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On Time, Money and Health

98 pointsby clubdorothealmost 4 years ago

17 comments

mythzalmost 4 years ago
Maybe it&#x27;s different for others but my best years definitely started from high-school, Uni and backpacking (teens-early 20s) which we had to do on a shoe-string budget which I attribute to hanging out with friends and meeting new people which is much easier to do when you&#x27;re young.<p>Strangely after Uni and backpacking my earning potential increased dramatically but my happiness definitely plateaued, so looking back I wouldn&#x27;t tie happiness to money since I was happiest when getting by without much of it.<p>Now in my early 40s I rarely worry about money and my main sources of happiness is definitely my kids. I&#x27;m at a loss at what I could do to increase my happiness other than focusing on keeping a happy home and spending time watching my kids grow up.<p>One life observation I&#x27;d share was when I was young and earned little I used to think earning more would increase happiness and therefore couldn&#x27;t wait to finish Uni and start working professionally, but money didn&#x27;t end up being the main source of happiness, being young and being able to spend lots of time hanging out with friends was when I was happiest. So my advice to my young self would be: cherish your youth and focus on building and maintaining strong relationships.
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arezalmost 4 years ago
Oh well, yes it&#x27;s good to have balance and think about your present and future. What do you want to sacrifice today, to have more in the future. Apparently the author just wants to make sure that we not fall to deep into the FIRE mindset and sacrifice too many good memories today.<p>But<p>F** all that. Somehow we&#x27;re obsessed with optimizing our lives with ever new ideas how we can have the best life, with the best health, the most money, most free time. We all work with computers and optimizing algorithms, or click-through-rates so we apply these techniques now to our lives and compare ourselves to others. Does someone online has better weights, should I still eat fruits or does this spike my insulin too much. Good god, just live your life without constantly checking on others, it&#x27;s perfectly fine to live a basic life, it&#x27;s perfectly fine to waste your time. Yes you don&#x27;t have unlimited time, but you will be relieved and relaxed without having to self optimize. That doesn&#x27;t mean you have to be unhealthy and miserable, if you want to change that it&#x27;s fine, but do it on your terms (The author says, &quot;just stop eating much&quot;, which is just arrogant, some things are hard to change and take years of willpower). Will you regret something at the end of your life? Maybe, but you lived your life on your terms and didn&#x27;t ran from guru to guru. Kierkegaard said the following<p>``` Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it; marry or don’t marry, you will regret it either way. Laugh at the world’s foolishness, you will regret it; weep over it, you will regret that too; laugh at the world’s foolishness or weep over it, you will regret both.```
pjeremalmost 4 years ago
Nothing revolutionary in this article but it hit the nail pretty well.<p>As a 30 yo person with health issues (nothing really bad, but not cool either), I totally acknowledge with the idea that staying healthy is the best gift you could do to your kids and I’ll work hard to give that to my son.<p>As on money, I have the feeling that the thing you must solve is finding not only your house, but the house you’ll love, so you can invest all of your « useless » extra money in it (extending it, renovating it, decorating it…)… It’ll only increase your house value while making you happier.
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rheidealmost 4 years ago
I love cycling. Did my first solo touring cycling trip over ten years ago when I was in my twenties. I&#x27;ve done a cycling trip every couple of years since then, until I got a mortgage. Then I started focusing on my career and kept delaying the next trip, thinking &quot;next year will be the year that I&#x27;ll make time for it&quot;. Now I&#x27;m approaching my 40s, I have a medical condition that limits the enjoyment I get out of cycling, and due to covid travel restrictions I can&#x27;t travel to the country I want to cycle in.<p>Don&#x27;t delay.
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alexpetraliaalmost 4 years ago
One of my friends opined that if most people (limited to people on this forum, let&#x27;s say) rationally priced in their future earnings, they&#x27;d be in debt more often, for longer and earlier in their life. The naive algorithm of &quot;save as much as possible&quot; might land high-earners with a huge nest egg they end up carrying to their grave. I think I agree with that.
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ZephyrBlualmost 4 years ago
I&#x27;m 23 and have been thinking about this a lot lately. It forced me to consider what I value. Do I want to spend my money on a nice flat? Clothes? Food? Etc.<p>I found it very difficult when you try to factor in compensation growth and the time value of money.<p>If I choose to save more money now, that benefits me more in the future because it has more time to grow. On the flip side, saving more money now means less money to spend on enjoying myself and I can&#x27;t get my youth back.<p>For compensation growth, if I knew that my compensation would grow by x times in say, 10 years then I could plan accordingly and save less money now because I know that I will be making a lot more money in the future. However, I can&#x27;t know that so how do I take this into account?<p>The result of this was me coming up with a very boring answer: save 30-40% of my net income (Equity comp makes this more like 50-60%) and make no assumptions about compensation growth. I&#x27;m naturally quite frugal so this isn&#x27;t difficult, though I think that this is probably overkill and I should loosen up my spending a bit.
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TeMPOraLalmost 4 years ago
I&#x27;ve been recently thinking a lot along the lines of this article, which is why I was surprised to see this being given, as positive advice:<p>&gt; <i>Make that extra money work for you. Invest into diversified index funds so you can use the power of compound interest, and use that “free money” in the later stage of your life. The earlier you invest, the better it is.</i><p>It surprised me because what prompted me to think about the other points the article makes was realization that <i>compound interest is a lie</i>.<p>I&#x27;ve written about it previously here[0][1]. It&#x27;s not that the math of compounding is wrong - it&#x27;s that, in terms of <i>saving money</i> in our economy, a typical person is unlikely to gain any meaningful amount of money through compounding. The rates are too low. If you&#x27;re lucky enough to front-load your savings early then maybe you&#x27;ll get something useful out of them... around retirement age. Which is, like the article points out, not exactly the best time to enjoy your wealth.<p>This isn&#x27;t to say you shouldn&#x27;t save or invest your money - just that you shouldn&#x27;t rely on interest rates to do anything for you. There are opportunities to multiply your wealth faster - if you&#x27;re willing to shoulder the high risk of losing it. But low-risk options available are so bad that mentioning compound interest is just... noise. Distraction.<p>--<p>[0] - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=26637164" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=26637164</a><p>[1] - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=27838926" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=27838926</a>
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m3nualmost 4 years ago
Yeah, don&#x27;t delay your dreams until retirement. Your health and energy will be limited.<p>At the same time, there is no need to spend money in a stupid way right now. Defaulting to a frugal mindset in most domains will buy more free time later.
JackPoachalmost 4 years ago
I think claiming that 25-40 is your best years is gross oversimplification. I am 42 and consider it to be the best time of my life. And considering that I will probably be financially independent before my 50s, I think that might be might best decade. Especially after my kids grow up and me and my wife will no longer need to make plans around them.
Pansy3almost 4 years ago
Exactly this. Am 23 (Ghanaian) and this is my final year in the university. I have been working as a software developer at small startups since I started schooling. As this is my final semester, I have decided to quit work and have more free time for myself.
kamaalalmost 4 years ago
FIRE definitely makes lots of sense. Even if you don&#x27;t believe in retiring early. You are in some way already retired by the time you hit 40. This is really for most ordinary folks out there, not the exceptional one&#x27;s that are chasing law degrees and PhDs in 50s.<p>Simple way to understand this is, 50s is your retirement decade. Therefore:<p>1. When you are 40, your resume has just 10 years worth value.<p>2. When you are 30, your resume has just 20 years worth value.<p>..<p>Sometime back, a manager advised me the surest way to get promoted is do the job of the level your are aiming for. Same applies to retirement as well. You can&#x27;t retire unless you are already retired in some way. Else you will just continue far into your 50s without retiring. Then you will be forced to.<p>Given all this FIRE is definitely a great strategy. The other point on health is very good advice as well. In fact every hour post age 35 spent on things on Leetcode instead of swinging a Kettlebell in many way is wasted time. More importantly in many cases might even give negative returns(Obesity, Diabetes etc).<p>None of this applies to the outliers of human race of course. But for most folks out there with ordinary lives. Retirement planning and health care should be the single biggest priority of your life through your 20s and 30s.
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toshkalmost 4 years ago
I agree mostly with the article and that one should focus on freedom in the moment, while at the same time creating stability for the future.<p>But the underlying assumption that having more experiences (outside of work) leads to more happiness I believe to be somewhat false. It of course depends on the person, type of experience and definition of hapiness.
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kaycebasquesalmost 4 years ago
Thinking of my life as a tradeoff between time, energy, and money [1] was a key factor towards my decision to take a 1-year sabbatical as of June. Similar to that trope about working with contractors: &quot;time, quality, cost: pick 2&quot; (i.e. we can do the work fast and high-quality but it will cost you a lot; we can do it high-quality and cheap but it will take a long time; we can do it cheap and fast but the quality will be low).<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kayce.basqu.es&#x2F;sabbatical&#x2F;prologue#tradeoffs" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kayce.basqu.es&#x2F;sabbatical&#x2F;prologue#tradeoffs</a>
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crypticaalmost 4 years ago
My life is already wasted. I&#x27;ve seen too much and I know too much to ever be completely happy. The best I can do is try to leave behind some kind of positive legacy. Maybe with 20 more years I will achieve something.
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lauriegalmost 4 years ago
I&#x27;m in my thirties and I&#x27;ve definitely maximizing time and health. This wasn&#x27;t a conscious choice, but I&#x27;ve almost always worked significantly less than 40 hours a week. On the flip side, I don&#x27;t have a huge amount of money. If I had been more dedicated to my career maybe I would have more money in the bank. Would that make a huge difference to my life? It&#x27;s hard to know.
wombatmobilealmost 4 years ago
&quot;I&#x27;m not afraid of death because I don&#x27;t believe in it. It&#x27;s just getting out of one car, and into another.&quot;<p>-- John Lennon
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john_minskalmost 4 years ago
What about children? This can turn your 20s-30s priorities around. Childfree is an option, but I&#x27;m super not sure about it.