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.
Most people, myself included, struggle to understand what actually makes us happy, what our needs truly are, and how to balance the pressures of the world around us (real or perceived, necessary or irrelevant).
We leave a lot on the table in terms of doing less and getting more — meaning, contentment, joy, safety — from our lives.
Maybe just for now?
Imagine if China start hiring all the laid off engineers. The US companies would need to start hiring again, paying even more than the first round.
> Cool but who is going to support me while this happens?
I don't know. Is this some arrangement you have had in your life? Being supported by others wasn't never an option for me, I will not expect to be the case now that my chosen career doesn't look as great anymore. I live frugally (after losing everything creating a startup) and saved most of my salary in the past 5 years tho which now gives me some space to breath and plan for the next breakthrough. If things get better again, you should use the current terrible position you are in as a reference to also save most of your salary if you get a good job in tech.
Of course it was never an option, how can you even ask. We the men either provide or are thrown aside, as you are well-aware.
Mine was a bit of a snarky question admittedly. As said above (and I just noticed I made a typo or a grammar mistake, not sure which of both as I typed on the phone), I get your idea but nobody cares how are people supporting themselves during transitional periods. :(
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.
When people say “make pasta” they typically mean make a pasta dish. This could mean nothing more than cooking dried pasta and incorporating premade sauce. Even making your own sauce doesn’t need to take long for a super tasty sauce. I assume your wife is talking about making fresh pasta, which is not common nor what I would immediately assume someone means when they say “make pasta” for dinner.
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.
Because they are their own individuals, and they have their own life based on their own experiences. And while I can suggest, or even influence a little, their life choices -- I can't command them to change themselves 180 degrees.
Sometimes I feel like we, as society, became so detached from each other and from reality. Maybe it's because of social networks that keep pumping up the idea that everyone can be rich by investing $5 a day instead of buying Starbucks, or that the path to financial freedom is as simple as "just buy a house and rent it for $5k a month"; or that people suddenly started to call randoms in Twitter their friends. But I feel like people lost the ability to be empathetic towards others. They simply are unable to see and accept that there are different people who were born, raised, and live under different set of rules that the ones they grew up under.
> Because they are their own individuals, and they have their own life based on their own experiences
it sounds like you need to make a choice to allow them to eat your life (spend your limited years of your life as race rat to satisfy their habits instead of "little life" if it is preference) or reject them.
> They simply are unable to see and accept that there are different people who were born, raised, and live under different set of rules that the ones they grew up under.
sorry, I don't understand how this claim(which I also don't understand why you put it here) connected to $5 starbucks and renting a home. Maybe you could expand?
While I was trying to find a partner, at one point I realized that if I wanted to experience life in Asia or Africa, it would be a lot harder to do so if I got married before going there. Since I was still alone at the time I decided to postpone my search and move first.
Now I took my children to Africa precisely so they can see and understand that there are different people who were born, raised, and live under different conditions than the ones they themselves experienced so far.
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.
it is 2025 mate, you do not have to work in Hope to live in Hope… geeeeeez
as far as all the other questions, ask yourself the same for an urban area too :) and yes, there are great schools, great doctors, everything you need is there or a short ride away.
I am not surprised by your reply, expected to see many more, brainwashing is strooooong in the USA and these are very predictable responses
when you have no control over your life, when you can get paged on your honeymoon or your kids birthday, when you need to ask permission to take time off… as society we are past what was slavery back in the day - now we got modern-day slavery, working for THE MAN
I don't remember ever asking permission to take time off.
I just put the days I'm going to be out on the calendar and inform my team/boss/manager after the fact.
And these weren't cushy FAANG jobs either. Just your typical run of the mill IT-adjacent roles.
> when you can get paged on your honeymoon or your kids birthday
Yes, you can be paged, but if you set your boundaries, you don't have to respond to the page. Again, I don't remember ever jumping up and treating something like that as an emergency. Always prioritized my own errands first.
I just put the days I'm going to be out on the calendar and inform my team/boss/manager after the fact.
why do you have to do that? who is this “boss” of yours that needs to know about what you do?
as long as you work for someone you are owned and exploited. if we had a nice chat meeting each other irl and we broached the subject of compesation and you said “I am L76 at Netflix making $965k” I am would be immensely happy for you but would think “this lovely mate is actually worth $1,500,000 and just doesn’t even know it”
>as long as you work for someone you are owned and exploited.
Truly, are you this deluded and bereft of perspective? Making such a claim about the vast majority of modern workers in the developed world is not only completely off the rails but also an insult to the real meaning of slavery and those who suffer it or have.
You've never exchanged money for someone elses labor in your life? Or had someone pay you to deliver your labor? Are you so privileged as to have never done either and thus live in a bubble that allows you to believe such nonsense as the above?
Feudal peasants weren't slaves. Employees aren't slaves. Serving someone makes you a serf in the worst case, not a slave.
If you were a FAANG slave, Google could literally prevent you from marrying, or ship you in a box to a different country without warning, or just kill you if you're no longer passing the bar.
