Ask HN: If you were suddenly Financially free, what would you do next?
An aged Texan Billionaire mistakenly leaves you enough in his will to pay of mortgages, debts and have enough to pay your own salary for the rest of your life.
You finish that stack of books on the bedside table, get the exercise regieme sorted, and then ...
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 124 ms ] threadI use Midjourney to generate assets.
I hire a programmer who has made games before, to help me make the first playable level 1 for game 1.
I buy ads on Reddit to get people to play the first demo. I leave comments enabled on my ads.
And then I hire more people and we keep working on the game for a few months.
Then I buy more ads to get people to play the demo that we have now.
And then we finish making the game and I start selling the final product.
We then proceed to work on the next game.
After we have finished the second game, we will see what to do next.
Could anyone come live there?
There was an article on HN few weeks ago, about a Russian open source programmer. He was going through tough times in his personal life, while also taking abuse from users of his project. People who were paying him nothing, while also abusing him online. If I had the money, I’d like to support people like him. Same goes for people who make educational materials, books etc without expecting anything in return.
And then some years later you get arrested for money laundering :)
OR
> and then
The Texan's billionaire's relatives sue you for the inheritance.
i.e. not really that free. Always caveats.
However I would no longer have to think about business and monetisation. I could open up the code and the content to pull requests and focus on creating a public good.
More specifically, I could focus on tools to help immigrants against greedy landlords, not the finance/insurance content that pays the bills. I would not have to split my time between both.
The other half of my life would be invested in creation of decentralized communications, which means no servers. No web servers, no data economies. Just direct connections between trusted users and for each user to have trusted direct access to their personal devices. I have already started on this, but its challenging. The technology is challenging, but the greater challenges are from existing less efficient data economies and the ignorance of the people therein.
An older relative collected scrap metal saying that when he retired he'd become a sculptor. But he never sculpted anything in his off hours and when he retired he also didn't.
It has to be burning in you, not some idle fantasy.
And why would you already be doing so much of something you didn't enjoy at all?
Also if it's something you really can enjoy why would you want to stop?
As long as I have a roof over my head why not continue, even if that was only the roof of my van after natural disaster.
I have no mortgages or debts, just other obligations which require regular payments not much differently than that, which cannot be "paid off" regardless of whether I'm working for a regular income or those funds were to be coming in some other way which required no further effort or attention.
That's why I work for my present employer to begin with, but it does keep me away from people I care about and those that care about me far too much. For so long everything I do must contribute foremost to "survival activities" even though I'm old enough for there to be no real recovery in my lifetime to very much of a fraction of the potential I lost before serial natural disasters have occurred.
Since that's the case I've been in anyway, I have made sure to do way more than necessary while I am at work, even though this employer showed their limitations to accept my proven growth approaches quite early. I wanted to finish the job I started on their terms if that's all there is, it's their company not mine. I will now be moving to a more generous employer where I will be able to have opportunites for more prosperous partnerships together for the first time in 20 years since closing my first company about a decade ago.
>Did he continue collecting scrap metal though? Maybe this was his true passion.
We both started out collecting surplus electronics in the 1980's, separating the wheat from the chaff IOW the worthwhile from the scrap. Still can get more out of second-hand instruments than others operating brand new.
For some time there's been another really wealthy Texas acquaintance who has been been doing a lot with electronics, computer science, and chemistry himself and has prospered quite remarkably in ways that I could not contribute to nearly as much without these years of recovery behind me. I could have started all over again in his distantly-related field, but not the one where I would be able to recover previously established international leadership. Even though he was well set and expressed interest years ago, we were both having nowhere near the potential that exists today, and could result in combining efforts & resources together with my new laboratory employer whom I have been much closer with for four decades not just one decade. Anything I invent now (if it's good enough) can be taken around the world with the help of a rare capitalist combined with a familiar established company having a fledgeling international presence already. There's always been more money in making deals than actual labor (aside; why do you think it's called a laboratory anyway), I'm not a greedy person but know it's even better doing both while I still can.
It was just not the brightest outlook until I could recover to the degree I have, where I could once again consider myself to be self-sufficient financially (with the available help of Social Security retirement payments if I want them now), before I would be able to pull my own weight in a partnership with others who are quite self-sufficient themselves, even if my contribution did not need to be financial to begin with.
I'll still work 12+ hour days and take 2 days off per week, but pass on much more of what I know while bringing those who care closer to me.
I just want to work and have something to show for it, not have something to show without working for it.
>It has to be burning in you, not some idle fantasy.
It's good having a wealthy Texas benefactor who got that way working with his own hands, and as a capitalist has a much more s...
I get more books. I keep going on walks, jogs, and bike rides. I go to the coffeeshop. I go to the movies.
He has formed many academic collaborations, teaches at several universities and delivers talks at many international conferences. Most of the time paying for his travel and accommodation expenses.
His motivation: to share his knowledge and experience with the next generation. An example of paying it forwards.
Having your life destroyed for doing the right thing is devastating, especially at 25 years old. He was valiantly still able to somehow continue working his remote tech support job until he was laid off. With the current market, it's unlikely he'll find work any time soon and even less likely to find an employer that will tolerate occasional days where the intense nerve pain is too much to bear.
FWIW, I have multiple boosters and will continue getting vaccines approved by the government. He was just extremely unlucky. I am pro vaccines.
HN - maybe I can wean off it slowly ;-)
I'd probably travel and work on projects I think are cool. Play video games, exercise, and do all the things I don't really have the time or energy spare to do right now.
And then I’d do that again about every five years.