Being a doctor, lawyer, or trained professional is highly respectable. It can be really hard to win in these arenas, and you need to be of good character to make a lot of money. But generally speaking, these professions are status oriented professions. You can make big money, but it takes a while and there are frequently more efficient ways to become wealthy nowadays. But if you want status, go get a good job.
Status will get you a nice life. Good friends. A beautiful wife your own age. But you will have a boss. You will have to socialize. You will have to answer to others. You will have to be intentional about creating time freedom for yourself.
When you get into Entrepreneurship and work hard at it for a while, you sort of know what you’re doing, even if you haven’t made money yet. You become shrewd and hard working, realizing that results and success aren’t guaranteed. You find a sense of freedom in frugality at a young age, knowing that the possibility of retiring young is just around the corner. I don’t really look ahead to my 50s of 60s when it comes to finances. Focusing on being relatively poor in the here and now is what motivates me.
If had chosen to be a doctor, my life would be markedly different. I would be somewhere between college and med school. Locked in. But I would have status. My allowance from my parents would be big. Women would want to marry me. People would ask me questions. People don’t really seem to think I have much to offer.
It’s a very different life, and you notice it when you’re in the thick of things and working. It’s too bad I’ve actually experienced a taste of freedom. In world where building copycat businesses seems to add immense benfit to human
But sometimes I do wonder what life would have been like if I had done something more normal. I would have more cash in my pocket, but a narrower vision. Or maybe my current vision is just delusion.
If you want to be wealthy for the sake of showing off, don’t do it. If you want to show off, get a dirt cheap degree, a good job, and learn how to manage a small debt portfolio. It’s a bit risky, but far less risky than starting a business. Starting a real, good business and creating financial freedom for yourself will give you no status if you’re spending wisely. This is because noone wants to be around some frugal guy, but the frugal business owner is the one who is awake to the current economic reality.
The truth is, I’ve always wanted time freedom more than I have wanted respect, money, or to date beautiful women. Building wealth optimizes for time freedom. Why? Because you can’t spend wealth that you don’t have. So building a nest egg the size of the average person’s retirement midway through life means you end up perfectly middle class, just with more time on your hands. Stopping at this point would likely represent a form of mediocrity for most, but time freedom does count for something. I wouldn’t want to be 40 feeling trapped in my medical career due to lifestyle inflation.
But life would be more comfortable right now if I had status. I would be more accepted in society, and things would feel easier. I would probably have a girlfriend or wife right now.
Time while you were young used to be valuable. But nowadays, the elderly are those who tend to be the most satisfied. Doctors and lawyers exercise more restraint than the general population. I would be surprised if more than 5% of the world population has a professional or master’s degree. It takes 7-10 years of study to put yourself in this position across the world. So if you can get these degrees at the right cost, you can create a good life for yourself. But there are tradeoffs to everything.
I’m pretty smart, and really hard working. Going the high-risk, high reward route looks like it’ll pan out for me over the next 15 years or so. I could be “set” in as little as four years from now. But it does nag at me that dilligently chasing superoptimal results often doesn’t really come with a white picket fence. Honestly, all this crap doesn’t even land you a date. It’s just the bare minimum to retire and raise a family.
So basically the instagram lifestyle is fake. But if you have a cool job title and are ok with dying upper middle class, you can become a professional and absolutely live it up. The experiences you have and the people you meet will be very real. Your 20s won’t be a blur that you want to forget. You’ll be in your 50s and reminiscient. If you can comitt to maintaining your status and position, you will definitely find that the time you invested was worthwhile.
Live fast when you’re young and be careful which path you chose in life. You have to know what you want life early, because the difference between contentment and crushing regret is extremely subtle.