[mottomotto]

My goal is to live the life I want to live knowing that what I want will change over time. My biggest drive right now is to gain financial independence through both lowering my cost of living, a high savings rate and continuing to grow my income. I work full time as a software developer but have also started a business on the side with a partner. That is part of my strategy of increasing income. Recently, I've realized that business, while bootstrap profitable, is not going to grow as fast as I want so I am going to start another business (and I expect this cycle will continue until I reach FI -- it may continue beyond that as it is fun).

So my goal is overall happiness with financial independence being a key part of it. I should note that I do not strive to be excessively frugal -- just cut where it doesn't impact myself or my partner. I've also elected to have children and I think that contributes positively to my overall happiness although it can be expensive and they can take a lot of time (so I think that is very much an individual choice).

[gallerdude]

Yeah, FI is a huge one. But it’s tricky - at the end of the day it’s just a means to more life goals. If you won the lottery today, that’d mean you’d have to come up with a new life goal for tomorrow.

[mottomotto]

I really hesitated to reply on this but I'm about 15+ years into my career and what the heck. On the one hand, I agree with you. On the other hand, I really disagree. The reason I disagree is we spend an immense amount of time every day working for money. Sure, many of us love what we do but we still go to work at a certain time and certain days because we have to by our agreement to get a paycheck.

So my goal is that I'm writing my own paychecks. By gaining FI, that might mean I'm just going to pay myself to watch TV and play videogames all day. Or go spend time traveling Japan and visiting all the Onsens/hot baths. Or spending time with my kids and working on my own businesses -- trying to bootstrap new ideas and just seeing what works and what doesn't (which includes working on interesting projects).

So the part of me that disagrees with you is the part that sees just how much of our life, how much of every single week day, is dedicated to one thing. And that one thing is not something I live for. I want to work on things I live for and fully believe in.

Does that make sense? I don't want to be harsh but on the surface, startups seem so awesome. Everyone is aligned and motivated along the same angles. But the reality is often much worse than one might expect. The investors are pushing the lead developer, who has health problems caused by stress, to use the new framework of the day. The cofounders are trying to figure out which management to hire. The managers are coming in and deciding to change the whole culture and bring in their people to do things their way. It just goes on and on. And nobody is really aligned in the end. There is that magic when it works but most of the time it doesn't. And it's disappointing to spend your life on things that don't ship, that fail, that aren't interesting to work on.