the house we wanted. A 1,000sqft in town house the same size as our duplex rental wasn’t going to cut it. Luckily I was able to find jobs in an area 45 minutes away from downtown with virtual worker status (3-5 days a month in office max). I changed jobs and was able to find many other ones in the same area.
  - ohgodplsno 4y ago
    Unfortunately, in a group made up of myself and Jeff Bezos, our average net worth is $90 billion. Jeff does a lot of work in that average though. In the same way, it's very possible this person is in an area where the cost of life is absurdly high and the actual price of homes where they are is not reflected in the average, due to the dream that software engineering is massively profitable, which increases the cost of life, which makes the need for a massive salary higher, which...
    - eropple 4y ago
      This phenomenon is real, and the best way to combat it is to Go Elsewhere. I'm still in a pretty expensive spot. But I'm very comfortable having somehow managed to never work for a big-tech-payin' big tech shop. There's a lot of great places out there. Believing that we have to all cluster around a few cities is pretty bad for us.
    - wil421 4y ago
      Why are you living in the high COL area? There are more developers working outside of Big Tech/FANG/West Coast than inside. The West Coast does have a higher employment of Software Developers per 1,000 people. Especially SF/San Jose. Texas seems to be increasing more than other areas outside of California and Washington. https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151252.htm#st https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151252.htm#st
hluska 4y ago
I don’t understand the need/urge to shit all over someone’s dream. If you don’t agree, why not just leave it? What does anyone actually gain from your negativity??
- coldtea 4y ago
  Do you understand the need to give people realistic expectations, so even if they wish to proceed, at least they understand the chances, and not put all their eggs on something unlikely? Or everybody should be left to live oblivious to some statistical facts, lest they be hurt?
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
> few millions (presumably in savings) before you are 35 is extremely ambitious Depends on what happens to the economy. 15% inflation for 10 years will make us all millionaires!
- dagw 4y ago
  15% inflation for 10 years will make us all millionaires! That's assuming wages keep up with inflation, which is something we're seeing very few signs of these days.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    Well, there will be millionaires, and the ones who starved to death :)
- CrazyPyroLinux 4y ago
  And then we can all go to McDonald's and order something off the million-dollar menu!
andrepd 4y ago
With the outrageous tech salaries, if you live in a low CoL area, I don't know that saving a million or two by the time you're 35 is such an ambitious goal. And don't pretend your way is the only way of looking at things. "Money is not important" is something people say if they have a lot of money.
- cloverich 4y ago
  > "Money is not important" is something people say if they have a lot of money. Well if money was key to happiness, why would people with money say that? Wouldn't you expect the opposite? The reality is money helps with lots of things in life, but it's never more than a means to an end. You should always be striving to enjoy what you can in life as you go, because cultivating a happy life requires being present. Otherwise you'll blow right by the stuff around you, and by the time you get the money you were seeking you may be on an island. That's all people mean when they make that statement.
chinchilla2020 4y ago
Most SWEs at the majors are bringing in a few million prior to the 35. If you save your salary it should be pretty trivial.... but it's more a savings challenge than an income challenge due to lifestyle creep.

newjersey 4y ago

> Money is a side-effect of happiness and persistence. A million is a lot but my first reaction to your comment was this is something only wealthy people can afford to say. Especially in the US where we don’t have universal healthcare. Just typing this made me realize I need concrete, achievable goals though so I appreciate your comment. I am not the gp but this is something I expect a lot of us need to work on. Something like: 1. What are my financial goals? 2. Is it realistic to have those goals? 3. How do I know if I am on track? If not, what can I do to correct my course?

Ntrails 4y ago
Personal views entirely... Money is largely a product of working, but broadly uncorrelated with time or effort. If you think this is untrue, try working a minimum wage job or two for a while. This shouldn't stop you working hard for returns. but it should offer a reality check. Money doesn't buy happiness, but it can remove stressors. However realistically this is linked to income-outgoings / debt. Earning a lot but being highly leveraged and living an expensive lifestyle ends up not being much less stressful. I may work until I'm 70. I may be dead before I'm 50. I don't want to be miserable today in order to live a mythical good life in the future. So I plan assuming the most important thing is being content day in day out. I guess I have a high discount rate. It's not obviously right!
- xpe 4y ago
  Using a discount rate is a decent start, but it is a vast simplification of how people think. If we want to make it a little more nuanced to capture more of the human condition, I would suggest: 1. Allowing one's discount rate to vary with age. 2. Varying the time horizon. Exponential decay probably doesn't map very well to how people think across different phases of life. For many people, their discounting may change roughly as follows: - When you first pop out, life is only the present. - When young, e.g. 2 or 3 years old, kids may want things very soon, within seconds, minutes, maybe hours. - Young'uns start to understand money. They might look towards saving for their first bicycle. Now time horizons look more like 1 to 12 months. - As people start to develop educational and professional goals, they allow more deferred gratification: preparing for their career or buying a house. This horizon might be around 1 - 10 years. - Somewhere in a career, people might start planning 5 - 50 years out, often for for kids and retirement. - As people approach their end of expected lifespan (or face a life threatening illness), they probably care a lot about: -- personally, living in the moment. This might mean checking off the bucket list as well as high quality relationships -- financially, allocating money away from themselves towards emphasizing long-term, inter-generational goals, like providing for their family or donating to charity. These goals have 20+ year horizons. - The ultra wealthy have the means to create charities with 50+ year time horizons via an endowment.
- throwaway98797 4y ago
  there’s a midwit meme here do things that are good ultimately no one knows when we will expire balance is hard and sometimes it’s nice to look back and say oh i worked so hard for nothing but the experience of working hard and that’s okay too we all end in the same place “nothing is good or bad, thinking makes it so”

urthor 4y ago

My circle of friends has three self made 8 digit millionaires in their 20s. I've honestly been slacking. I don't think I can do it in 1 year. 5 years is perfectly possible. We live in the golden age of computer science entrepreneurialism. Venture capital has never been easier to get. The low hanging fruit is largely still unpicked. And, with full remote, hard working highly capable talent has never been easier to hire (hire Europeans, they're overeducated and underpaid). IMO, not starting a business in the next 5 years would be remarkably foolish. Just have to write a 35 page business plan, get it reviewed by capable people, have a good idea, and execute.

JackFr 4y ago
> Just have to write a 35 page business plan, get it reviewed by capable people, have a good idea, and execute. Last word in that sentence doing a lot.
- adhesive_wombat 4y ago
  "Have a good idea" isn't exactly lounging around, either!
- pdntspa 4y ago
  Step 1: Collect underpants Step 2: ????????? Step 3: Profit!
  - HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
    Depending on whose underpants they are, you may not need a Step 2...
wombatpm 4y ago
Venture capital was never easier to get. Be careful, past performance is no guarantee of future results
smcl 4y ago
If that's what will bring you happiness, then don't let anyone stop you. However I just want to give you a little nudge, to think about if you really have no time outside this pursuit of wealth to enjoy yourself. You're only young once :)

jstummbillig 4y ago

Why would not achieving the goal correlate with happiness? Aiming for something high only is a problem, when you tie your happiness into getting there. I find the reaching alone very fulfilling. As a side note, finding and focusing on developing a speciality that I enjoy is a lot harder than making a lot of money. For me at least.

brabel 4y ago
Happiness is not something you achieve by fullfilling some dream. What counts is the day-by-day, or "the journey"... once you get there, trust me, it will just feel pretty empty after perhaps a day or two of excitement, and you'll just have to find a new "dream". Just enjoy the little things. Difficult to quantify but I bet that watching a football match where your team wins (if you're a football fan, and obviously through no action of your own other than just sitting there watching) makes you feel much happier (for a few hours) than any dream you could fullfill by your actual actions. Doesn't make sense, but yeah, humans don't make sense a lot.
- urthor 4y ago
  I mean, I really really do enjoy coding. It's just so fun to do something where knowing stuff actually changes people's lives every day. I'll be happy along the way regardless I'd say.
- jstummbillig 4y ago
  I (mostly) agree – which makes the reply somewhat confusing. Am I missing the contradiction or did you maybe misread my comment?
  - brabel 4y ago
    A comment doesnt' need to be a rebuttal. I was expanding on the topic.
coldtea 4y ago
>Why would not achieving the goal correlate with happiness? Because that's what usually happens with such "bet my life on it" goals on something that affects most of your daily efforts for years. This is not a "I'll learn to play guitar this year" kind of resolution.

frognumber 4y ago

1) I constantly set ambitious goals for myself and fail. That doesn't make me less happy. 2) Happiness isn't my goal in life. It's not a healthy goal either.

Thiez 4y ago
I'll bite: what do you consider healthy goals, and why isn't happiness amongst them? Not sure if you were going to go there, but lets skip the 'on a permanent heroine IV' interpretation of happiness.
- frognumber 4y ago
  I find setting "happiness" as an explicit goal reduces my happiness. A good book -- more mainstream than most of these comments -- is "Man's Search for Meaning" by Frankl. It has been listed as one of the ten most influential books in the US a few decades ago, although has fallen somewhat by the wayside in recent years. I believe the core thesis. It's worked well for me. Leading a meaningful and purposeful life, having good relationships, helping people, doing interesting things, learning, and growing tends to be a more effective path to emotional well-being than searching for happiness. To answer your question directly: My high-level goal is to leave the world a better place than I found it and to have a positive impact on the lives around me.
- throwaway98797 4y ago
  not op but i aim for peace which isn’t joy i find pleasure to be destructive (sugar, sex, booze, drugs) so i’ve been aiming for peace which isn’t happiness but it is pleasant without causing me to crave more of it where joy or dopamine rush always makes me want moar
  - frognumber 4y ago
    My experience is similar but different. Sugar, booze, drugs, video games, social media, television, etc. are destructive. Those are unnatural things which are engineered to give a dopamine rush. I've been healthier in periods of my life when I did. Going "clean" is stressful, but lands me in a healthier place. I can't usually do that because of family and social ties. The odd item on your list is sex. Sex -- in the context of a permanent, stable relationship -- builds social bonds and helps emotionally regulated. Studies show that too.

ilyt 4y ago

Frankly the answer is expensive hobbies and/or hobbies requiring space. And "Money doesn't buy happiness" is only said by people who have enough of it to not worry. Yeah "money is not everything" but I'd be able to do more things I like if I had house and spacious garage. But that's $$, $$$ if I also want to live in place with reasonable commute

wil421 4y ago
Average home price in the US is $375k. If you add a $100k-$200k to that price, a SE should be able to save and afford a house. My hobbies take up a lot of space so I understand what you want. We had to move out of an in town location to get the house we wanted. A 1,000sqft in town house the same size as our duplex rental wasn’t going to cut it. Luckily I was able to find jobs in an area 45 minutes away from downtown with virtual worker status (3-5 days a month in office max). I changed jobs and was able to find many other ones in the same area.
- ohgodplsno 4y ago
  Unfortunately, in a group made up of myself and Jeff Bezos, our average net worth is $90 billion. Jeff does a lot of work in that average though. In the same way, it's very possible this person is in an area where the cost of life is absurdly high and the actual price of homes where they are is not reflected in the average, due to the dream that software engineering is massively profitable, which increases the cost of life, which makes the need for a massive salary higher, which...
  - eropple 4y ago
    This phenomenon is real, and the best way to combat it is to Go Elsewhere. I'm still in a pretty expensive spot. But I'm very comfortable having somehow managed to never work for a big-tech-payin' big tech shop. There's a lot of great places out there. Believing that we have to all cluster around a few cities is pretty bad for us.
  - wil421 4y ago
    Why are you living in the high COL area? There are more developers working outside of Big Tech/FANG/West Coast than inside. The West Coast does have a higher employment of Software Developers per 1,000 people. Especially SF/San Jose. Texas seems to be increasing more than other areas outside of California and Washington. https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151252.htm#st https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151252.htm#st

hluska 4y ago

I don’t understand the need/urge to shit all over someone’s dream. If you don’t agree, why not just leave it? What does anyone actually gain from your negativity??

coldtea 4y ago
Do you understand the need to give people realistic expectations, so even if they wish to proceed, at least they understand the chances, and not put all their eggs on something unlikely? Or everybody should be left to live oblivious to some statistical facts, lest they be hurt?

ClumsyPilot 4y ago

> few millions (presumably in savings) before you are 35 is extremely ambitious Depends on what happens to the economy. 15% inflation for 10 years will make us all millionaires!

dagw 4y ago
15% inflation for 10 years will make us all millionaires! That's assuming wages keep up with inflation, which is something we're seeing very few signs of these days.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  Well, there will be millionaires, and the ones who starved to death :)
CrazyPyroLinux 4y ago
And then we can all go to McDonald's and order something off the million-dollar menu!

andrepd 4y ago

With the outrageous tech salaries, if you live in a low CoL area, I don't know that saving a million or two by the time you're 35 is such an ambitious goal. And don't pretend your way is the only way of looking at things. "Money is not important" is something people say if they have a lot of money.

cloverich 4y ago
> "Money is not important" is something people say if they have a lot of money. Well if money was key to happiness, why would people with money say that? Wouldn't you expect the opposite? The reality is money helps with lots of things in life, but it's never more than a means to an end. You should always be striving to enjoy what you can in life as you go, because cultivating a happy life requires being present. Otherwise you'll blow right by the stuff around you, and by the time you get the money you were seeking you may be on an island. That's all people mean when they make that statement.

chinchilla2020 4y ago

Most SWEs at the majors are bringing in a few million prior to the 35. If you save your salary it should be pretty trivial.... but it's more a savings challenge than an income challenge due to lifestyle creep.