Hey, Guys, It's Totally Okay If You Don't Get Rich

On the other hand I fear that I'm underestimating how much I need. Because the macroeconomy will be more challenging in the future than it has been in the past. And because we're often competing financially with our closest peers. If more people have successful startups in the bay area the price of housing and everything else will go up. National inflation matters less than regional inflation.

We know the rewards of living in a big city. But the cost of living in a big city grows over time, and faster than one thinks. Like the red queen, you end up having to run at some speed just to stay in the same place.

1.) We are hardwired to want things to attract mates. 2.) Power, Success, Prestige, Freedom, etc. are attractive. 3.) We want things that are derivative of such things, even if we consciously believe we want to benefit humanity, think it's, fun etc.

Conclusion: The mind has a way of aligning our conscious interests with our subconscious procreative ones. We need to recognize this, but we don't need to embrace the appetitive.

Isn't the whole point of doing a startup, to be able to work on what you want? Surely creating a profitable startup gives you that freedom to do what you like?

The only time I think about the money is when I read someone on here mentioning it, but it quickly fades.

Otherwise, all I think about is being able to work on anything I want and starting my own company. Nothing seems cooler than that in my opinion. Besides, if you want bragging rights, how many people can say they started their own company?

Why not just take the direct route?

It sounds charming to be a vintner, writer, film producer, or my personal favorite, travel the world care-free once you have enough money but I'm honestly not sure there's more to it than the charm of it. Time and resources aren't that short that we cannot do what we want to (even if it means in a limited manner) in the present. I have a friend who wants to become a writer (he writes very well, too) but in the mean time wants to make a lot of money by being a Fx Quant so he can "retire" to write full-time. I can't help but think that he is mistaking what it means to be a writer to the idyllic charm of the idea.

My field of view might be limited but I don't know of even half a dozen people who went on to do drastically different things after getting rich, so to speak. They continued doing what they did before, the only difference being that they now had the means that afforded them more diverse experiences. In fact, just recently one of the ten richest men in my city came back to my division to run it after a hiatus of ten years. He is past 60, owns a vineyard, and enough money to outlast five generations. At this age, he comes back to the challenge but grind of trying to turn around a division's fortunes.

The purpose I think comes from industriousness, not in bumming around from one fleeting interest to another because you have money.

That's why I'm forcing myself to finish a book before my next startup. It's matter of self-respect.

When I dream of 'winning the lottery', I don't dream of laying on sandy beaches. I dream of starting a new start up, knowing that I can have enough FU money to take risks and make it great.

She is saying that ideas are powerful, and internalizing the wrong ones can cause damage.

I recently saw pg give an interview wherein he discussed how much more Y Combinator focuses on who the founders are rather than what the idea is. This is a great start, and I think there is a lot of fertile ground that can really be developed into a powerful message that will reach many young people.

I thought I'd need 10m+ to do this, but over time I'm gradually acquiring everything I need due to places like sparkfun, ebay and alibaba for little more than the cost of an average car.

I'm inventing every day (5-6days software, weekends building random projects), learning more than I ever thought possible and loving every minute.

My point is that if this is anything like your dream, it's readily doable now as the cost of doing science is extremely cheap these days. And I've found that productivity increases when I take a break from software in the weekends and do some wet/hard projects.

If you save wisely, you can retire just fine after a career at a tech company making 2-3x the US median salary. And most companies have good health coverage for the cancer.

She is talking about the pressure to make $10M or more through a startup, not getting the money to retire comfortably.

Of course having a sizeable amount of savings is important for all the things you described. Yet the "low six-figures" income of her first example is probably largely sufficient to handle these.

All of the possibilities you mention are much more likely to be handled by a) Good budgeting b) A solid career as an employee or an independent contractor

The reason to start your own business is because you want the challenge, and the satisfaction of building something important.

If you have a desperate need to have a few million in the bank, your best shot is to to get a good job, learn about investment, and start living cheaply.

You don't need to start a company to have enough money to retire. And of course if you choose to start a company you're trading increased likelihood of being severely short of funds at some stage in the short term for the possibility of being rich later in life.

How many founders on here can honestly say their main motivation is maximising their chances of survival in old age?

So much so that a bunch of people agree with you and it's a defining norm.

Note that the article is talking about the obscenely rich, like the Facebooks and the Googles. There's no need to be obscenely rich to retire, afford healthcare, treat your lovely soon-to-be-cancerous wife. Above a certain point, having more money gives diminishing returns on quality of life. After that, it's just a scorecard as someone will almost always be more rich than you.

But we think we do need to be obscenely rich, and that it's our role, nay our purpose to do so. It's a story that's exulted, whispered, and told in our ear so often, we don't realize it anymore.

In the end, you should know yourself. The old masters weren't kidding when they said that the hardest thing to do is not mastery over others, but over yourself. You should know what you value in life and what you want out of it, and that the source of that inspiration comes from within.

Because when you buy into other people's values that aren't your own, you may find that when you finally get to the top of the hill at the expense of everything else, what you really wanted wasn't there at all. And that's what she's warning her friend about.

Setting a high target for success and working hard to get there are worthy goals for men and women alike but going through life with a perpetually-agitated constitution because you don't attain a result that puts you in the top-1% wealth bracket (for example) is an almost certain way to find yourself unhappy and discontented as you strive to meet your main life goals.

In the midst of the tech bubble, a prominent Valley newspaper ran a feature story in which it interviewed five couples who were each at varying degrees of financial success, from modest to rich. Ironically, it was the rich couple (net worth of approximately $200 million) that was quoted as saying, in response to a question about what they most wanted, "we want to know what it would be like to be worth a billion dollars."

To me, this sort of mindset can be problematic, and the problem becomes one of loss of perspective. When the accumulation of money becomes in itself an obsessive goal, it comes back to bite because, no matter how much one has, it will never be enough. I don't think this is really an issue about the money itself, either - it involves instead the idea that your very perception of your value as a human being somehow becomes defined by how the ciphers add up, and that ultimately represents a sad loss of perspective because you wind up forever measuring your wealth (and what it brings) with what everybody else has.

Money is great when rightly gained and used. So too is ambition and a desire to achieve the ultimate success. It is good to set your goals high. But it is never good to become obsessed about the accumulation of money as an end in itself. Such a goal, even if attained, will sap the life out of anyone who allows money to become his master.

This piece was thought-provoking along these lines, though I think flawed in tying to tie all this to feminist themes. The issue of avarice as a problem is a transcending one that is hardly shaped by gender.

Once you hit late 40s to 50s, people won't pay you a high salary for a typical line position.

So at that point, you either continue to work for low wages, possibly being shifted within the company to doing sales on commission, being a trainer, or moved to a low-wage country.

Or you are independently wealthy by then.

Some things just come naturally to you I suppose.

http://www.forbes.com/2010/03/22/billionaire-women-entrepren...

Forever. Unless there would be a world where every city costs the same and has the exact same gender ratio. And, most people don't move, thus leaving the arbitrage intact.

As it stands, it's nearly impossible for spouses to exert enough leverage to find academic employment at the same institution. If they're lucky, they'll spend a good deal of their career building up the karma to pull that one off; there isn't anything left over for little Billy.

In those prime years before 40 will see very poor income given your education level and expenses, and a whole lot of stress and overtime spent in meeting all the requirements. Big publication list, talks, grants, scholarships, postdocs, teaching experience, taking on grad students, and perhaps even committees.

You really need to love the lifestyle, and not money, to stick it through to tenure.

People need to ask themselves - what do I want out of life? What are my personal measures for success, that I can explain and justify to myself based on my beliefs. Instead almost everyone simply avoids thinking on that level and instead absorbs and adopts the measurements promoted by society

It's not that making money is bad. It's that far too many people blindly focus on making and spending money without considering the amount of time and sanity and other opportunities for living that's being consumed by their consumerism