Quote:
Originally Posted by leftcoastman
I guess I'm not making myself clear.
With $500k in the bank, you can leave and do whatever the hell you want, as long as you don't live the consumption lifestyle. What I have seen as I have made more money (and certainly my friends who make beaucoup bucks), you develop more and more expensive tastes. You just up the ante and have to make more to support that lifestyle. Some of my friends laughed at me for getting a 335i and said, "Dude, if I were you, I'd buy that 430. You don't want to show up rolling in a pedestrian car like a BMW."
Frankly speaking, you don't need much to survive. Once you get a taste of the forbidden fruit, nothing else will do.
I hate to say it, but I assume you are young - like lower 20s at most. I hope you don't take offense to this.
Don't get me wrong - I am a capitalist to the core. I'm just happy I escaped the fate of the finance lifestyle, a lifestyle in which very few people find fulfillment. Same with my close brush with lawyerdom after undergrad. A girl I dated back in school is now starting her law career - STANDARD starting salary is $160k. They are all miserable, however. I'll probably make more money in my current field anyways, since I love and therefore put a lot of effort into what I do.
That's just my thought process. Yours is not better or worse, just different. Different strokes....
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No I'm not in my lower 20s and I think you are quite a way off the mark to say you can do what you want on $500K. Consumption for some does not have a limit...but doing what you want does have a price. If what you want for example is to have 2 homes, a couple cars at each, 2 part time staff for each house and to do unlimited travelling....then there is a price to that. You could probably afford to keep it all going with $50 Million. Once you get passed that hurdle, then you can leave when ever you want. What I am saying about all these people you seem to know who up the ante every year at the consumption jamboree is that they probably enjoy what they are doing. And the whole consumption argument is a little flawed in that there is always an arugment that a person can do with less...we made it this far by starting in caves without fire. Having a BMW and scoffing at consumption is a little counter intuitive regardless of the model. Some people just like cars. Jay Leno has a ton of them, but last I checked he doesn't yearn for the latest cubists auctioned at Sotheby's. If what you truly want is a small apartment in a small mid-western town and you truly don't want any things, then you're $500K might be just fine....but then that guy probably didn't contemplate a private equity job in the first place. And I think you can keep upping the ante on consumption until you are done. Personally I wouldn't want 25 houses, 6 yachts and 4 jets and I don't have an appreciation for paintings and sculptures but a couple of houses, a boat and some cars would be something I do want...and that comes with a price.
There doesn't have to be a conflict with making money and enjoying the job or even putting in hours. I've come off some seriously tough weeks and felt great about it. From the outside, many would say that an 80 hour week is ludicrous but there are many that enjoy it, and for many, the money is the end game.
Oh and the dude above who said all hedge funds want are math wizzes is incorrect. Some quant funds do want modellers but others just want traders to execute orders or analysts to churn through data. There is a ton of software already out there and all the math in the world won't make a perfect trader, otherwise markets would all be predictable and none of us would have anything to talk about. Guys like Carl Ichan don't create an algorithm to make a decision.