[arcsin]

Coming at it from a different perspective, I did something similar to this by saving money on a US salary and then moving to a low cost of living country. I spent years at a time not working or even thinking about how to make money. I think almost everyone has felt the pain of financial and social obligation, but very few people have experience a total lack of such obligations for years at a time which leads to things like fantasizing about FU money.

I can tell you that for me personally I don't think it was ideal. Yes, at first the freedom is exhilarating, but it doesn't last forever. There were two big problems. One is that you feel disconnected from society. This is hard to explain but being outside of normal social structures you lose a sense of context and meaning to your actions. Second is that when you don't have any social or financial pressures it's hard to avoid the path of least resistance. It's very easy to fall into bad habits, just watching youtube, reading reddit, bad diet, etc.

I would assess myself as someone who would be less susceptible to these problems. I consider myself a fairly self-motivated person and definitely an introvert. But after several years it starts to weigh on you.

Today I work in an office. There are often times when it's hard and I have to deal with things I don't want to. But I still think it's better than when I wasn't working. I think if I never had the experience of not working I would probably only see the downsides of office life as the upside is quite abstract and hard for me to articulate. I don't think this is something unique to me, I think it's human nature to want social structure and this naturally comes with social obligations. But for most people not being constrained to social structures was never an option anyway so they underestimate how much it affects their happiness.

[StavrosK]

I work remotely and live in a low cost of living country, but find that's not very true for me. I always have my own projects and hobbies to work on, and I love working on them whenever I want to. I feel pretty motivated and fulfilled with that, so I don't get the feelings you mention.

Not having a job can sometimes feel like you don't have a long-term purpose, but I think that's mostly because we've been used to working, rather than any intrinsic thing. Besides, I don't know why having a long-term purpose at work is any more fulfilling than a long-term hobby.

[Nextgrid]

I think the original post referred more to the social impacts of the situation to which I can relate to. You can indeed work on your own projects/hobbies but I find it's harder to find people to connect with if your situation is so different.

[abnercoimbre]

> You can indeed work on your own projects/hobbies but I find it's harder to find people to connect with if your situation is so different.

Aren't we just in a transitional period? Digital nomads are fairly normal by now, even though they're (currently) a minority. A growing number of countries have visas and residencies for these folks and this group organizes special events all the time.

[WilTimSon]

Well, there's always a healthy option in the middle. I'm not exactly up to speed on what the pay is like in the USA (which is where I presume most of the users here hail from), but getting at least $3-4k is enough to work remotely from some place like Thailand or a small European country. You still get the benefit of a traditional-ish social life, where you "go" to work every day, talk to people and then have some time to go out. Except that salary that would get you a passable living in London, Seattle or whatever other expensive city you inhabit, could get you much farther in a poorer country.

I do realise that this only applies to those who CAN work remotely but that seems to be a large chunk of the userbase for HN.

[buran77]

With $3-4k you can live more than decently in 99% of Europe. Sure, it might not get you very far in the most expensive cities like Geneva, but otherwise you can can have anything between a very comfortable and a very lavish lifestyle. This is subjective, after all a luxury car or a top of the line Mac are just as expensive wherever you go. But for the amenities of regular life you really shouldn't worry about missing out on much when living in Europe on that kind of money.

[toto444]

£3,000 in London is comfortable if you don't have kids. Nursery fees are about £1,800 and a rent £1,500.

[nicoburns]

More than comfortable if you don't have kids and don't expect to have your own flat. I live in London, and probably spend around £1200-1500/month total. Which is more than what some of my friends earn.

[Nextgrid]

That amount in London is a bit of a problem if you live close to the city center due to housing prices. So you can either live close, not having the overhead of commutes, or live far away and then be better off financially but have the inconvenience of a commute.

[JayPeaEm]

Fun Fact: Switzerland is not part of the EU.

[dri_ft]

But it is part of Europe.

[tluyben2]

Or a big EU country, just not a in a city. In Spain(/Portugal) you can live like a king (villa, swimming pool, huge garden, cars etc) on 3-4k/mo. And if you are an 'ok' coder, 3-4k/mo is not very hard to get remotely.

[agustif]

Would yo mind helping someone find that? I think I might be an OK coder...

Maybe I'm not that good, but would love to find a remote job paying 3-4k...

[tluyben2]

Send me an email (see my profile on HN) and let’s see. But for anyone else ; reliability is a huge issue. People do resume driven dev and job-hop; as a company you really do not want people like that. I would like people who want to work for some amount corrected with inflation for 20+ years. And the people who want that really have no issues finding work. The depressing ghosting when someone finds something for $1 more is the reason why most people think it is hard. I do not want those people and never did (company running for over 25 years).

[ido]

You don't even have to go to Thailand, there are plenty of minor towns in western countries that are very cheap (usually because there aren't any good local jobs).

[luckylion]

I wonder when it'll shift that people that can do remote work move to these towns specifically for the lower cost of living.

In my circle of friends who do usually work remote, there are a few that want to move to more rural areas. The number one concern is availability of broadband, which is just terrible in Germany. Further down is friends/family not being close and possibly sticking out very much. I don't think remoteness is an actual issue (because there really isn't remoteness anywhere in Germany, it's very densely populated, and saving a lot on rent & co might well offset the cost for a few hours of driving every other weekend to meet friends.

[ido]

I also live in Germany! We're in Berlin and we only moved here in 2013 so we dont really care about the family/friends angle (we have no other relatives in Berlin & all of our friends here we've made in the last 7 years, so we could probably make new friends elsewhere easy enough).

You also don't have to go rural, there are plenty of mid sized towns with cheap housing prices (and often a university and/or other cultural institutes, like Halle or Cottbus).

My main concern is that while we don't really standout in Berlin, in a smaller town we will be considered more "exotic" & especially for our kids I'm afraid it will translate to mobbing in school.

[rayhendricks]

Hah go to a rural area and find bidirectional gigabit fiber optic internet for $60/mo and a decent house for $200,000.

[kerkeslager]

> There were two big problems. One is that you feel disconnected from society. This is hard to explain but being outside of normal social structures you lose a sense of context and meaning to your actions. Second is that when you don't have any social or financial pressures it's hard to avoid the path of least resistance. It's very easy to fall into bad habits, just watching youtube, reading reddit, bad diet, etc.

This strikes me as an extraordinary failure of imagination. There are other communities that have nothing to do with money, and other activities that have nothing to do with work, or sitting at home on the internet.

I'm living in my van currently and once I finish pay off my debts, I'll have few expenses. I spend my time rock climbing and volunteering, and both these have communities around them that I'm deeply connected with. My goals these days are around rock climbing, guitar, and helping underprivileged people in my community gain more agency over their lives. I'm in better shape and eat better than most of my friends who work more than I do.

Sure, doing nothing isn't very enjoyable. So maybe when you quit your job, don't do nothing.

[perfmode]

it’s true it indicates a failure of imagination, but i wouldn’t be so quick to make a personal indictment.

i, too, have been financially independent for the past year. past employer IPO. modest take.

for the past couple months, i’ve struggled with the same issue described by the OP.

for me, it’s a challenge of community. i spent so long living the silicon valley engineer lifestyle, along with others on that same track.

now, i find myself without community. in college, i dated liberal arts majors who live in co-ops, prioritize relationships, etc. i know they’re all out there in the world living out the type of life that remains a projection for me.

it just feels challenging to jump out of my self and my habits to start living a very different type of life.

this is my daily task. i understand it’s in my hands. my responsibility.

but feeling the acute challenge on a daily basis, i understand where the OP is coming from.

[kerkeslager]

The decisions I've made in my life which I've looked back on the most positively were ones that were far outside my comfort zone, and I'm not going to pretend I did that on my own courage. In every case it's been because someone gave me a kick in the pants. Call it a "personal indictment" if you wish, but the intentions aren't to hurt the person, it's to motivate them.

[mercer]

See my other comment, but I'd love to hear actionable steps to take to make these decisions with 'outside courage'!

[mensetmanusman]

This is a rough time for those without a strong community. I feel for you, good luck

[mercer]

>> There were two big problems. One is that you feel disconnected from society. This is hard to explain but being outside of normal social structures you lose a sense of context and meaning to your actions. Second is that when you don't have any social or financial pressures it's hard to avoid the path of least resistance. It's very easy to fall into bad habits, just watching youtube, reading reddit, bad diet, etc. This strikes me as an extraordinary failure of imagination. There are other communities that have nothing to do with money, and other activities that have nothing to do with work, or sitting at home on the internet.

> I'm living in my van currently and once I finish pay off my debts, I'll have few expenses. I spend my time rock climbing and volunteering, and both these have communities around them that I'm deeply connected with. My goals these days are around rock climbing, guitar, and helping underprivileged people in my community gain more agency over their lives. I'm in better shape and eat better than most of my friends who work more than I do.

> Sure, doing nothing isn't very enjoyable. So maybe when you quit your job, don't do nothing.

If you're up for it, I'd very much like to hear more about the concrete steps you took to get where you are. Or some blog posts (haven't checked the link on your profile yet, so maybe they're already there?).

But what I can say is that your suggestion is just really fucking difficult to put into practice. For me, at least. While I've got a bunch of issues going on that legitimately do make all of this difficult, a more general problem is that I've found it so much easier to go and live in a van than I've found it to shed the behaviors that have defined me for almost a decade. There's progress: I'm at least noticing how much of what I do day to day just doesn't make sense anymore, but actually changing my behavior as a result of these observations has proven much more difficult than I expected.

[kerkeslager]

Yeah, I apologize if I came across as saying this is easy: it's definitely not easy. I'd also be interested in hearing ways in which you've been successful in changing your lifestyle.

Getting into rock climbing has been huge for me. It's given me long-term goals, a community, fitness, and challenges to overcome that I care about.

I've also done a good job of removing addictions from my life. I don't have a Facebook account, and largely haven't gotten involved in most social media. In a sense, my biggest failure is that I'm here: detaching myself from social media has proven to be the biggest challenge in removing wastes of time from my life. There's some payoff here, but compared to the time I put into it, it's not a net gain.

I've also invested a lot of time in developing fewer, but deeper relationships. My friends now are people who show up for me and I show up for them and we're honest with each other (brutally so, in some cases). This is why a lot of my posts on HN get downvoted; I've come to believe that attempts to soften negative feedback just cause it to not be heard--it's kinder to be a bit harsh than to understate problems.

Volunteering has been a big thing for me, although I'm less involved right now (focusing on adjusting to some big life changes I've made). Helping other people has given me a big sense of community and purpose.

[mercer]

> Yeah, I apologize if I came across as saying this is easy: it's definitely not easy. I'd also be interested in hearing ways in which you've been successful in changing your lifestyle.

So far it's been really difficult. I don't want to excuse it by arguing that my (high-functioning) autism and OCD/anxiety issues make it really difficult to make changes in general, but they do play a role.

That said, your experience sounds solid to me and I've actually been really interested in rock climbing specifically. Any way I could ask you for advice/input outside of this public forum? If yes, you can find my email in my profile.

EDIT: I'll add that it's the volunteering part that makes me want to talk more. My late teens up until my mid-twenties were defined by various forms of volunteering, and I seriously considered becoming a 'professional' volunteer (priest/monk). so it's close to my heart but far away from my current-day practice.

EDIT2: for the benefit of anyone reading along, zen, mindfulness, and taking all my problems less seriously and focusing on fundamentals (diet, exercise, friendships) have had the most positive impact by far! Therapy too, for the stuff that all the previous stuff can't fix (and crucially, not giving up after the first therapist who only made my situation worse. finding a therapist you 'click' with is, as far as current knowledge is concerned, the best predictor of effective therapy)!

[Nasrudith]

It may be a failure of imagination but it is far from extraordinary unfortunately. It is a rare situation which receives little training, thought, or societal institutions. For millenia following was largely the only viable defeat essentially. Even nobility who became divorced from occupying duties had the same issues with use of idle time. The "Gentleman Scientest" or successful activist/reformer or similiar people who used their time wisely were the extraordinary ones even among the already extraordinary very small pool of privledged idle rich.

I can only conclude that failure of imagination is unfortunately not only ordinary but the default.

[alexpetralia]

I could have written this exact comment. Hits the nail on the head. There is something unique about working in a job, collectively - with other people - on something that imbues your work with purpose. It doesn't feel like if you give up tomorrow, it was all for naught, because someone else will pick up the baton. I have a feeling this communal work is to some degree evolutionarily baked in.

[cheez]

Most people need structure and cannot provide it for themselves.

[mercer]

> Coming at it from a different perspective, I did something similar to this by saving money on a US salary and then moving to a low cost of living country. I spent years at a time not working or even thinking about how to make money. I think almost everyone has felt the pain of financial and social obligation, but very few people have experience a total lack of such obligations for years at a time which leads to things like fantasizing about FU money.

While I haven't fantasized much about that, I'd say the past half decade has been very similar to what you describe.

> I can tell you that for me personally I don't think it was ideal. Yes, at first the freedom is exhilarating, but it doesn't last forever. There were two big problems. One is that you feel disconnected from society. This is hard to explain but being outside of normal social structures you lose a sense of context and meaning to your actions.

Thanks a ton for putting that into words and making me feel less isolated about having similar feelings! In my interactions with family and friends, I often felt guilty somehow about not sharing their day-to-day concerns. I was relatively frugal generally, but I'd just buy whatever I wanted. Going to a supermarket with them was frustrating and somewhat embarrassing, because they'd hunt for the cheap stuff. Or sometimes they'd 'indulge' and their indulgence was something that just wouldn't register for me as anything noteworthy if I'd be shopping by myself.

We'd talk about future prospects (a number of them working in the 'service industry') and I would hide the fact that for me these issues were not on my mind at all. Not because I'm rich by any means, but because I get messages and calls from recruiters on a weekly basis, and could potentially make more in three months than they would in a year.

> Second is that when you don't have any social or financial pressures it's hard to avoid the path of least resistance. It's very easy to fall into bad habits, just watching youtube, reading reddit, bad diet, etc.

My 'saving grace', I suppose, has been a constant desire to keep learning and an anxiety-driven need to 'stay up to date in my field'. But I definitely lost a lot of my 'fire' and self-improvement and goal-setting once I was good enough to just get work without even looking for it.

> I would assess myself as someone who would be less susceptible to these problems. I consider myself a fairly self-motivated person and definitely an introvert. But after several years it starts to weigh on you.

Same here. I've had an unusual life and had an unusual amount of freedom to be an auto-didact and develop skills that will probably allow me to be 'okay' no matter what (barring life's usual curve-balls). As much as I don't want to complain about that luxury, there's a weird feeling of isolation that results from it. A sort of "what's the point when nobody around me shares my (privileged?) concerns?" as well as a sense of "I feel I have an obligation to use this unique privilege for good but I don't know how". In my case, anyways.

> Today I work in an office. There are often times when it's hard and I have to deal with things I don't want to. But I still think it's better than when I wasn't working. I think if I never had the experience of not working I would probably only see the downsides of office life as the upside is quite abstract and hard for me to articulate. I don't think this is something unique to me, I think it's human nature to want social structure and this naturally comes with social obligations. But for most people not being constrained to social structures was never an option anyway so they underestimate how much it affects their happiness.

Not putting your choice down at all; it's often entered my mind, I can't help but feel like somehow that would be a kind of defeat. Sure, lots of it is probably good, but maybe there's a creative way to get all that without the downsides? Is that maybe the challenge to face?

Again, no judgment. I've never been less happy than I've been since I reached my situation of 'freedom' and the guilt over not feeling really happy and content about it. I have often considered just getting a 'regular' job again.