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This was awesome. Thank you for writing this. I'm saving money to have a year's cash to live on while fleshing out my idea(s) and heading down the runway of mak

This was awesome. Thank you for writing this. I'm saving money to have a year's cash to live on while fleshing out my idea(s) and heading down the runway of making my way on my own. I'll be making the transition ("falling out of the bottom of the world" I lovingly call it) on June 1st. My favorite line was this one: "...life isn't a competition to see how upper middle class you can get." This is so true. It blows my mind how much people internalize these milestones of success and how little questioning goes into them. It seems that basically the whole culture's on autopilot, and I guess the point of a culture is basically to build a structure for most people to sail through on auto-pilot but I am really starting to see a life of questioned assumptions as the only life not lived in slavery.

pnathan 14y ago
"...life isn't a competition to see how upper middle class you can get." That's been on my mind a lot for the last few years. While I'd like to put my (future) kids in a good starting point, there's more to life than rolling around in cash.
- koko775 14y ago
  Not until you have enough that you're not clawing just to stay afloat. Until that point, stress and paranoia about job security are a pretty big deal.
  - pnathan 14y ago
    I've been broke before. Not to toot my own horn, but I know what it's like. There's a long way between "barely not broke" and "upper middle class". I am not particularly interested in struggling my whole life on the way up to wealth, but I am also not interested in living broke and trying to keep myself and my family fed.
- rayiner 14y ago
  Counterpoint: It's really hard to appreciate a day job for what it is until you're filling out HR forms to ensure your new baby has health insurance coverage from birth, and you let yourself appreciate the terror of not having that in a system that will do it's damndest to screw you over for any lapses. I have a friend who had a baby and had a gap between the 30 days during which the baby was covered by her health insurance, and the time he was covered by her husband's health insurance from his new job. The gap was the result, if I recall correctly, of her forgetting to timely fill out some paperwork. In that gap, the baby rolled off the changing table and hit his head. The baby seemed fine, but she faced the sickening choice between racking up a multi-thousand dollar hospital bill or just hoping the baby didn't have any internal injuries. Ultimately, they took the chance and luckily it worked out for them because the baby was fine. These weren't poor people, by the way. They were students at an Ivy-league school who were in the transition period between graduation and six-figure jobs.
- reinhardt 14y ago
  The irony is that the "startup culture" and HN in particular glorifies "rolling around in cash" even more in the form of billion+ dollar acquisition lottery hits, while looking down on moderately profitable sustainable "lifestyle" busineses.
Crake 14y ago
It's not really about seeing how long you can stomach being a starbucks barista with your $100,000 english degree either, haha. I think there's a good medium between the two that most people fail to notice--it's good not to be too obsessed with money, but when I hear people say that "money doesn't matter!" I instantly suspect that they have always been rich enough to never have actually experienced living without it. It matters quite a bit when you are struggling to pay rent on your crap retail job, and routinely having to choose between gas in your car or food in your stomach.
- sethrin 14y ago
  So, this time last year I was in a kind of a bad fix. I was completely broke, homeless, and living in a country where I didn't share a language with the majority of inhabitants. Also, at the time that I became unemployed and homeless I had managed to contract a (relatively mild) case of MRSA. This all was somewhat stressful. However, it's important to be mindful that things can always get worse, and that your happiness is not actually dependent on having a job, place to live, or food. Although the last one does tend to occupy your mind, most people would not actually be harmed by skipping a meal or six. You can let money, or the lack of it, determine your happiness. You can let your health, or lack of it, determine your happiness. You can let whether your favorite sports or political team determine your happiness. Or, you can have a sense of perspective, trust in yourself, and let happiness be a goal to reach no matter what fate has in store for you. I can't help but recall the lines of "Invictus" here, but I'll refrain from quotation.
  - Crake 14y ago
    "your happiness is not actually dependent on having a job, place to live, or food." Mine is.
hkmurakami 14y ago
>"...life isn't a competition to see how upper middle class you can get." This was the most powerful phrase of the article for me as well. These days I wonder if something like a "Freedom maximization framework" or a "Personal satisfaction maximization framework" might work well for many people including myself, rather than a "Income maximization framework" or a "Career maximization framework" that we tend to default to.
disgruntledphd2 14y ago
The unexamined life is not worth living. Socrates, via Plato. So this is a very old idea, but nonetheless true for all of that.

pnathan 14y ago

"...life isn't a competition to see how upper middle class you can get." That's been on my mind a lot for the last few years. While I'd like to put my (future) kids in a good starting point, there's more to life than rolling around in cash.

koko775 14y ago
Not until you have enough that you're not clawing just to stay afloat. Until that point, stress and paranoia about job security are a pretty big deal.
- pnathan 14y ago
  I've been broke before. Not to toot my own horn, but I know what it's like. There's a long way between "barely not broke" and "upper middle class". I am not particularly interested in struggling my whole life on the way up to wealth, but I am also not interested in living broke and trying to keep myself and my family fed.
rayiner 14y ago
Counterpoint: It's really hard to appreciate a day job for what it is until you're filling out HR forms to ensure your new baby has health insurance coverage from birth, and you let yourself appreciate the terror of not having that in a system that will do it's damndest to screw you over for any lapses. I have a friend who had a baby and had a gap between the 30 days during which the baby was covered by her health insurance, and the time he was covered by her husband's health insurance from his new job. The gap was the result, if I recall correctly, of her forgetting to timely fill out some paperwork. In that gap, the baby rolled off the changing table and hit his head. The baby seemed fine, but she faced the sickening choice between racking up a multi-thousand dollar hospital bill or just hoping the baby didn't have any internal injuries. Ultimately, they took the chance and luckily it worked out for them because the baby was fine. These weren't poor people, by the way. They were students at an Ivy-league school who were in the transition period between graduation and six-figure jobs.
reinhardt 14y ago
The irony is that the "startup culture" and HN in particular glorifies "rolling around in cash" even more in the form of billion+ dollar acquisition lottery hits, while looking down on moderately profitable sustainable "lifestyle" busineses.

Crake 14y ago

It's not really about seeing how long you can stomach being a starbucks barista with your $100,000 english degree either, haha. I think there's a good medium between the two that most people fail to notice--it's good not to be too obsessed with money, but when I hear people say that "money doesn't matter!" I instantly suspect that they have always been rich enough to never have actually experienced living without it. It matters quite a bit when you are struggling to pay rent on your crap retail job, and routinely having to choose between gas in your car or food in your stomach.

sethrin 14y ago
So, this time last year I was in a kind of a bad fix. I was completely broke, homeless, and living in a country where I didn't share a language with the majority of inhabitants. Also, at the time that I became unemployed and homeless I had managed to contract a (relatively mild) case of MRSA. This all was somewhat stressful. However, it's important to be mindful that things can always get worse, and that your happiness is not actually dependent on having a job, place to live, or food. Although the last one does tend to occupy your mind, most people would not actually be harmed by skipping a meal or six. You can let money, or the lack of it, determine your happiness. You can let your health, or lack of it, determine your happiness. You can let whether your favorite sports or political team determine your happiness. Or, you can have a sense of perspective, trust in yourself, and let happiness be a goal to reach no matter what fate has in store for you. I can't help but recall the lines of "Invictus" here, but I'll refrain from quotation.
- Crake 14y ago
  "your happiness is not actually dependent on having a job, place to live, or food." Mine is.

hkmurakami 14y ago

>"...life isn't a competition to see how upper middle class you can get." This was the most powerful phrase of the article for me as well. These days I wonder if something like a "Freedom maximization framework" or a "Personal satisfaction maximization framework" might work well for many people including myself, rather than a "Income maximization framework" or a "Career maximization framework" that we tend to default to.

disgruntledphd2 14y ago

The unexamined life is not worth living. Socrates, via Plato. So this is a very old idea, but nonetheless true for all of that.