Dear Self,...
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All good but for the "follow your passion in your career" advice. That's rarely practical, but the people for whom it works out consider it their duty to try to convince everybody that that's the best way to live. I don't suspect any of the "musicians" in that video would have been well-served to try to make a living at it.
Education is extremely important.
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Save early and save often. I know we have shown charts here on that.
For example: saving a USD$100/month at age 20 will give you XXX $ at age 60.
However, if you wait to start saving until age 30, it will require USD$500/month to get the same amount.
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Save early and save often. I know we have shown charts here on that.
For example: saving a USD$100/month at age 20 will give you XXX $ at age 60.
However, if you wait to start saving until age 30, it will require USD$500/month to get the same amount.
@taiwan_girl said in Dear Self,...:
Save early and save often. I know we have shown charts here on that.
For example: saving a USD$100/month at age 20 will give you XXX $ at age 60.
However, if you wait to start saving until age 30, it will require USD$500/month to get the same amount.
Each generation helps the next, at least that's the goal. My dad's parents abandoned him as a kid, so he lived with his uncle and ate ketchup packets after school because there was no food in the fridge. Worked 80 hours a week during college to pay for it, later was the single income with 5 kids at home, eventually got his masters and doctorate. Smart man but also too proud to talk finances and unfortunately taught me a lesson indirectly as he later admitted he burned through his 401k just after the housing crash in 2008 as he was trying to get a consulting firm off the ground. So instead of that $300k 401k in 2009 being worth a million now, he mostly lives off of social security now. Two of my brothers have zero in savings, whereas another brother and I have been saving from the start.
In any event, I'm building off of the opportunities my parents provided to me (paid for about half of college), by having savings accounts for the 3 kids already set up and college accounts (529s) ready to help them get a jump start in life once they enter the workforce. Hopefully it enables them to do the same for their kids, and so on, and so on.
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All good but for the "follow your passion in your career" advice. That's rarely practical, but the people for whom it works out consider it their duty to try to convince everybody that that's the best way to live. I don't suspect any of the "musicians" in that video would have been well-served to try to make a living at it.
@Horace said in Dear Self,...:
All good but for the "follow your passion in your career" advice. That's rarely practical, but the people for whom it works out consider it their duty to try to convince everybody that that's the best way to live. I don't suspect any of the "musicians" in that video would have been well-served to try to make a living at it.
It depends on how rigidly it's defined. There are a shitload of musician-adjacent careers that are just close enough to help musicians maintain enough give-a-shit to make the job loads better than accountancy.
Please love yourself.
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All good but for the "follow your passion in your career" advice. That's rarely practical, but the people for whom it works out consider it their duty to try to convince everybody that that's the best way to live. I don't suspect any of the "musicians" in that video would have been well-served to try to make a living at it.
@Horace said in Dear Self,...:
All good but for the "follow your passion in your career" advice. That's rarely practical, but the people for whom it works out consider it their duty to try to convince everybody that that's the best way to live. I don't suspect any of the "musicians" in that video would have been well-served to try to make a living at it.
Good point. I really wanted to "make movies" when I was in high school, but I learned relatively soon after that it's more realistic to get a decent paying job that I don't mind (and coworker who I enjoy, which is important IMO) so that it enables my passions, whether that is photography, travel, movies, golf, etc.
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The comments are pretty interesting, too.
Link to video@Jolly said in Dear Self,...:
The comments are pretty interesting, too.
Agreed.
Such as this one: "It’s not a mistake to retire, it’s a mistake to stop living just bc you’re not working"
I think it depends on your personality. I've mentioned before how I told my wife I want to retire as early as possible, who knows when but my goal right now is 57, maybe earlier. She said "won't you get bored?" and I would never. I have so many books I want to read, movies, shows, golf, travel, swimming... heck I'd be happy getting a massage and then watching sports at the local pub. I would NEVER get bored if I was able to stop working. I'd volunteer for little leagues and umpire. Who cares! So much to do, so little time.
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@Horace said in Dear Self,...:
All good but for the "follow your passion in your career" advice. That's rarely practical, but the people for whom it works out consider it their duty to try to convince everybody that that's the best way to live. I don't suspect any of the "musicians" in that video would have been well-served to try to make a living at it.
It depends on how rigidly it's defined. There are a shitload of musician-adjacent careers that are just close enough to help musicians maintain enough give-a-shit to make the job loads better than accountancy.
@Aqua-Letifer said in Dear Self,...:
There are a shitload of musician-adjacent careers that are just close enough to help musicians maintain enough give-a-shit to make the job loads better than accountancy.
That's not really following your passion, though.
Also, as somebody else once said (I might be paraphrasing), music is a wonderful pastime but a terrible career, at least for most people.
I was only joking
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I wanted a job I was passionate about until i started looking for jobs. I quickly found out that fun jobs were hard to come by but shit jobs were relatively plentiful. Luckily after futilely pursuing journalism, I ended up programming which provided me the autonomy and creativity I sought. It was like being paid to work puzzles, plus my positions always had a lot of user contact.
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I wanted a job I was passionate about until i started looking for jobs. I quickly found out that fun jobs were hard to come by but shit jobs were relatively plentiful. Luckily after futilely pursuing journalism, I ended up programming which provided me the autonomy and creativity I sought. It was like being paid to work puzzles, plus my positions always had a lot of user contact.
@Mik said in Dear Self,...:
I wanted a job I was passionate about until i started looking for jobs. I quickly found out that fun jobs were hard to come by but shit jobs were relatively plentiful. Luckily after futilely pursuing journalism, I ended up programming which provided me the autonomy and creativity I sought. It was like being paid to work puzzles, plus my positions always had a lot of user contact.
They call it 'work' for a reason. If it was any different, they'd call it 'fun' and charge admission.
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I taught myself simple computer programming as a kid, and always wanted to do it professionally. Then I got sick of it professionally and was lucky to be able to move into more math and algorithm work, with almost no expectation that I do grunt work programming. That had everything to do with luck, since I only fell over backwards into bio-tech as a fledgling programmer, and bio-tech happens to have those other avenues available. I despise the process of "mastering" ever-changing programming technologies.
Education is extremely important.
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I taught myself simple computer programming as a kid, and always wanted to do it professionally. Then I got sick of it professionally and was lucky to be able to move into more math and algorithm work, with almost no expectation that I do grunt work programming. That had everything to do with luck, since I only fell over backwards into bio-tech as a fledgling programmer, and bio-tech happens to have those other avenues available. I despise the process of "mastering" ever-changing programming technologies.
@Horace said in Dear Self,...:
I taught myself simple computer programming as a kid, and always wanted to do it professionally. Then I got sick of it professionally and was lucky to be able to move into more math and algorithm work, with almost no expectation that I do grunt work programming. That had everything to do with luck, since I only fell over backwards into bio-tech as a fledgling programmer, and bio-tech happens to have those other avenues available. I despise the process of "mastering" ever-changing programming technologies.
It's funny, when I graduated I really wanted to be a programmer. I went to a couple of interviews, and in both cases passed the aptitude test - I must have shown something as they selected about 5 people out of 100 both times. Then, in both cases I failed to get offered a job, presumably due to my admittedly completely woeful social skills at that time.
So ever since then I've had to live with the stigma of not having good enough social skills to be a computer programmer. And now I'm a manager
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@Horace said in Dear Self,...:
I taught myself simple computer programming as a kid, and always wanted to do it professionally. Then I got sick of it professionally and was lucky to be able to move into more math and algorithm work, with almost no expectation that I do grunt work programming. That had everything to do with luck, since I only fell over backwards into bio-tech as a fledgling programmer, and bio-tech happens to have those other avenues available. I despise the process of "mastering" ever-changing programming technologies.
It's funny, when I graduated I really wanted to be a programmer. I went to a couple of interviews, and in both cases passed the aptitude test - I must have shown something as they selected about 5 people out of 100 both times. Then, in both cases I failed to get offered a job, presumably due to my admittedly completely woeful social skills at that time.
So ever since then I've had to live with the stigma of not having good enough social skills to be a computer programmer. And now I'm a manager
@Doctor-Phibes That is funny.
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@Doctor-Phibes That is funny.
@Horace said in Dear Self,...:
@Doctor-Phibes That is funny.
And common. So many times I've seen the best technical resources made into managers, which is usually the last thing they want.
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@Horace said in Dear Self,...:
@Doctor-Phibes That is funny.
And common. So many times I've seen the best technical resources made into managers, which is usually the last thing they want.
@Mik said in Dear Self,...:
@Horace said in Dear Self,...:
@Doctor-Phibes That is funny.
And common. So many times I've seen the best technical resources made into managers, which is usually the last thing they want.
To be fair, my social skills have improved a lot in the last 40 years.
And anybody who says otherwise can go fuck themselves!
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@Aqua-Letifer said in Dear Self,...:
There are a shitload of musician-adjacent careers that are just close enough to help musicians maintain enough give-a-shit to make the job loads better than accountancy.
That's not really following your passion, though.
Also, as somebody else once said (I might be paraphrasing), music is a wonderful pastime but a terrible career, at least for most people.
@Doctor-Phibes said in Dear Self,...:
@Aqua-Letifer said in Dear Self,...:
There are a shitload of musician-adjacent careers that are just close enough to help musicians maintain enough give-a-shit to make the job loads better than accountancy.
That's not really following your passion, though.
"Music" isn't a passion, that's ridiculous. What do you mean by that? Playing in front of others? Teaching others how to play? Mixing stuff? Soundscapes? Theory? Music therapy? Actual passions aren't vague.
And there's a world of difference between compromising everything about yourself to be more marketable and negotiating with the world to find something you don't entirely hate doing and gives you something beyond a paycheck. No, it's not literally doing the very specific thing you had in your head that you wanted to do, but were you allowed to do that thing for a living you'd be just as happy or miserable as you are now.
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@Doctor-Phibes said in Dear Self,...:
@Aqua-Letifer said in Dear Self,...:
There are a shitload of musician-adjacent careers that are just close enough to help musicians maintain enough give-a-shit to make the job loads better than accountancy.
That's not really following your passion, though.
"Music" isn't a passion, that's ridiculous. What do you mean by that? Playing in front of others? Teaching others how to play? Mixing stuff? Soundscapes? Theory? Music therapy? Actual passions aren't vague.
And there's a world of difference between compromising everything about yourself to be more marketable and negotiating with the world to find something you don't entirely hate doing and gives you something beyond a paycheck. No, it's not literally doing the very specific thing you had in your head that you wanted to do, but were you allowed to do that thing for a living you'd be just as happy or miserable as you are now.
@Aqua-Letifer said in Dear Self,...:
@Doctor-Phibes said in Dear Self,...:
@Aqua-Letifer said in Dear Self,...:
There are a shitload of musician-adjacent careers that are just close enough to help musicians maintain enough give-a-shit to make the job loads better than accountancy.
That's not really following your passion, though.
"Music" isn't a passion, that's ridiculous. What do you mean by that? Playing in front of others? Teaching others how to play? Mixing stuff? Soundscapes? Theory? Music therapy? Actual passions aren't vague.
And there's a world of difference between compromising everything about yourself to be more marketable and negotiating with the world to find something you don't entirely hate doing and gives you something beyond a paycheck. No, it's not literally doing the very specific thing you had in your head that you wanted to do, but were you allowed to do that thing for a living you'd be just as happy or miserable as you are now.
What I meant was that 'maintaining enough give-a-shit' isn't really what I think of as passion. Of course music is a passion. Not doing something you hate isn't the same thing as following your passion, but is of course better than doing something you hate.
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@Aqua-Letifer said in Dear Self,...:
@Doctor-Phibes said in Dear Self,...:
@Aqua-Letifer said in Dear Self,...:
There are a shitload of musician-adjacent careers that are just close enough to help musicians maintain enough give-a-shit to make the job loads better than accountancy.
That's not really following your passion, though.
"Music" isn't a passion, that's ridiculous. What do you mean by that? Playing in front of others? Teaching others how to play? Mixing stuff? Soundscapes? Theory? Music therapy? Actual passions aren't vague.
And there's a world of difference between compromising everything about yourself to be more marketable and negotiating with the world to find something you don't entirely hate doing and gives you something beyond a paycheck. No, it's not literally doing the very specific thing you had in your head that you wanted to do, but were you allowed to do that thing for a living you'd be just as happy or miserable as you are now.
What I meant was that 'maintaining enough give-a-shit' isn't really what I think of as passion. Of course music is a passion. Not doing something you hate isn't the same thing as following your passion, but is of course better than doing something you hate.
@Doctor-Phibes said in Dear Self,...:
@Aqua-Letifer said in Dear Self,...:
@Doctor-Phibes said in Dear Self,...:
@Aqua-Letifer said in Dear Self,...:
There are a shitload of musician-adjacent careers that are just close enough to help musicians maintain enough give-a-shit to make the job loads better than accountancy.
That's not really following your passion, though.
"Music" isn't a passion, that's ridiculous. What do you mean by that? Playing in front of others? Teaching others how to play? Mixing stuff? Soundscapes? Theory? Music therapy? Actual passions aren't vague.
And there's a world of difference between compromising everything about yourself to be more marketable and negotiating with the world to find something you don't entirely hate doing and gives you something beyond a paycheck. No, it's not literally doing the very specific thing you had in your head that you wanted to do, but were you allowed to do that thing for a living you'd be just as happy or miserable as you are now.
What I meant was that 'maintaining enough give-a-shit' isn't really what I think of as passion. Of course music is a passion.
Says the guy who's never really pursued his professionally? Following your passion isn't the same thing as doing the exact thing that you think your passion is at this very moment. Where you end up is almost always going to be wildly different. That's not a failure of the process and it's still good advice.
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@Doctor-Phibes said in Dear Self,...:
@Aqua-Letifer said in Dear Self,...:
@Doctor-Phibes said in Dear Self,...:
@Aqua-Letifer said in Dear Self,...:
There are a shitload of musician-adjacent careers that are just close enough to help musicians maintain enough give-a-shit to make the job loads better than accountancy.
That's not really following your passion, though.
"Music" isn't a passion, that's ridiculous. What do you mean by that? Playing in front of others? Teaching others how to play? Mixing stuff? Soundscapes? Theory? Music therapy? Actual passions aren't vague.
And there's a world of difference between compromising everything about yourself to be more marketable and negotiating with the world to find something you don't entirely hate doing and gives you something beyond a paycheck. No, it's not literally doing the very specific thing you had in your head that you wanted to do, but were you allowed to do that thing for a living you'd be just as happy or miserable as you are now.
What I meant was that 'maintaining enough give-a-shit' isn't really what I think of as passion. Of course music is a passion.
Says the guy who's never really pursued his professionally? Following your passion isn't the same thing as doing the exact thing that you think your passion is at this very moment. Where you end up is almost always going to be wildly different. That's not a failure of the process and it's still good advice.
@Aqua-Letifer said in Dear Self,...:
@Doctor-Phibes said in Dear Self,...:
@Aqua-Letifer said in Dear Self,...:
@Doctor-Phibes said in Dear Self,...:
@Aqua-Letifer said in Dear Self,...:
There are a shitload of musician-adjacent careers that are just close enough to help musicians maintain enough give-a-shit to make the job loads better than accountancy.
That's not really following your passion, though.
"Music" isn't a passion, that's ridiculous. What do you mean by that? Playing in front of others? Teaching others how to play? Mixing stuff? Soundscapes? Theory? Music therapy? Actual passions aren't vague.
And there's a world of difference between compromising everything about yourself to be more marketable and negotiating with the world to find something you don't entirely hate doing and gives you something beyond a paycheck. No, it's not literally doing the very specific thing you had in your head that you wanted to do, but were you allowed to do that thing for a living you'd be just as happy or miserable as you are now.
What I meant was that 'maintaining enough give-a-shit' isn't really what I think of as passion. Of course music is a passion.
Says the guy who's never really pursued his professionally?
OK, let's make it personal
I was never good enough to make it a career. I've played with people who were and who did, and I've seen enough to know it's a very double-edged sword, with ruined marriages and in one case ending up being a hotel porter and playing in pubs at night, which isn't what I would want. I know other people who have ended up with a decent life doing session work and playing cruise ships, but I don't think that's the dream.
Anyway, my passion is safety engineering.
I was only joking
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