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Comment by throwaway713 | Hacker News Reader

> When people ask me about my life’s ambitions, I often joke that my goal is to become independently wealthy so that I can afford to get some work done. Mainly that’s about being able to do things without having to explain them first, so that the finished product can be the explanation. I think this will be a major labor saving improvement.

This is an excellent explanation that mirrors my own life goals, but I have struggled to put the sentiment into words this well. At the end of the day, I just want to spend (waste?) all of my time doing AI research or working on a cure for cancer, but I want to do it my own way.

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Same. Over the years I've become obsessed with becoming financially independent, so that I can work on what I think is important and don't have to explain it to others. In the process, I've completely lost interests in achieving any success in the day job, which is the polar opposite of myself 10 years ago. Everything at work just feels so pointless now. I feel really bad but just can't help it.

I recommend the book or the blog posts of JL Collin. His posts are all about how to achieve financial independence

https://jlcollinsnh.com/

Websites that aim to help people become wealthier, and yet are sprinkled with ads, inevitably give an impression that their owners consider ad revenue a viable source of income.

If that is so, I’d be reluctant to follow any advice given on such a site, as I do not want to be in a position where I rely on ads for own financial independence.

Or they feel leaving money on the table by not running ads is pretty stupid?

Or users turn off Javascript on the page and never see the ads to begin with.

The content degrades into becoming ads for their books, seminars, shovels for gold miners, etc.

By the time get-rich advice becomes even moderately popular it's either applicable only to saturated markets, selling the dream, has hard requirements outside the reach of most (birth, luck, credit, liquid assets, etc), or some combination of those.

It's like writing a book on how to become wealthy, and the advice it gives you is to write a book on how to become wealthy.

Of course they never admit the truth, that the only way they got rich/famous was by writing self help books and have never done anything real outside that.

I know someone who did exactly that. They can't quit their day job yet.

His advice is simple: stick your money in low fee index funds.

>> Mainly that’s about being able to do things without having to explain them first

It seems as good a rational definition of faith as any.

How is your way different from the current way it's done and what benefits would there be to your way?

My way involves a lot more risk that nothing useful will be produced.

I basically want a higher risk / reward than what working in this field as an employee would provide. I wouldn’t be able to try far out ideas if I wanted to keep my job, because it may be the case that one avenue of research never goes anywhere for years.

Peter Higgs has some interesting thoughts on how he would probably not have produced anything valuable if his work had occurred in the current academic environment that prioritizes frequent publications in high impact factor journals (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-...)

I share your goals.

I'd put it this way: your way involves a lot more risk of dead ends, but also offers a lot more of focused, productive deep work.

In general sense, companies are set up to derisk work. It's a trade-off - we get consistency, but also mediocrity.

In my case I just want to follow the rabbit hole to wherever it takes me without worrying about showing results to anybody.

Why can't you do that now?

It generally leads to being fired for not completing milestones, which leads to not having income to support yourself.

How much monthly income would a person need to support themselves and work on what they want to work on?

Depends on the location but living without a job is not really feasible without government assistance of some sort which is usually tied to stress and extra work proving you need the money. For example in many US states you have to prove that you are constantly looking for a new job and are willing to accept any kind of job offered in order to receive unemployment assistance. This is a far cry from being relaxed enough to work on projects in peace.

Have you heard of the 4% rule? That basically means if you save up X amount, you can spend 4% of X every year, in perpetuity, given some reasonable return like 7%. So if you can live on $80k/year, save and invest $2 million.

I can live on much less than $80k and I actually currently do. But $2 million actually sounds like a reasonable goal. If I can get it down to $1 million then that will be achievable.

Yes, if you can get your expenses under 40K a year, you'll be good. I read a lot of financial independence / FIRE forums. Some people are much more conservative and think 4% is too high. They prefer the 3.5% or even 3% rule. For a very early, longer retirement, they are probably right. The 4% rule was based on a "normal" 30 year retirement.

Is this similar to FIRE?

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