Rob Fitz “How to Screw Up Your Life by Getting Promoted” (The Startup Toolkit):
Maybe the smartest thing I’ve done over the past few years is to avoid raising my expenses.
I have friends who took jobs in finance 2 years ago, saying it was just to get settled and gain some experience and save some cash before doing what they really wanted.
But then, each year’s raise goes into a slightly bigger flat and slightly nicer restaurants. And just a couple years later they’re looking at the life they used to dream about and saying, “Well, I’d love to, but I just don’t see how I could afford to live with that sort of salary.”
Strong people fall for this trap. It’s poisonous.
As I’ve said previously, career entrepreneurship looks like someone living well below their means and re-investing that financial freedom in the seeds for future opportunities: developing relationships, projects, and themselves.
Building something interesting requires a surplus of time and money. Salaried jobs provide neither. Unless the job itself is your dream, stay the fuck away from them.
P.S. I just wrote a book on bootstrapping indie startups called MAKE. And I'm now on Twitter too if you'd like to follow more of my adventures. I don't use email so tweet me your questions.