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by Kevinjmireles 5952 days ago
I guess that goes to the old saw about don't bet more than you can afford to lose. The losing the life savings generally happens in chunks and you keep hoping things will get better - and then they don't - and suddenly you have the new problem of finding work, which takes more time and burns through more cash. So if you follow some of the lessons in the blog, you won't burn through your life savings. More on that later.
1 comments
gfodor 5952 days ago
There is, of course, a corollary to this in that you can often afford to lose more than you think. Most people don't realize this, and hence, never take any risks.
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freshfunk 5952 days ago
My thoughts exactly.

When you're out of college, you're used to living on a shoestring budget. You can get by without quite little because you haven't really raised your standards of living around a big salary.

When you've worked for a few years, you've likely saved up a decent amount of cash (unless you live a life filled with consumption). You may have to cut back on all the perks but you can still get by.

Most of the people I know who want to start a company don't want to risk their current cash flow. Yet all of them have been working long enough where they've likely saved up enough money to go a long time without making money and be ok. I think the only thing is that people raise their standards of living (more expensive rent, big car payments, high rent/mortgage) such that they feel they must continue to make their current salary in order to "survive."

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Kevinjmireles 5950 days ago
The problem is when you're the sole bread winner with 3 kids...When I was much younger I chucked it all and spent a year biking through South America. People asked me how I could leave everything behind - and my response was, "what behind?" I had no girlfriend, no fancy stereo (pre-ipod days)a VW bug, whose steering wheel would loosen up after every few hundred miles, so it was easy to leave it all behind because I didn't have much to start with. So my advice is don't wait - take risks when you're young and the consequences aren't that great and your cash flow needs are fairly limited. Don't wait because it doesn't get any easier.
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