i assume you are responding to my post? since this was a hypothetical question, i gave a hypothetical answer. logic just kicks in given the state of the world and its economies, that a million just isn't as much as it used to be.

for sure, more money is always better. but thats not the point. your choice to rent, would be a personal one. for me, i'd want to own, and yes own a house at that, with a car. what i am saying is this. i am not saying i want to aspire to a jet-setting lifestyle with personal yacht and jet, but in no way should i end up with less than now. all i am merely saying, is that to continue on the trajectory of my current lifestyle, taking into account where i'd want to end up comfortably, one million is not a lot, at least not enough for me to retire on. mind you, i am also only 30, so if i just peel away at that 300k (no matter whatever interest or anything) how long is it gonna last?

even if i give u all the interest and whatever and gave a more conservative number of having 500k left over. given i spend 20k a year (hopefully that agrees with whatever soul searching you're talking about), that only lands me 25 years...and trust me, living off 20k a year is not the kind of comfortable i am talking about.

thats the point i am trying to make. of course i could make due with less, but given the choice, i dont think anyone in the right mind would choose the lesser route. point is, a million is still a big number, but not enough for me at least, to retire on. maybe someone in their sixties, sure, but not me.

perhaps someone else needs to check with reality

As I pointed out earlier, I've spent the last 35 years of my life living in expensive cities and never spending more than 40K a year. And I'll bet you aren't that much happier, your life isn't that much more fulfilling than mine. It might be a cliche, but happiness doesn't come only from owning things.

But the whole point about retiring on that mil is that you wouldn't have to continue working. You could then devote all of your time to doing what you and you only find interesting and meaningful. The improvement in your life that would come from not having to work would far outweigh any economic compromises you might have to make because of reduced income. But maybe you're the kind of guy who loves to work or doesn't know what to do with himself when he's away from the office. I'm just the opposite, there's always a million things I'm interested in, and I've always seen work as a huge waste of valuable time - time that isn't coming my way again.

So it's a choice - continue working to afford that house and two cars, or live a more modest life but be the master of my own time. That's how I understand the issue:
freedom but having to get around on a bike, or 10 hour days at the office and a Maserati? The bike wins hands down.

[ Last edited by  Marsupial at 1-2-2010 11:36 ]

completely agree, but I don't think I'd spend that much time outside!     I'd get all the cardio I never got when I was working!

you are just in a different stage of life. your choice to live on a bike and ride around all day, finding other ways to pass your time is respectable. as you are right, happiness does not come from material things, which is not the point i am trying to make. nor do i want to get into a conversation about what makes people happy.

u said yourself, you lived comfortably spending 40k a year living in expensive cities. perhaps you could have done it with less, but lets use that as a figure. not counting any interest for ease of calculations, a mill would net u 25 or so years. at the end of that 25 years you will have nothing, because u would have been renting and biking (nothing wrong with those choices btw, so dont take offense). then do u work again? but at least u enjoyed 25 or so years of a work free, fulfilling life. but assuming u live past those 25 years, ya gotta get your ass back to work.

my point really is that one could do with a lot less than a mill, for sure. but if you want to carry out a modestly comfortable upper middle class kind of living, and have something to call your own at the end of the day, a million isnt going to free you from working at all! unless you are in your upper years, where ideally you've already worked to attain some assets. but if you're like me, a mill is not security enough to quit the day job, no way jose.

if a mill could achieve a work free life, i'm all up for it and agree with you whole-heartedly that there's better things i could be doing with my life than work it away. but reality tells me, a million just wont get me there.

Just don't live full time in Chang Ping - you'd really regret it!

Perhaps just rent a small apartment there for approx RMB 1,500/month for a 1/2 way decent 1 bedroom.

Just IMHO

SEAJ

At the end of the day, we're all dead.

But I hear what you're saying. My take on this issue is no doubt influenced by my hatred of work, and the fact that I have first-hand experience of living frugally and know that it really doesn't involve sacrificing anything terribly important. For instance, I rather liked going around Seattle on my (very nice) bike.

btw, invested wisely, that 1 million should give 30 to 40 years years of 40K.

That sure beats my wife's request to buy the 5mm RMB Beijing apartment.  Does anyone think Chinese real estate will go down any time soon?  Whenever I go to Beijing, it seems like half ofthe apartments are vacant.  I would live there (it has improved dramatically) and make business trips to CP!

I don't know Mars.... I really don't know.

I'd debated with myself if I should post this up or not - but....

Anyway, your replies etc just looks to me to be another one of your Marserendipity!

Really... in this day and age??  It's NOT the Flower Power years no more - heck even the torn jeans gotta be US$120 A + F's.

Tell me, please tell me that this  all had just been a send up!!  
Yes??!!  
That all along you're sitting there typing away in a palatial Penthouse suite, sipping fine Champagne, nibbling caviar - and laughing your fool head off at us suckers!!

SEAJ

That's true - times have changed. Now the accepted wisdom is to work yourself half to death so as to afford a really nice wheel chair to sit around in as an old man and ask yourself why the fuck you threw away your youth running after money. Tho I'm sure most of these guys go to the grave thinking that gilded wheel chair was the whole point of life.

These last 10-15 years, whenever I return to the States and find myself around college students, it seems like half of them are studying marketing or business or some such bogus bullshit. Marketing! wtf kind of "institute of higher learning" allows a student to make marketing the focus of his education?!

People are dumb Seaj, and getting dumber; and that's because all they think about is money. You ask people what their idea of a good life is and 99% of them will talk about things they'd like to possess. They're just sleep-walking through life clicking on all the ads and ignoring the text, just like the marketing people want - maybe they'll wake up before it's too late, maybe not.

The worst thing about the 70's is that it's over.

And thus my reminding myself all the time that no matter how badly placed you are, if you're gonna be happy, you're gonna be happy. With the reverse also being true of course.

People nowadays have too much of everything - and end up not appreciating anything.  And the worse part is that they slave away to get these very meaningless things!  What a conumdrum!!

Yeah - Flower Power, the idealism of the 60's, the carefree days of freedom from materialism.... but how rapidly those days passed, sucked in by the glitz of the Market and the marketeers!!

Oh well - back to trying to make some more money I guess!!  LOL!!

SEAJ
sp. and grammar edits

[ Last edited by  SEAJ at 2-2-2010 01:50 ]

Macau is a nice place to visit for a few days, but I wouldn't really want to live there.

i see your point and where you are coming from, but i think i have to chime in here and disagree with the essence of what you are saying, especially the point about people being dumb because all they think about is money.

it has to do with a matter of choice and evolution. i think you being able to do what you do and still be able to choose your own lifestyle is a luxury. however, in our day and age of such capitalist societies and economically driven world, how can one not turn their focus towards money? trust me, i hate money and materials too, but its also a reality that you need money to survive.

having said that, once you have money is then when u can choose your lifestyle. for instance, u could not have chosen your lifestyle in rome if u did not somehow have 40k a year to spend right? i could not choose to travel as much as i like to if i wasnt secure in the money aspect. but to able to do what u want to do, u gotta evolve with how the society evolves in order to survive and be free to make your choice.

but thats the thing, is because now there is so much choice. as a consumer, from gadgets to clothes to furniture, u name it. there is so much choice and marketing of products out there that the typical person is not at a level where they will be able to resist falling prey to. i dont think the majority of the population realizes (at least are not constantly aware of it) material things are not the key to making a person happy. but its the age of instant gratification, and thats what materialistic things provide for us. some are bred to believe this is the meaning of life, and so is the life they choose. but are they to be faulted if they knew of no other life to compare? the world still turns, and life goes on. if anything, people will continue on this path and look for bigger and better ways to make money, so they can choose bigger and better things to fulfill the lifestyle that they will eventually want to live.

ultimately its a choice. if they were put in a different society, of course their views and their values would be different. and as a result, the way they go about achieving these views would also be different. but i dont think one can fault another person for choosing a certain kind of lifestyle they want to live, and having the muster to go and do the necessary things to achieve it. also not everyone can ascertain a level of spiritual sophistication where they can overcome mass peer appeal. in a way people are just sheep, one following the other. unfortunately that is our society. but the luxury is that we are able to have that choice, so long as we can afford it.

I'm definitely agreeing with you that things are out of balance.  Way too much stress and pressure ... interesting Trivial statistic: the vast majority of modern diseases have an underlying root in stress.

So yes, slowing it down, taking it easy, letting the guy cut in in front of you, etc. is a smart way to live.  

Apropos, last weekend I took a 2km walk home instead of driving - so instead of a 3 minute drive it was a leisurely 30 minute stroll.  I got to see a ton of stuff I never saw before - trees, flowers, streams, nature doing its thing.  

Where it gets interesting is that, ultimately, stopping and doing nothing is unsatisfying.  It's every bit as empty as a meaningless career.  So having done that for a while once I got back in the saddle.  

The reality is that we do need a level of challenge to experience the best of life.  Psychologists such as Mikszentmihaly's research into Flow cover it very well.  

Again, I do agree the issue is that for most people the balance is too much in the direction of striving and achieving in order to be able to buy a bigger Thing (what was it again we're supposed to be saving up for???).  I could go into a whole new rant about the cynical exploitation of people's dreams by government and big business, but there isn't enough time in a day to cover it properly.  

My caution is that making materialism wrong and eliminating it from life is just as wrong as making it the goal of life.  

It sounds like you yourself probably do have a conscious and considered balance in your life - you clearly have enough money to indulge yourself in an expensive hobby but without the stress of feeling you're constrained by any commitment to material goals.  

I'm just throwing a spanner in the works by gently challenging anyone who believes that $1m is in any way "a lot" ... and equally challenging anyone who feels the only way to get it is either by doing unreasonably hard work or by a stroke of blind luck ...

Taking the research on Flow at face value, adding to it the impact of learning and growth, the conclusion is that more IS better. Not necessarily more money per se, but more of everything INCLUDING money.  

In that context my question (to the Forum) is if you could have $2m instead of $1m, without compromising your quality of life or health, how would that change your choices?

I'll second that.

I'll definitely retire if I had that money !!!!
With the low income I'm earning right now, 1million us$ equates to 35 years of working.

I'd rather take that money, live 35 years free from my enslaving job and when the money is finish...kill myself

[ Last edited by  conqueror77 at 6-2-2010 22:40 ]

$1million is plenty to live on. I just disagree wtih everyone who thinks $1million is chump change. Now to prove that one can be happy and live on $1million without having to work for the rest of  his life even if he is still in his 20's, I'll conduct an experiment and prove to you guys that it is more than enough. For the ones who disagree that it's not enough, just donate $50K to my experiment and I'll need 20 people to do that. After that, I'll take that money and move to China and live out the rest of my life happily. I'll take a vow and forgo all material things. I'm with Mars on this issue 100%.

haahha, "kill myself". I wouldnt go that far but if invest wisely, I can almost guarantee that it wont run out.

it wouldnt' change squat!! I'll still be doing the same things with $1M versus $2M or $100M. Doing things that make me happy costs me barely anything so I could do it with $500K instead of $1M. Actually I would even think $500K would be enough to live the rest of my life let alone $1M or even $2M. I am smart enough to be able to support myself with investing and working part time yet still enjoying my life to the fullest isntead of slaving 9-5 and stresssing out all the time.

I don't know anything about investment. But from what I read, money invested here, in France, in"life insurance"   (I'm just trying a translation from the french "assurance vie") seem to have interest rates ranging from 3.50% to 5%. Though they might be some subtlety that I'm not aware of.

For those who understand french, you can check out this link and tell me if I misunderstood something:

http://www.comparatif-assurance- ... -assurance-vie.html

[ Last edited by  conqueror77 at 6-2-2010 23:50 ]