I’ve wrestled with this idea since reading My Side of The Mountain when I was quite young. Our society and culture constantly reinforces the perceived need to make enough money to retire one day, assuming that there is a necessary amount of money one needs to continue living and that one should stop working at some point. The fear of exorbitant medical costs in our privatized healthcare system scare me into thinking I need a fortune to feel safe and be able to live a long health life. My rampant consumption and desire to live a “full” life, like those that I see posted on social media, also stoke this financial insecurity mindset—“I must have more so that I can do more so that people will know that I am fulfilled and then I will feel happy and fulfilled.”
> The fear of exorbitant medical costs in our privatized healthcare system scare me into thinking I need a fortune to feel safe
It wasn't an accident. Near as I can tell there is a not-insignificant part of the American psychological context that amounts to a threat of utter destitution should you not choose to keep slaving away. By Krom, America needs homeless people to show you just how far you can fall unless you keep serving the man.
I'm coming to terms with the fact that if I want to leave any inheritance at all I will need to be voluntarily turning down medical care at some point in my life. I'm only 30 and I know for certain that lifespan is not the parameter I want to optimize. Rather, it is quality of life.
That's definitely true, and I think it's good you realize it so young.
It's inherent because of the diminishing returns for aggressive healthcare intervention. We're all going to die. We could ramp up the costs of intervention to arbitrary levels in a final death spasm, but we will still die. So, we have to strike some kind of balance.
The harder part, I think, is thinking about the decades leading up to that final end game. How do you trade off quality of life in different decades by saving and time-shifting some of your spending power into the future. It's not just medical costs but all the other aspects of life which carry a mix of predictable and unpredictable costs.
I hope to solve it through the healthy lifestyle: diet, exercises, sleep, outdoor time, stress management, so I will be healthy and active for a long time until some organ suddenly fails, so I won't spend money on medical care which observes my slowly fading body while giving some not necessary helpful treatment.
Turning down medical care at some point in your life maybe the right thing to do.
I bet if you were to ask most doctors, one of the most heartwrenching things they are required to do is keep people alive and in pain long past the point of compassion.
I am not advocating for euthanasia, but within the last 2 years I have observed such cruelty only once averted
> lifespan is not the parameter I want to optimize. Rather, it is quality of life.
Fortunately, the 2 are often correlated, the best ways to prepare for a long lifespan are the same as preparing for a long health span, and that includes a high quality of life.
Most people agree with you until the moment they actually have to decide between further treatment and likely death. Most people simply hold on until they have no choice but to die.
Is there some kind of reader-mode filtering site one can put a URL in to get a version that undoes this extra effort to remove capital letters? From what I’ve gotten of this piece I think it’s up my alley, but reading it is unpleasant.
[edit] incidentally, if this fad doesn’t burn out soon we’re going to need a setting to fix it under the heading of accessibility. I expect there are several categories of people for whom this is even more annoying than for most of us, and who can’t just get over it or re-train their brain to do better without the very-useful cues provided by capital letters, notably dyslexics.
I suspect much of the reaction is that it seems a little pretentious, like a faux optimization along the lines of "Oh I'm soooo busy, no time for caps", etc.
Couldn’t read it & didn’t want to make the extra effort required to. Every message, paragraph, article, blog post or company missive I’ve ever read that deliberately went the extra mile to remove capitalisation was written by the type of “change for the sake of change is always better” numpty who is not yet mature enough to have any insights worth sharing.
I always think these kinds of mentalities are based on people who have never been in dire straits or financially insecure. Living a simple life is almost impossible, pursuing wealth is probably the only way to be secure in a simple life. Even if you FIRE, you need to pretty aggressively pursue wealth at the beginning to make it work.
> Living a simple life is almost impossible, pursuing wealth is probably the only way to be secure in a simple life.
Maybe this seems true if you live in SF or NYC or are surrounded by people who are continuously preaching "high acheivement", but there indeed many people who lead a simple life. They don't have all the comforts that they could otherwise have if they pushed themselves to have more money, but they earn enough at their job for their own modest needs and contentment. It's the feeling that you always have to be reaching for the next rung in the ladder that creates anxiety.
I live in Canada, 2 hours from Toronto and a 1 bedroom apartment is CAD2300 per month. Working is not enough to afford that, you need to be somewhat affluent to afford rent and groceries. I think this idyllic idea of life is only possible outside of US/Canada/most of Europe.
It’s pretty easy to live a simple life if you don’t expect cutting edge healthcare, the best education for one’s kids’, and living in colder/flatter places.
If you expect a better than average quality of life, then you will have to compete for it. Unless, of course, you are lucky enough to be bequeathed a sufficiently large portfolio.
My reaction as well. Sure, one can have a fulfilling life without always chasing more, more more and it is might be worth thinking about cutting out some excessive consumerism, but this...
breakfast in bed on a sunday morning- sticky buns and black coffee, sharing a bed with my best friend. having more children. walking through the park while listening to the sounds of nature and kids laughing in the playground nearby. decompressing after a day at work on the couch with a cat who nestles besides my belly while i read, sip hot tea, and listen to tender jazz. cooking pasta for dinner, drinking wine, slow dancing in the kitchen with a lover. maybe starting a garden. farmers markets on weekends carrying a wicker basket full of apricots and hydrangeas. a soft, romantic, simple existence.
... this is the life of a wealthy retired person.
Most people who have a job where they aren't influencers, don't achieve anything, just go in for 8 hours a day and do ordinary work, are earning ordinary money, living in a small apartment, no pets allowed, have a marginally reliable car, can't afford to shop at the farmer's market, and with kids and homework and laundry and daily chores just want to get some sleep at the end of the day, spending three hours on cooking and enjoying a slow dinner with wine and music just isn't going to happen.
> Most people who have a job where they aren't influencers, don't achieve anything, just go in for 8 hours a day and do ordinary work, are earning ordinary money, living in a small apartment, no pets allowed, have a marginally reliable car, can't afford to shop at the farmer's market, and with kids and homework and laundry and daily chores just want to get some sleep at the end of the day, spending three hours on cooking and enjoying a slow dinner with wine and music just isn't going to happen.
In what world does making pasta take 3 hours? If you wanted to be fast, making pasta is literally a 10 min endeavor. “Slow” could mean spending an hour… or 30 mins. Nothing there is unreasonable.
There’s plenty to be gleaned from shirking the “keeping up with the Jones’s” mentality and being able to enjoy with less. Maybe that less isn’t true poverty, but even then there’s plenty of ways to foster contentment.
It reminds me of the average “indie hacker” mentality: just move to Bali and live off $2-3k.
The problem is that it just doesn’t work once you are past a certain age, and suddenly have “adult life”: parter, kids, aging parents.
I’d love to life a “little life”. Read books with my partner, drink coffee in the morning while watching the birds. The problem is that one small unlucky event, like being laid off, or someone you love getting sick, and it can all snowball into oblivion.
And the realistic thing to accept is that money solves a lot of problems. And in order to make enough of it, one should forgo the luxury if “little life” to some extent.
Yes. Money is being able to support my family. Money is a safety net. Money is choices. I'd take a little life, but only if it comes with a Big paycheck.
with all due respect this cannot be further from the truth. americans are taught from young age that to make it in life they must increase their earnings. america needs modern day slaves working in cubicles 9-10 hours per day (even if you are at FAANG making high six figures you still a slave…).
but economics which america would not dream teach their young is that you can also cut expenses :) this is the quiet life part that you missed in the post… how much money do you think you need to make to have an insane level-of-comfort life in say Hope, Arkansas…?
I think this is a very entitled approach, I bet you need very little to live in a small rural area, but the crazy thing is that not everyone can do that since by definition if would get more expensive for everyone to do that. We can't all live off the grid away from people, modern infrastructure just cannot support that.
I think if the approach was, be happy with less, then sure we can get on board. There is a massive difference in being able to afford more and choosing less, than being forced to have less.
How many jobs are in Hope, Arkansas? And I mean real jobs, not building React garbage from a coffee shop. How many people are in Hope, Arkansas, especially people you could easily connect with? How much housing is in Hope, Arkansas? How many doctors? Are there specialists? How are the schools?
I'm so sick and tired of the techbro response to a rising cost of living and a lower quality of life is just "lol be poor :)". There's a reason half the country cheered when that CEO got shot. Maybe there just isn't enough Hope in Arkansas.
Ok, no capital letters as a writing affectation is immediately upsetting... but I'll let my anxiety about that subside and focus on the content.
I get it, I really do. I find it a daily struggle. Last week I told my boss I couldn't travel this week. He was fine about it, there wasn't even a discussion. But I've worried about it ever since. Not because I want a raise or a promotion, but because I need this job and I worry that I won't get another good one if I lose it. I need it to cover my families needs, I need it so that I can live a good life post work. I need to think about post work because we all know that when your hair goes white and you struggle with the accessibility of the office you're not going to get another one.
So, there is no compact that will create the feeling of safety and fulfillment that this article wishes for. Just money.
> So, there is no compact that will create the feeling of safety and fulfillment that this article wishes for. Just money.
Money is the best freedom buyer. Don't trust anyone who says "Money doesn't buy happiness". That's rich-people propaganda to keep the rest of us dependent.
As Lucy Liu said in a fantastic interview: Do everything in your power to accumulate fuck you money as early as possible. Because then you can say No.
Even a few months of buffer is enough to buy lots of wellbeing. Having FIRE money is obviously even better.
Collective action is the best freedom-buyer. Stop trying to atomize society. We need to work together to fight for our rights, not try to hoard what meager crumbs we get from multi-billion dollar companies.
The issue is game-theoretic. There’s value in having money, absolutely, but most people end up having to chase it and never get any. If one person chases money, emancipation results for him. If everyone chases money, as most of us are forced to do, we end up miserable, and nobody wins except the people we should be removing from power as fast as possible.
Money clearly matters a lot, though. Why? Because we live in an objectively evil society—an oligarchy that has no language but money.
I think I've found my peace. I'm 24, planning to live my entire life without long term relationships, so I don't have to worry about responsibilities to others. I live in Europe so theoretically retirement is not a death sentence, but if it gets too difficult I can always kill myself. One advantage of this life is that it becomes quite easy to save money when you don't have pointless expenses. So far I am very happy and stress free.
It is peaceful and I'm finding myself in a similar place at a slightly older age. Responsibility to others can indeed be draining. But I'd encourage you to see beyond ending yourself as an alternative. There's always another way to go forwards and grow.
Author lives in NYC (a little city?) and seems to be rediscovering early '00s hipsterdom ("authenticity"), JOMO, and realizing her surrogate activities are just that. Her instagram is a sea of beige and rouge that represents what I hate about IG: an unattainably fashionable and curated portrayal. Oddly, this is what I loved about tiktok. On tiktok I watched a 60 year old man talk about his early mornings working at costco. I watched a middle aged woman prepare breakfast at a rural gas station. I can't imagine these types of real, ordinary, and representative lives on IG versus OP's yuppie elite ideal. For god's sake, does she ever sit down and eat a big mac? She is dripping in pretense not authenticity, especially with the tumblr-era lack of upper case.
Have some sympathy. She's been told she's a princess her whole life and is waiting for the rich prince to provide the IG worthy lifestyle of luxury and ease she deserves.
Eating a big mac and posting on Tiktok isn’t authenticity. It’s two bad health choices. Asserting someone is not serious or intelligent because they don’t post on your marketing driven social media app of choice is very pot-kettle behavior.
Agree but at the same time talking about leaving the rat race and glorifying the simple life is old hat for anyone over the age of 25. It gets annoying reading trite advice written by someone that sees it as profound insight.
I find these types of ideas to be more of a coping mechanism than any sort of deep insight on the human condition. Once everything is stripped away and you are spending your days making artisanal gooseberry preserves you may find that life is still not possessed of anything meaningful.
Yes. These types of hot takes only have force because most people don't pursue them. In a world where most people pursued a "little life", you'd see articles about the "quiet rebellion of ambition". Is either life better than the other? On what grounds? Is it not entirely dependent on the details of the life in question? Does no one understand the deep truth of the phrase "the grass is always greener"?
Mmmm the OP describes a very expensive mid-life retirement: an unspecified number of children, cats, a dog, a garden, living near enough a park that you might want to walk through, shopping at a farmer's market, books and art in your home, wine, and all in a "culturally rich" location!
I think most humans are pleasure seeking and would choose the above, if it were a choice! But the pinnacle for most people I know would be to enjoy one or two of the above, on the margins of a hard-working life.
It reminds me of some of the "I had a job in finance but it wasn't fulfilling so I went and did X" and X is where they take their massive nest egg and largely without much hassle just buy a nice retirement (farm or something and do wood working).
It's presented as some sorta contrast / revelation, but story is one that wasn't going to happen without the first part.
Reminds me of the start up that gets acquired and the former founder sitting on his pile of cash upset about what they do with his product. Bro you took gobs of money to let them do that thing ...
I'd be most interested in folks jiving those two lives and how they intersect rather than the almost strange born again type stories.
There is a better way, but you can’t drink any of the kool aid. I wish I could tell other people how to do what I have done, but I have come to understand that it only works for me because i tend not to think things are important that other people value, and I value things that other people sacrifice to obtain those unimportant things.
It’s worked very well for me. If I have a piece of advice I think people might be able to use, it would be to own a place. It should be cheap and have little or no property taxes. A bit of land. Maybe an acre or two. In the country but not too far off a road. It’s not an investment, it’s not your home, it’s a place. Build a house there. Build it yourself. A very modest house with your own hands.
Learn how. Build a home that you can walk away from and come back in ten years and not be bothered by the inevitable decay. The absolute minimum. This is not your home. This is your refuge. Put it in a legal situation so that it can’t be taken from you (obviously this also means you don’t really own it, and can never sell it) The worst that can ever happen is that you have to go and live there while you start from zero.
Now, you will never be without a place.
For most people, this will be enough to give them courage to take some necessary risks. That is enough.
If you want to take it farther (you probably don’t) this is what I have done, and I’m not at all alone in this experience:
Once you have a place, Become unemployable. Any job is a means to a very near end. If you have to work, take a job that pays well but you hate. invest your time and resources in anything where your efforts will be rewarded disproportionally to the risks. 10:1 bets on 1000:1 odds. There are so many things that people will simply ignore because the chance of failure is 90% if done well… but there are a lot of those losing propositions that will compensate way above their risk.
The hack is you can never go bust. Only your health can stop you. you have your place. You have to always be willing to put it all on the line. You can go to zero but it doesn’t matter. Just do it again. And again. And again. You get better, you get smarter, you get wiser. Eventually you win. Is it enough? If it’s not, set half aside in durable assets, and keep going.
Most people are so risk averse that you will have these opportunities basically to yourself.
99.99 percent will find a reason that this won’t work for them, and they’ll be right.
But sometimes you’ll run into someone else in a different stage of the same game. If they’re much farther along than you, they’ll recognise you and you might have a drink, and make a mentor. This is the most valuable relationship you will ever have. Your spouse can be replaced. Your mentor probably can’t .
Unfortunately what you described has been made illegal by incompetent "small town governments" by adopting Karen-esque zoning and building codes that would fine you to oblivion if you tried to build something affordable.
"Cheap", from what I'm currently seeing, starts at around $300,000 for a place like you describe. If you just buy raw land and try to build your own home, the county will either not let you, or it will end up more expensive than $300,000.
> You can go to zero but it doesn’t matter. Just do it again. And again. And again.
If it doesn't matter, you might as well not do it at all. Doing it again takes time in a game with a very limited amount of it. You can only do it again maybe 2-3 times in a lifetime. Maybe 4-5 if you have exceptionally lucky genetics.
Now $300k isn't that much, but it is going to be a barrier for a lot of average Americans.
Readit News
It wasn't an accident. Near as I can tell there is a not-insignificant part of the American psychological context that amounts to a threat of utter destitution should you not choose to keep slaving away. By Krom, America needs homeless people to show you just how far you can fall unless you keep serving the man.
It's inherent because of the diminishing returns for aggressive healthcare intervention. We're all going to die. We could ramp up the costs of intervention to arbitrary levels in a final death spasm, but we will still die. So, we have to strike some kind of balance.
The harder part, I think, is thinking about the decades leading up to that final end game. How do you trade off quality of life in different decades by saving and time-shifting some of your spending power into the future. It's not just medical costs but all the other aspects of life which carry a mix of predictable and unpredictable costs.
I bet if you were to ask most doctors, one of the most heartwrenching things they are required to do is keep people alive and in pain long past the point of compassion.
I am not advocating for euthanasia, but within the last 2 years I have observed such cruelty only once averted
Fortunately, the 2 are often correlated, the best ways to prepare for a long lifespan are the same as preparing for a long health span, and that includes a high quality of life.
[edit] incidentally, if this fad doesn’t burn out soon we’re going to need a setting to fix it under the heading of accessibility. I expect there are several categories of people for whom this is even more annoying than for most of us, and who can’t just get over it or re-train their brain to do better without the very-useful cues provided by capital letters, notably dyslexics.
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Maybe this seems true if you live in SF or NYC or are surrounded by people who are continuously preaching "high acheivement", but there indeed many people who lead a simple life. They don't have all the comforts that they could otherwise have if they pushed themselves to have more money, but they earn enough at their job for their own modest needs and contentment. It's the feeling that you always have to be reaching for the next rung in the ladder that creates anxiety.
If you expect a better than average quality of life, then you will have to compete for it. Unless, of course, you are lucky enough to be bequeathed a sufficiently large portfolio.
The exception being, as you noted, some wealthy people (not all, though).
breakfast in bed on a sunday morning- sticky buns and black coffee, sharing a bed with my best friend. having more children. walking through the park while listening to the sounds of nature and kids laughing in the playground nearby. decompressing after a day at work on the couch with a cat who nestles besides my belly while i read, sip hot tea, and listen to tender jazz. cooking pasta for dinner, drinking wine, slow dancing in the kitchen with a lover. maybe starting a garden. farmers markets on weekends carrying a wicker basket full of apricots and hydrangeas. a soft, romantic, simple existence.
... this is the life of a wealthy retired person.
Most people who have a job where they aren't influencers, don't achieve anything, just go in for 8 hours a day and do ordinary work, are earning ordinary money, living in a small apartment, no pets allowed, have a marginally reliable car, can't afford to shop at the farmer's market, and with kids and homework and laundry and daily chores just want to get some sleep at the end of the day, spending three hours on cooking and enjoying a slow dinner with wine and music just isn't going to happen.
In what world does making pasta take 3 hours? If you wanted to be fast, making pasta is literally a 10 min endeavor. “Slow” could mean spending an hour… or 30 mins. Nothing there is unreasonable.
There’s plenty to be gleaned from shirking the “keeping up with the Jones’s” mentality and being able to enjoy with less. Maybe that less isn’t true poverty, but even then there’s plenty of ways to foster contentment.
Deleted Comment
It reminds me of the average “indie hacker” mentality: just move to Bali and live off $2-3k.
The problem is that it just doesn’t work once you are past a certain age, and suddenly have “adult life”: parter, kids, aging parents.
I’d love to life a “little life”. Read books with my partner, drink coffee in the morning while watching the birds. The problem is that one small unlucky event, like being laid off, or someone you love getting sick, and it can all snowball into oblivion.
And the realistic thing to accept is that money solves a lot of problems. And in order to make enough of it, one should forgo the luxury if “little life” to some extent.
> The problem is that one small unlucky event, like being laid off, or someone you love getting sick, and it can all snowball into oblivion.
that's why financial health would be to allocate 15% of your indie $2-3k to saving account to cover this unlucky event.
but economics which america would not dream teach their young is that you can also cut expenses :) this is the quiet life part that you missed in the post… how much money do you think you need to make to have an insane level-of-comfort life in say Hope, Arkansas…?
I think if the approach was, be happy with less, then sure we can get on board. There is a massive difference in being able to afford more and choosing less, than being forced to have less.
I'm so sick and tired of the techbro response to a rising cost of living and a lower quality of life is just "lol be poor :)". There's a reason half the country cheered when that CEO got shot. Maybe there just isn't enough Hope in Arkansas.
I’m sorry, but do you know what a “slave” is?
I can’t imagine the kind of hopelessly ignorant perspective a person must have to say something like this.
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Deleted Comment
I get it, I really do. I find it a daily struggle. Last week I told my boss I couldn't travel this week. He was fine about it, there wasn't even a discussion. But I've worried about it ever since. Not because I want a raise or a promotion, but because I need this job and I worry that I won't get another good one if I lose it. I need it to cover my families needs, I need it so that I can live a good life post work. I need to think about post work because we all know that when your hair goes white and you struggle with the accessibility of the office you're not going to get another one.
So, there is no compact that will create the feeling of safety and fulfillment that this article wishes for. Just money.
Money is the best freedom buyer. Don't trust anyone who says "Money doesn't buy happiness". That's rich-people propaganda to keep the rest of us dependent.
As Lucy Liu said in a fantastic interview: Do everything in your power to accumulate fuck you money as early as possible. Because then you can say No.
Even a few months of buffer is enough to buy lots of wellbeing. Having FIRE money is obviously even better.
Money clearly matters a lot, though. Why? Because we live in an objectively evil society—an oligarchy that has no language but money.
https://www.amazon.com/Little-Life-Hanya-Yanagihara/dp/08041...
I think most humans are pleasure seeking and would choose the above, if it were a choice! But the pinnacle for most people I know would be to enjoy one or two of the above, on the margins of a hard-working life.
It's presented as some sorta contrast / revelation, but story is one that wasn't going to happen without the first part.
Reminds me of the start up that gets acquired and the former founder sitting on his pile of cash upset about what they do with his product. Bro you took gobs of money to let them do that thing ...
I'd be most interested in folks jiving those two lives and how they intersect rather than the almost strange born again type stories.
There is a better way, but you can’t drink any of the kool aid. I wish I could tell other people how to do what I have done, but I have come to understand that it only works for me because i tend not to think things are important that other people value, and I value things that other people sacrifice to obtain those unimportant things.
It’s worked very well for me. If I have a piece of advice I think people might be able to use, it would be to own a place. It should be cheap and have little or no property taxes. A bit of land. Maybe an acre or two. In the country but not too far off a road. It’s not an investment, it’s not your home, it’s a place. Build a house there. Build it yourself. A very modest house with your own hands.
Learn how. Build a home that you can walk away from and come back in ten years and not be bothered by the inevitable decay. The absolute minimum. This is not your home. This is your refuge. Put it in a legal situation so that it can’t be taken from you (obviously this also means you don’t really own it, and can never sell it) The worst that can ever happen is that you have to go and live there while you start from zero.
Now, you will never be without a place.
For most people, this will be enough to give them courage to take some necessary risks. That is enough.
If you want to take it farther (you probably don’t) this is what I have done, and I’m not at all alone in this experience:
Once you have a place, Become unemployable. Any job is a means to a very near end. If you have to work, take a job that pays well but you hate. invest your time and resources in anything where your efforts will be rewarded disproportionally to the risks. 10:1 bets on 1000:1 odds. There are so many things that people will simply ignore because the chance of failure is 90% if done well… but there are a lot of those losing propositions that will compensate way above their risk.
The hack is you can never go bust. Only your health can stop you. you have your place. You have to always be willing to put it all on the line. You can go to zero but it doesn’t matter. Just do it again. And again. And again. You get better, you get smarter, you get wiser. Eventually you win. Is it enough? If it’s not, set half aside in durable assets, and keep going.
Most people are so risk averse that you will have these opportunities basically to yourself.
99.99 percent will find a reason that this won’t work for them, and they’ll be right.
But sometimes you’ll run into someone else in a different stage of the same game. If they’re much farther along than you, they’ll recognise you and you might have a drink, and make a mentor. This is the most valuable relationship you will ever have. Your spouse can be replaced. Your mentor probably can’t .
That’s it. Bring on the hate.
"Cheap", from what I'm currently seeing, starts at around $300,000 for a place like you describe. If you just buy raw land and try to build your own home, the county will either not let you, or it will end up more expensive than $300,000.
> You can go to zero but it doesn’t matter. Just do it again. And again. And again.
If it doesn't matter, you might as well not do it at all. Doing it again takes time in a game with a very limited amount of it. You can only do it again maybe 2-3 times in a lifetime. Maybe 4-5 if you have exceptionally lucky genetics.
Now $300k isn't that much, but it is going to be a barrier for a lot of average Americans.