3 ms·

That sounds exactly like it's a problem with retirement.

bluefirebrand 6mo ago
It sounds like a problem with a society that more or less forces people to make work their only focus for their entire lives
- CydeWeys 6mo ago
  Or maybe that's just the human condition? Retirement is a pretty recent concept anyway. Back when people were hunter/gatherers or subsistence farmers, you didn't have the option of retiring. You either kept working or you starved, perished from the elements, etc.
  - tensor 6mo ago
    That's not true. There were always different roles for older people. They didn't just keep doing the same job their whole lives.
    - pavel_lishin 6mo ago
      And people who were injured to the point where they couldn't "work" anymore were still cared for by their community.
      - weirdmantis69 6mo ago
        I mean, that just isn't true. There are amazon tribes today where they just send them down the river to die... your ideas are a disney-fied version of a false past that never existed.
        DangitBobby 6mo ago
        Unspecified Amazon tribes don't represent the lion's share of historical treatment of aging populations. One negative example doesn't undermine the point.
        ryoshoe 6mo ago
        They're right. We've found remains that show how thousands of years ago people took care of people that would have died without external assistance. https://phys.org/news/2025-10-ancient-patagonian-hunter-disabled.html https://phys.org/news/2025-10-ancient-patagonian-hunter-disa...
        pavel_lishin 6mo ago
        Yes, humanity is full of various societies that do things differently. These ideas aren't disney-fied - they're just accurate representations of the fact that people care for each other, most of the time. I appreciate your anecdote, but here's a few counter-examples: - Neanderthals took care of their elderly: https://theconversation.com/neanderthals-cared-for-each-other-and-survived-into-old-age-new-research-93110 https://theconversation.com/neanderthals-cared-for-each-othe... - Neanderthals took care of a child that likely had a developmental condition: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adn9310 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adn9310 - other Hominids also did this at some point in the last few million years: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/deformed-skull-of-prehistoric-child-suggests-that-early-humans-cared-for-disabled-children https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/deformed-... - 2500 year old woman had a jaw prosthetic made: https://www.vice.com/en/article/mummified-skull-reveals-iron-age-woman-survived-brutal-jaw-surgery/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/mummified-skull-reveals-iron... - 15k years ago, someone with a broken femur was cared for well enough to heal: https://www.forbes.com/sites/remyblumenfeld/2020/03/21/how-a-15000-year-old-human-bone-could-help-you-through-the--coronavirus/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/remyblumenfeld/2020/03/21/how-a... - Neanderthals pre-chewed food or provided soft foods for someone who lost their teeth: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/care-worn-fossils https://www.sciencenews.org/article/care-worn-fossils - 4000 years ago, a man who was almost certainly a quadraplegic was still being cared for: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/06/17/878896381/ancient-bones-offer-clues-to-how-long-ago-humans-cared-for-the-vulnerable https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/06/17/8788963...
        brokenmachine 5mo ago
        I thought that a major reason humans were so successful is because the older members of the tribe could protect the children while the others hunted.
  - bluefirebrand 5mo ago
    > Or maybe that's just the human condition? Retirement is a pretty recent concept anyway So are computers but we accept that they are a core part of our reality now. I'm not interested in "back in the day" arguments. We should always be striving to do better than "back in the day"
- JumpCrisscross 6mo ago
  > a society that more or less forces people to make work their only focus Modern American society really doesn't force anyone to do this. Targeting work-life balance requires making trade-offs. But in a country where the median wage is around $45k, some significant fraction of half of Americans can dial down their work if they reduce lifestyle and consumption.
  - bluefirebrand 6mo ago
    Not when basics like rent, food, and healthcare eat up the majority of that 45k There's only so much you can reduce your lifestyle before you're literally just living to work anyways
    - deleted 6mo ago
      [deleted]
    - 0xDEAFBEAD 6mo ago
      The US has one of the highest median incomes adjusted for cost of living in the world: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-median-income https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-median-income (You're welcome to complain. I'm just clarifying that insofar as this is a problem, it is very much not exclusive to the United States.)
      - rsynnott 6mo ago
        One caution there; if you read the small print, they're using PPP figures. Which is definitely better than using nominal figures, but doesn't account for anything. In particular, it doesn't account for transfers, either direct (social welfare payments) or indirect (subsidised healthcare, housing, childcare etc etc). Not to say it's a useless figure, but it can mislead (especially for lower income people, where healthcare costs and childcare costs, say, might be literally 0 in some countries, and a huge part of their income in others). And obviously for people trying to do the FIRE thing in particular, healthcare costs are likely to be a very big deal; for those in countries like the US where most people get healthcare through their job, that's an additional consideration that people in countries where it's done by income-based subsidised insurance, or free-at-point-of-use systems, don't have.
- breezybottom 6mo ago
  That's literally every society
the_gastropod 6mo ago
Or maybe it’s a problem of spending all your effort working a job for 40+ years, and having your curiosity atrophy into nothingness. I retired last year in my late 30’s and it’s just such a life upgrade. I study Mandarin, go to the gym, cook fun meals, volunteer at our community garden, volunteer at our food pantry, go to board game nights, brew beer, DIY house maintenance, write some software for myself for fun, etc. I have so much more time to spend learning new things, it’s ridiculous. I just can’t even fathom continuing to do a job I don’t particularly enjoy just because I’m too unimaginative to figure out what I’d do with the extra 40+ hours of weekly freedom.
- ravenstine 6mo ago
  My thoughts exactly. Maybe I'm just wired differently, but if I couldn't work anymore or didn't need to I'd be like "Finally! I can spend as much time as I need to make yeast glow with CRISPR, collect microscopic things, build a chicken coop, learn to fly planes, build a bigger coil gun, actually get proficient at speaking German, go to more pub trivia, build a new Dobsonian telescope, yada yada." And I'm bet someone would say "you're not really gonna do all those things." Well, you're wrong. Those are the sorts of things I've done since I was a kid. I would just have so much more time to do them. There is no way I would retire and have nothing to do.
  - ericd 6mo ago
    [dead]
- jcgrillo 6mo ago
  I've been doing sort of a temporary version of that :). I quit working for the next year or maybe some more to focus on a big house renovation project, among other things (a few major car, truck, and tractor projects too.. some welding.. building some other machinery..). I figured why wait until some indefinite future to do work that is actually personally meaningful rather than what an employer tells me to do? I guess financially this year of negative income has some opportunity cost associated with it, but I'm building a bunch of stuff that cannot be bought, and I'd rather take the time now when it's definitely good than wait for a "maybe". And frankly the tech treadmill had pretty well erased the interest I used to have in computing. I'm also quite happy to be sitting out the current AI insanity. I've been working on some personal coding projects as well--as well as playing with local LLMs--to stay current and hopefully rekindle the interest in computing that the industry beat out of me. The work used to be fun, where did that go?
tensor 6mo ago
Do you have anything more interesting to say on the topic than "No U wrong"? The OP had a lot of thoughtful comments about the issues with having things to do after retiring.

It sounds like a problem with a society that more or less forces people to make work their only focus for their entire lives

CydeWeys 6mo ago
Or maybe that's just the human condition? Retirement is a pretty recent concept anyway. Back when people were hunter/gatherers or subsistence farmers, you didn't have the option of retiring. You either kept working or you starved, perished from the elements, etc.
- tensor 6mo ago
  That's not true. There were always different roles for older people. They didn't just keep doing the same job their whole lives.
  - pavel_lishin 6mo ago
    And people who were injured to the point where they couldn't "work" anymore were still cared for by their community.
    - weirdmantis69 6mo ago
      I mean, that just isn't true. There are amazon tribes today where they just send them down the river to die... your ideas are a disney-fied version of a false past that never existed.
      - DangitBobby 6mo ago
        Unspecified Amazon tribes don't represent the lion's share of historical treatment of aging populations. One negative example doesn't undermine the point.
      - ryoshoe 6mo ago
        They're right. We've found remains that show how thousands of years ago people took care of people that would have died without external assistance. https://phys.org/news/2025-10-ancient-patagonian-hunter-disabled.html https://phys.org/news/2025-10-ancient-patagonian-hunter-disa...
      - pavel_lishin 6mo ago
        Yes, humanity is full of various societies that do things differently. These ideas aren't disney-fied - they're just accurate representations of the fact that people care for each other, most of the time. I appreciate your anecdote, but here's a few counter-examples: - Neanderthals took care of their elderly: https://theconversation.com/neanderthals-cared-for-each-other-and-survived-into-old-age-new-research-93110 https://theconversation.com/neanderthals-cared-for-each-othe... - Neanderthals took care of a child that likely had a developmental condition: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adn9310 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adn9310 - other Hominids also did this at some point in the last few million years: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/deformed-skull-of-prehistoric-child-suggests-that-early-humans-cared-for-disabled-children https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/deformed-... - 2500 year old woman had a jaw prosthetic made: https://www.vice.com/en/article/mummified-skull-reveals-iron-age-woman-survived-brutal-jaw-surgery/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/mummified-skull-reveals-iron... - 15k years ago, someone with a broken femur was cared for well enough to heal: https://www.forbes.com/sites/remyblumenfeld/2020/03/21/how-a-15000-year-old-human-bone-could-help-you-through-the--coronavirus/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/remyblumenfeld/2020/03/21/how-a... - Neanderthals pre-chewed food or provided soft foods for someone who lost their teeth: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/care-worn-fossils https://www.sciencenews.org/article/care-worn-fossils - 4000 years ago, a man who was almost certainly a quadraplegic was still being cared for: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/06/17/878896381/ancient-bones-offer-clues-to-how-long-ago-humans-cared-for-the-vulnerable https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/06/17/8788963...
      - brokenmachine 5mo ago
        I thought that a major reason humans were so successful is because the older members of the tribe could protect the children while the others hunted.
- bluefirebrand 5mo ago
  > Or maybe that's just the human condition? Retirement is a pretty recent concept anyway So are computers but we accept that they are a core part of our reality now. I'm not interested in "back in the day" arguments. We should always be striving to do better than "back in the day"
JumpCrisscross 6mo ago
> a society that more or less forces people to make work their only focus Modern American society really doesn't force anyone to do this. Targeting work-life balance requires making trade-offs. But in a country where the median wage is around $45k, some significant fraction of half of Americans can dial down their work if they reduce lifestyle and consumption.
- bluefirebrand 6mo ago
  Not when basics like rent, food, and healthcare eat up the majority of that 45k There's only so much you can reduce your lifestyle before you're literally just living to work anyways
  - deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
  - 0xDEAFBEAD 6mo ago
    The US has one of the highest median incomes adjusted for cost of living in the world: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-median-income https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-median-income (You're welcome to complain. I'm just clarifying that insofar as this is a problem, it is very much not exclusive to the United States.)
    - rsynnott 6mo ago
      One caution there; if you read the small print, they're using PPP figures. Which is definitely better than using nominal figures, but doesn't account for anything. In particular, it doesn't account for transfers, either direct (social welfare payments) or indirect (subsidised healthcare, housing, childcare etc etc). Not to say it's a useless figure, but it can mislead (especially for lower income people, where healthcare costs and childcare costs, say, might be literally 0 in some countries, and a huge part of their income in others). And obviously for people trying to do the FIRE thing in particular, healthcare costs are likely to be a very big deal; for those in countries like the US where most people get healthcare through their job, that's an additional consideration that people in countries where it's done by income-based subsidised insurance, or free-at-point-of-use systems, don't have.
breezybottom 6mo ago
That's literally every society

the_gastropod 6mo ago

Or maybe it’s a problem of spending all your effort working a job for 40+ years, and having your curiosity atrophy into nothingness. I retired last year in my late 30’s and it’s just such a life upgrade. I study Mandarin, go to the gym, cook fun meals, volunteer at our community garden, volunteer at our food pantry, go to board game nights, brew beer, DIY house maintenance, write some software for myself for fun, etc. I have so much more time to spend learning new things, it’s ridiculous. I just can’t even fathom continuing to do a job I don’t particularly enjoy just because I’m too unimaginative to figure out what I’d do with the extra 40+ hours of weekly freedom.

ravenstine 6mo ago
My thoughts exactly. Maybe I'm just wired differently, but if I couldn't work anymore or didn't need to I'd be like "Finally! I can spend as much time as I need to make yeast glow with CRISPR, collect microscopic things, build a chicken coop, learn to fly planes, build a bigger coil gun, actually get proficient at speaking German, go to more pub trivia, build a new Dobsonian telescope, yada yada." And I'm bet someone would say "you're not really gonna do all those things." Well, you're wrong. Those are the sorts of things I've done since I was a kid. I would just have so much more time to do them. There is no way I would retire and have nothing to do.
- ericd 6mo ago
  [dead]
jcgrillo 6mo ago
I've been doing sort of a temporary version of that :). I quit working for the next year or maybe some more to focus on a big house renovation project, among other things (a few major car, truck, and tractor projects too.. some welding.. building some other machinery..). I figured why wait until some indefinite future to do work that is actually personally meaningful rather than what an employer tells me to do? I guess financially this year of negative income has some opportunity cost associated with it, but I'm building a bunch of stuff that cannot be bought, and I'd rather take the time now when it's definitely good than wait for a "maybe". And frankly the tech treadmill had pretty well erased the interest I used to have in computing. I'm also quite happy to be sitting out the current AI insanity. I've been working on some personal coding projects as well--as well as playing with local LLMs--to stay current and hopefully rekindle the interest in computing that the industry beat out of me. The work used to be fun, where did that go?

tensor 6mo ago

Do you have anything more interesting to say on the topic than "No U wrong"? The OP had a lot of thoughtful comments about the issues with having things to do after retiring.