eezee wrote:I find your posts interesting but I am confused.
I see you are retired, could you give me a hint what you did to earn a living to get you to this point in life.
I actually tried earning an hourly wage/salary. Just to make sure that it was as unsatisfactory as I thought it would be. I spent some time working in uninteresting jobs. For awhile I earned a slightly-above average salary doing fairly uninspiring work. I did it long enough to know that I didn't like it. However, I did see how people got caught up in it; the idea of 'security' and a regular paycheque. It was an interesting emotional feeling. A kind of intoxication. The more I started to understand this attachment that people had to being an employee, the more that I hated it.
(As a long-winded, semi-related aside, this intoxication with "security" extends not only to finding a "good job with good benefits" but to the entire idea that individuals seek to "minimize volatility" in their investment portfolios. All these behaviours are different symptoms that stem from the same psychological root. The same need for "security".
Which is ironic to me since this security is completely illusory. It is an illusion that security is related to a "good job with good benefits" or minimizing portfolio volatility. In fact, I find that it does the opposite. It decreases an individual's ability to withstand financial/change-in-life disruptions. In my uneducated opinion only.)
As you can see, although I rebelled against the teaching of earning an hourly wage/salary, even I wasn't able to completely escape parental/societal indoctrination. I will attempt to spare my child from this idea since I can only control myself. But I fully accept that indoctrination re:hourly wage/salary will be imposed by influences outside of the home (i.e. society).
What I did do, however, was learn about how money was made outside of the conventional hourly wage/salary idea and employed those techniques until I didn't need to earn a conventional hourly wage/salary.
With regards to earning a living, at the moment, all my income is from my 'success' at investing. I recognize now that money is just an idea. It isn't bound by an hourly rate or salary (e.g. annual rate). It can be any amount that an individual wants it to be based on their ability and passion.
It wouldn't make sense if money was bound by an hourly rate or salary anyway. That is, bound by time. Because there are individuals who have made more money than can logically be explained by the amount of time that has passed. And although there are common themes on how these individuals made this money, many have made money in vastly different ways.
PS: I just don't like the flawed logic of obtaining money through an hourly wage/salary. Not only is it an
inefficient way to make money, but
if it's an individual's one and only way to make money, then it offers no "security" whatsoever. What if I lost my job? What if I became injured and unable to work? What if I get old and infirm? If my only way to make money is to "find a well paying job", then I might be screwed.
As another semi-related aside, I don't consider the accumulation of money/assets to be part of my definition of success. I simply recognize that, in a materialistic world, money is needed for food shelter and a few other things. I just didn't want to have to spend my most precious resource (i.e. my time), making it. My (long-shot) hope is that my child will learn this skill as well, so they will spend the time raising their own children (as I am right now), or spending time with their friends and family or helping the less fortunate in society, etc. instead of (ugh) worrying about spending their most precious commodity of time, to "make a living". I think we all want our children to do better than we did. And I don't want my child to make that trade if it can be prevented.
SQRT wrote:What I mean by example is simply to make a success of your own life. However one might define success. Your kids will be impressed and will naturally try to emulate you.
I actually agree with you.
However, I still feel that it's all the same thing. It's all influence. And how the influence is labelled (e.g. "lead by example", "indoctrination", "manipulation", etc.) is a matter of perspective and whether or not the observing individual agrees/disagrees with the influence.