I don't intend to spend my life working for the big payoff. I like PG's concept of 'compressing your working life down to a few years.' Like I said to a work colleague, "Who wants to retire at 65, when you're old and geriatric, with barely any lead left in your pencil?"
At 30, I'd like to have my own music studio. But rather than simply making do with an M-Box and a cheap mic, I'd like a RME Hammerfall and Shure SM-58s. All thing being equal, money makes life easier.
It's like the old argument about bootstrapping vs VC. How many founders wouldn't want a longer runway while they iterate?
Thought so.
Admit this much: Up to a point, money simply makes life easier. And I suspect that point is WAY past 1 million.
In closing, allow me to post an unfinished poem I began writing a few months ago, as a repsonse to the 'wealth deniers.':
--------AN ODE TO LUCRE--------
We praise the One whose bounty feeds,
And to whose temple success leads,
Who blesses us with cream, with salmon,
All praise to Thee, O God, O Mammon!
The heathen speak against they name,
That thy seekers should hide in shame,
And that your love shall be our ruin,
Let papuperdom be their undoing!
(While on our grills, sirloin is stewing.)
Despite their speech, they too seek rent-
But saying for their Lord it's meant!
Till paid his due, Devil won't relent,
Even God demands his ten percent...
By suffering they have been selected,
Because thy precepts they rejected,
And while they in their misery puffeth,
We enter pearly Gates of Buffet.
Thou sent to us thy sacred prophets,
To lead us to make naked profits,
Who taught us how to raise our station:
O Atlas Shrugged! O Wealth of Nations!
I'll be finishing it soon...