Hacker News Reader

Comment by acconrad | Hacker News Reader

The irony is that to truly be able to not think about money, you have to have enough of it for your expenses to be paid on autopilot. To have that, you essentially need to have enough to retire on, which requires a lot of money, which requires thinking a lot about how to make that money.

View on HN

I'm super into not thinking about money right now, and am acutely aware that I am only able to do so because I don't desire more than a modest lifestyle, have cheap hobbies, and a stable high paying job. If you have sufficient privilege, I highly recommend trying it out, it is very freeing.

That is just your money focused mind at work. There are other ways.

Some trivial suggestions:

- becoming a monk

- begging for food

- steal for food

- roam the open land and life with the animals and eat what nature provides

- die

Some of these are not really attractive, but they show how it is possible to life in a way where you can truly not think about money.

But making the "not wanting to think about money" much less strict will also work.

"you have to have enough of it for your expenses to be paid on autopilot" Having a job helps here. If it makes enough money, you don't need to think about it.

"enough to retire on" Solutions:

- having kids

- gamble that pension is enough

- delegate your future problems alltogether to your future-self

- never stop working

If you truly don't want to think about money, "enough to retire on" wouldn't be a concept for you anyway...

The annoying thing about startup jobs in particular, though, is that "having a job that makes 'enough' money" this month doesn't guarantee the business (and thus your job) will still be in existence next month.

And so, if you care about eating (by being paid, by having a job), and you work for startups, you have to think about a bunch of things like improving your resume, paying attention to the company's ups and downs, etc. ...because you need to be able to recover from your money-source disappearing out from under you. You can't really just join a startup and "drift along" doing your job, the way an employee of a bigcorp can.

> "enough to retire on" Solutions: > - having kids

Whoa, no. I've had 3 over the last five years. Total expense of well over a quarter million so far, and we live in a fairly cheap city in flyover country.

[EDIT] small expenses that nevertheless add up to several thousands over the first 5 years: clothes, diapers, food, formula (YMMV), toys, furniture (cribs, beds, dressers); large expenses: housing (need more space and in decent school district, both = $$$), cars (3 kids basically = at least one van required, no getting by with only tiny, cheap cars), medical, lost wages of wife staying home for ~1.5yrs, daycare/school after that.

in the long term it can work out. can. and not a suitable solution if it doesn't work out short or mid term, yes.

God, considering how much that'd be worth if invested it'd have to be a hell of a payoff from my kids to make up for it. Plus we're nowhere near done spending yet, and could easily spend a lot more.

[EDIT] by which I mean we could spend more to improve their prospects and educational outcomes, especially on housing or directly on school itself. The sky's the limit on that stuff, at least until you reach absurd levels of wealth at which point it does taper off (i.e. it becomes easy to afford the very best, and there's nothing more expensive than that)

yea.. having kids while wanting their best probably doesn't go very well with "not wanting to think about money" in our society/economy

having kids can be a good reason to change that attitude.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com