Is it mathematically impossible NOT to be able to make a living in today's society?

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lillo9546
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Is it mathematically impossible NOT to be able to make a living in today's society?

Post by lillo9546 »

Hi!
Is it really mathematically impossible not to be able to live in modern society, having an ERE/Frugal lifestyle, with a full-time or even a part-time job? During my life, I've stressed so much about "having a raise", "making money", do the right thing for the "career path", but I came up that it could be easier than it seems.
Take for example someone who have a frugal lifestyle and a regular 9to 5 job: making a living is stress free.
In my particular scenario, My COL is 7€ a day, this mean I need 1h of work on my day job. This means, the following hours are just a plusvalence I am earning to invest or, for someone else, to spend on an inflated lifestyle.
For example:
My COL is 7€ a day. My Pay is 10€ a hour. I work 7 hours a day, and pay is 10+10+10+10+10+10+10. This means the 10 will be used to pay for my COL, then the other 10*6times, would be used to make investiments. This mean, according to my situation, I can downshift to 3 hours a day, and still have a 66% plus to invest.
Is this just so easy? Is this applicable to any living scenario? What Am I missing?

I made this argument, because I see, and hear, about so many people that is very very very difficult to make a living. Is this related to an High-COL, but High Salary, or viceversa, Low-col, but Low Salary, cityies only?

Bill
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Re: Is it mathematically impossible NOT to be able to make a living in today's society?

Post by Bill »

7€ a day cost of living seems very, very frugal. Can you really keep a roof over your head and yourself fed and clothed for €210 a month? If so great! Where I live you couldn’t even get a single room that cheap.

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Seppia
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Re: Is it mathematically impossible NOT to be able to make a living in today's society?

Post by Seppia »

Even living in Italy, that’s an incredible feat.
I’m assuming OP isn’t paying for housing?

jacob
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Re: Is it mathematically impossible NOT to be able to make a living in today's society?

Post by jacob »

Technically speaking, it's just that easy. Socially, it's rather harder because it requires one to stand out from the herd and think independently.

Lets distinguish between:
  • Rich - Having a high income
  • Broke - Spending more than you make
  • Poor - Having a low income
  • Wealthy - Spending less than you make
People in general struggle with being broke. Whether rich or poor, they find a way to spend right up to their earnings or slightly above it because everybody expects them to do so. Becoming wealthy requires passing the marshmallow test and learning some money management skills. It is easier to get wealthy on a high [rich] income, also called easy-mode, than a low [poverty] income, also called hard-mode, but both are possible.

See https://earlyretirementextreme.com/id-r ... -rich.html

The reason more people aren't wealthy comes from not learning these skills and constantly being tempted by ads, friends, family, and society to eat the marshmallow. One substantially increases ones chances of becoming wealthy proportionally to one's focus on independence of mind and personal competence. This is also why there are so many INTJs, INTPs, and ISTJs who are getting wealthy.

lillo9546
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Re: Is it mathematically impossible NOT to be able to make a living in today's society?

Post by lillo9546 »

With this in mind, I really would like to focus on things that count.
Also, I'd like to find a useful occupation and keep paying the COL, with just "1 hour of daily work".

In the end, thinking about pensions or retirement income just make you feel anxious for the future, while instead, saying "I will only need to keep work at least 1h a day for my entire life", would make you feel incredibile different, since this is an easier (possibly genuine?) smaller goal to accomplish for the everyday.

In the process of learning how to be wealthy, I think we've all come to think that we can "stop working forever" one day, thanks to our pensions and retirement income. But this will never be possible. We will continue to work, we are human.

So the gist of the whole discussion is to ask yourself another question: what kind of job, or more jobs, could I do that makes me really proud, that has effective utility, that looks to the future.

As far as I'm concerned, at first I thought that being a restaurant owner that makes 1milion/y, could be a worth goal to follow, but there are different types of these owners: those who work actively in their business, and therefore work 12 hours a day, and those who work 1 hour a day, but who do not feel satisfied because they have done practically nothing. I don't think this is a job with a utility, or purpose, beyond the monetary one, or just to feel you have "something to do for the entire day". You are taking raw food at "x" price, processing it, and selling it to people for "x+y" price, who are there just to unwind their job stress, and inflate their lifestyle.

Instead, I started looking at jobs like being a doctor or other specialist who is interested in his profession, who works 1 hour a day, but who is satisfied with the patient visit, or with the scientific research he has done, and feels accomplished, and has a job that pays his COL well.


Please discuss where this is a wrong reasoning, and Please Tell what you think :)

ducknald_don
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Re: Is it mathematically impossible NOT to be able to make a living in today's society?

Post by ducknald_don »

I read some research that said you can get all the psychological benefits of a job by working just one day a week.

https://www.cam.ac.uk/employmentdosage

xmj
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Re: Is it mathematically impossible NOT to be able to make a living in today's society?

Post by xmj »

lillo9546 wrote:
Wed Mar 29, 2023 7:57 am
My COL is 7€ a day. My Pay is 10€ a hour. I work 7 hours a day, and pay is 10+10+10+10+10+10+10. This means the 10 will be used to pay for my COL, then the other 10*6times, would be used to make investiments. This mean, according to my situation, I can downshift to 3 hours a day, and still have a 66% plus to invest.
Is this just so easy? Is this applicable to any living scenario? What Am I missing?
Yes, it is *that* easy.
Applicable to most white collar jobs and many skilled blue collar jobs.
You're missing that most people have a higher cost base than you do, so they'd have a COL of around 60% of net daily wages (I'm leaving some margin for weekends and days off) leaving 10% surplus.
lillo9546 wrote:
Wed Mar 29, 2023 7:57 am
I made this argument, because I see, and hear, about so many people that is very very very difficult to make a living. Is this related to an High-COL, but High Salary, or viceversa, Low-col, but Low Salary, cityies only?
It's difficult to make ends meet when your expenses scale [super]linearly with income.

First time I started freelancing in 2014, I made 50$/h and my cost base was 30-40€/day. Worked two hours and spent my time doing sports, meeting friends for coffee, reading books, etc etc. Good times!

lillo9546
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Re: Is it mathematically impossible NOT to be able to make a living in today's society?

Post by lillo9546 »

xmj wrote:
Thu Mar 30, 2023 7:46 am

First time I started freelancing in 2014, I made 50$/h and my cost base was 30-40€/day. Worked two hours and spent my time doing sports, meeting friends for coffee, reading books, etc etc. Good times!
Did you changed anything about your routine?

xmj
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Re: Is it mathematically impossible NOT to be able to make a living in today's society?

Post by xmj »

Pretty much everything, most of it due to remote work with a 10h timezone difference. Instead of 9to5 [am to pm] I'd do 5to7 or 6to8 [both pm...]

Easy to cycle 30km to the nice beach, go for a swim, and cycle back -- all before 5pm.
Or dig around opensource software all day long, work two hours, go out and meet friends.

What did you change after figuring out your situation described in the OP?

7Wannabe5
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Re: Is it mathematically impossible NOT to be able to make a living in today's society?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Well, it depends somewhat on how you define "living" and "society." Easy example of fail case might be you live in the rural U.S., your highest level marketable skill is general labor, you have 2 year old and an infant, you have no family support, your arm is broken, your truck in which you are currently living is broken, and your psycho-ex who broke your arm is stalking you. Obviously, there are some social support systems, such as church groups, non-profits, and welfare programs that may lend you some assistance in this situation, but the general* rule of thumb would be that you are not going to be able to simultaneously legally/morally qualify for these programs and put money aside for investments.


*Exception to this rule might be the parent/child relationship (your parents might allow you to continue to live with them for $0 even if you have higher net worth/income/education/health/etc. than they have, because they want you to do even better) or rescuer/rescuee dynamic in adult/adult relationship. However, the second is a bit sketchy, as can easily be demonstrated by putting a slider from 0-10 on how attractive our imaginary fail case looks as she emerges from her broken down truck in the WalMart parking lot.

At the other end of some spectrum, I sometimes consider the situation of one of the highly intelligent characters in one of Sally Rooney's (very popular with the top 5% of readers) novels who is living in London on her $20,000/year salary as an editor for a literary magazine. In a way, her passion for her "baby" which is literature keeps her as locked in to her high COL locale/relatively low income lifestyle as the real life babies of the fail case above. The fairly predictable way she finds out of her dilemma is she ends up marrying some wealthy law/finance guy she knew since her university days.

*************************************************

Also, I would note that in situation where one is freely able to adjust number of hours devoted to paid work, it becomes a two marshmallow problem. The stuff-slut AKA average consumer will spend up to whatever they are able to earn working 40 hrs week no matter how high AND the slacker-slut will reduce hours worked to match expenses no matter how low. As jacob noted above, only those MBTI types who are also most likely to be described as Ice Princess and/or go about with chastity pin affixed to bosom in other contexts ;) :lol: (jk- you guys are great) will be able to forswear both of these forms of temptation.

lillo9546
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Re: Is it mathematically impossible NOT to be able to make a living in today's society?

Post by lillo9546 »

ducknald_don wrote:
Thu Mar 30, 2023 5:05 am
I read some research that said you can get all the psychological benefits of a job by working just one day a week.

https://www.cam.ac.uk/employmentdosage
Interesting.. thinking about if this could apply to just "one day a week" or "one hour a day for 5 days a week"

7Wannabe5
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Re: Is it mathematically impossible NOT to be able to make a living in today's society?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I would guess that one hour per day would be more psychologically beneficial than one day per week, because more akin to natural hunter/gatherer lifestyle. I have sometimes considered doing a challenge where I would have to wake up in the morning and starting from scratch somehow make enough money/stuff to support my current needs and commitments/contracts for the day. It's much easier to default to what you already know how to do or structure provided by other(s.) If your current COL is only approximately $7/day then you could just choose to forage and dumpster dive (or local equivalent) to cover your expenses, but it might take approximately 3 hours on average.

ducknald_don
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Re: Is it mathematically impossible NOT to be able to make a living in today's society?

Post by ducknald_don »

I suppose it depends on the nature of your work. If you drive for Uber or Deliveroo then it would be easy to work until you made your $7 or one hour but I couldn't see a customer being happy with you spending an hour a day installing their new kitchen.

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