Paul is 27 years old.
He has a college degree, possibly a master's degree too. He contemplated a PhD for a while but gave up on the idea because he's not stupid, he's different than the others - he's better than them.
He suffers from an inferiority complex (that he rarely admits) due to his modest upbringing and the fact that he missed out on some key aspects of life (again, as he says, due to his upbringing).
Paul believed for a time that he should just follow rules, go to school, find a job, just like his parents did, and he will be awarded. Paul might be coming from some post-communist country in Europe, but he might also be coming from the USA, UK, Canada or Japan - where the idea of an entire four person family easily living off of one salary was a given, not a hope or expectation.
He doesn't smoke, never contemplated drugs, he sometimes drinks socially, in the off chance he goes out partying or with a night out with friends, but never at home or as his first choice with food.
Paul found work straight out of college. No wonder, he was always above average and worked hard. Consulting, Big4, Big3, accounting, HR.
If Paul is by any chance from a third world country, he's probably outsourced, but it doesn't affect him that much, because the ratio of income:expenses remains more or less the same as his first world counterparts and colleagues.
Paul has some hard skills, he's proficient in Word, Excel, can automate and program things a bit even before ChatGPT, he has (had) a natural aptitude for it since a long time ago, but recently he doesn't feel like experimenting too much.
He prides himself on having a great work life balance, with decent perks such as mostly remotely working. He earns more than his dad does, more than most of his peers, but way less than some of his friend circle, and he's upset about this - quite a lot more in recent years.
He first found out about Bitcoin and crypto in 2017-2018, as most people did when it broke into the mainstream, but he was quickly dissuaded from it for 3 distinct reasons:
He had no money to invest at the time (remember, he's poor)
He realized its a ponzi because he saw it crater -70% from when he first saw it and contemplated putting in a pittance into it. He kinda regrets that now ngl, especially since friends he thought were not as smart as him made way more money than he did.
He realized its way too risky to buy now at all time highs (he LITERALLY saw it at 15k, and 10k, and he didn't buy..TWICE!), so he will stay sidelined - besides, there's other things to spend money on that are more important.
Despite that, out of desperation (and having more saved than he's never really had), he started DCAing his ever so small salary into various ETFs, uses IBKR/T212/Fidelity.
He has an instagram, but its either on private or he posts twice a year, double digit follower count (but in all honesty, he prefers it that way)
He's not too active in his highschool/university friend circle groupchats, but he has a few friends he speaks to more or less regularly, as well as some acquaintances from abroad.
He drifted apart from most people he was on great terms with before or even during COVID. He constantly doubts himself whether it's his fault.
He doomscrolls, but not Tiktok or YT shorts - instead, he scours various FIRE-related subreddits in English, and also his local financial subreddits. He knows his resources are limited, and believes only through careful planning that he can reach his goals.
But.. he knows that the dream of owning a home or paying off his parents' bills and mortgages is pretty much zero in the next 10 years, unless something changes.
He feels its too late for him at 27; because he missed several key milestones in life, but he feels that if he starts rushing to reach these milestones, everything will fall apart and he will revert back to what life was like before he worked a full time job.
He openly resents his parents for being poor as a result of not being assertive and "hungry" enough in their youth, and he has the higher salary than they have to back those claims up. But the worst thing about him really becomes apparent here:
He believes that everything should be optimized for. This is the main issue with him - this has become his daily mantra.
He feels too late for the milestones I previously mentioned, partially due to his own aloof behavior (not really) and partially due to never having the starting position his peers did and now he's lagging behind them.
As such believes measures of austerity and deep calculation are needed.
He overthinks things - by a lot. He'd tell you he's not autistic, after all he rarely cranks out the Excel to calculate things.
But his entire life since graduation has been a series of optimizations and avoiding the sub-optimal experiences.
He has zero spontaneity. He will spend 30 hours researching a decision that will perhaps cost him 100 dollars more or less (which is often times just a coinflip anyways), but he's come to enjoy the process so much because to him its become almost like therapy.
When he is overthinking - he's in his flow state.
When he's pursuing a hobby or evaluating the pursuit of one - he's acting rationally and futureproofing.
When he's researching his optimal life path - he's planning, not procrastinating.
When he travels, its usually for work (because work pays for it, yay), maybe once a year, but every now and again he will get the Instagram LiveLaughLove bug and decide to go somewhere solo traveling.
He doesn't go traveling with friends because:
He has a tight work schedule that doesn't allow for it (he's scared to leave the country with his laptop because he worries the company might find out and he won't be GDPR compliant), despite bragging about how easy it is to cruise by with a 2h workday.
He's declined invitations so many times for stupid reasons (read above) that he just doesn't get them from friends anymore.
He feels he is not "ready" for bigger trips such as a Japan/China/Southeast Asia backpacking trip because he's never done smaller trips before.
He will, however, often mention to friends that he will travel on his own accord and on his own schedule.
He sends screenshots to friends of various booking websites, price aggregators, asks if "is this a normal price for X in Y during Z month" because the friend had already been there a few months before - more as a conversation starter and a cry for help than his inability to check historical prices.
The friends gloss over this because they're tired of putting up with his inability to be a normal human being and often these messages and rationalizations are forwarded to other people in separate groupchats that know him too, and laughed at.
When he does do a solo trip, out of desperation and boredom from the day-to-day, he realizes quickly that he overpaid for it compared to had he gone with friends.
Accommodation costs are higher because he didn't stay in a hostel (afraid) He went in the wrong season (everything is more expensive)
For the longest time, material things eluded him - because the family was barely scraping by.
An OLED TV is something he always wanted to own. Perhaps a PS5 with it too. A Macbook (he always hated Apple, but he realized how cool MBPs are from work)
Of course, the latest iPhone - bought and paid in full, not on credit, because he's not only heard but felt the brunt of consumer loans and predatory interest rates when his father took loans back in '08/'09 just to keep the family afloat. He never buys anything on credit - the math shows you're more likely to lose than not.
When he got those from the first few salaries, he started chasing all the things he wanted 10 or 15 years ago - Pokemon/YuGiOh cards, old video games, signed memorabilia, imports, bidding wars on ebay/yahoo auctions.
But, every few months he will relapse:
"What the f did I just waste my money on" "I'm still going to be living with parents 10 years from now in a cramped 1 bedroom apartment except I'll have all this junk I've been hoarding, fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK" "Why did I not wait 4 months to pay $300 less for that stupid iPhone Air..I could have DCA'd more"
Paul will give some of these items away, often to family members, in disgust and shame that he got tricked by the advertising Wehrmacht that is peer pressure and unrealized dreams from back when he was a child.
For all his consumer habits, he is aware that he doesn't need much to be happy - but he feels he can't do anything about it.
If he doesn't consume and have something physical to show that he's been promoted to the upper echelons of society - he gets depressed.
What's important to preface is that he's not incelpilled. However, he is not someone who actively seeks out friendships or romantic relationships.
His closest friends (the ones still left) tell him:
brother, you are a ticking time bomb - if you continue at this rate you'll go insane at 40 years old and commit some crimes or something lmfao just go out and have fun man
Every time he's met with the happy-go-lucky attitude of his (privileged?) peers his mind takes it half as a personal insult, half as a genuine advice that's coming from someone who just had a better luck of the draw in life:
"I have my own schedule, I have my own time to do stuff, I'm not you, you don't get to tell me what to do and when to do it" - he types out but refuses to send, because he knows how pathetic and angry it looks.
He deletes and instead swiftly sends: "bro lmao chill we'll go next year together jfc"
They never do - because time waits for no one.
To him, Naval and YouTube podcasts on self-improvement are nothing more but softcore pornography. It just doesn't do anything for him anymore. It used to, a while back, but not anymore.
He requires more esoteric knowledge - newsletters from people with <1000 followers, X articles, one-line quips on X that make him go "woah.."
He shares viral motivational oneoff tidbits in the whatsapp chats with the remainder of his friend circle and in private.
They all agree or maybe drop a 3 line discussion about the content, but nothing gets acted on by anybody.
That doesn't irk him, but every few months he will fall into a state of deep depression where he doesn't know what to do next. It's dangerous.
By scrolling, bookmarking, screenshotting, categorizing all the great advice he can find on this website, he's fooling himself into, yet again, "optimizing" for the future.
Utterly pathetic to everyone around him but not him.
To him, nothing is ever a failure - everything is a lesson and a data point.
He is incapable of admitting failure.
Because there's nothing to admit, he was always and still is smarter than most.
The hard data proves it - he's employed, he lives a great life (with his parents or roommates he doesn't really have issues with), and he's never had it better in terms of physical items that he owns.
Whether he lives with roommates in NYC or with his parents in the suburbs of a third world country - he doesn't plan on moving (although he often contemplates the pros and cons, asks ChatGPT about it) because it's -EV to move; he works remotely after all, why would he cut his disposable income in half just to live a few miles away from the 1bedroom apartment he shares?
He's been taking increasingly longer walks during daytime though, and often times he cannot sit in one place at home, he needs to get out of this home, even though often times its just him, because it is suffocating him - quite literally.
There's no logic behind the walks, there's no immediate need for them other than a compulsion he picked up a few years ago, strangely enough AFTER the pandemic.
He never had a serious relationships because KNOWS he's young - everything is practice to him.
"Time is working in my favour" - says the increasingly nervous man for God knows which time today.
He's not really violent, boastful, neither does he have a holier-than-thou attitude - at least not until you push his buttons and like a rabid animal in a corner, he's forced to lash out at you for trying to make his life better with actionable but mostly honest advice (you've known him for many years).
He never picked up any sports as a kid because they were poor and these things cost money (or so he'll tell you), and he just preferred to do intellectual things.
He does contemplate going to the gym, but he more often researches stuff because he's afraid of lifting something wrong and hurting himself, than actually spending the time there.
He worries about the future a lot, but not really.
In fact, when it comes to future most of the time, he regularly traverses between the two modes.
It mostly depends on what he reads that day and what happens at work - at one point he will be back, at another point he'll become very upset at the headlines such as "AI will replace you" and "have you skilled up enough?"
He believes in "upskilling" himself, and he knows that moving abroad is in the cards for him, he's just not sure when, where, how - because he's actually got a fairly decent thing going on for him, most of his peers work 8 hours a day and commute, he's got a decently (but globally speaking, lowly) paid remote job, or if not - he's doing just fine where he is even with rent prices.
If you've made it this far and you've found yourself in this, I have only one question for you, Paul:
When are you going to start living life?
katexbt
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