I always like seeing old patio11 posts get resurrected to the HN radar. In reading this one an interesting detail stood out to me, he calling his upbringing "modest," and it suddenly made some dots connect in my head.
I too grew up in a fairly modest household, where I was often told that good grades were the ticket out of a precarious existence and into, if not a luxurious one, one with at least a modicum of safety. It really warped my perception for a long time about what I actually wanted out of life, and led me to some pretty tough choices emphasizing financial safety at all costs. It's hard to call those choices "wrong" so much as selected based on the flavor profile of a younger, much more anxious me, whereas I am now considerably more willing to swing for the fences now that I've realized just how high the ceiling, and how low the bar, really are.
This is fascinating to me. I grew up in a very impoverished family and that has clearly shaped my relationship with money. I tend to resent it, or more correctly, I resent that it rules my life and I try to arrange things so I have to deal with it as little as possible.
Financial safety has never really been a huge deal with me because I know that I can live on almost nothing, and I know that money and how happy I am in life are not correlated. That means that I've taken risks that others wouldn't have taken because I don't see them as very risky. Sometimes, those have paid off.
Yeah, no, I'm glad that worked for you but this whole approach is anathema to me. Money and how happy I am in my own life are definitely correlated, and it's strongest at the bottom end.
The time of my life where I came closest to living on nothing were the 4 years where I was an unemployed NEET. Torrenting movies and eating day old rice got real old after a while. I'm considerably happier now that I kicked my ass into gear and am now making something valuable for my fellow man. That ascent is good reason to suspect my life will be even better if I can do things that drive even more
Now I've taken more than my share of risky moves in life after that period, and I intend to take more in the future. But saying "Well it's not risky to me, worst case scenario I'll just go back to rice and torrenting" is just not going to work for me, because I've been there before and it actually sucked. I'm no Diogenes. I find it's much better to fuel my actions from thinking about what an overwhelming success would look and feel like. Of course if I felt money and how happy I am in life were actually uncorrelated, then not only would failing the die roll suck immensely, but winning the die roll wouldn't actually make my life any better. Why play the game at all in that case? Luckily, in my experience, that latter part just isn't true at all.
Different people are different, naturally, and I celebrate that. I'm very pleased you've worked out what's best for you! I just find it interesting how different people's experience with poverty affects their relationship with money differently.
> Why play the game at all in that case?
Because, for me, "playing the game" isn't really about maximizing income. It's about doing something fulfilling. Income is important, of course. My business ventures have to generate enough income for me to live in the manner I prefer. But once that bar is met, income is not why I do any of it.
My only point is that I come from a place where if the venture fails, I'm fine. I can make another stab at one later. That gives me freedom that I value a lot and is the reason that I've had business successes. The risks I take aren't all that risky to me.
> It's hard to call those choices "wrong" so much as selected based on the flavor profile of a younger, much more anxious me, whereas I am now considerably more willing to swing for the fences now that I've realized just how high the ceiling, and how low the bar, really are
As someone in a similar situation where it has become time to make bigger bets: Those earlier smaller, safer, bets enabled you to get here. If you made the big bets too soon, you'd run out of swings.
Kelly criterion talks about this in a mathy sense. This fantastic old HN comment talks about it in a more relatable way: Entrepreneurship is like a carnival game https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15659076
I too grew up in a fairly modest household, where I was often told that good grades were the ticket out of a precarious existence and into, if not a luxurious one, one with at least a modicum of safety. It really warped my perception for a long time about what I actually wanted out of life, and led me to some pretty tough choices emphasizing financial safety at all costs. It's hard to call those choices "wrong" so much as selected based on the flavor profile of a younger, much more anxious me, whereas I am now considerably more willing to swing for the fences now that I've realized just how high the ceiling, and how low the bar, really are.