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Comment by partisan | Hacker News Reader

For your life circumstances, is there an amount of money that is large enough to celebrate, but not so large as to be life changing? If so, then you can relate to the author's point, but for a different value of N. The author is speaking from their experience. I think if they were to caveat every point like this, it would be a much longer read and one would get tired of reading the disclaimers.

In the past few years, I've received bonuses that were massive and I could only have dreamed of some years ago. Since then I've come to realize that sums like that were not life changing. When I dreamed of them some time ago, I imagined they would have been. I would have bought the car I really wanted or bought a bigger apartment or something. But in the end, I would have still had a car and somewhere to live, working to sustain that quality of life. Is it life changing?

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I'm sure there would be such an amount of money for me. And I don't mean to say that $200,000 must be a life-changing amount of money to her, or anyone else for that matter.

But she didn't say "I don't think much [...]", she said "You don't think much [...]", which makes it sound like this notion wasn't specific to her, but rather a sentiment shared by some majority. Now my point is that while it may be true for the majority of her social circle, it's important not to loose track entirely of how others are doing, because our lifes aren't isolated from one another.

Maybe I'm reading too much into the specific choice of words , and if that is true just take my comment as a friendly reminder to us all not to forget those less fortunate than us.

Life changing is a moving goal post and it is contextual for the individual.

Roughly 10 years ago when I first started in software development I was making ~$40k and thought I had made it and I'd be able to achieve everything I wanted on that amount assuming I just kept up with inflation.

Fast forward, I bought $500 of Basic Attention Tokens at $0.17 and after currency conversion it is over $5k. The money has 10x'ed but in the present I wouldn't describe it as life changing at all. The impact isn't notable at all to the point I'm like, either it goes to $0 or it goes to $50k to be "worthwhile".

It's all percentages. If the author's lifetime earnings were already going to be $5M than $200k might not seem like a life changing amount but anyone's who lifetime earnings are going to be $1M could see that as a life changing amount.

>anyone's who lifetime earnings are going to be $1M could see that as a life changing amount.

I would define life changing as being able to have kids if you couldn't before, moving to a radically different environment than before, or being able to stop working if you were working before.

So probably it needs to double what you were expected to make without it.

I would say that the money did change your life. It's tempting to say that you just didn't recognize it, but clearly you did. By your own account, your life changed and your attitude has changed.

I hope that you are helping to make other lives better. I wish you well.

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