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Comment by Desafinado | Hacker News Reader

Try retiring at age 45 and see how that goes.

As I'm trying to re-iterate, work-life balance. Others in this thread are making the assumption that work is always bad. People like working, without work we have no purpose. But finding work that offers work life balance offers both - purpose and leisure time. Not an excess of one or the other,

When we have an excess of work and money we have no leisure time, when we have an excess of leisure time we have no purpose. This isn't that controversial of a point, read up on any number of uber-wealthy people that attempted to retire early.

Sure they were financially free, but in practice they were beholden to the work they chose.

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I get what you’re saying, I just think you’re justifying your position because you can’t change it. Someone who is financially independent can choose any point along the work/life balance continuum. You can’t.

And lots of people have retired early. Many struggle with it and return to work to find purpose or meaning. But they can choose to do that, and on their own terms. I’ve never heard anyone who has become financially independent wish they were back where they had to work a job in order to survive.

And guess what, if they DID want that, they could choose that too! They could donate their money and go back to work.

They’re more free than you are, no matter how you slice it. It’s OK to acknowledge that.

I'll stop with this comment but I will say that there are a few fallacies in your comment. In short, you're overestimating the level of freedom many entrepreneurs actually have.

Can they choose anywhere on the work / life continuum? Maybe sometimes. Can they just go do something else? It's not always that simple.

I’m not overestimating the freedom that entrepreneurs actually have. I didn’t make any statements about entrepreneurs in general, we’re talking specifically about your rich relative and how much freedom they have.

For the record, I am currently self-employed again after a five-year stint in big tech. Prior to that I worked for myself for more than a decade. I’ve seen this issue from both sides, and I definitely wouldn’t say most entrepreneurs can pick anywhere on the work/life balance continuum. But again, we’re not talking about most entrepreneurs, or even really about entrepreneurs at all. We’re talking about people who have reached financial independence, specifically your relative. All of this would still be true if they were an employee who had enough money to stop working tomorrow.

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