Synthetic intelligence (AI) is inflicting an existential disaster for a lot of staff, myself included. With the rise of AI, I’ve usually discovered myself questioning: what’s the purpose? If AI goes to take over, why trouble attempting?
Perhaps you’ve felt the identical method—apprehensive about the right way to safeguard your future from AI. Or maybe you’re a dad or mum questioning if there’ll even be good jobs on your children after spending a fortune on their schooling. If that’s the case, this publish could enable you and your youngsters put together for what may very well be a difficult future.
The Existential Disaster You Would possibly Face
An existential disaster is a interval of deep questioning about life’s which means, goal, or worth. It usually includes grappling with questions like:
- Why am I right here?
- What’s the goal of life?
- Does something I do actually matter?
These crises will be triggered by main life occasions like loss, failure, growing older, technological change, or transitions comparable to retirement or a profession change. Whereas they’ll really feel overwhelming—bringing anxiousness, despair, or a way of being misplaced—in addition they current alternatives for private development and a renewed focus in your priorities.
After I first retired in 2012, I confronted my very own existential disaster. It took me years to regulate and discover peace in my new function. I don’t need AI to set off an analogous disaster for you, making every part you’ve labored for really feel out of date. That will be a double intestine punch.
The fact is, all good issues ultimately come to an finish. When that second comes, you’ll both panic or adapt and discover methods to thrive. And when you’re studying this, I do know you’re the sort to plan forward and rise to the problem.
The Good Factor About Being Unemployed Or Retired
The silver lining of being unemployed or retired is that there’s no job for synthetic intelligence to take from you. Nonetheless, when you’re seeking to re-enter the workforce, discovering a job will seemingly be a lot more durable. For retirees, you would possibly merely end up as an bystander, observing AI’s disruption of the labor market from the sidelines.
As a semi-retiree working Monetary Samurai, even this website is going through an existential disaster of its personal. With AI firms like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity copying my work with out attribution, and Google prioritizing AI-generated content material taken from writers on the high of search outcomes, driving site visitors to the location is changing into more and more difficult.
Initially, my plan was to function Monetary Samurai for 10 years—from July 2009 to July 2019—after which step away from the inventive endeavor. Nonetheless, the start of my daughter in December 2019 and the pandemic gave me a renewed sense of goal and extra time to jot down. I had insights to share, worries to course of, and a need to report this distinctive time in our lives.
Now that the pandemic is behind us and AI has arrived in full pressure, my need to pivot and do one thing new has grown once more. I’m now greater than 5 years previous my authentic objective of working this website. Generally, it’s essential to acknowledge when the top of a chapter is close to and embrace the chance to maneuver ahead.
Existential Disaster Survival Plan Due To Synthetic Intelligence
Though I don’t depend on Monetary Samurai for survival, it has offered supplemental retirement revenue that I’ve grown accustomed to incomes for over a decade. Since 2009, I’ve additionally devoted roughly 20 hours every week to sustaining the location. Dropping that revenue, together with abruptly having 20 further hours of free time every week, can be a major adjustment.
Right here’s my existential disaster survival plan for Monetary Samurai—and for my youngsters, who will seemingly face an excellent more durable time getting forward in an AI-driven world. This survival information must also enable you higher put together in case your occupation is vulnerable to AI distribution as effectively.
1) Estimate if you’ll lose your job or livelihood attributable to AI
Simply as actuaries calculate life expectancy to design worthwhile insurance policy, we should always estimate how lengthy our job or enterprise would possibly final earlier than being eradicated by AI. Develop a worst-case, base-case, and best-case state of affairs.
With practical timelines for the way a lot incomes potential stays, you may higher put together for the worst-case end result. The extra time you must plan, the higher geared up you’ll be. Don’t be complacent—many individuals stay unaware of the speedy developments in AI and the businesses driving them, leaving them unprepared for what’s coming.
Personally, I’ve set a base-case state of affairs that Monetary Samurai will probably be rendered out of date by December 31, 2027. This timeline offers me sufficient room to arrange, although the top might arrive sooner with any of the frequent Google algorithm updates all year long.
Beneath is one in all quite a few examples of particular person, hard-working creators getting punished by Google and AI for no good motive. Her site visitors retains happening after some head-fakes. I anticipate this to occur to me sooner or later out of the blue.
2) Save Aggressively—Past What You Thought Potential
Together with your estimated timeline of demise, it’s essential to push your financial savings charge to the best doable degree. My suggestion is a minimal of fifty%, and far increased in case your timeline is brief.
In the event you save and make investments 50% of your after-tax revenue yearly, you successfully purchase your self one yr of monetary freedom for yearly you’re employed. But when it can save you 70%, you acquire 2.33 years of freedom for yearly you save.
Personally, I plan to extend my financial savings charge from on-line revenue to 90% (up from an 80% common) till December 31, 2027. It’s not 100% as a result of my passive funding revenue falls in need of totally protecting our present dwelling bills after we purchased a brand new home in 2023.
Embrace my motto: “If the sum of money you are saving every month does not harm, you are not saving sufficient!” This can be a matter of monetary survival. Push your self to avoid wasting as a lot as you probably can, beginning now.
3) Diversify Your Investments to Increase Passive Earnings
Boosting your financial savings charge is simply a part of the equation. To safe your monetary future, you additionally want to take a position these financial savings in property with the potential for constructive returns. Given the existential disaster going through you and your job, it’s finest to deal with three core funding courses: shares, bonds, and actual property.
Incomes an affordable return, say 4%–8%, in your investments will additional speed up your monetary freedom. This is a web value asset allocation framework to think about when you’re in search of a logical approach to make investments.
Your final objective needs to be to generate sufficient passive funding revenue to cowl 100% of your required dwelling bills. If reaching that milestone feels too bold, goal for a minimum of the Minimal Funding Quantity that makes work elective. Alternatively, goal a web value (excluding your major residence) of 25X–50X your annual bills.
By December 31, 2027, I hope to attain full protection of our dwelling bills by means of passive funding revenue. If I can hit that concentrate on, I’ll be financially unbiased sufficient that the affect of AI on my energetic revenue will now not matter.
4) Diversify Your Energetic Earnings Streams
As you construct your financial savings and diversify your passive revenue, it’s equally essential to diversify your energetic revenue streams. Ideally, you’ll wish to deal with abilities or merchandise which might be more durable for AI to copy. In different phrases, take into consideration jobs that require in-person interplay and hands-on work.
For instance, you can construct a clientele instructing a musical instrument, teaching a sport, or providing private providers like tutoring. Alternatively, you can leverage your skilled experience to seek the advice of one-on-one with shoppers who want your steering. The much less dependent your work is on AI, the higher.
Study To Use Your Palms
Personally, I’m contemplating constructing a clientele for pickleball and tennis classes. Each time I go to my native public park on a weekday, I see tennis coaches charging $120–$140 per hour. It’s an effective way to satisfy folks, get pleasure from some sunshine and train, and receives a commission. Going from writing 20 hours every week to teaching for 20 hours every week might generate a minimum of $2,400 every week. That is nice supplemental retirement revenue!
I might additionally improve my private finance consulting efforts, one thing I do not actively promote on Monetary Samurai attributable to overwhelming demand. Many individuals need to seek for my web page to search out these providers, however it’s one other avenue to pursue by means of December 31, 2027.
Diversifying your energetic revenue streams is just sensible monetary planning. Take a look at how creators on TikTok are branching out to Instagram and YouTube, simply in case TikTok will get banned.
5) Develop Your Private Model
Everyone has a private model, whether or not they understand it or not. The one approach to thrive in a world the place every part is changing into commoditized is to face out. To attain this, constructing a private model that individuals acknowledge and belief is important.
A robust private model ought to embody these key qualities:
- Reliability
- Likability
- Dependability
- Creativity
In the event you will be each reliable and likable, you’re greater than midway there. Folks naturally promote and rent these they determine with. In the event you don’t belong to the bulk, it’s much more essential to develop a private model that units you aside.
To amplify your private model—or just make it discoverable—it’s best to have your individual web site. Consider it as a dynamic resume the place you showcase who you’re and what you’re as much as. Employers and traders admire the chance to study you earlier than committing to a partnership.
Charisma and Communication Expertise Matter Most
Whereas intelligence will at all times be helpful, AI has already claimed the title of the neatest agent. As extra folks study to leverage AI to perform duties, the premium positioned on being exceptionally sensible will diminish over time.
What is going to matter most is your capacity to speak successfully and develop charisma—abilities that construct belief and encourage others to observe your lead. Do you converse along with your chest out and enunciate your phrases? Do you look somebody within the eye and know when to smile or present empathy? Have you learnt the right way to correctly use your palms when talking? Are you story teller?
In case your faculty or school doesn’t supply programs in branding and communication, it’s important to hunt out these courses independently and decide to practising them. Will probably be a lot more durable to outlive, not to mention get forward, when you wouldn’t have the nice capacity to attach with folks.
6) Make investments Aggressively in Synthetic Intelligence Firms
In the event you can’t beat AI firms by way of their affect in your profession, you would possibly as effectively be a part of them. By investing in AI firms, you may hedge in opposition to a troublesome future for your self and your youngsters. It’s clear to me that many roles are vulnerable to being eradicated by AI. Even bodily jobs like driving for Uber or delivering groceries are threatened by autonomous vehicles and robots.
Ever since AI turned a game-changer in 2022, I’ve ramped up my investments in each private and non-private AI firms. As a result of I strongly consider within the AI pattern, I am much less involved with valuations extra targeted on its long-term affect on the labor market.
I personal shares in public firms like Google, Microsoft, Apple, NVIDIA, Tesla, and Meta. As well as, I’ve been dollar-cost averaging into Fundrise’s Enterprise product, which invests in high personal AI firms and different personal development firms.
My objective is to construct a $500,000 place in personal AI-related investments and by December 31, 2027. Coupled with my public AI-related investments, I’ll have over $2 million in publicity.
If the $2 million compounds at 6% – 15% a yr for 20 years, it’s going to develop to $6.4 – $32.7 million. With this sum of money, my then grownup youngsters ought to have the ability to stay on a minimal wage job or no job for some time.
7) Make investments For Your Kids At present
I’ve lived in San Francisco since 2001 and have moved by means of 5 totally different neighborhoods throughout that point. In every of those neighborhoods, a minimum of one in all my neighbors has been an grownup man who nonetheless lives at residence together with his mother and father or resides alone in his mother and father’ houses. The explanation? None of them could make sufficient cash to stay comfortably on their very own.
In 10–20 years, synthetic intelligence will make it even more durable for younger folks to search out well-paying jobs. This actuality means it is as much as mother and father to avoid wasting and make investments aggressively for our youngsters’s futures at this time.
This contains opening custodial funding accounts, contributing to Roth IRAs, saving in 529 plans, and shopping for rental properties for profession insurance coverage. As well as, we should educate our youngsters sensible abilities to allow them to use their palms to earn.
Image a world the place, after spending 17–21 years at school, and probably accumulating vital school debt, your children are informed they’ll’t even get a job at McDonald’s as a result of meals prep and cashier duties are automated. Now think about your 30-year-old son, nonetheless dwelling at residence eight years after school, unable to make use of his $1 million pc science diploma as a result of his abilities are now not in demand.
Even at this time, the median revenue for Ivy League graduates 10 years after graduating is simply about $91,000. That’s not significantly excessive for people who ranked within the high 1% of their highschool class and will have paid a premium for his or her schooling.
8) Study How To Use Extra AI Apps To Enhance Your Productiveness
You don’t must be nice at math anymore—simply know the right way to use a calculator. To guard your self from AI disrupting your life, it’s essential to grasp as many AI apps as doable. Whereas most individuals follow ChatGPT and Anthropic, there’s a whole ecosystem of AI instruments designed that can assist you excel at your job. Right here’s an inventory of a few of them:
I’ll use AI for higher voice dictation so I can write my posts whereas within the scorching tub. I’m additionally exploring AI apps that may report podcasts in my voice, create movies, and perhaps even draft posts that sound like me—with my edits, after all. Lastly, I’ll improve my web site’s search field to an AI-powered model that may reply any query primarily based on the content material I’ve written.
9) Develop Good Relationships By Serving to Others
Lastly, if we discover ourselves going through a dire future due to AI, robust relationships will probably be important for survival. The wealthiest and strongest people are more likely to change into much more dominant. That’s why it’s essential to start out constructing connections with them at this time, ideally earlier than they’re big successes.
When alternatives are scarce, folks naturally prioritize their very own circles, and people with wealth and energy aren’t any exception. In the event you don’t resemble or share frequent floor with them, deal with being helpful. The extra you may contribute and assist others, the extra seemingly they’ll reciprocate if you want it most.
Benefit from the Good Instances Whereas They Final
Embrace the fact that synthetic intelligence will ultimately get rid of your job and put you out to pasture. Perceive that every one the hassle and cash you are spending elevating your youngsters to achieve success, unbiased adults could in the end be for nothing.
I have not been this assured a few long-term funding pattern since I invested closely in heartland actual property again in 2016 and 2017, believing in a demographic shift to lower-cost areas of the nation. These investments have usually turned out effectively, particularly after the pandemic accelerated working from residence. After all, some investments have been large zeroes as workplace and lodge took large hits.
Sure, perhaps I’m overly influenced by dwelling in San Francisco, the place the highest AI firms have been based or have workplaces. However I converse to workers at these corporations and enterprise capitalists usually, and there is not any stopping AI from disrupting most of our lives. It’s already disrupted mine, beginning with the elimination of my father’s job as a Monetary Samurai editor.
Let’s profit from the time we’ve got left with the roles we maintain and the businesses we run. Finally, they might be gone, however by then, we’ll hopefully have constructed sufficient monetary energy to be simply advantageous.
Reader Questions About The AI Existential Disaster
Readers, how are you making ready for the existential disaster that AI poses to your job, firm, or product? How are you defending your self and your youngsters from a future the place your providers could now not be wanted? Do you suppose you’ll have the ability to get wealthy sufficient to not care in regards to the destruction AI will deliver?
To expedite your journey to monetary freedom, be a part of over 60,000 others and subscribe to the free Monetary Samurai publication and to my posts as quickly as they arrive out. Monetary Samurai is among the many largest independently-owned private finance web sites, established in 2009. The whole lot is written primarily based on firsthand expertise.
