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Comment by DougN7 | Hacker News Reader

This isn’t anonymous enough for me to give any details. Nearing retirement so I’ll just say I can buy almost whatever I want, especially if I raided the retirement account, but have finally discovered those things don’t bring happiness. There’s a great cartoon I lost track of that shows a person walking around with a huge hole in their chest, and how different people try filling it with various things (sex, drugs, drinking, money, fame, other people, hobbies(?), etc). While that gaping hole is there, money means very little. How to fill it? Still trying to figure that out.

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That's pretty reductive.

Having enough money to buy "almost whatever" allows for real happiness to happen. Money doesn't buy happiness, but it opens the door for it.

Family, friends, love, hobbies.

- Financial hardships are one of the top reasons for divorce.

- Building and keeping loving relationships and friends is a lot harder when you have to work 60-80 hours a week.

- Funds to have hobbies so you can do what you truly want to do rather than what pays the bills.

A good fulfilling life is simple (but usually not easy).

Your answer is rather reductive. And unfortunately you seem to be strawmanning since your comment is replying to something that DougN7 never said.

I would summarize your point as: we need some money to be happy.

DougN7 said "[I] have finally discovered those [costly] things don’t bring happinessis".

I think lots of money doesn't make you happier. I strongly suspect that most people don't really understand that, because they don't have lots of money and therefore they have not learnt about the lies we are taught about money by our money focused societies.

Let's view your divorce argument from https://flowingdata.com/2021/05/04/divorce-rates-and-income/ :

  Divorce rates are tied to job security, age, and occupation, so it should make sense that we see a pattern when we plot divorce rates against income

  There’s a tight decrease in divorce rate for incomes between $10,000 and $200,000 per year, and then rates seems to flatten out around 30 percent after that

I suspect your assumptions about divorce money and unhappiness are incorrect. And you were definitely ignoring the confounders mentioned.

Here it is: https://imgur.com/gallery/we-are-all-born-with-hole-chest-An...

Money buys me a lot of things that lead to my happiness - the ability to tell my wife that she could stop working in 2020 when she was 44 and I was 46 and we could travel post Covid and she could pursue her passions.

It gives me enough to know that I could be out of a job for a year without being homeless and hungry (not counting retirement assets)

It means that even though we live in Florida, I can still say “let’s go to Costa Rica and Panama City for the entire winter”. And even locally when I want to fly back to my former home for a weekend every quarter just to play cards with my friends and hang out I can or if we just want to rent an Airbnb back home for a couple of months during the summer to spend time with friends and our adult sons.

When our friends suggest we get together and go on a cruise during Christmas we don’t think about it, we just say “yes”.

When my younger adult son calls us and tells us he is going to be temporarily laid off during Christmas we just ask how much he needs and don’t think about it.

Notice I didn’t say “buy things”. We live in a 1200 square foot condo and everything we own besides our car can literally fit in four suitcases and we have actually traveled around the country with everything we owned in suitcases. Even the furniture in our condotel came with it and if we do sell it, it stays with it. We threw away or gave away everything but the clothes we actually wear and our electronic devices and we even downsized those. If you can’t tell - we really hate “stuff”. Our one car is the cheapest thing that we could buy that was the base level of comfort we could deal with.

We use money for experiences, spend time with friends and family to allow my wife to pursue her passions and do her volunteer work. Even before she retired she was able to get a lower paying job (with the benefits we needed then) working with special needs kids.

I think you won at life and I’m genuinely happy for you. Though I’m of a similar mindset, circumstances don’t allow me to do similarly, but it’s not the money.

> Money buys me a lot of things that lead to my happiness - the ability to tell my wife that she could stop working in 2020 when she was 44 and I was 46 and we could travel post Covid and she could pursue her passions.

I told my wife the same. I'm currently on a $97k/year salary as a CS teacher with very few hours; I make about half of what I normally do, so I can have a lot of time with our firstborn. We're not pressed for money, but we also save less than $1500/mo. We spend most money on food, and second-most on travelling to my wife's home country.

I'm 39, and she's 32. My point is that you don't have to be very well off to make that choice.

> We threw away or gave away everything but the clothes we actually wear and our electronic devices

Wow. Just wow.

That sounds so liberating, but I could never do it.

I have a laser printer that I use a few times a year. I have two kind of belt sanders, even though I hardly do woodwork, because I imagine that I will, and I don't think I'm wrong. I have fitness equipment for a dozen sports. I have a collection of wires so that friends and family can ask for any kind of wire, and I can give it to them. My wife has three moving boxes of shoes that I've never seen her wear. I really wish it didn't take up so much space in our tiny apartment, but I wouldn't want to lose any of it.

I mentioned earlier that I own a unit in a condotel. It’s basically your standard condo style resort that you find in tourist hotspots. It’s not a time share. Anyone can come in and reserve a room just like any hotel and the owner of the unit gets half of the money when your unit is rented out.

That also means we have outsourced a lot for $800 a month (not including a mortgage) - that takes care of all of the utilities, maintenance, access to multiple pools, a gym that is literally downstairs and one that is a block away. I use to have my own cardio equipment setup. They come in our condo every other day and take the trash out and will clean our unit for $80.

As far as the printer? We use the one in the business office that all guests can use when we occasionally need to print something.

When we leave for extended stays, we pack our suitcase and put our unit in the rental pool and money gets put in our account.

This isn’t my bragging about money. Our total fixed bills now are slightly less than when we were living in the burbs in Atlanta 5 years ago. Our fixed expenses are ridiculously low.

> This isn’t my bragging about money.

I get it. Simple living. Don’t own things you can borrow for free or rent cheap. I really see how that makes for quality of life. My brother lives simply but more luxuriously. He owns less and spends more on experiences. I see that saving things you can use in 5 years isn’t really maximising total wealth or convenience, so it’s just a deep affection for a ton of crab.

> That sounds so liberating, but I could never do it.

I did that. Few years ago work was getting tough (new boss) and owner sold our rental right when second child was born. So we decided to move back from NZ to LT. Spent nearly a year living in Japan, Fiji and Tenerife and LT. Turned out to be mistake as work was hard to come by and it turns out I don't really like my country anymore. Kids need to go to daycare/school and form their friendships.

We went back to NZ, sourced some decent contract work and in like 6 months I was able to get mortgage. Life is stable and nice.

I get to spend money on improving house - got some tools and DIY a solar, heat recovery ventilation systems. Install Japanese toilet seats and get decent beds. Induction cooktop and some cooking tools. Ebike, kayaks and camping gear. Home assistant and robot vacuum. It's definitely reaching saturation point tho.

Hardest part is with third child on a way any sort of travel across the world is at least $10k in flights, $20k lost while not working and another 5k on vacant house.

Big hope is to save enough on a sailboat big enough for weekend trips. Otherwise grind another 5-10 years, sell everything and go around the world for a proper catamaran.

IMO, the hole metaphor is terrible. Mountain of trash feels more accurate. Problem is, after it's all cleaned up, there is no hole to fill. There's just nothing more to do, except whatever comes at you. That gets boring pretty quick in a relatively non-hostile environment. Playing Minecraft in peaceful mode never made me happy. Trying to figure out why that is is what I'm working on now. I think that's just creativity for it's own sake but, even though I find joy in other people's creativity, I find little point in doing it myself. Now that I'm typing this out, maybe something like "challenges" and "achievements" is what I should be "creating". Craft my own trash pile.

> especially if I raided the retirement account, but have finally discovered those things don’t bring happiness.

I see lot of retirees buy ski condos and live skiing lifestyle

And I think this is really dumb. We are definitely going to start wintering in Costa Rica next year. But why commit to a second home when we can just get a nice AirBnb and preserve optionality?

ppl i've met seem to ski 100+ days and live there all winter.

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