4 ms·

If you are really making 3x what you really need, you should be building wealth at a rapid pace. Once you are financially secure, you can stop doing unfulfillin

If you are really making 3x what you really need, you should be building wealth at a rapid pace. Once you are financially secure, you can stop doing unfulfilling work just because the pay is good. I 'retired' early because I don't need to work for anyone anymore. My wife and I saved and invested so we are set financially. I still love to program so I spend my time and energy working on a project that is personally fulfilling to me even though it has yet to bring in meaningful revenues. BTW: it is a new data management system that is designed to be a distributed system. Have you considered teaming up with someone on a side project?

tombert 2y ago
> If you are really making 3x what you really need, you should be building wealth at a rapid pace. Once you are financially secure, you can stop doing unfulfilling work just because the pay is good. I didn't word it terribly well, so apologies for that, but for "really need" I was talking about subsistence wages in this case. I make perfectly fine money, and I do save/invest as much as I can, and I do own my house in NYC, so I do alright. I do hope to retire somewhat early, at least by American standards, but it's not like I'm making "fuck you" money. > BTW: it is a new data management system that is designed to be a distributed system. Have you considered teaming up with someone on a side project? Outside of something I did with my dad a few months ago, not really. I have a decent job now that's not psychotic about non-competes, so I've been ramping up to build something.
- tome 2y ago
  Well, I think the suggestion remains: live on subsistence income whilst working for as long as it takes to be able to live on subsistence income whilst not working. (All the while you can be attempting to effect changes that allow you to earn more than subsistence income at something you enjoy going.)
  - tombert 2y ago
    Yeah, I don't really disagree; I'm still trying to get out of debt from the six months I was unemployed last year (which also ate a bit into my savings, but I live kind of boring so it wasn't super bad). Hopefully that should be coming to a close pretty soon (even sooner if Gemini actually reimburses the money that they ponzi'd out of me like they claim they will). I've been trying to invest in a combo of relatively-low-risk ETFs (VOO and VTI primarily) and US Treasury Bills, to give myself a combo of potentially-higher-than-inflation-reward but also zero-risk-and-still-higher-than-bank-interest money. Once my wife starts working, we figured that we'd put nearly 100% of her paycheck into some forms of savings to accelerate the process a bit further, since my salary has traditionally been enough to cover the bills. I'd like to have enough money to retire comfortably by my mid-to-late 40's. I think that's realistic. 2023 was one of the worst years of my life, maybe the worst. It was really horrible being laid off twice and having to spend so much time on LinkedIn and doing Zoom whiteboard interviews and waking up to dozens of rejections every morning, not to mention that being laid off twice in a year makes your resume look insanely bad (each stint being about 3 months). As a result, I think I've become more frustrated than I probably should, and grown a strong resentment towards companies, with a nearly-complete lack of optimism that they'll ever do anything even remotely actually-technical. My current gig seems a lot better but I've learned my lesson about getting my hopes up. We'll see if it lasts more than three months.
    - tome 2y ago
      I'm very sorry to hear about the double layoff! That must be very difficult to experience.

tombert 2y ago

> If you are really making 3x what you really need, you should be building wealth at a rapid pace. Once you are financially secure, you can stop doing unfulfilling work just because the pay is good. I didn't word it terribly well, so apologies for that, but for "really need" I was talking about subsistence wages in this case. I make perfectly fine money, and I do save/invest as much as I can, and I do own my house in NYC, so I do alright. I do hope to retire somewhat early, at least by American standards, but it's not like I'm making "fuck you" money. > BTW: it is a new data management system that is designed to be a distributed system. Have you considered teaming up with someone on a side project? Outside of something I did with my dad a few months ago, not really. I have a decent job now that's not psychotic about non-competes, so I've been ramping up to build something.

tome 2y ago
Well, I think the suggestion remains: live on subsistence income whilst working for as long as it takes to be able to live on subsistence income whilst not working. (All the while you can be attempting to effect changes that allow you to earn more than subsistence income at something you enjoy going.)
- tombert 2y ago
  Yeah, I don't really disagree; I'm still trying to get out of debt from the six months I was unemployed last year (which also ate a bit into my savings, but I live kind of boring so it wasn't super bad). Hopefully that should be coming to a close pretty soon (even sooner if Gemini actually reimburses the money that they ponzi'd out of me like they claim they will). I've been trying to invest in a combo of relatively-low-risk ETFs (VOO and VTI primarily) and US Treasury Bills, to give myself a combo of potentially-higher-than-inflation-reward but also zero-risk-and-still-higher-than-bank-interest money. Once my wife starts working, we figured that we'd put nearly 100% of her paycheck into some forms of savings to accelerate the process a bit further, since my salary has traditionally been enough to cover the bills. I'd like to have enough money to retire comfortably by my mid-to-late 40's. I think that's realistic. 2023 was one of the worst years of my life, maybe the worst. It was really horrible being laid off twice and having to spend so much time on LinkedIn and doing Zoom whiteboard interviews and waking up to dozens of rejections every morning, not to mention that being laid off twice in a year makes your resume look insanely bad (each stint being about 3 months). As a result, I think I've become more frustrated than I probably should, and grown a strong resentment towards companies, with a nearly-complete lack of optimism that they'll ever do anything even remotely actually-technical. My current gig seems a lot better but I've learned my lesson about getting my hopes up. We'll see if it lasts more than three months.
  - tome 2y ago
    I'm very sorry to hear about the double layoff! That must be very difficult to experience.