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A little bit in the same vein, I'm a big fan of the "rich, broke, or dead" retirement calculator - in addition to telling you the odds your money will run out by age X, it includes the odds you'll be dead by then. I feel like it helps me put my retirement savings in a bit better perspective, as someone who also doesn't want to work in a corporate job until I die.
https://engaging-data.com/will-money-last-retire-early/
An important caveat: the probabilities are based on historical back-testing, and the degree to which the past accurately predicts the future is difficult to estimate.
Thank you for that link. It validates my hunch that holding mostly equities and reducing spending during lean times can be better than holding equities/bonds and maintaining spending.
How can I get the grey wedge to be smaller on that chart?
If that's a UI question, you can choose "healthy nonsmoker" in the mortality table drop-down, or uncheck "death" to remove it entirely and get a more-standard retirement calculator that assumes you're living at whatever age you calculate out to.
If you mean you want to decrease your odds of death, then "healthy nonsmoker" is also a good start, and there's a very deep rabbit-hole you can go into on longevity research, though no real option to uncheck "death" yet.
If you are asking about increasing longevity, it's mostly about taking care of yourself (rather than some magic pill or supplement). Don't smoke, exercise, maintain a healthy weight, get the recommended cancer screenings (e.g. mammograms and colonoscopies), find a reason to live (communities, family, purpose).
They should define death-aware career plan a little better. This seems to be an investment driven piece for someone with plenty of money.
I don't feel NFTs or crypto are logical choices, feels like gambling. I would rather incrementally invest in ETFs, and/or start a business that I have a little more control over. If you want work to be worthwhile, consider helping non-profits. You will be paid less, but the goal is altruistic, not money.
He’s not saying he’ll invest in NFTs. He’s saying he wants to put his writing into NFTs so people will read it. It’s kind of like teaching philosophy with TikTok videos because that’s where the audience is. (At least I think that’s what he saying!)
It took me a couple of read-throughs of this to really see what he's trying to say about NFTs, and (having been skeptical elsewhere about NFTs) I kind of understand what he's saying. He thinks that everyone is obsessed with NFTs, he thinks he has wisdom to share, by packaging up his wisdom into NFTs he can smuggle his wisdom to a wider audience. Am I getting that right? If that really is what he's doing I think it fits much better into a conversation about how you do stuff that interests you whilst still working, than in a conversation aobut financial freedom.
I feel like the thing missing or not conveyed here is a purpose. Between my last job and the current one, I took a lot of time off to figure out what I was doing and why - more broadly, what is the purpose of my life? What is the impact I want to have in my limited time here?
I found an answer to that, and it's made all the difference for me - I know why I'm doing what I'm doing, I know that my work makes a difference, and that makes the rest of this much easier. If I suddenly had $50M, I would still be working in the space I'm in.
Simultaneously, it's given me balance. I don't have the same frantic energy I had before - I'm doing meaningful work, I'm in this for the long haul, and I can't do this alone, so I can pace myself instead of panicking that I need to keep studying so I can reach my next career milestone.
The philosophers were right - find your meaning.
What are you working on now that was different between the last one and this one?
I was a programmer and manager at a large tech co in a space that became increasingly problematic over the last ~5 years or so.
In the time off, I decided that climate change was the issue that mattered most to me - I felt I would feel guilty at the end of my life if I didn't at least try to do something in that space. Given that and my set of skills and general beliefs about the world, I wound up in SynBio, which I think has the promise of providing both the ability to significantly shift how we build our world and also the tools to repair the damage we've done so far.
I'm now working as a programmer in a company in that space, learning amazing science from amazing people, and seeing the impact of my work on helping advance their work. I'm learning a ton every day, I'm excited to go to work, and I feel like even if we don't succeed as a field as I'm hoping we will, at least I tried.
GP's comment resounds heavily with me. I took time off to consider who I am, what I want my "legacy" to be (other than bad puns), etc.
My answer to your question is: B2C consumer internet -> Cancer research.
The purpose of life is whatever you give it. At the end of the day, nobody will remember you, and you will be forgotten.
> At the end of the day, nobody will remember you, and you will be forgotten.
Absolutely, and I think not enough people understand or internalize this.
I think there are two responses to this - one is that the grand cosmos will not remember me, but my children, friends, and those I can mentor and teach will. You may not remember your great grandparents, but your parents do, and their influence influences you.
The second is that it takes a whole crew to sail a ship - I'm not the hero of the story, but my efforts can help accomplish changes I think are worthwhile in the world. I won't see the end of the journey, but I can help it along the way.
That's only a given if you try for it.
Side comment - the visualization linked from flowingdata is absolutely cool (and to me much more interesting than the linked article)
https://flowingdata.com/2015/09/23/years-you-have-left-to-li...
I wish there was a dashboard where you could input more data about yourself (diet, habits, family health history, location) and watch the animation change accordingly
> A dollar today is worth infinitely more to me than a dollar after I’m dead.
Either you're single or you're about to be.
Hypothetically, where would "societal collapse" fall in this framework? I'm thinking that you'd just consider it the same as "sudden death," if it happens, assign it a prior probability distribution, update that prior every year or so, and act accordingly.
There is one thing that might change the time value calculation and make a big payoff in decades be worth much more than a dollar today. That would life/health extension technology & medicine. When it starts becoming available, it will cost millions.
What the fuck is a scaler?
I'm actually slightly surprised Kent Beck is not financially independent at 60. I would have assumed he had gotten some equity somewhere along the way that would have had a big upside.
You can't really tell from this post that he doesn't have enough to be what most people consider financially independent. Michael Mechanic, who wrote this book called Jackpot interviewed a lot of 100m+ rich wealthy people.
He says that if you ask any of them how much money they need, they will consistently tell you they need about 1/3rd more than they have. It's a phenomena of psychology not material well being.
We are on the Hacker News forum. We probably all do well in a relative sense, but will probably all go to our grave with goals ahead.
For sure, Jeff Bezos who is the world richest man has said many times that he wants his legacy to be:
"World oldest man"
It never stops, for sure in the back of his mind he has the goal of delaying death as much as he possibly can (for obvious reasons) and on top of that it means more time to achieve goals that he has in mind (which will inevitably be measured monetarily)
Sure, people with $100M+ want more. If they didn't, there's plenty of off ramps before $100M for the people who are willing to be satisfied.
There's really not that much added utility going from say $10M to $100M. And if you didn't see that and stop accumulating, you're more worried about having more than others than having enough. Or you really want to win the America's cup or own a private jet rather than slumming it on charters.
At 60, in a country and industry that has experienced unrivaled growth over his lifetime. It is surprising given that a very basic balanced stock portfolio over that time frame should have returned phenomenal results.
The next post medium recommended to me was about him playing poker..
He just mentions he doesn't have 50M vested. That doesn't preclude him having 10M or any other still very high number that would be considered financially independent
>equity somewhere along the way that would have had a big upside
That's more about luck than hard work and good ideas.
True, but with the amount of opportunities that come along with Being Kent Beck I would have thought he would have gotten lucky at least once over his career.
Or even just negotiated the level of salary that invested in a safe index fund would mean money wouldn't be a problem once hitting no penalty IRA withdrawal age.
This is a person whose retirement plan includes NFTs but not mutual funds. I am not surprised.
Personal attacks will get you banned here. No more of this please.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: since your account has already been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly, I've banned it. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Not sure NFTs should be part of your retirement plan.
They're convex--small investment, small chance of a large return. Also, I've been curious what mechanism will fund creators creating & NFTs seem like a contender.
What do you mean by convex?
To me the culture and mechanism show all the signs of a speculative bubble mixed with euphoria, memes and a severe lack of substance. In some cases I‘m worried about the mental health of the actors, because of the full blast gold-rush vibe.
> I’m going to try minting my more popular tweets as NFTs
I totally don't get this. They're tweets meaning that they're already out there. There's no scarcity here. Am I missing something?
You're missing the fact that enough people see value there to be willing to pay for it, therefore it might be worth selling it. That's all "value" is.
I do agree that it's stupid. But it's the buyers who are stupid, not the sellers.
Reminds me of beenie babies. Some are still valuable to the right buyers but that can be said of any collectable over the last century. However that doesn't mean beenie babies were a good investment or that selling beenie babies led to any lasting success.
There are plenty of images of the "Mona Lisa" painting, and you can print one yourself if you wish something to hang on your wall, but there's a 'real' one. Similarly the original creator of the digital item (tweet?) makes a public statement that they're assigning it to you. Think of it as a certificate of authenticity:
* https://www.agora-gallery.com/advice/blog/2017/12/02/prepare...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_of_authenticity
A chain of custody from the original creator, to you, to whomever you may sell it to.
The Plain Bagel channel had a good video on the subject, 'WTF Is an NFT? (And Should You "Invest" in One?)':
There's no scarcity for any NFTs because they are all trivially replicated. The only thing you ever have is entry on the blockchain that you own the NFT. That's as true for a NFT of a tweet or an NFT of a bored ape.
He’s talking about selling NFTs not buying them (at least as far as I can tell). Selling NFTs (or the infrastructure for others to do so) seems like a reasonably sensible plan.
Have NFTs even been legally tested as inheritance?
Your soul bears the validity of your NFTs into the afterlife, making them ill-suited for inheritance. They'll all be lining up for St. Peter covered in Nerd Chimps.
Why would they need to be tested? Don't get me wrong, spending thousands on a generated illustration of a zombie is ridiculous, but if someone has access to the token, they can bequeath that access. They don't need some special mechanism to do it.
It seems odd that a discussion about facing your death would contain more references to NFTs than to your family.
This is how your brain operates on big tech futurism larping.
anyone else getting 404 not found on the article? clicking the link redirects me to HN. not surprised if everyone who upvoted so far just saw the title and the username :)
I saw the article, but closed it when it started talking about something called “NFTweets”.
As far as I can tell, the lesson is, “I might die, so I should work on NFTweets, which has some shot at giving me financial independence before I die, so I can spend more time on my true passion, which is watching Marvel movies and drinking craft beer.”
I made the last part up… apologies for the cynicism, I just observe that the kind of people who fill up their time with hustle to make money often don’t know what to do with their time once they’ve made enough money to be independent. Retirement takes some people by surprise. No judgment for how people want to live their lives, but if you plan on spending your retirement not working, you should probably get some preview of that beforehand so you know what you like.
A lot of people want to spend more time with others after they retire. It turns out that if you spend all your time at work, and you retire, you don’t have a lot of other people in your social network to spend time with. Hence, Marvel movies and craft beer.