Keep repeating cliches without thinking about them. Especially ones so obviously false. Let's consider two hypothetical options:
1) A steady, decent income job. Let's say you're making $120k/yr. After taxes, that's about $7.5k/month. If your expenses are $3k/month, you can save or splurge to the tune of $54k/year. Not bad!
2) A higher paying job, say $500k/yr. After taxes, that's $25k a month. Let's say that you need to spend $4k a month instead of $3 to deal with the extra stress. Now you're saving $252k/year.
At the end of five years of option 1, you've got over $250k in savings. You can probably buy a pretty nice place to live in your chosen location, but you have exactly one option going forward: keep working for the rest of your life.
At the end of five years of option 2, you have over $1.25 MILLION. This amount of money makes available to you the option of never working again in your life, if you so choose. You just bought an astronomical amount of time -- the rest of your life -- to do with as you please. Not only does this destroy your notion that money can't be exchanged for time, I think the exchange has been shown to be a pretty fucking good deal, to boot.
Because you can make enough money to retire before you are 30, which means you can spend much more time with your wife and kids when that time comes. I wouldnt want to be the type of dad who has to stress out about money issues.
Except I bet people that actually want to work 100 hour weeks don't retire when they are 30. And if they do, they probably go crazy (and drive their families crazy) because they don't have anything to do. I wonder how many rich, overworked people really do walk away long before retirement age?
It sort of runs in my family. My grandpa retired because he had a heart attack, then started his own company and had to stop that because he had a stroke. He sits in his house and watches fox news and I've never seen him unhappier (fox news doesn't help)
The only time my dad has worked less than 50 hours a week was when he was diagnosed as terminal and on medical leave for a cavernous malformation on his brainstem. He had brain surgery and now he's mostly better, and he's been back to 60 hours a week for a few years since then... except now he comes home exhausted, take some pain killers and lies in bed.
I make the same salary as he does, and I'm 25 working a bit more than 40 hours a week.
Replying to bmj (not sure why i don't see a reply link ...)
For me, and I think for a lot of other people on HN, retirement means not having to work for the money. Which, for people in some areas of the world, isn't really that much. And in that vein, if you don't have to worry about the money, you can afford to say "no, I would rather go see my daughter's choral concert than work". Obviously I would keep myself busy, but it would be under an arrangement where I could prioritize my family.
