Ask HN: How do you make big bucks and get out of grinding?

By understanding that "making big bucks" involves a fair share of luck. By not defining my life by my career or money, but instead valuing time.

I mean, I'm still working on it to. But that's what I'm trying to do.

you just described a large majority of men who already have a signifcant other.

why do you think you need 300k to be in a relationship?

First of all, 130k is already 'big bucks'. If you want 300k+, go to medical school or start your own business. You're upset about the time you spend working, yet you also want to make more money? That is not going to happen soon. You can keep working and make more money, or work less and have more free time.

You, like %99 of the people are looking for 1. Job Security, 2. Comfort, 3. Becoming Rich

The other %1 go like that: 1. Becoming rich, 2. Comfort, 3. Security. It's all about focusing on what you want in life while getting rid of the extras...

If you already know what you want and it is indeed to make big bucks, then carve out time to study to get to the place where you are qualified. Then demonstrate the ability, i.e. open source, work, etc. Relentlessly iterate on becoming more efficient at all areas you fall short in.

The secret to professional success isn't really secret - smart & hard work gets you there.

I was exactly like you - work, exercise, sleep, repeat. In a big dirty city. Got so fucking sick of it.

Solution:

1) Work remotely. That, by far, was the best decision in my life. I didn't have to sacrifice a penny. I just told my employer I'm moving to a tropical island, and they agreed to continue my employment. From then on it was just coding and once in a while meetings over the phone. No more boring daily standups. No more daily dumb meetings that waste hours of everyone's time. Just make sure you produce quality work.

2) Stop working altogether. I was making good money for years, in the $200-250K range, and I never spent it on stupid shit like expensive cars or expensive restaurants. I saved up enough, and I haven't worked in two years as of today. Well, I haven't been employed for two years, I work on my own projects that I enjoy. If you live frugally, $100K will last you 5-7 years in a cheap area, or even more if you move to Asia.

I would recommend cutting your work hours and using that time to develop things that you find fulfilling.

1) What's with the preoccupation behind making 300k?

2) Would finding a less stressful job, even if it paid the same, make you happier?

3) It sounds like there's some other underlying issues to address here. Maybe finding some work-life balance would help you address your unhappiness with other parts of your life?

The thing is, most of the time one finds that expenditures grow to match income and capital - you have shinier toys, a bigger box to keep them in, and the ratio between income and expense stays constant. You find yourself constantly levering up, reassessing what it is to be rich, aspiring to loftier goals - all of which are just a slight rotation of the hamster wheel.

I finally reached the conclusion that the only winning move is not to play. Sold up. Went frugal (feral?).

I'm now travelling the world marvelling at how far how little can go in some corners, and considering the next move. Subsistence permaculture up a mountain is looking appealing at the moment - and the capital outlay is tiny. I can retire, at 32, and enjoy living.

130k is a lot of money, but so is Seattle. In much of the world, it would be a fortune that you could live off for decades, not a year.

Ultimately it comes down to what you want in life. Money is gas in the tank, which can take you places - but like gasoline, having a lot of it sitting around does little for you - how you apply it is what makes the difference - and even if you have no gas, you can still walk.

So - the question is, what brings you happiness? Not money - many think it does because there's a gap in the chain of logic, whereby the means somehow become the ends, but if you think about what you want money for, it might reveal that money isn't actually what you want, but you've spent long enough in the pursuit of it that your true goals have been left by the wayside.

I can't pretend to have the answers, but I can say that I'm having the time of my life on $20 a day, living in a van.

The other thing that has opened my eyes is that I'm not alone in this conclusion. The more I wander, the more I meet disillusioned entrepreneurs who have likewise sacked it all in to be a vagrant.

I write this sat on the terminal moraine of a glacier, watching a little bird slowly edge closer to me, and the shadows creeping over the mountains. The air smells like moss and honey.

You can't buy this, but I feel something I thought I had lost - happiness.

If you want to date women, earning a lot of money is not the right approach, nor will it actually solve your problem. In fact, trying to attract women by a display of wealth is one of the worst things you can do for yourself. Your problems with dating women come down to two things: (1) lack of confidence and (2) lack of understanding of what women want and how they feel.

It's a very deep and complicated topic so I can't explain to you everything you'll need to know in a forum post, but I can point you in the right direction. The resource that's been most helpful for me in the past year has been Coach Corey Wayne. You can find his material on his YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/coachcoreywayne) and his website (https://understandingrelationships.com/).

His website looks real janky but trust me when I say that his material is the ground truth for understanding women and dating. I've read his book 3 times and am going to read it another 12. It has literally changed my life and I feel so insanely lucky to have chanced upon it last year. I recommend it to every single guy I know, whether they're single or married. If you really dive into what he teaches and, just as importantly, practice it out in the field, you will see results.

If you have any further questions, feel free to email me (contact info in my profile). Good luck.

edit: why the downvotes? He mentioned that he's not happy about his dating life.

This goes for everyone else, too. Don't feel you have to give your employer so many free hours. The work will still be there in the morning. No one is going to die because you decided to work normal hours.

Since you're working 60-70 hours per week, your employer probably expects that. So change jobs, and possibly change cities. You don't have to have your current job situation, and it's hurting you.

300K is just a number. You would probably do better to reduce your expenses (more time would allow you to cook for yourself, by the way, which has numerous benefits). Apartment, car lease/payments, subscriptions to stuff you don't use (cable?), all of that should go. Small apartment, small reliable used car, get rid of HBO, etc.

Save as much money as you comfortably can: short term cash savings, medium term CDs and the like, long term index funds and the like, and max out your 401K or IRA.

When you have enough FY money, tell whoever's in front of you to FY (politely), and spend more time working on what you like in a job/activity that allows that.

Live a life that's enjoyable, and you'll find someone that enjoys that life too.

The first thing you should figure out is what you want to do in life, what you want to be and to achieve. Then, you will need to build a path towards there. If you plan on getting to financial independence, you need to plan it wisely.

The first option is to build a business. Some options are very safe but most are not, so it would be hard to find the right opportunity there. It is possible (I did it) but it's hard. By the way, if you don't want to do things that require front-end, you can do things like a paid API service or things like that.

The second option is to maximize salary by becoming a rare asset. Special skilled workers can bill 2k/day, putting you at around a 500k annual salary, even for doing things like front-end development. What you need to do to get there is to acquire skills that are considered to be in high demand right now in the market (e.g. front-end development, DevOps) and they don't ask you if you have a masters degree or not.

The third option is to become an executive, and that requires strategic thinking, and mainly showing your organization that they can trust on you. Plus - being super extra friendly to everyone would help.

The problem with the "start your own business route" is that it's not easy. And success, while extremely possible is not guaranteed. OTOH, the nice thing about the business world is that you can try over and over again, and - as the old saying goes - "you only have to be right once."

I guess there are some people who achieve financial independence solely through trading (currency|commodities|stocks|derivatives|etc), but I feel like most of the stories you hear of wild success doing that are apocryphal stories, or - at the very least - impossible to replicate.

One other thought is to go into sales. The thing about sales is that you are basically in control of how much you earn (to a point). The harder you work, and the better you get at selling, the more money you can make. Sell enterprise software for Oracle or IBM or somebody, I am pretty sure some of those guys / gals are pulling down some serious dosh.

I'll also throw in a plug for watching Grant Cardone's videos on Youtube. He's a veritable fountain of advice on business/life/success.

As far as the thing with women goes... others have already said it, but it's mainly just about confidence. And it's also something of a numbers game. Honestly, I'd say jump into the PUA community for a while... not with the goal of becoming "a PUA", but just to reset some of your current beliefs about dating and women. Doing approaches using canned routines and what-not and having even limited success, can go a long way towards improving your confidence and help you interact with women in a way that is more productive. Just don't get overly caught up in that world.

Edit:

Let me add this: the very first thing you need to do is quit your current job. Working 60/70 hours a week and doing extensive travel is bullshit, especially for only $130K. You should easily be able to make that with a job with no travel, working 40 hours a week. Make that your first step. That frees up 20/30 hours a week that you can then use to advance yourself towards YOUR goals, instead of working to make the owners of your current employer rich. If you have enough savings, quit on Monday. If not, start contacting recruiters and trawling through job boards first thing Monday morning (or better yet, right freaking now).

Now I'm a developer, and I also work a lot. I'm often tired, but I love development, even when I'm tired. I'm slowly figuring out how to be less tired, and it's a lot easier to figure out when I like the rest of what I'm doing.

A couple tips here:

- if you're tired all the time, it's going to be hard to think effectively about making positive changes. I don't have any specific guidance more specific than "don't forget to take care of yourself, because no one can sleep away your exhaustion for you".

- If you want to make the big bucks, you have to be what my boss calls a force multiplier [1]. Generally speaking, a force multiple is (in theory) someone who gives you more bang for your buck. A simple example would be hiring someone gets 4x more done for 2x the price, or does 1X of work in 25% of the time is takes a typical 1X-er.

I'm not sure if I have anything else to offer you without more information. What I can say is that if you learn to accept the reality of your situation, and don't let negative feelings weigh you down, it'll be easier to take steps towards the life you think you want.

You could always try recruiting :) If you're any good at it, you can make a killing. I know a good recruiter, and I'm sure he'd be happy to speak with you, if you'd like to explore that option. He has all the first world problems that come with making boatloads of money.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_multiplication

Now, you might want to install a third pillar instead of trying to make the first one bigger in order to provide your happiness with stability - even if that means taking material off the others :)