[dw_arthur]

Paradoxically, inflation has contributed to me taking a sabbatical. While I live in a LCOL area and made ~140k/year it just no longer felt worth it to work as I saw my retirement accounts start to match and exceed my salary in yearly gains. I do plan on going back to work in a part time manner, but inflation has killed any reason for me to work hard at a job for that level of salary. Furthermore, the feeling of "what's the point" around white collar work has never been more intense.

[jr3592]

This actually makes 0 sense. Like, do you even understand what you're saying? The value of your savings is decreasing at a faster rate than ever before, so its a good time to stop saving and spend it?

The stock market increasing is not the same thing as inflation. What you're saying makes sense only if you are referring to stock market valuation... strictly retiring because inflation is high makes no sense.

[markerz]

> Like, do you even understand what you're saying?

That comment is unnecessary and has the effect of making people feel bad.

I think the rationale is that wages are stagnant in comparison to investments (stocks) and costs (inflation). So there's decreased incentive to focus on wages as a form of income, and more incentive to focus on investments.

I've definitely felt this personally, as my income shifts towards investments, my will to work for a wage has decreased. That shift has increased because I've accured more investments, but also because investments have grown kind of ridiculously compared to my wage.

[thrance]

> So there's decreased incentive to focus on wages as a form of income, and more incentive to focus on investments.

That's been the case for a while now, and is steadily getting worse. But the issue is, workers usually rely on their wages to live. It's not a choice for the vast majority of people.

And it's unsustainable. You can't build a society of exclusively parasites that feed on the work of fewer and fewer hands.

[PearlRiver]

Most people do not have money to invest. There should be a law that forces the rich to go on an annual safari to see how poor people live because we are literally entering "let them eat cake" levels and it will not end well.

[bachmeier]

> This actually makes 0 sense. Like, do you even understand what you're saying?

It makes perfect sense if the decision to work is based on real, after-tax income. Change the comment to say "the tax rate keeps climbing so I quit working" and it would not occur to anyone to challenge it.

Once you have enough saved to generate income covering the very basics (probably somewhere around $30k/year in a LCOL area in the US) it becomes a question of whether selling a 40-hour block of your time on a weekly basis is worth it. For this individual, it is not.

[mancerayder]

Not 30k a year, even in a LCOL area. Where's your health insurance? Do you even bother with it at that level?

[danaris]

> Change the comment to say "the tax rate keeps climbing so I quit working" and it would not occur to anyone to challenge it.

Um, what?

Many people would challenge that, because it's absolutely bonkers.

The only way it could possibly make sense is if you're already wealthy enough to be able to retire. Which cuts out nearly everyone, even on this hopelessly-skewed forum.

[casey2]

If you don't understand second-order effect that is. What happens when everyone stops working, either QoL falls or prices rise. Labor force rate is at 83.8% for prime age workers. (Most of the QoL add comes from immigrant labor while most of the QoL extraction comes from high tech. So this does complicate the math) The govenment then lacking revenue extracts more from prime age workers and raises the retirement age and early withdrawal penalties.

[inigyou]

That's going to happen regardless of your individual action. You can take a sabbatical and suffer a raised retirement age, or you can not take a sabbatical, and still suffer a raised retirement age. If you want to solve it, a collective action (i.e. government regulation) is necessary.

[vinyl7]

I saw this coming from a mile away. Jobs just don't pay enough anymore, especially with inflation eating away at money faster than pay raises and housing becoming unaffordable for the majority. It's barely worth it to work. But that is what US capitalism has optimized for. Prioritizing the rich capital owners over the proletariat with tax cuts, regulation cuts, not enforcing monopoly laws, spending money on wars and bailing out the large companies etc.

[JKCalhoun]

"This actually makes 0 sense … What you're saying makes sense only…"

I take issue with the phrase "makes 0 sense". Maybe it's just a common refrain these days?

Because you then explain how it could make sense. So it wasn't really zero, just required a narrow interpretation?

[fluoridation]

>The value of your savings is decreasing at a faster rate than ever before, so its a good time to stop saving and spend it?

Inflation does incentivize spending, yes. Would you rather have 100 kilos of rice today, or wait and have 99 kilos of rice tomorrow for the same price?

[jr3592]

> Inflation does incentivize spending, yes.

All inflation incentivizes is finding an asset class that isn't devaluing. If that is what you mean by "spending" then we align. But does inflation incentivize spending money on depreciating assets? Only for fools.

[inigyou]

Everything depreciates in a long enough term. What would you rather own?

[fragmede]

Does it? Outside of a couple of rich island city-states, they're not making more land, so on a long enough timeline, that asset class is bound to go up eventually. Same with gold – there's a limited supply of it on Earth, so at some point we'll mine it all, and then what? The question is how assets perform on a given timeline, and how it does relative to inflation. I could guarantee you 1% a year returns if you give me money, but no one would do that because that's less than inflation, as well as a number of other classes of assets.

[fluoridation]

The price of land is approximately correlated to the total population, because that's the variable part of the supply-demand equation. If there's fewer people there's less need to grow a lot of food, less space needed to manage waste, less space needed to house them, etc. etc. There's nothing productive you can do with land that would justify a very high price if there's only 50 thousand humans in the world; if one parcel of land is too expensive just go find and claim a different one for yourself.

So, yes, on a long enough time frame, land also goes down in value, because human population is likely to at some point go down.

>I could guarantee you 1% a year returns if you give me money, but no one would do that because that's less than inflation

What do you mean, "no one would do that"? If you're guaranteeing that ROI, someone who's investing with you instead of holding currency at 2% inflation would see their savings depreciate by only half as much, at no risk, perhaps with just some liquidity loss depending on what your terms are for pulling out. I assure you there's people out there who would take that deal.

[fluoridation]

??? "All" it incentivizes? Uh, no. The vast majority of people don't treat their salaries as an investment opportunity, they have to live off it. If you need to fix your water heater, you might get it fixed now while inflation is high than wait until winter (not a great example given the time scales involved, but it gets the point across). Even if you have nothing that you desperately need, if inflation is really high you might blow it on something frivolous because if you try saving it it won't be worth anything in one or two year's time.

Inflation doesn't push people towards non-devaluating assets, it pushes people to get rid of currency by any means they have available.

[jr3592]

???

OBVIOUSLY if you absolutely HAVE to spend money because your life depends on it (ex: hot water) then you're going to be incentivized to spend it sooner rather than later in an inflationary market.

I'm referring to discretionary spending. Eating out. Buying a new laptop. Traveling. Etc.

This statement: "it pushes people to get rid of currency by any means they have available." is just flat out wrong. If you're draining your bank accounts on discretionary purchases right now, that's your mistake.

I would include retiring before you absolutely have to as "discretionary". Now is not the time to make a decision like that, when the alternative is a smarter financial decision (work, save, invest in assets that aren't devaluing at the same rate as currency).

[phil21]

Inflation absolutely stimulates spending. Especially if it's predictable and people are paying attention.

Peak COVID it was obvious inflation was going to hit hard in some sectors. So I loaded up on durable goods like HVAC, hot water heater refreshes, major appliances, and even pushed some home maintenance forward where labor and materials were likely to skyrocket.

I certainly made a bet, and a lot of it had to do with "lifestyle" - in that I wanted upgrades of most of those things either way over the next 5 years. I just pushed the spending forward by a whole lot since money was going to be rapidly worth less and those specific goods I predicted were going to outpace generalized inflation. I also wasn't certain my income was going to be secure for the long haul so I'd rather spend the money while it was still regularly coming in vs. being stuck later.

Same went for looking at laptops late last year. Since I'm in the IT industry it was obvious memory and flash storage prices were going to go parabolic, and consumer pricing was lagging the market at the time. If you saw this happening you'd be pretty silly to sit and wait on it for another 6mo.

And the same goes for investment class assets. As those outpace wage growth by multiples, your salary becomes less and less important. Once your salary is in the low double digits of your total income in a given year I'd say it's probably time to take a hard look at continuing to work. The juice no longer becomes worth the squeeze. And asset price inflation means this decision point is brought forward years - perhaps decades - for some people.

It obviously doesn't mean go YOLO in your 20's. But if you're 58 years old and were thinking you'd work another 8 years - perhaps it's time to reevaluate the situation. Adding another 3% a year to your dragon hoard via wage savings might not pencil out how you think it will.

[danaris]

> OBVIOUSLY if you absolutely HAVE to spend money because your life depends on it

Food. Clothing. Shelter.

For most people in the world, all or nearly all (or, in some cases, more than all!) of their annual earnings go toward these absolute necessities.

The way you talk here makes you sound incredibly out of touch, as if you think everyone has vast amounts of disposable income they can just chuck toward whatever investment opportunity looks best at the time.

[fluoridation]

It's not flat out wrong. If the means you have available include investing, you might do that. If they don't, you're still better off spending it on something not strictly necessary now that you're able to than saving it to have its purchasing power be eaten away by inflation.

[inigyou]

Would you rather spend your savings before or after they become worthless?

[mancerayder]

He's saying there's no direct connection between effort and wealth. He works and made 140k, seeing his portfolio go up 140k a year by itself. So what's the point?

You and he are in different language games. His is an existential philosophical one, yours is the financial planning one.

Both make sense. I'm trying to transition to his, but I'm not ready yet.

What's the Point? is exactly the question we should be asking ourselves.

[wat10000]

Stock market returns will tend to exceed inflation. Salary may not. It's quite possible for inflation to make your salary shrink in real terms, making it no longer worth working if you can afford to retire.

[inigyou]

There is absolutely no guarantee that stock market returns exceed inflation. The big US indices have for the last few decades, but they're extreme outliers.

[wat10000]

I said "tend to," not "guarantee."

You'd expect this to happen with a couple of reasonable assumptions, like stock prices being somewhat based on real value most of the time, no wide-scale long-term economic collapse, and new companies replacing incumbents over many years rather than very quickly. If the real value of a company stays constant, then the stock price should, on average over the long term, rise at a pace that matches inflation.

[breakpointalpha]

I don't understand this point of view. $140k in a LCOL is a fantastic salary. Median US household income is $83k/yr.

It feels more likely your investment account gains are driving your decisions. Stock gains are also driven by inflation though!

I can sort of understand the feeling though, I just recently got a 2.5% raise for "inflation", which hardly feels like it's making a dent.

[dmoy]

I don't think that OP meant to say their wage income was low.

I think OP means that once their investment returns starts exceeding their wage income, their motivation for continuing to work drops.

Which, I kinda get. If you don't really like what you're doing, it's harder to stay motivated at continuing to work when your bag of money makes more money than you do.

It sounds like OP is already planning on some amount of return to work, which may be necessary because that exact point (investment returns > wage income) isn't necessarily a safe point to retire. But it might be, depending on how much you spend, and what your not-employer-funded healthcare costs are.

[cyanydeez]

Y"eah, the same reason we're going to have a trillionaire soon is why even if someones making a great salary, their 401k is inflating faster than they need to earn a living in a low cost of living area.

Absolutely absurd, but if you got the upswing between 2010-2020, you might be in an upper class while still living in lower class, meaning your 401k is all you need to survive on while the billionaires continue to pump the market as a defacto monetary instrument and leave the dollar for the poors.

Think of it like bitcoin, but instead of owning electronic worthless hashes, you own LLCs that own stocks and take out loans on behalf ot he LLC against those stocks.

Then you just trade those LLCs around as tokens of wealth.

Welcome to the great new oligarchy.

[inigyou]

It's just yet another wealth transfer between classes. They can happen frequently and unpredictably, and usually but not always from workers to owners. If you happen to be in the class that benefits, you take the windfall.

[cyanydeez]

UNFORTUNATELY, the movement from rich to poor is not gradual, pretty or effectively transitioned.

Not sure if you intend it, but the struggle to reverse course from rich to poor is bloody and not always effective.

[nonethewiser]

Hacker news moment

[ilikerashers]

I feel the same. Investments are shooting up and wages stink.

UK has very high taxation now so working full time doesn’t bring in as much as a decent portfolio.

[ZeWaka]

Are you assuming yearly wages not increasing to match/exceed inflation every year?

The logical point here doesn't make much sense to me otherwise.

[dw_arthur]

My salary has not kept up with inflation over the last 15 years. The industry I am in, which is not related to tech, has undergone massive consolidation leading to 2-3% raises some years and no raises other years.

[kennywinker]

Cumulative inflation since 2019 has been 30%. More with these new numbers, I think.

What jobs have the wages gone up 30% in that same time period? I’m sure a few, but not many.

[em500]

Hourly wage for all private sector workers is up +32% since Dec 2019 ($37.54 vs $28.38)[1]. For non-management workers +35% ($32.31 in May 2026 vs $23.85 in Dec 2019)[2].

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES0500000003

[2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AHETPI

[thewebguyd]

I'd say almost no one gets a 30%+ increase staying in the same company. There was a short period between 2019 and ~2022 when tech was hiring like crazy and you could just hop from job to job for huge increases every 6 months to a year.

The problem is that is now over, and so wages are back to being suppressed again.

[cmrdporcupine]

In the tech industry? Absolutely they have not, and in fact have likely gone the other way.

Unless you're maybe one of the few specialists in deep learning, CUDA, etc.

There's been mass layoffs and downward pressure on compensation all over.

[rottencupcakes]

Also is having twice as much money (1x from interest and 1x from income) not a benefit?

Maybe you are the strawman consumer that skeptics point to in guaranteed basic income debates, who just stops working because they get a check.

[dw_arthur]

The only thing I want to spend a bunch of extra money on is a nice property and making twice the money would not get me there in what I consider a reasonable amount of time. I'm also not interested in going on an extra two fancy vacations per year or a nicer car. I'm plenty content to read, cook, learn, and enjoy the arts.

[win311fwg]

If the first 1x covers all your spending, what else are you going do with the other 1x? Invest it in even more investments to produce more income that you already cannot spend? That turns into what is essentially working for free. Why bother?

[inigyou]

That turns into working hard so you or your descendants can eventually own the world. Jeff Bezos did it. Elon Musk did it. Bill Gates did it. If any of today's billionaires stopped when they had enough money, we wouldn't be talking about them.

[win311fwg]

Except all of the above settled for 1x, quitting their jobs (where they had one) to pursue their personal dreams. It so happens that their dreams also turned into something valuable, but that's secondary. They would have never been able to seek out their dream or turn that dream into something valuable had they accepted 2x.

[Salgat]

You're still cutting your annual income in half though. That's pretty big no?

[jbmchuck]

I have the same feelings as the original poster as I get further into middle age and have a good retirement nest egg - for me there are things more valuable - free time and the things I want to do with it but can't get paid to do - than making more income than I really need.

[jr3592]

How much do you have saved?

[jbmchuck]

Enough that a 5% annual return is enough for me to get by. I'm certainly not done working - I want to get that to 3% or so - but it does make it a bit demotivating some days when I look outside and imagine the other things I could be doing with my time.

[jr3592]

I mean, I'm totally with you... It's just never clear to me what "enough" is.

[dw_arthur]

I don't have a family, so it's manageable. If I had kids there is no way I could work part-time.

[asdff]

LCOL a good house might be 140k outright. Their costs are probably barely anything yearly against their returns.

[bluecalm]

The thing is at some point there is very little to gain. Once you have a nice place to live and don't need to sweat over daily expenses there isn't much that significantly improves life quality other than just having more time (that is working less) for yourself and your family.

Add high taxes to this and working is even less attractive when they take 50% from you. No wonder many highly qualified people decide to pass on that deal and just do the bare minimum which in OP case is nothing.

[boringg]

Equities rise and fall. Unless you fully cash out that stuff can materially drop and if you do materially cash out - it can inflate away.

Sorry to be a downer but there is no certainty on the future especially with the level of chaos being sown in the western world as a function of a few key people.

[thisisit]

I understand that salaries might have been stagnant and with wages not keeping with inflation it doesn't seem to make sense to continue working.

The stock market often aligns with inflation. After all if the companies growth is not beating inflation what exactly is the point really? But that also comes at the expense of not paying people their due worth and incrementing below inflation rate.

But past returns do not guarantee future results. Stock markets ebbs and flows. It will take a blip, not even a crash, to impact those retirement accounts.

IMO this is a risky idea especially if there are jobs available.

[Dig1t]

It sounds like either way you could just use a break. If you have a house and retirement is tracking inflation, you can use the time to reset and figure out a career change.

[FrustratedMonky]

If your retirement account is making more than 140k/year. You are probably in late stages of career, and of course have completely different incentives that also play into 'what's the point'.

If my retirement account was making more than my salary, then I'd also be asking myself 'what is the point' -> Regardless of inflation.

[w10-1]

I would never, ever leave work regardless of the pay.

Regardless of your skill and reputation, time off can quickly put you below the bar for even getting a call-back, and you lose access to relevant lessons.

You'll be shocked at how irrelevant you become, and how quickly the retirement accounts will give up the gains of the last 3 years (particularly when this 2026 IPO summer terminates US equity markets).

The feeling of "What's the point" might have little to do with work, and more to do with (finally) losing faith in ambition. If so, don't worry: the best comes after we put aside dreams.

[scarecrowbob]

Oh no, you mean I might not be able to get another really annoying job so I can, what, have more money than I need to live on?

I used to get paged at 1am to mess with downed webservers, now I hang out in a shack with no running water in rural CO.

I'm 48 and have a chunk of cash that made more last year than I've ever been able to make in a single year doing salaried labor as a programmer.

I quit 3 years ago when my kiddo graduated college and have been just living on that and my small A/V production business.

It's great.

I do a lot of work; I have done first aid at one music festival, paid sound at a bluegrass festival, and sat around doing random volunteer stuff at another. I can give the local music school and the local civic orchestra really good bids on doing sound for them. I am going to get an EMT cert because I have a friend who contracts to do first-aid at festivals.

I'm not at all worried that my (pre-LLM) programming skills and connections are going away- I've replaced them with mandolin skills and much happier.

[josh-sematic]

You are describing where I want to be when my kid graduates (years from now), mandolin and all! Low cost of living, contributing to the community, enough time for passions… Not able to get there yet but it’s what I’m working towards. I just hope LLMs don’t eat my current career path before I can achieve it.