Artificial intelligence (AI) is causing an existential crisis for many workers, myself included. With the rise of AI, I’ve often found myself wondering: what’s the point? If AI is going to take over, why bother trying?
Maybe you’ve felt the same way—worried about how to safeguard your future from AI. Or perhaps you’re a parent wondering if there will even be good jobs for your kids after spending a fortune on their education. If so, this post may help you and your children prepare for what could be a challenging future.
The Existential Crisis You Might Face
An existential crisis is a period of deep questioning about life’s meaning, purpose, or value. It often involves grappling with questions like:
- Why am I here?
- What is the purpose of life?
- Does anything I do really matter?
These crises can be triggered by major life events like loss, failure, aging, technological change, or transitions such as retirement or a career change. While they can feel overwhelming—bringing anxiety, despair, or a sense of being lost—they also present opportunities for personal growth and a renewed focus on your priorities.
When I first retired in 2012, I faced my own existential crisis. It took me years to adjust and find peace in my new role. I don’t want AI to trigger a similar crisis for you, making everything you’ve worked for feel obsolete. That would be a double gut punch.
The reality is, all good things eventually come to an end. When that moment comes, you’ll either panic or adapt and find ways to thrive. And if you’re reading this, I know you’re the type to plan ahead and rise to the challenge.
The Good Thing About Being Unemployed Or Retired
The silver lining of being unemployed or retired is that there’s no job for artificial intelligence to take from you. However, if you’re looking to re-enter the workforce, finding a job will likely be much harder. For retirees, you might simply find yourself as an interested bystander, observing AI’s disruption of the labor market from the sidelines.
As a semi-retiree running Financial Samurai, even this site is facing an existential crisis of its own. With AI companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity copying my work without attribution, and Google prioritizing AI-generated content taken from writers at the top of search results, driving traffic to the site is becoming increasingly challenging.
Originally, my plan was to operate Financial Samurai for 10 years—from July 2009 to July 2019—and then step away from the creative endeavor. However, the birth of my daughter in December 2019 and the pandemic gave me a renewed sense of purpose and more time to write. I had insights to share, worries to process, and a desire to record this unique time in our lives.
Now that the pandemic is behind us and AI has arrived in full force, my desire to pivot and do something new has grown again. I’m now more than five years past my original goal of running this site. Sometimes, it’s important to acknowledge when the end of a chapter is near and embrace the opportunity to move forward.
Existential Crisis Survival Plan Due To Artificial Intelligence
Although I don’t rely on Financial Samurai for survival, it has provided supplemental retirement income that I’ve grown accustomed to earning for over a decade. Since 2009, I’ve also dedicated roughly 20 hours a week to maintaining the site. Losing that income, along with suddenly having 20 extra hours of free time each week, would be a significant adjustment.
Here’s my existential crisis survival plan for Financial Samurai—and for my children, who will likely face an even tougher time getting ahead in an AI-driven world. This survival guide should also help you better prepare if your occupation is at risk of AI distribution as well.
1) Estimate when you'll lose your job or livelihood due to AI
Just as actuaries calculate life expectancy to design profitable insurance plans, we should estimate how long our job or business might last before being eliminated by AI. Develop a worst-case, base-case, and best-case scenario.
With realistic timelines for how much earning potential remains, you can better prepare for the worst-case outcome. The more time you have to plan, the better equipped you’ll be. Don’t be complacent—many people remain unaware of the rapid advancements in AI and the companies driving them, leaving them unprepared for what’s coming.
Personally, I’ve set a base-case scenario that Financial Samurai will be rendered obsolete by December 31, 2027. This timeline gives me enough room to prepare, though the end could arrive sooner with any of the frequent Google algorithm updates throughout the year.
Below is one of numerous examples of individual, hard-working creators getting punished by Google and AI for no good reason. Her traffic keeps going down after some head-fakes. I expect this to happen to me one day out of the blue.
2) Save Aggressively—Beyond What You Thought Possible
With your estimated timeline of demise, it’s crucial to push your savings rate to the highest possible level. My recommendation is a minimum of 50%, and much higher if your timeline is short.
If you save and invest 50% of your after-tax income annually, you effectively buy yourself one year of financial freedom for every year you work. But if you can save 70%, you gain 2.33 years of freedom for every year you save.
Personally, I plan to increase my savings rate from online income to 90% (up from an 80% average) until December 31, 2027. It’s not 100% because my passive investment income falls short of fully covering our current living expenses after we bought a new house in 2023.
Embrace my motto: “If the amount of money you're saving each month doesn't hurt, you're not saving enough!” This is a matter of financial survival. Push yourself to save as much as you possibly can, starting now.
3) Diversify Your Investments to Boost Passive Income
Boosting your savings rate is only part of the equation. To secure your financial future, you also need to invest those savings in assets with the potential for positive returns. Given the existential crisis facing you and your job, it’s best to focus on three core investment classes: stocks, bonds, and real estate.
Earning a reasonable return, say 4%–8%, on your investments will further accelerate your financial freedom. Here's a net worth asset allocation framework to consider if you’re seeking a logical way to invest.
Your ultimate goal should be to generate enough passive investment income to cover 100% of your desired living expenses. If reaching that milestone feels too ambitious, aim for at least the Minimum Investment Amount that makes work optional. Alternatively, target a net worth (excluding your primary residence) of 25X–50X your annual expenses.
By December 31, 2027, I hope to achieve full coverage of our living expenses through passive investment income. If I can hit that target, I’ll be financially independent enough that the impact of AI on my active income will no longer matter.
4) Diversify Your Active Income Streams
As you build your savings and diversify your passive income, it’s equally important to diversify your active income streams. Ideally, you’ll want to focus on skills or products that are harder for AI to replicate. In other words, think about jobs that require in-person interaction and hands-on work.
For example, you could build a clientele teaching a musical instrument, coaching a sport, or offering personal services like tutoring. Alternatively, you could leverage your professional expertise to consult one-on-one with clients who need your guidance. The less dependent your work is on AI, the better.
Learn To Use Your Hands
Personally, I’m considering building a clientele for pickleball and tennis lessons. Every time I visit my local public park on a weekday, I see tennis coaches charging $120–$140 per hour. It’s a great way to meet people, enjoy some sunshine and exercise, and get paid. Going from writing 20 hours a week to coaching for 20 hours a week could generate at least $2,400 a week. That's great supplemental retirement income!
I could also increase my personal finance consulting efforts, something I don't actively promote on Financial Samurai due to overwhelming demand. Many people have to search for my page to find these services, but it’s another avenue to pursue through December 31, 2027.
Diversifying your active income streams is simply smart financial planning. Look at how creators on TikTok are branching out to Instagram and YouTube, just in case TikTok gets banned.
5) Grow Your Personal Brand
Everybody has a personal brand, whether they know it or not. The only way to thrive in a world where everything is becoming commoditized is to stand out. To achieve this, building a personal brand that people recognize and trust is essential.
A strong personal brand should embody these key qualities:
- Reliability
- Likability
- Dependability
- Creativity
If you can be both dependable and likable, you’re more than halfway there. People naturally promote and hire those they identify with. If you don’t belong to the majority, it’s even more crucial to develop a personal brand that sets you apart.
To amplify your personal brand—or simply make it discoverable—you should have your own website. Think of it as a dynamic resume where you showcase who you are and what you’re up to. Employers and investors appreciate the opportunity to learn about you before committing to a partnership.
Charisma and Communication Skills Matter Most
While intelligence will always be valuable, AI has already claimed the title of the smartest agent. As more people learn to leverage AI to accomplish tasks, the premium placed on being exceptionally smart will diminish over time.
What will matter most is your ability to communicate effectively and develop charisma—skills that build trust and inspire others to follow your lead. Do you speak with your chest out and enunciate your words? Do you look someone in the eye and know when to smile or show empathy? Do you know how to properly use your hands when speaking? Are you a good story teller?
If your school or college doesn’t offer courses in branding and communication, it’s essential to seek out these classes independently and commit to practicing them. It will be much harder to survive, let alone get ahead, if you do not have the great ability to connect with people.
6) Invest Aggressively in Artificial Intelligence Companies
If you can’t beat AI companies in terms of their impact on your career, you might as well join them. By investing in AI companies, you can hedge against a difficult future for yourself and your children. It’s clear to me that many jobs are at risk of being eliminated by AI. Even physical jobs like driving for Uber or delivering groceries are threatened by autonomous cars and robots.
Ever since AI became a game-changer in 2022, I’ve ramped up my investments in both public and private AI companies. Because I strongly believe in the AI trend, I'm less concerned with valuations more focused on its long-term impact on the labor market.
I own shares in public companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, NVIDIA, Tesla, and Meta. In addition, I’ve been dollar-cost averaging into Fundrise’s Venture product, which invests in top private AI companies and other private growth companies. The minimum is only $10 and there is zero carry.
My goal is to build a $500,000 position in private AI-related investments and by December 31, 2027. Coupled with my public AI-related investments, I will have over $2 million in exposure.
If the $2 million compounds at 6% – 15% a year for 20 years, it will grow to $6.4 – $32.7 million. With this amount of money, my then adult children should be able to live on a minimum wage job or no job for a while.
7) Invest For Your Children Today
I've lived in San Francisco since 2001 and have moved through five different neighborhoods during that time. In each of these neighborhoods, at least one of my neighbors has been an adult man who still lives at home with his parents or is living alone in his parents' homes. The reason? None of them can make enough money to live comfortably on their own.
In 10–20 years, artificial intelligence will make it even harder for young people to find well-paying jobs. This reality means it's up to parents to save and invest aggressively for our children’s futures today.
This includes opening custodial investment accounts, contributing to Roth IRAs, saving in 529 plans, and buying rental properties for career insurance. In addition, we must teach our children practical skills so they can use their hands to earn.
Picture a world where, after spending 17–21 years in school, and possibly accumulating significant college debt, your kids are told they can’t even get a job at McDonald’s because food prep and cashier tasks are automated. Now imagine your 30-year-old son, still living at home eight years after college, unable to use his $1 million computer science degree because his skills are no longer in demand.
Even today, the median income for Ivy League graduates 10 years after graduating is only about $91,000. That’s not particularly high for individuals who ranked in the top 1% of their high school class and may have paid a premium for their education.
8) Learn How To Use More AI Apps To Improve Your Productivity
You don’t need to be great at math anymore—just know how to use a calculator. To protect yourself from AI disrupting your life, it’s crucial to master as many AI apps as possible. While most people stick to ChatGPT and Anthropic, there’s an entire ecosystem of AI tools designed to help you excel at your job. Here’s a list of some of them:
I will use AI for better voice dictation so I can write my posts while in the hot tub. I’m also exploring AI apps that can record podcasts in my voice, create videos, and maybe even draft posts that sound like me—with my edits, of course. Finally, I will upgrade my website’s search box to an AI-powered version that can answer any question based on the content I’ve written.
9) Develop Good Relationships By Helping Others
Finally, if we find ourselves facing a dire future thanks to AI, strong relationships will be essential for survival. The wealthiest and most powerful individuals are likely to become even more dominant. That’s why it’s crucial to start building connections with them today, preferably before they are huge successes.
When opportunities are scarce, people naturally prioritize their own circles, and those with wealth and power are no exception. If you don’t resemble or share common ground with them, focus on being valuable. The more you can contribute and help others, the more likely they’ll reciprocate when you need it most.
Enjoy the Good Times While They Last
Embrace the reality that artificial intelligence will eventually eliminate your job and put you out to pasture. Understand that all the effort and money you're spending raising your children to be successful, independent adults may ultimately be for nothing.
I haven't been this confident about a long-term investment trend since I invested heavily in heartland real estate back in 2016 and 2017, believing in a demographic shift to lower-cost areas of the country. Those investments have generally turned out well, especially after the pandemic accelerated working from home. Of course, some investments were big zeroes as office and hotel took big hits.
Yes, maybe I’m overly influenced by living in San Francisco, where the top AI companies were founded or have offices. But I speak to employees at these firms and venture capitalists regularly, and there's no stopping AI from disrupting most of our lives. It’s already disrupted mine, starting with the elimination of my father's job as a Financial Samurai editor.
Let's make the most of the time we have left with the jobs we hold and the companies we run. Eventually, they may be gone, but by then, we’ll hopefully have built enough financial strength to be just fine.
Here’s to everyone achieving generational wealth and never having to work for money again!
Reader Questions About The AI Existential Crisis
Readers, how are you preparing for the existential crisis that AI poses to your job, company, or product? How are you protecting yourself and your children from a future where your services may no longer be needed? Do you think you’ll be able to get rich enough to not care about the destruction AI will bring?
To expedite your journey to financial freedom, join over 60,000 others and subscribe to the free Financial Samurai newsletter and to my posts as soon as they come out. Financial Samurai is among the largest independently-owned personal finance websites, established in 2009. Everything is written based on firsthand experience.
The AI news of late is quite diff than what you say here Sam. Google is unable to find a price point that will attract customers and is now including AI for everyone and charging $2 more a month to all customers.
I am pretty sure Sam Altman has issued in the pinnacle of the Gartner hype cycle.
I hope you are right given this site partially depends on Google for traffic.
I will just focus on what I can control, which is writing good content.
I am an SEO, so it’s clear that my business might be affected in a negative way. Yet, AI is not that strong, at least today. Not to mention than now, with these Ai seearches integrated, SEO is actually harder than it was before. And I say that as someone who’s been doing it for decades and kinda knows her stuff. I have adapted my skills and procedures, I use Ai for content generation (heavily prompted with a strong SEO brief in place), but most of the strategies are still human, as I understand entities better and what exactly my client wants to sell.
Since we came into this point, the ones who can reinvent themselves, who can learn and adapt, will always thrive. I’ve done it for 30 years now, I’ll keep on doing it from now on. Saving aggressively is the way to go, diversifying our investments and just being ready for the change.
Adaptation certainly is key. One thing I wonder about people in the SEO field is that why don’t more just use their knowledge to write SEO content to generate a lot of traffic to their site and make more money online that way? Seems like that would be an obvious route.
I know the basics of SEO, but I don’t want to write for the search engines. Instead, I want to write about my experiences because it’s more enjoyable to write, and hopefully, to read.
Good SEOs don’t write for the search engines. That’s why you have this amazing traffic and engagement. You do research on keywords, top rankers etc, but the writing NEEDS to be human for humans. This is why a lot of AI based websites get deindexed, because it’s ChatGPT writing junk about junk no one cares about. I have quite some talks with my clients, who think that just cliking a button will create content :D
Gotcha. I hear you on the dream of “clicking a button to create content” and fully finished posts! That would be nice!
I don’t do keyword research when I publish. I tried maybe 10 years ago and it just bummed me out as it felt too much like work. So instead, I just started writing about whatever that was interesting and pertinent, and then just using the Yoast plug-in to just ensure the post is properly structured.
If you’d ever like to do a complimentary audit an share your thoughts on what I should do/write about/optimize, I’d love to hear it! Although it will seem like work to me, I should probably pay better attention!
Thanks!
I plan to weather AI by paying off my debts as soon as possible, and cutting my expenses, and trying to live off of the rent from my 10 investment properties. I also will get normal jobs while they are available.
Sometimes I wonder if the concept that humans have to work for somebody (capitalists) to make a living or exist would hold anymore in the age of AI. Obviously with AI, the employers (capitalism) don’t need that many people to work for them. On the other hand, capitalism is built upon consumerism that people need to consume to buy things to upgrade things so that the economy could continue growing the corporations the billionaires could continue ruling the average people etc. Then that is the paradox, capitalism doesn’t want to pay average people shit for its efficiency/productivity/profit, yet capitalism wants people to spend their last cent to buy shit it produces. How could that work? UBI may be an option. Whoever wants to buy more could work more. If not, people have basic needs covered whether they trade their labor or time for monetary return or not at least in the developed countries. Average people could try to adapt as much as you could, but why live your life to adapt to the sick system? AI emerges not really to improve average people’s lives or happiness, it emerges so the billionaires could have more power over average people.
they said the same in the industrial revolution era, and here we are, working harder and more than ever (although there are other causes like overpopulation, paired with less resources paired with people wanting more things).
Are we working harder than ever before though? I don’t think 50 years ago, it was really possible to work so little and make so much and retired so much earlier than we can right now.
Dear Fin Sam, forty years ago thru today we were told “technology” would replace humans. It doesn’t. It creates new jobs as old ones disappear. Forty years later unemployment is fairly low.
Like Warren Buffett says: don’t bet against America!
Let’s hope! The pace of innovation is much quicker today than 40 years ago.
I agree with Warren, which is why I’m aggressively investing in American AI companies. Let’s go!
may have been from the same alarmists who predicted in 1969 that the earth would be uninhabitable by 2000
What I don’t see on this list you posted is the myriad of physical “service” work where people can make serious money: plumbers, electricians, HVAC, iron workers, welders, carpenters, roofers, oil riggers, etc. For the most part, software apps don’t mean sh*t to them…sure they may make use of an AI generated app to streamline some aspect of their job. But all things physical, which is a large part of our economy, will keep on no matter the latest advancement in software/data processing. Hell, even now, a plumber in business for himself/herself can outpace many college grads’ incomes and will likely be even better off in the future. And I did that kind of physical work for a number of years, ended up as a software engineer, pretty brutal on the body. Unless you’re the boss…
I agree. Section in the post about learning to use your hands and be practical. Electricians make great money and also have pensions if in union.
Related: https://www.financialsamurai.com/be-willing-to-do-the-dirty-work-if-you-want-to-get-rich/
Yup, I’ve done a lot of work on my home, saving me thousands. But now that I’ve passed the 70yrs of age mark, my wife doesn’t want me to go up on ladders anymore. Kind of agree with her, my balance is a touch weaker now, but doing exercises to correct that…
I have a completely different and contrarian take on this new computation paradigm (I refuse to call it “AI”). This technology is not “intelligent” at all. It’s dynamic software capable of real-time error correction. A very powerful and useful innovation to be sure… and one that will displace some existing roles… but not one that abrogates the value of human input. The technology is also not improving “exponentially” as we hear either. This is based on highly manipulated and “p hacked” training benchmarks that aren’t objective and don’t translate to real world functionality. A simple example is ChatGPTs ability to “pass the bar” hasn’t made it displace legal work. It’s useful as a legal researcher and can do some analytics but we’re confusing task with function. This doesn’t mean “AI” – again I absolutely despite this term, but it’s the one people know – won’t displace certain roles and jobs… it just means all the garbage about “general intelligence” and “human level competence” are enormously overstated. Largely, OpenAI is not very profitable and has no products in the pipeline that show strong profit potential. So they need to sell their “sugar daddies” – tech moguls with massive egos who want to create digital gods, that they can engineer “AGI” and eventually “ASI”. Just like Howard Hughes spending piss loads of money on massive cargo planes that are not suitable to real world hauling, these algorithms aren’t going to “spring to life”. It’s really just a religion for nerds. Interesting and useful, but not existential IMO. I expect human content to outperform AI generated content for a long time (probably forever) and suggest that Sam create a YT channel with explainer videos as that content is in very high demand. You’re confusing a dying format for an attenuation in the value of unique human insight. That’s my TLDR.
Love it! Then that means more of us will have jobs and our children will be OK in the future.
“ I expect human content to outperform AI generated content for a long time (probably forever) and suggest that Sam create a YT channel with explainer videos as that content is in very high demand.”
I hope you’re right. But on the last part, who has time to make YouTube videos as a semi retiree? That’s just way too much work. But I do interview Humphrey Yang on The Financial Samurai Podcast, who does just that and has 1.5 million YouTube subscribers.
Please share some background on what you do as your AI opinion is excellent. Thanks.
Agree 100%. AI is an abused term.
Thanks, Sam, for a really thoughtful and important discussion.
Nice post, Sam. Very informative. Could I take the liberty of asking you: if you were to sell your blog today, what kind of valuation would you expect? Like maybe 15x/ 30x/ 50x/ 100x trailing 12 months earnings? I’m asking just to understand this business. Thanks in advance.
Wouldn’t sell for any reasonable price. Need something to do in retirement, especially now that my kids are in school full time.
I notice that education isn’t on either list of jobs, which seems odd given there are already problems with students using AI to get around working on writing assignments now. I see my colleagues wrestle with this today.
Although primary education will likely continue as kids have to go somewhere/do something during the day, secondary education may change beyond recognition in the next decade. It may, in fact, cease to be a source of employment for humans by 2035.
From my own observations where I work, management (and much of the faculty) is in utter denial that anything is wrong.
Which is why I believe this is a very good year to retire.
Unfortunately, my post-retirement career as a blogger now won’t get anywhere. Good thing I won’t be doing it for money…
Yes, interesting education isn’t on the list of fastest declining jobs given everything can be learned for free online now. I do think it is incredibly important for teachers to teach students how to become good communicators, presenters, and citizens. That’s never going to go away.
Based on your comment, you may enjoy this post: Bloggers Make More Money Than You Think
Fundrise Venture Fund – what happens to one’s private equity investment if a company in that fund goes public? Example (with made up numbers) – you have $100k in Venture Fund and, assume, $10k of that is allocated to DataBricks. What happens to your $10K allocation in the meantime?
It’s a great question. Once public, the value of the shares gets updated daily in the fund’s NAV. So you will start seeing more frequent changes in your balances. Then it will be up to the Fundrise Venture committee to decide whether to hold, sell, or buy more.
The $10K allocation will fluctuate per the public market valuation, and be reflected as a percentage of the overall fund.
Solid post, thanks Sam. Resonates with me a lot. Two years ago, I didn’t bat an eye at AI. One year ago, I’d pause and say hmm then brush it aside as something to worry about in 5-10 years. Six months ago I started to pay attention but still turned up my nose in denial. Today, I am calm on the surface but freaking out in reality.
As much as the risks and negatives upset me, the exponential speed that AI is accelerating and getting distributed is completely undeniable and unstoppable at this point. I have accepted that there’s no going back anymore and that adaptation is the only way to survive.
So I’m doing my best to focus on the positives—as there are always negatives to anything in life and we might as well focus on the positives and what we can control—and find ways to actually utilize AI to my own advantage and my family’s. There’s already so much to learn and catch up on. It’s going to be a challenge to keep up with the pace.
I agree with you on mapping out various scenarios and doing the best we can to be ready for dramatic changes in many scopes of our lives. I’m also looking to stay conservative with spending this year, focus more on saving, and do my best to figure out how to best thrive in this rapidly changing environment.
We’ll have to have a deeper chat on what’s freaking you out specifically!
I truly believe the more you invest in AI companies, the less worried you’ll be.
I agree on the AI threat. My question is – what is next? Let’s say AI will make 40-70 percent of today’s employed people jobless. A lot of will potentially happen in well developed countries likes US (little regulations, lots of jobs to be taken by AI etc.). Wouldn’t this collapse an entire system? If unemployment rate is 40-70 percent then who is buying all these good and services made by AI? Prices of everything will collapse as demand plummets. US will become a poor country with a majority of population leaving in poverty. Rich will get richer, most of others, will become extremely poor. Apart from goods and services made by AI who will pay for plumber, HVAC etc. services. If we are all poor and jobless, demand for these services will plummet too. Real estate prices will plummet etc. Even if we are given an income from a government, I assume it would barely cover food cost if at all. And let’s say a miracle happens and we are given a high income from a government, then nobody will be willing to work. Also, won’t most of us will go crazy due to a boredom? Initially it will feel like a paradise, but long term, I am not sure. I know there are poor countries where people basically live under the sun and do nothing as there is nothing to do. Is this going to happen to US and other developed economies? Back to third world country for a significant size of population, and again who are rich selling to? To themselves? Will there be enough of them? Will all of this cause riots or wars? Am I missing something? Is my train of thought totally wrong? Seriously looking for a feedback form someone smarter than me. Thanks!
An unemployment rate of 40% or more would be way too drastic. There will be new jobs created because of AI, but a lot of automated jobs will be done forever. So maybe unemployment break go up to 8% as the new steady state instead.
Probably the bigger risk is demographics risk given we are not replacing deaths with enough births today. China has really decelerated and is not doing well due to their one-child policy they had for decades.
We will be able to figure things out before things get that bad. But I do think things are gonna get a whole lot worse for millions of people who are not paying attention.