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As someone who has spent their 20's accruing "significant wealth" through a startup (I am by no means loaded, but have not worried about money at all in ~3 year
by madaxe_again 11y ago
As someone who has spent their 20's accruing "significant wealth" through a startup (I am by no means loaded, but have not worried about money at all in ~3 years), I'll tell you now - it's overrated.
Money can buy you happiness, but it's an inefficient exchange mechanism - unless you roll two sixes, the amount of work and bullshit that goes hand in hand with growing your "worth" usually exceeds the reward - and that reward for most is tantalisingly close but always "a year or two" away.
Monetary wealth is a means - it is "gas in the tank" - but it isn't the end. The end is your own happiness and wellbeing, and there are much easier ways to secure this than through wealth.
If I'd known what I know now, I would have moved to a hut up a mountain a decade ago rather than going into business. Now I am responsible for the livelihood of dozens directly, thousands indirectly, and while I may have made myself a very comfortable gilded cage, it is a cage, and the cost of my wealth has been my freedom.
- wingerlang 11y agoSo why don't you quit?
- madaxe_again 11y agoBecause I have a responsibility to my employees and our customers.
- wingerlang 11y agoI mean over a longer period, transfer this responsibility to someone else.
- hebdo 11y agoAnd then do what? Isn't this the problem of non-decreasing expectations? Once you learn how to fly, you see yourself as a sucker every time you try to ordinarily walk.
- wingerlang 11y agoI don't know, but if you read the comment I replied to he says: > If I'd known what I know now, I would have moved to a hut up a mountain a decade ago rather than going into business. Now I am responsible for the livelihood of dozens directly, thousands indirectly, and while I may have made myself a very comfortable gilded cage, it is a cage, and the cost of my wealth has been my freedom. Doesn't sound like continuing is what he wants.
- hebdo 11y agoAgreed. My point was that not continuing is difficult because it would mean going down, instead of up. Or in other words, I've been trying to guess the reason behind the lack of change, not question the intention itself.
- zzalpha 11y agoHaving grown up in a poor household with a single parent who worked multiple jobs to get ends to meet, you'll forgive me if I don't feel a whole heck of a lot of sympathy for you and your "gilded cage". Money itself does not buy happiness. A lack of money, though, makes it a heck of a lot harder to find it. The goal should be to reach a point where you don't have to actively worry about money, and that includes some buffer to allow for luxury expenses... travel, eating out, entertainment, that sort of thing. Beyond that, additional money will, at best, provide an increment in terms of overall life satisfaction. Less than that, and money has a major impact on happiness, and anyone who says otherwise has clearly never experienced the stress of living paycheck-to-paycheck. That is a cage, and trust me, it ain't gilded.
- namecast 11y agoSeconded. "Money can't buy happiness, but it can sure chase away the blues". (And the debt collectors and irate landlords, I would add).
- madaxe_again 11y agoTrust me, I've lived worse than paycheck-to-paycheck (tried being homeless?), and having enough to get by is a blessing - but the incremental benefit of wealth is not usually worth the labour it takes to get there.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- dorfuss 11y ago"Wealth is a means - it is "gas in the tank" - excellent thought!