Conversation

I’ve bought my way out of 100x more discomfort and misery with $ than I’ve endured. It isn’t cheap, but it isn’t as expensive as you tend to imagine when you’re young and poor. And most of what I can’t buy my way out of at middle-class income level, Bill Gates can’t either
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90% of life misery and pain seems to be concentrated in the bottom half of the population by income or something. The top half has the same problems, but can just afford to buy its way out. Spending money to avoid pain is Mets-painful, but not as bad as the primary pain.
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The 10% that does not respond well even to large doses of money is mostly health and old age related. So my rule is: try to stay in the top half by income, preferably much higher, and try to age healthy.
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Solving for life directly in the bottom half is far harder than solving for money, which is why most who are forced to do it fail to varying degrees and accept misery in proportion as their lot as a result. Kinda sucks, but hey, 100 years ago when that was true of bottom 90%
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Tricky balancing act. You have to get enough $-flow, fast enough, young enough to escape misery orbits. But if you try too hard relative to talents, you’ll blow a fuse, burn out. Then, even if you overshoot $-flow hugely, no happiness will take root in space cleared of misery.
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I sometimes wonder how anybody makes it past 40 with sanity intact Then I remember, nobody does 🤪 We just get good at pretending to be sane enough to stabilize the $ flows needed to keep misery at bay and protect a small clear space for better things. Sanity is overrated.
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“Happiness” in this thread is a loose proxy for any non-miserable state of being that can take root in space cleared of misery, usually with $. Think of it as a ladder of more interesting states, most without names, of which basic happiness is the lowest accessible rung.
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I’m very skeptical of people who evangelize the character-building merits of responses to misery and pain besides trying to avoid them/buy your way out with $. If you look closely, they usually solve the hard problems with $ and save their stoic virtues for the easier stuff.
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This thread brought to you courtesy some free space that would otherwise have been filled with misery if I hadn’t had $ to throw at it to make it go away 😆 I’ve bought my way out of an exceptionally high misery-potential spike in the last 2 months. $ is a lightning conductor.
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Point I’ve been getting at is that keeping misery at bay is by far the most valuable use of money. Most actual desires for positive experiences aren’t actually that expensive to fulfill. The best things in life are free. It’s avoiding the shitty things that costs $$$$.
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If you inventory desires, I bet you’ll find that most material things you want are pretty cheap. Ice cream is cheap. Movies are cheap. Even a cliche trip to Paris is cheap if you live in the west and are canny about deal-hunting. But an illness or commute-busting car repair, 💀
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If you doubt this thread just think about a couple of people one rung better off than you, but otherwise similar in lifestyle/family situation as you. Examine what they spend their extra discretionary income on: to remove some marginal misery, or add some marginal pleasure?
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