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Comment by rwmj | Hacker News Reader

$331,381.55 in 2024 dollars. If only he'd invested it in the stock market rather than half-assed ponzi schemes he could have been reasonably comfortable.

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The whole point of money is being able to do what you enjoy. And it's clear he absolutely loved these shenanigans. Losing it, regaining it, and finding something new - that was what he wanted and seemingly spent his entire life doing. The journey was the destination.

You can see this everywhere in all aspects of life as well. Jeff Bezos, and countless other billionaires, could easily retire tomorrow and have enough money to do essentially anything they could even dream of. So what do they do? Continue to work 60 hours a week doing pretty much the same stuff they were doing on their way up. Because they love it.

On the other end of the spectrum countless rappers have managed to break out of a life of crime to become successful and make millions. Yet many end up right back in that life of crime. It's because they enjoy the lifestyle. They don't want to just be comfortable, but to actually do what they enjoy.

> Continue to work 60 hours a week

I do not, even for an instant, believe they pull those kinds of numbers.

Time reviewed a study based on some 256 CEOs here. [1] The average work week ended up at just over 58 hours. Here [2] is a post from Forbes where they surveyed 50 billionaires on how many hours they work per week. For 60% it was at least 60 hours.

Imagine tomorrow - you finally 'made it'. You have $15k/month guaranteed income, forever. It's not like that's a destination, because at that point you need to decide in a point for your life. Relentless hedonism is really awesome for like a year or two, but even that becomes rapidly unfulfilling. So... what now? For some it's work, others go for religion, others just end up playing 'make number go up' with their earnings, and so on. But the point is you need to find something to do with your life. "Comfort" is a false destination, because it's not a destination - once you reach it, you just immediately start going down a new path that can even take you further away from where you were - as in this guy's case.

[1] - https://time.com/4076563/ceos-productivity/

[2] - https://twitter.com/forbes/status/498274992694784000

I'm surprised no one has replaced the entire Wikipedia page on Sampling Bias with a link to this study that only looked at the work habits of CEOs.

This would only be sampling bias if someone made the claim that working 58 hours/week is what you need to become a rich CEO. That claim is false, but a survey of CEOs only would make it seem true. (there are lots of people working 60+ hours/week in low end jobs that will never make CEO - as any sample would tell you)

The claims here though are CEOs generally work more than average despite their high income where they seem to have plenty of money. That claim checks out.

It might have more to do with claiming to work more than doing actual work. For example, musk claims he works 80 hrs/wk, but obviously 60 of those hours are goofing off on Twitter.

> Surprisingly though, meetings aren’t what take up most of CEOs’ time. For 6.55 hours per day, the executives say they actually work alone, strategizing, planning, and reviewing reports.

Yeah....

Or, like Elmo, they spend 20 hours a day on Twitter(x).

Did losing half his net worth in a robbery contribute to his enjoyment of life? From his subsequent behaviour towards his girlfriend, it seems like it didn't.

If what you truly enjoy is stealing from others then it's time to reevaluate your life.

>The whole point of money is being able to do what you enjoy.

That's a very common and reasonable way of putting it, otherwise it wouldn't be so popular.

An antithetical approach that is completely compatible without conflict, would be to say the whole point of money is to have some financial results from doing what you enjoy.

It's fully possible to achieve the same monetary reward by performing the same tasks, under either scenario, even though the attitudes can seem mutually exclusive, there is a shared basis for coexistence.

If he had invested the prize in the S&P500, in order to be able to live from the investment income for 50 years (Michael was aged 33 when he won), he would have been able to withdraw only about $10,040 per year, in 1982 dollars, which is equivalent to $32,500 in today's dollars, which is a minimum wage salary. I don't think this is "reasonably comfortable".

The CAGR of the S&P 500, including dividends reinvested, inflation-adjusted, was about 9% in the 1982-2024 period [1], and my Python script below shows that starting with $110k, with this 9% CAGR, he would run out of money in about 50 years:

   t = 110e3
   for y in range(50):
     t *= 1.09
     t -= 10040
     print(1982 + y, round(t))

Output:

    1982 $109850
    1983 $109687
    1984 $109508
    1985 $109314
    1986 $109102
    1987 $108871
    1988 $108620
    1989 $108346
    1990 $108047
    1991 $107721
    1992 $107366
    1993 $106979
    1994 $106557
    1995 $106097
    1996 $105596
    1997 $105049
    1998 $104454
    1999 $103805
    2000 $103097
    2001 $102326
    2002 $101485
    2003 $100569
    2004 $99570
    2005 $98482
    2006 $97295
    2007 $96001
    2008 $94592
    2009 $93055
    2010 $91380
    2011 $89554
    2012 $87564
    2013 $85394
    2014 $83030
    2015 $80453
    2016 $77643
    2017 $74581
    2018 $71244
    2019 $67606
    2020 $63640
    2021 $59318
    2022 $54606
    2023 $49471
    2024 $43873
    2025 $37772
    2026 $31121
    2027 $23872
    2028 $15971
    2029 $7358
    2030 $-2030 # no more money
    2031 $-12263

(But actually he died early in 1999, so if he had know that he could have spent more yearly...)

[1] https://dqydj.com/sp-500-return-calculator/

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