I’ll have to share this story with Hubby. He’s an “onward and upward” sort of guy, always thinking of ways to make things better. We have a friend I’ll call “Mike.” Mike has a landscaping business. He is the sole employee and works pretty much when he feels like it. He gets his clients through word-of-mouth and makes enough to support himself in the simple lifestyle he prefers.
Every time we go to visit him, Hubby can hardly contain himself from giving suggestions on how he could increase his business. Mike just recently put in a greenhouse in which he sells his excess stock. Last time we were there, Hubby chatted about how much Mike could make if he’d hire someone to staff the greenhouse while he did landscaping, and really, if he hired some other landscapers, he could triple the number of jobs he could do . . .
Mike just listens and smiles. He doesn’t want to own a big company, and he doesn’t want to be rich. He just wants to putter around working when he needs money and spending the rest of his time in whatever leisure activities suit him. Mike already has his Fuck You money, even though his sofa is the same one he had back in college.
Hubby frets for him. On the drive home, he started wondering about what Mike would do for retirement, or if he got sick, or if any number of bad things happened. Hubby has insurance plans out the wazoo and can tell you exactly how much money is in our investments, what interest rate he’s getting. He has three scenario plans: one for if the market is good, one for average returns, and one for what to do if the market goes south. He’s got everything planned out down to minor details. (I once teased him by asking when he had us scheduled to die.)
I’m extremely fortunate to have him, because I don’t have the fiscal sense that God gave a goat. My parents taught me a strong work ethic, but they were “comfortable” and I never got the life lessons in budgeting, saving and planning that most people get. Without Hubby, I’d blithely spend myself into bankruptcy and spend my elder years eating dog food.
You got it exactly right, even the gender. While $60k is great for some parts of the country, if that was my whole income, I’d be foreclosed on within the year, and I’d have to give up luxuries like heat.
But here’s the point- once the Fisherman get’s too old to go out and fish, he won;t have any money at all, thus he won;t be able to “would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take a siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos”
Suppose we have an individual who wants to tell everybody to “fuck off”. It follows logically that this individual dislikes people. It follows logically that this individual dislikes himself or herself. A person who dislikes themself will never be able to relax, kick back, enjoy themself. They will never be “just fine”, they will never be happy, they will never be content. Consequently, this entire concept of “fuck you money” is invalid. The individual should instead figure out what their problem is, get that problem fixed, and learn to get along with their fellow members of the human race. Then they’ll be capable of relaxing, finding happiness, achieving inner peace, etc… regardless of how much money they have.
Firstly, the fisherman may never get to old to go out and fish. Secondly, should he somehow be crippled by disease or injury, he’ll probably be able to rely on his children, other family members, or amigos for finanical support, and maintain a lifestyle fairly similar to what he was used to.
You’re missing the point. Just because you have the ability to say “fuck off” to anybody doesn’t mean that you will actually say “fuck off” to everybody. It means that you don’t have to put up with asshole bosses, or neighbours, etc. The goal is to be able to be rude to those that deserve it, because you don’t need anything from them.
That’s so untrue. You make a higher rate of return butchering people in truly impoverished nations than you do in oil producing ones. Since the people are sick and poverty stricken and have no medicine, your costs are much lower and you make it up in volume.
It’s why the Pimco Third World Global Genocide Fund has consistently outperformed th S&P Global Oppression Index for 40 consecutive quarters.
I saw the thread title, and knew right away that Scylla was reading Cryptonomicon. I’ve read the book twice now, and gotten a good laugh out of the “Fuck You Money” section both times.
I get a better laugh though out of the combination of the Van Eck Phreak/Gomer Bulstrood furniture fetish punchline in Cryptonommicon and the knowledge that an uptight Puritan character in The Baroque Cycle is the selfsame Gomer.
Damn Straight. “Fuck You Money” means you can tell all the scumbags to fuck off and set about cleaning up your soul. It means you can devote your life to whatever you want and whatever you value.
Yeah but those years at the end of your life suck anyway.
I think the point is that people spend their entire lives working to make enough money to be free and end up enslaved to maintaining that lifestyle of “freedom”. It’s called “golden handcuffs”.
Only if I wasn’t the one who was paying you
The show Entourage has some great examples. Vince and Ari make tons of money as an actor and an agent respectively. It’s not “fuck you” money though because they have people they answer to - studio execs, ect, and people dependent on them. The more they get sucked into the lifestyle the more it becomes a necessity.
To have true “fuck you” money you can’t be dependent on anyone or anything for your income otherwise the only people you can tell to fuck off are little people.
Bingo. Dick Parsons pulls down about $12,000,000 a year as CEO of Time Warner, but there’s no way in hell that he could’ve told Carl Icahn to fuck off.
Well, by most people’s standards, he certainly could after working there for a year. If I made 12 mil in one year, I could make that last the rest of my life, no problem.
I don’t think so- I think it was more along the lines of drop dead money always costing more than you were willing to pay (not necessarily all in a monetary way…).
