Until you get sick. Or your loved ones get sick. Or any of a thousand other things happen for which our society has no safety net.<p>Make more than you spend is indeed very good advice. But the bullshit stories that the wealthy tell themselves about themselves never cease to amaze me.
I enjoyed Derek's writing while I ran my own business, but he's forgotten the difference between having millions of dollars in the bank and living comfortably, and living hand-to-mouth with the tiniest of buffers. He's literally confused the two.<p>This bit is impressively tone deaf:<p><i>Once I had $12,000 I could quit my job and become a full-time musician. I knew I could get a few gigs per month to pay my cost of living. So I was free.</i><p>I bet loads of musicians knew that in January 2020 too! (also what freelance musician can get good US health insurance?)
I don’t mean to be rude but I am genuinely confused why this is interesting? The author is saying: “to be rich, save more than you spend”. Isn’t this obvious?
<i>> When I finished telling my friend this story, he asked for more. I said no, that was it. He said, “No, what about when you sold your company?”<p>I said no, that didn’t make a big difference in my life. That was just more money in the bank. The difference happened when I was 22.</i><p>Yeah I think I get what Derek is saying. However if I was his friend, I would also be unsatisfied by this answer. It feels like Derek should know what he's asking and is being obtuse.<p>Likewise<p><i>> It’s not how much you have. It’s the difference between what you have and what you spend.</i><p>is in a real sense very true, but it's also vacuous. The more you have, the less effort is required to have a big difference between what you have and what you spend.<p>In my opinion Derek's friend was probably framing this question in the sense, "How did you end up with so much?" and not, "How did you end up with such a great burn rate?"
Weird he left out the fact his dad lent him money to start the recording:<p><a href="https://sive.rs/mistake" rel="nofollow">https://sive.rs/mistake</a>
I don't know who this person is, but this is a story that can only be told by a rich person, or someone who's family has money.<p>How do I know, because he isn't worried. You see when you are poor, or have been poor, you have this persistent worry that something bad is on the horizon, that the good times are going to come to an end.<p>It take real privilege to not have worry when you are just barely scraping by.
Reductive gibberish. It would be more accurate to say once you are earning more than you spend while spending as freely as you want you are rich. Maybe he forgot that eating pb sandwiches all day doesn’t feel real rich.
My one question: how did he make it to 22 without any debt? I had $5,000 in the bank at 18, but at 22 I was about $50K in the hole because of college. I know I shouldn't have worried about it because monthly payments were low and interest was low, but it <i></i>felt<i></i> crushing, and if I was saving $6k per year like he did, it would take me 12+ years to have "$12k in the bank and be free".
I think there's something to this but Derek is falling into a couple traps here - first the trap of good, pithy writing, and secondly assuming everybody else has he has.<p>I absolutely accept that learning to live frugally and no longer make the same old mistakes with money is a huge advantage. It's amazing how that can compound and no longer having to worry about money is very freeing.<p>But then there's the whole 'and never had a job again' bit and the implication that his further success was either immaterial or just an inevitable consequence of having saved some money or maintaining a surplus - obviously not the case for very many.<p>It's very well written and pithy but, like much of PG's writing, leaves you feeling like hands have been waved like windmills.
I don't get his analogy of 'sleight of hand'. If anything, sleight of hand is <i>fooling yourself</i> into thinking you are rich, when in all probability you are not, whatever 'rich' may mean to you, because it's not all about money. 'Some people are so poor, all they have is money' as the saying goes.<p>Also: certain monetary events in life do not automatically make you happy, as your foundation for that wealth has to be fundamentally sound. If you can't handle $1000 of disposable income correctly, then you can't handle a million.
I feel like people take the idea that an obsessive pursuit of more money won’t make you happier and then extrapolate that money has zero effect on your happiness. This simply isn’t true.<p>The amount of money you have plays a role in your happiness. Of course, the marginal value of a dollar will change immensely depending on how many dollars you already have and your stage of life, but it is a factor. It also really matters how much you have to sacrifice to make that extra dollar.
That first feeling for true financial independence is different for everyone, I guess. For me it's having enough to pay for unexpected medical bills and children.
Setting aside the merits of this blog post, someone needs to chime in with the relevant Dickens quote:<p>"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery."<p><a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Micawber_principle" rel="nofollow">https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Micawber_principle</a>
Interesting how many comments here bring up the inability to live modestly as a freelance musician and have health insurance in the US.<p>Amazing that this status quo is so widely accepted. And that pursuit of art for happiness and income is frowned upon (or deemed too risky). Meanwhile people are willing to waste their youth in unhappy menial jobs in order to have health insurance.<p>Why shouldn’t people be able to pursue art as work <i>and</i> have a doctor?
I would tweak the definition of rich provided by Sivers<p>Having more money than you spend for a year is not enough is not enough to be 'rich'. You want assets where you will always be able to generate more money than you need spend for every year that you live.<p>I think people read Siver's blog because he got to this tweaked definition of rich. This article does not seem to acknowledge that reality.
I don't think he answered his friend's question very well. All he did was describe how he made it to a point where he didn't need to worry about very small costs. That isn't "getting rich" in my definition, but merely becoming middle-class.
I'm glad Derek never felt anxiety after he had saved up 12k, but I am sure that's uncommon. The article comes off as extremely condescending to me as a result, which I am sure wasn't meant but I am having a hard time not feeling.
My family is big into the whole financial independence thing, albeit at a much higher level of spending than this person. I think it's great to have such conservative needs, but I'm not sure it's practical for most people.
I guess we all have different things that make us happy. Is life about amassing cash? You need to decide what happiness means to you.<p>Its good to have goals. Its good to make plans to achieve your goals. What that means is different to everyone.
Most people misunderstood the spirit of the story.<p>There's another story on HN's frontpage today, that is highly related and correlated to this one: <a href="https://www.outsideonline.com/2401643/life-lessons-97-year-old-lobsterman" rel="nofollow">https://www.outsideonline.com/2401643/life-lessons-97-year-o...</a>
I'll be honest this is a stupid story.<p>He's sharing a three bedroom apartment with two roommates. There isn't some beautiful moral to be taken here. what about when you have a family? What about when you have children? What about when you have a medical expense come up? Insurance is very expensive.<p>I hate these anecdotes that imply that you can just live simply in the United States and be happy. So much is left unsaid. Maybe this guy wants to live an ascetic life, but most people don't.<p>I understand that the idea of spending less can apply on varying scales, but this implication that you can just give up the material world and be a musician making minimum wage and be happy is silly.
Unlike most stupid takes, this one is actually enraging. He is mocking everyone out there who is not a millionaire like him. Everyone who has kids and wants to give them a good life and is struggling to make it work financially.