I'd like to talk about a conversation I had this week, a book I'm reading, and some thoughts on work and freedom that I think somehow tie the whole thing together.
Earlier this week I was having a conversation with a woman who was telling me about her nephew. I didn't know too much about her. I gathered she was rather wealthy. She looked like she was in mid-late fifties and definitely a younger member of the baby boomer generation. I tell you all these things because I think they help provide context for our conversation and I think help me to understand where she might be coming from. Let's pretend her name is Kathy.
Anyways we were talking about how it seems that younger generations can't seem to stay in one job for very long. I was trying hard to not incriminate myself. I'm one of those guys who get bored with jobs almost every 18 months like clockwork. I got the sense that she wouldn't approve of my occupational wanderlust.
She described for me how her nephew was emblematic of this problem. He sold life insurance and was apparently really good at it. He made great money. He received residuals in addition to his commission. This should have been a dream job. Kathy told me that she didn't understand why he didn't want to invest the next 15 or 20 years of his life into this. If he did he would be set for life. What was his problem?
This brings me to the Four Hour Work Week. For those who don't know this is a book written by Tim Ferriss. I'm only a third of the way in, so please no spoilers. In this book Ferriss talks about what he calls the New Rich, or NR. According to Ferriss the traditional way of making a living involved graduating from a good college, working for a good company for twenty-five years, then retiring to live the rest of your life, having finally attained the freedom you worked so hard to get.
The NR however don't want any part of that. Ferriss describes the NR as people who value time and freedom just as highly as income. Absolute Income isn't what's most important. The real metric that matters to the NR (and I'd like to expand this to almost all of us who think of themselves as Millennials) is Relative Income. The NR ask, "Who cares if you're making a six figure salary if you're working 80 hours a week?" It'd be better to bring home half that, if you get to work hours that don't threaten to send you to an early grave.
Additionally the NR question the idea of retirement. This could be because a lot of of graduated high school and college and walked into a job market during one of the worst recessions in history or the fact we watched our parent's and grandparent's life savings lose almost half their value when the market crashed. The whole idea of working our life away in jobs we don't really like until our bodies start to fail and then we get to sit back and enjoy our lives just sounds like a terrible deal.
And this brings me to where I'm at now. I'm definitely not a member of the NR. In fact I'm pretty broke most days, but I definitely agree with those sentiments. When Kathy was telling me about how she couldn't believe that her nephew would quit selling life insurance, I was like I get it. The thought of trading years of my life for drudgery and misery all so that when I'm 65 I can retire and then enjoy the fruits of my labor sound awful. I'm sorry, but I'll pass.
So in closing if you're young and like me, it's OK. There are a lot of us out there. You can live the life you want. You'll have to be creative and resourceful, but you'll figure it out. I have faith in you. If you're like Kathy and you just don't understand why we young whippersnappers don't just get with the program already; I promise you, we'll be OK. It's a big new world out there and the ways that you guys made your living doesn't necessarily work anymore. But you did a good job raising us and we'll find a way to become successful. Even if that success doesn't look like it would have 20 or 30 years ago.
Thanks so much for reading guys. You're all awesome.
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