Early-Retirement Update
livingafi.com
livingafi.com
Retiring at 30 sounds great, but no one's life goes exactly to plan for next the 30-40 years until traditional retirement age. People change, expectations evolve, possessions wear out and need to be replaced. Living frugally may be fun when you're in your 20s, but it's not so fun when as you get older and your friends want to do things that require money (vacations, hobbies, dining out). Even worse when your romantic partner has different goals in life, as happened here.
Many of the leanFIRE stories have their roots in people who hate their jobs so much that the only thing that motivates them is early retirement. They grind through the job the hate, counting days on their leanFIRE countdown until they can quit working and never look back.
Most of these people would be much happier if they simply invested time and energy into finding a job they enjoy, or at least one that doesn't make them miserable. Even if it requires a pay cut and a later retirement date, it's much better to spend your time doing something you don't hate than it is to grind out a bad job in misery just to reach dreams of early retirement sooner.
What stings (as I can't help but empathize with the author's feelings) in reading this blog is that it sounds like they were very aligned five years ago, but she discovered a gradual growing miscontent only once they tried the early-retiree life.
Not sure if there's a possible fix there, other than trying to compromise (only one of them working, which would probably just lead to more growing apart)
I absolutely will never subscribe to the BS notion of "couples love each other more when they don't spend much time together".
I'm with my wife for 7 years now and I already worked remotely by the time we met. Our relationship is actually getting better with time.
So what you say mostly applies to people who are, let's call them, good roommates, not two people loving each other.
But it could possibly be offensive to some people that I call their couples "good roommates" which is a fair reaction -- I still have the right to my opinion however.
Sadly these things can and do happen. But we the people usually make it much worse by holding on to relationships that are past their date, for much longer than it's healthy.
Via homeschool groups or via your own? I don't know much about homeschool group, so I'll comment only educating kids alone: parents tend to underestimate the skills required for quality education. You need empathy to understand that your kids may not get some seemingly simple concepts. You need skills to explain to kids complex concepts in simple terms -- and this is not about merely applying Feynman's technique, but about knowing what language is more accessible to kids. You need to know a subject well to teach your kids effectively. The list can go on. In a word, education is a profession, and it takes years of experience to become a quality educator. Why do parents think that they can magically give "a much better education than anything that involves money"?
By the way, I recognize that there are always exceptions, especially that smart and driven kids probably need just parents' guidance and advice instead of full-fledged "education". I mainly have ordinary kids in mind, though, as they are the majority to whom education makes a huge difference. Case in point, I didn't get physics, especially free-body diagram and optics when I started learning physics in junior high. It was a retired teacher who removed my conceptual blocks by giving me very targeted exercises. I got stuck again in high school when studying electromagnetism, and it was another teacher who opened my eyes by prescribing inspiring problems like how to accelerate a static electron without a push. I was also lucky to get a math teacher who somehow could find incredibly challenging yet accessible problems that kept me in the discomfort zone. I have similar stories for writing class, for history class, and for chemistry class. Oh yeah, chemistry. A teacher in my senior year was so passionate about chemistry that I didn't realize that he taught us how to reason about organic synthesis at college level, to the point that we could solve some of the IChO problems. And the truth is that my parents could never do what those teachers did. I'm not sure how many kids were lucky enough to have responsible and capable teachers around. And if they don't, finding tutors is not a bad choice.
We are finding that concepts that the kids are ready for come super easily — Like, there’s nothing special that an educator is going to provide — And concepts that the kids aren’t ready for can still be taught but it’s takes much more time and effort. I think this is one of the reasons why school (and teaching) can seem difficult and overwhelming. We expect all ten-year-olds to be at the same level and for a single teacher to get these kids to all learn the same stuff at the same time. It’s Sisyphean!
If you decide to go-all-in with homeschooling you can tailor your child’s education to each child and go with the flow. The difficulty is if you want to be able to go back to regular school because they are going to all over the map, they might be 4 grades ahead in math and 4 grades behind in history.
You also get to choose what you want your children to learn. It’s a double-edged sword. My kids are getting a very science-heavy and pragmatic education while some bible-banger down the street might be teaching frickin’ creationism. For society, I don’t have a good solution to this problem. But as a parent I’m excited that I can ditch the memorization bullshit and focus on providing my children an educational and intellectual framework that will keep them growing intellectually for the rest of their lives, if they so choose.
The gist of my approach is: Know what subjects exist and what problems they can solve and know how to teach yourself those subjects when they are needed. That’s basically it. Teaching is helping them find ways to help themselves and talking through philosophical problems with them.
Were you reading FIRE blogs or extreme frugality blogs? Or maybe I can just ask "how do you define extreme frugality?" (I think of myself as kind of frugal, and planning to have the choice to avoid compulsory paid work before I'm 50, but I also live in one of the most expensive areas of the United States outside of big cities / California, with somewhat regular trips to Disney World and other countries.) But a blog like earlyretirementextreme.com isn't focused on high earners cutting down on consumption and retiring early (that's MrMoneyMustache.com) - it's a version of extreme frugality and self-reliance (and adaptability regardless of changing life circumstances.)
> bare minimum savings
I assume by this you mean "leanFIRE" as in "just enough of a nest egg to retire with 25x your annual expenses and everything goes perfectly?!" Of course, that sounds like a recipe for disaster, and I think in some cases it's a bit of a "oh I can quit my stupid job at the exact moment I hit this magic number" mentality, but a misunderstanding of putting a real plan in place for a future that is filled with variables. Depending on the blogs you frequented, they could be "copycat" blogs that just took the juicy headlines from more in-depth blogs and throwing up quick articles so they can get some ad revenue.
Any idea, handled poorly, is going to either come off unappealing or be riddled with shortcomings. That doesn't mean the original idea can't work (and it does for some - some by luck, others by proper strategy.)
If you had an unlucky year and had to spend an extra $10K on various things (car breaks down, medical expenses, moving for a job) it's probably not a big deal for you. If a leanFIRE person had an unexpected extra $10K expense, they'd have to cut $10K out of the rest of their budget for the entire year.
If you're already squeezing by on $30K/year like this author, somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3 of that might go to basic living expenses (rent, utilities, food). If the other 1/3 of your budget gets wiped out by an unexpected $10K expense, it's going to be a very lean year.
This is the problem with most leanFIRE plans: They only work if nothing ever goes wrong, no unexpected expenses occur (for 4 or more decades straight), and a person's lifestyle never expands at all.
The notable exception is called a "sequence of returns risk" (SORR) where either something bad happens in the first few years draining a really large portion of your original savings (more than $10k) and/or the market undergoes a recession during the first few years, and if you withdrew the full 4% from your investments while their value was markedly depressed, you would never recover (without additional income). In my opinion, a proper retirement strategy should account for SORR; some padding (i.e. the wants portion of your budget you can reduce during a lean year), reverse-glide strategy where you can draw from cash/bonds instead of equities in case of depressed value equities, etc. In many cases, this scenario happens so early in retirement that anyone retiring at a younger age has relatively good prospects of rejoining the work force to get to the other side, and then will likely be very well prepared for a second retirement with a decreased likelihood of yet another bad sequence of returns occurring before their nest egg has grown well beyond 25 times annual expenses.
And all retirement plans should be flexible - some years where you might spend a bit less than the target, but have room to change that, particularly if your invested assets grow beyond the original necessary funds.
I don't think that's the case if you're retiring early. The 4% withdrawal rate was based on a 30 year retirement. You need to go a bit lower if you want to have minimal risk of running out of money for a much longer horizon.
You're more likely to die than run out of money!
That's a much higher level of risk than I would accept.
I intend to "Fat-FIRE", and the only reason I don't retire now is to see how much I can leverage my position to do crazy shit at massive scale. Paradoxically, this sets me up for larger windfalls because I can take risks that my peers do not take.
I am an early retiree, who sometimes thinks it would be nice to get back into the industry just to steer or at least nudge the projects I still care about very much into the direction I'd like to seem them to go. And because they are corporate-driven (hello, Microsoft, Facebook, and Google!) it is just too hard to do from the outside.
One thing that I see is that people complain about politics rather than recognizing the natural force it is and how to bend and master it towards your will.
The working title is "Way of Code"
Anyway, you might as well give it a try, see what happens.
Let's see where I can get to...
It seems like such a nihilistic way to live. You're just floating along the stream of life. Things worked out for you, but you have no further passion or inclination to improve the world? No problems you could set yourself to solving?
As much criticism as Elon Musk gets (he's certainly not perfect), the path he took is the only thing that makes sense to me in that position. He didn't take his wealth and begin doing angel investing in new CRUD app startups, he wanted to solve real problems humanity faces.
Not everybody has that amount of money or skill, but it's surprising to me how many people's alternative to having a day job they're forced to do is just complete leisure time 100% of the time or picking up arbitrary hobbies.
In this guy's post, like with writing, it sounds like he wasn't actually passionate about it. There are plenty of places to post serialized fiction as you write in online and get feedback (Royal Road, Substack) but it sounded like the measuring stick he was judging himself was becoming a very popular/famous author, not actually writing great stories. It seems just like a different version of the treadmill he was talking about with other people.
And I say this as someone who has made a major career change during their life.
Everyone gets old. How can we not want a society that would take care of them, including some form of worthwhile employment?
It is an inherently selfish setup as one day you too will be old.
Edit: trying to clarify my thoughts/point.
But that doesn't mean they are all useless and should be in an old folks home.
To more directly answer your question.
Old people don't have to take care of even older people. I mean the whole point is to NOT cut them off from the rest of society.
It needs a social component and simplicity. However, simpler tasks are often more easily automated and people generally avoid social interaction it seems.
I get the feeling that people would rather a hot coffee vending machine than talking to ol' Carol or Bob at the mom & pop cafe.
Some random ideas: - Working the coffee shop on the ground floor of the corporate building. - corporate internal mail - storytime Reader at the local library - non-profit business pushbike/skateboard/scooter store - campus bus service
This is just antidotal evidence of seeing my partners dad say yeah fuck that job after 6 months.
When I think of opening a bar/restaurant, I'm actually just hoping for more quality time with friends.
When I think of opening a bookstore, I'm actually just hoping for more time to focus on reading.
When I think of becoming a cook, I'm actually just hoping for more passion and drive in the thing I make professionally.
This discussion point reminds me of a Sir Ken Robinson talk (not sure which one, but he has many). After a friend's musical performance on stage, he comments to his friend that he'd love to do what he's doing, being on stage, playing guitar. His friend quickly remarks that no, he actually wouldn't. If he really wanted to be a musician, he would've done it by now. He would've put in the work and toil to get there. Instead, he just likes the idea of being able to perform at a high level in front of other people.
I think so many of our fantasies are like that. We think of the end result and want that, but don't think about all the work needed to get there and whether we're up for that.
But it would be interesting to try. I was a life guard in college. I am probably the worst lifeguard of all time but it was fun for a summer. Same with being a basketball referee. I don't really know the rules well enough to officiate a game. But it was a fun job for a year.
It's things like that which I was able to afford to do in college or early adulthood that seem like they are not possible now. Not without significant financial sacrifice and a large detour of a career in motion.
The reason people want to open a bar when they work in IT or whatever, is because most people don't want to do the same shit over and over again for 40 years.
That's just human nature, we are not robots, but society has been structured to commodify us and make us predictable producers of 'moar money' for people who already have money :)
It's called wage slavery for a reason, and no, a slave doesn't simply want more friend time or whatever, humans want to be free.
I like the little bookstore near me. They play classical music during the day and the lady who runs it seems nice. I'd like to work there for a while and see what that is like.
Carpentry (or being a cook which would also be on my list) is about doing something with my hands professionally. Can I make my living by creating something with my hands? What would that feel like? I know I can make a living using my voice. I know I can make a living with my fingers on a keyboard.
What would it look like to make a living building something physical? For me it's more about things that seem like they would be interesting life experiences.
If you spend some years just chilling and and are actually happy, then sure, why not. But there are so many retired people who do nothing, and are not happy.
For example, my mother, my mother and father in law, my other father in law, my grandmother - all retired, and all do absolutely nothing but watch TV and moan about other people all day. And they are all very obviously not happy, yet suggestions for things to do or get involved in always fall in deaf ears - they'd apparently rather sit and do nothing until they die.
I really, really don't get it.
Which is the rub. Passionate people will be busy, all the time. Without it.. well, i can't even envision how to live.
I think parents need to help their children find hobbies. Find passions. Develop passions. You don't _have_ to be excellent at piano or whatever. I don't care what it is, be it games, wood working, farming, etc - but i feel like it is essential to the human experience.
But.. i've got an isolated view. So.. YMMV.
Most people have an idea of what they would ideally do if given unlimited amounts of time. The reality is, in my experience, that most people cannot put the same level of work, focus, and dedication into their own projects that they can into the projects an employer pays them to work on.
For whatever reason, most people need the structure, constraint, judgment, or whatever that an external authority imposes on them. Having the skill and motivation is not enough to bring your highest work to your own purposes. There is a second discipline that involves self-accountability, which runs orthogonal to capacity for the work.
This is exactly why I'm pursuing leanFIRE. Even if I hit the jackpot, I would still be toodling on personal software projects for the rest of my life. Not saying I'm any Michelangelo, but I would have to be trained not to write software. I'm just aiming to set my own priorities instead of working on things I'm not passionate about because I simply need the money.
I keep wondering if I shouldn't quit the day job and start a software shop, but even that sounds an awful lot like work where you trade one relentless taskmaster for another. I sure as shit don't want to have to worry about market share, I just want to make cool (to me) software.
Their dream was to sit around, do nothing, and judge other people. And they have achieved it.
It's all explained by one simple fact: the average IQ is 100. In today's society, how many activities are there for 100 IQ people to engage in?
Are there animals to take care of? Is there land? Is there community to partake in? Are there things that need to be done by 100 IQ people?
When you build society optimizing for young people to work 8 hour days or giant factories and supply chains doing everything else, what is there for somebody at 65 to do but watch tv and wait until they die?
Young people barely even have children anymore and when they do, chances are their parents are still working, so by the time they retire, the children are 5-10 years old and playing on their own.
It's easy to blame the individuals for not joining a knitting club or whatever, but people are not built to do pointless activities, they are built to do activities that have purpose and those are not available in modern society unless you have high IQ or a talent in a specific domain.
Also one last point: moaning about other people is what people have always done, especially when you're older and you're almost certainly experiencing chronic pain of some sort. Younger people moan just as much, they just have youth and belief that things will be looking up on their side - old people have neither.
I think 100 IQ people are more capable than you realize - but it comes down to their attitude.
So intelligence is increasing while IQ stays the same, to be pedantic.
When you spend all that time disciplining yourself to work (against your own will) and having little time to develop your own interests, you become hard wired to do what is necessary.
When that necessity ceases to exist you no longer have the machinery to move yourself. A career and kids and church and a house and big yard to maintain can leave nothing left of you. It can erase your very identity as your brain is rewritten to subdue the self and pursue work, chores and favors over all else.
That's just my hypothesis anyway.
Being compulsively tied to income generating work, and then all of a sudden being cut off from that seems like a surefire path towards unhappiness, since someone who has done that their whole life likely hasn't explored the mental space of what else they could be doing with their life.
On the other hand, being totally free from any restraints seems like it could be an almost worse curse. No pressure to complete any projects, to help anybody, to do something useful for the world. That also wires your brain in a particular fashion, and could be it's own version of hell. Perhaps this is sour grapes though :)
I'd like only to add that, what many artists (and in general people who pursue their artistic passions) had, compared to the agerage workin-joe, is TIME.
The only way to understand your passions is by having time to observe your world, to reflect on people's actions, to contemplate nature. If you have to work (because you're the bread-winner and have 2 children already and an house to pay), your only glimmer of hope is to have already found your passion during your younger years.
Finally, your energy levels going on are never gonna be your current ones. Keep that in mind.
And I say that as a man who had a fair number of interests, never had time to really pursue them, and now has to to a work I hate and have no remaining passion at all.
Basically, we live for work and when many people retire they loose the thing to live for and die. It's sad.
Long ago I learned to not live to work. I work but I have so much more to life... retirement is just a point in time where I don't need to earn income to live any longer and I can have more choice in what I do.
If you are reading this do yourself a favor and take your body’s health seriously right now before it’s too late. Exercise every day, get that 30 pounds of fat you jokingly call your dad bod off before it’s too late, go to the doctor and fucking do what they say instead of nodding and convincing yourself you know better and don’t really need to do that. Oh and brush and floss your damn teeth. The above story doesn’t have to be your story but if you sit at your computer all day everyday and don’t take care of yourself it very much can become your story.
Plenty of depressed people will tell you about friends being frustrated at them "not snapping out of it".
Chronic illnesses at any age suck as much as having aging as a chronic illness.
This is the 20-something version of being idle. Minus the travel, which isn't a given.
Being 20 doesn't mean you want to do something productive or meaningful with your life. There's plenty 20 yo that party, socialise, get drunk and never amount to anything. The reason it's just a phase is that it's not all trust fund kids and most need money (a job) to live.
I don't see why working/producing is anymore meaningful than partying / socializing. I think people can find meaning in their life in different ways.
This is what I'm talking about. It's likely much harder to do this when you retire at a normal age after having lived most of your life. But if you retire in your 30s or 40s? Or your 20s!? Good lord.
Think of all the great companies that get started and then snapped up by the big boys because the founders want to become millionaires. Imagine if there was zero pressure to take an exit when offered. I believe our world would be in a better place. I don't want to just highlight companies, but companies can scale and affect change in a way that just volunteering or simple philanthropy cannot in our society.
That's why I think so called "Lean FIRE" is such a bad trap. You're giving yourself very little margin to explore new purposes and passions. It's a much bigger bet that you're going to be satisfied watching TV and going for day trips to Niagara Falls the rest of your life.
This is exactly why I think FIRE is a great thought exercise even if you don't actually care to do it. Given enough money to live for the rest of your life without the need for a job, what would you do with your time?
I’m 37, nearly five years out of the game, and I’m busy, every single day. My time is fully absorbed in building up a homestead, and my list of projects is many, many years long yet, and as diverse as shredded encyclopaedia.
I can’t see myself running out of things to do before I myself run out. I occasionally tell people snippets of what I’m up to here or on Twitter, and people ask if I have a YouTube or a blog. I don’t have time. Or inclination, to be honest. I do this for me.
Define "of note"
In my experience most retired people do productive things until their bodies confine them to home or an assisted living.
Most retired people I know of keep doing the things they were doing as hobbies before. Gardening, teaching kids piano, racing cars, etc. Most retired people I know are more active on the things they love in retirement. Sure they're not doing Elon Musk things but they don't have that budget either.
I rather doubt that you would choose Elon's life either -- especially if you were in his financial position.
(Happy to stand corrected, since I don't know you.)
He plays up the uberworker shtick for the same reason Warren Buffet in his 80s tells everyone he has a coke and Dairy Queen everyday: because it’s part of his brand and very conducive to moving forward his pursuits. Warren buffet definitely doesn’t have coke and Dairy Queen everyday either.
Elon’s days of working to the bone everyday are likely long behind him, by decades.
I understand your point about "waste of his position" and that he could have a more balanced life, but as the books depicts him that's not the case. Nor it was when he was at PayPal or Zip2.
Good (audio) book, btw. I would recommend.
There's also tons of subreddits like r/WritingPrompts to practice or r/NoSleep to post short horror fiction. There are huge audiences on both of those. A post from NoSleep is getting made into a Steven Speilberg movie: https://variety.com/2019/film/news/spire-in-the-woods-steven...
RoyalRoad is huge though. Here's the top story from it: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/21220/mother-of-learning authors usually get a following on RoyalRoad and then they can start a Patreon where people who donate get early chapters. Other authors go the Kindle Unlimited route where they self publish their novel on Kindle Unlimited after they've got a fanbase and plenty of people make a decent living from it.
This is all the modern version of how older authors got started: by submitting short stories to be published in anthology magazines. You have to love writing and be willing to do it for a long time before you pop off though. The way he was describing it didn't resemble that to me.
> It seems like such a nihilistic way to live. You're just floating along the stream of life. Things worked out for you, but you have no further passion or inclination to improve the world? No problems you could set yourself to solving?
You seem to assume or take for granted that releasing music for an external purpose, improving the world, solving problems, etc have inherent value. I would 100% disagree with that. I don't think there's any greater objective value to raising orphans than there is to playing video games for the rest of your life. If somebody wants to make music and never release it, then they should have the freedom to do so. Your comment is on par with criticizing people for living meaninglessly just for not having children, when not everybody values or enjoys having children.
> complete leisure time 100% of the time or picking up arbitrary hobbies.
I'm at the opposite end: I'm surprised how many people care about solving problems or things like that. I couldn't care less. If I were to win the lottery or something, I'd immediately erase my identity and go live in a castle/farm in a forest somewhere, making music I'll never release etc until I die, etc
I agree with you that if your bills are paid and you're harming no one, then you have no moral obligation to do anything more than sit on your butt and play videogames. It's your life.
At the same time, humans are a social species. We have evolved brains and intrinsic motivation reward systems that only give us the real deep kinds of life-satisfaction emotions if we are putting real effort into something that we find to be meaningful in ways that help our perceived family or tribe.
There are of course outliers who can spend indefinite days just binge-watching TV happy as a clam. But most of us are wired like border collies. If we don't have a herd to take care of some real reason to get out of bed in the morning, we go crazy.
> There are of course outliers who can spend indefinite days just binge-watching TV happy as a clam. But most of us are wired like border collies. If we don't have a herd to take care of some real reason to get out of bed in the morning, we go crazy.
I don't think these are outliers, I think these are a surprising majority. It's the classic bread and circuses or Soma concept: as long as people are fed a steady supply of moderate entertainment and material enjoyment, they are content to idle. And I would go further and say that you somewhat contradict your earlier position, which to me came across as being interested in solving problems and improving the world, not just your family/tribe.
I would also point out that binge-watching TV is different from creating music, never to produce it. Kafka created amazing works that he specifically wanted destroyed. So from my perspective it's unclear if you look down on anything that isn't sacrifice for someone else's gain (external reward), created for sharing with others (external reward), or engaging with others (external reward). I'm not sure where you get your data that most humans are like border collies, but at least based on your comments it seems like you really value socially-based activities, so you may be overlooking the many others who don't need social interaction or external reward/response to find meaning and fulfillment.
This is a typical cynical take, but not borne out by reality at all. Yes, people enjoy leisure, but look at how they really live and you'll observe that they enjoy it in the context of a larger meaningful framework. While there are many bullshit jobs, most people still work surprisingly hard at them in large part because they have at least some coworkers they care about and want to support. Even the most jaded employee does so to earn a paycheck that most use to take care of their families and loved ones.
Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2mS3uDqQL4
You're right that given the opportunity, many people will just idle and consume media. But if you notice, most of them aren't actually enjoying it much. It's a way to survive, but not to thrive.
> And I would go further and say that you somewhat contradict your earlier position, which to me came across as being interested in solving problems and improving the world, not just your family/tribe.
I said "perceived tribe", which for some includes the entire world.
> it's unclear if you look down on anything
Again, I'm making no moral claims. I'm not looking up or down at anyone. I'm just saying that if you observe humans as a species it is clear that most of them need meaningful social connections and effortful tasks that support those connections in order to thrive.
Imagine you were an alien species building a human zoo. If you gave each person their own cell with unlimited videogames and movies, they would wither and die. Give them community and something meaningful to struggle for to benefit that community and they won't even know they're in a zoo.
> so you may be overlooking the many others who don't need social interaction or external reward/response to find meaning and fulfillment.
I am fairly introverted and as a software engineer, I obviously know lots and lots of other introverts. I many think the emotional experience of introverts in today's society is "I want more solitude". But that doesn't mean their optimal state is hermitage. (True hermits are vanishingly rare in the human species, less common than many severe mental illnesses.) That emotional response needs to be understood in the context of their lives.
Everyone needs solitude to process their experiences, autonomous time to feel that they are the agents of their life, and time away from the draining experience of being surrounded by people we think of as "others" and need to raise some level of defenses of wear masks around.
If you live in an urban area as a lowly employee of a giant corporation and spend all your down time consuming media instead of actually just sitting with your thoughts, then you get little of those. But that doesn't mean most people want an unbounded quantity of solitude anymore that wearing a cast for the rest of your life is somehow healthier than taking it off once the bone has knitted.
What we need is balance, and while everyone has a different prefered quantity of solitude, there are very very few whose ideal is "no social interaction at all".
aside from the farm likely taking up all my time (for however long i'm able to sustain that), pursue all my interests: exercise, language, reading, writing, watching movies/tv, taking photos, making films, lifting weights, kayaking, hiking, rock climbing, cooking/baking, biking, playing video games, drawing, spending time with loved ones, studying, the list is endless.
And why should they? I'm no fan of trust fund babies who coast by on life, but really, why does anyone have to justify their lives by doing something to improve the world? What are you and I accomplishing right now?
Maybe it's just the severe burnout talking, but I for one would love to just stop everything and exist for a while with no tangible goals or requirements of me. Besides that, what good is a person who did the leanFIRE thing really supposed to do? The whole idea is to live cheaply, they don't have a lot of money to invest in making the world better. They have all the time in the world, sure, but if you're putting 40+ hours into "making the world better" (Whatever that means to you) then are you really retired? Or are you just doing the same thing as everyone else but living a much more meager life for the sake of it.
By the way, "making the world better" doesn't need to be large or expensive, at least in my opinion: If I talk to the lone, probably widowed neighbour on my way home, I count that as "making the world better".
I think at the end of the day, it's really about finding meaning in your own existence, and such a large part of that for a lot of us is feeling like we are giving back to society or helping our fellow humans somehow. I think this is where I can see the author's goal of just writing being hollow. He writes about his fears that maybe his writing won't ever be discovered. It makes me wonder if he's writing because he enjoys the craft or he wants the status of being known as a writer.
If he really enjoyed the craft, maybe he would've enjoyed writing more. The status thing would be nice, but maybe he would enjoy having other people read his stories and connecting with them. That could've been something to keep him going and give him some short-term goals, direction, and connection with other people.
I figure that by definition, not everyone can be the 0.1% world changing person. Founder of Google/FB/Ikea or a Nobel Prize winner.
I want to leave the world better than when I came into it. It doesn't have to be gobsmackingly better, just fractionally better is fine. I try to apply this day by day.
There have been a few replies in this vein, and I see where you're coming from based on the way I phrased what I was saying.
I'm not arguing that anybody should be forced by some external entity to do anything. I am advocating for a person in this situation to attempt to cultivate a passion/greater purpose because I believe it's something we need to be fulfilled. The man in this article designed a life for himself that was free from labor, but ultimately unfulfilling in many ways.
And if you need to find that passion, looking to improve society in some way is a great place to start. I can think of a few things in that vein that I would consider focusing on if I was in such a situation, and none of them are as far reaching as "make humanity multi-planetary."
Nope! I know who I am and what I’m capable of.
If I could, I would do literally nothing besides wake up, go to the gym, go to the coffee shop, read, watch TV, and surf the internet until I die. I know this because I took several years off and did exactly this until I ran out of money.
Best years of my life and it’s not even close.
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/comments/58j8...
So that you could invest time into finding a way to spend your time that pays less (or nothing) but which you enjoy?
You should checkout /r/fatFire
Isn't the status quo of working a 9-5 and saving ~10% (aka spending 90%) of your salary exactly this? Having ~25x living expenses saved up seems like a significantly less fragile position than you're suggesting. Even this "failure" case, the author ended his 6 years of not earning a penny with more money than he started. And he was able to get a job when he decided he wanted one.
> Most of these people would be much happier if they simply invested time and energy into finding a job they enjoy
Lots of people don't enjoy things that are necessarily financially viable. Putting in a finite amount of time to free yourself to pursue interests without concern for the financials makes a lot of sense.
At first I thought I can do lean FIRE, because I was never a big spender in the first place. As I get older I started to gradually spend more on things and frankly enjoy the ability to do so as I earned more. For example, not having to take the crappiest flight to get some where. Recently as I get older, I question if I want to even retire early at all. Now I'm shifting more towards "I want to be financially independent so I'm not reliant on a job, but I still want to work".
So things change, and things change more and faster than we anticipate. And this isn't even accounting for externalities outside of our control.
Many people reach FIRE without much energy, it's an incredibly easy "set and forget" style of life. Many use its concepts to get in a position where they can find a job they enjoy.
This skips over the part where the individual might want to be entrepreneurial and needs the funds to be in a position to take such a risk. Or the job they love is inherently in a shitty position (passion industries teeming with bad conditions), so it's a "pick your poison situation" until they have leverage, and in many cases, both poisons make them feel miserable anyway.
The idea that there's a job out there for every person they'll enjoy doing as long as they put in the energy, is an incredibly idealistic and even privileged mindset we should be getting rid of.
If some of my friends spent half as much time learning new skills as they do saving pennies - I think they'd be much better off. And especially because they don't even enjoy most of the ways they're saving money! Long commutes, cooking all their meals, doing all their dishes. Especially being overworked by a dead-end job they hate!
Spend your money, invest your time.
I know it's easier said than done.
The author is a literal millionaire living (when not working in a well-paid job) on what is roughly the median income for their state. This is neither extremely frugal nor bare minimum savings.
They downgraded from "upper-class lifestyle with upper-class work" to "middle-class lifestyle without work". Not exactly going poor.
> assuming their lifestyle would never change and nothing would ever go wrong.
They bet that nothing would go several-hundreds-of-thousands-dollars wrong. Sounds like a fairly safe bet. If it's likely that you'll get into a situation that costs you that much, having a job doesn't guarantee much either.
I don't think there is such a job, not at 8 hours * 5 days a week. Even if it's unfair towards people who have to work longer and harder - I find it grueling. And I believe it's not due to job (I'm a software developer) - I'm pretty sure if I did my favorite hobby full time for a year I'd start resenting it. It's not for lack of vacation either - 5 weeks/year is just enough to get me to baseline where I'm ready to enjoy proper vacation.
3 days a week * 4 hours + 2 months completely off each year could work nicely, but that's not available in a regular job. It'd mean switching to consulting and my selling skills are non-existent. So I'll probably grind for 2-3 years then take 1-2 years off. I did that once already and the main takeaway was that I could easily and gladly not work ever again, if I could afford it.
There are some ways around it:
- Have several hobbies and just do whichever depending on your mood and desire at the time. They are hobbies, not jobs; you don't HAVE to do them if you currently don't want to. It's OK to abandon some of your hobbies for years. (There is a good amount of stories about book authors who start seriously writing -- and become famous and financially successful -- at 50+ years old).
- Don't do anything "meaningful" for a while. I have found huge inner peace and improved mental health by just being completely useless for 3 months between contracts. Ironically, during these "useless" times of mine I've progressed hugely on numerous personal interests (some of which overlap with me being a programmer but are relating to things that aren't popular there).
- [Re-]Discover true leisure time: walks in nature and admiring the scenery, boat trips, lying on the beach, traveling to exotic locations (OK, this one is almost impossible at the moment), and many others. We don't live to only work.
Even if only age 55 rather than 65, realizing I was not tied to one number, pre-specified by society, has been immensely valuable.
Now, I work much harder, have kids, and responsibilities. That being said, I know the work I do is meaningful, and serves many people. We have significant savings. Though living in a big city means we can't retire early. That's beside the point though: I motivate myself to work because it is meaningful. The same with kids: I don't do things because I enjoy them, I do them in the service of my kids and my family. Reading the story in the OP, I get the sense that the OP hasn't made that transition to thinking about work in terms of serving others. A happy life is not a life of retirement, its a life of meaning. What was meaningful once (aiming for retirement), loses its meaning once it has been attained. You have to keep moving forward. This is not about "Keeping Up," but about stepping outside of oneself, and learning to put others ahead, even if it requires personal suffering. (Something parents of young children know very well.)
you figured out the meaning of life for everyone?
maybe you are rationalizing your own lack of freedom from work and responsibility as "serving others" and secret to happiness. Which is fine but its a bit weird to say that applies to everyone and ppl who aren't doing have just not made that "transition" to a life of meaning.
I am glad You figured out formula of happiness for your life don't you think everyone else has the same freedom to figure out their own path and formula. Why do you think everyone should follow your universal formula.
While retirement is cool, I think life goes better without thinking too much about it. Try to work at a job that doesn't suck ass, try to have hobbies and free time, focus on family etc, invest your savings, don't buy stupid stuff. The level of financial freedom will increase in your life just automatically if you live rationally.
I've been trying to do that since I entered the workforce. I still haven't found it.
I also joke about wanting to do nothing for a year. About 2-3 weeks in I'm ready to take on a full workload again. I once was unemployed for 2 months, I thought it'd be a vacation. I hated it after the first month.
Now I have a better nest egg, but I also know my tastes mean I can't retire.
Who said anything about happiness. We are mixing two different things 'retirement' and 'happiness'. Happiness is an emotional state, and Retirement is a financial state. Happiness/Sadness can apply to any situation. It has nothing to do with wealth or financial independence.
Retirement is about having enough to not worry about being in need of a job to just keep your head above water.
Retirement is just worth the independence and availability of options.
> I looked at other FI bloggers who quit work and retired. They all appeared to be blissful. Stoic. Confident and without reservations. Since I ran into problems myself, I started to feel like I was defective. Like something was wrong with me and that’s why it didn’t work so well. Maybe it has to do with my personality (a nerdy introvert). Or it could be because I’m not trying to sell product and make money off of my choices, like almost everyone else who blogs about FI seems to.
There always seemed like a potentially strange conflict of interest with many of the FI bloggers who are ostensibly "retired early", but still earn a significant amount of money from their FI blogs. Which isn't to say they shouldn't be earning that money, but it does bring up questions about some of the conclusions that they make. (There's also a bit of a groupthink or even cult-like mentality among some of them, particularly in the MMM sphere.)
Maybe he took those FI blogs seriously and dedicated himself to reaching that goal, and he did. And then people who never tried say "he got lucky".
My problem with most of the advice from FI and FIRE blogosphere is that it essentially boils down to "be the 1% (where you live) and live frugally". It's not wrong, per se, but it isn't actionable advice for 99% of the population[1].
In particular, while anyone could be MMM, not everyone can be MMM: There simply aren't enough people who read financial advice blogs to support a significant population of such bloggers living in rural LCOL-ville. Even if there were, someone has to stock the shelves at Walmart. Shelf-stockers simply don't earn enough to retire early, unless shelf-stocker wages rise to a level that makes blog-FIRE unsustainable.
It's sort of like asking why everyone doesn't buy a rental and become landlord. Who rents the apartment then? Or do all the landlords rent apartments from each other?
[1] Perhaps it isn't a 99/1 split. Maybe it's 90/10. But it sure isn't 50/50.
There are aspects of MMM's that anyone can do, but obviously the huge income he got after retiring from the MMM blog is unique to him (and the few really successful FI bloggers) and for many, just having insufficient income compared to the cost of living will be a roadblock. In general, this post seems to be a rebuttal about these ideas people have about MMM - https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2018/10/05/the-fire-movement....
I mean if you want everyone to have the same opportunities, you are welcome to give up the advantages you might have so that others get better opportunities. Or you can look at your own life and decide what's best for you.
First, I am not discarding the advice. I was responding to the idea that successful practitioners didn't get lucky.
Second, my assertion is that the advice is useful for only a small segment of the population. The goalposts have moved to the opposite end of the field if we are now talking about advice for everyone except for a small segment of the population.
> I mean if you want everyone to have the same opportunities, you are welcome to give up the advantages you might have so that others get better opportunities.
Nowhere did I say that everyone should have the same opportunities.
Finally, your link does not seem to refute my point (I've seen it before).
Of course they are "lucky", but only because they took the risks and went in prepared. There is no 100% guarantee for anything, so you also need luck. The article here actually shows that, because the blogger was unlucky to have an expensive disease that made his plan nonviable.
Should we stop giving advice unless it’s actionable for 100% of the world’s population?
I can perhaps agree that there is no single rule that everybody in the world could follow to become financially independent, like your "rent housing out to other people" example. Nevertheless, in most environments, there is something people can do. If you just have a house you yourself can live in, it also saves you a lot of money.
At the very least, most people have to retire eventually. And many manage to do so, too. As a last resort, perhaps try to have children who can take care of you.
If overall consumption were reduced by a factor of 10, everyone could work 10% as much over their lifetime. I see no reason that couldn't be a hard few years of shelf-stacking until you get together enough to retire. Maybe that would be a better way for society to operate.
I hate when people confuse not wanting to belong to and impress a particular community with not wanting to belong to or impress ANY community.
He is just like everyone else, just in a different group.
I think they're somewhat non-conformist by posting about negatives and the fact that life will push you in unpredictable directions - even when you've done the maths.
But maybe that's because I tend to agree with the commentary around 'other people needing to "keep up" with the rest of society'.
> I looked at other FI bloggers who quit work and retired. They all appeared to be blissful. Stoic. Confident and without reservations. Since I ran into problems myself, I started to feel like I was defective. Like something was wrong with me and that’s why it didn’t work so well.
That is the EXACT same emotion people feel when seeing their peers who are posting their wealth on Facebook. It might not be material wealth he is trying to keep up with, but it is still the same emotional desire.
He is still keeping up with the Jones's... just a different group of Jones's
There is nothing wrong with that, except he expresses such disgust for other people having that need, while pretending his own doesn't exist.
The need to have or display material wealth, on any level, as some kind of basis for happiness just isn't the same as the ability to be happy in ones self, naked to the world. One is unhealthy and unsustainable, the other isn't. "Like there was something wrong with me" more sounds like "maybe I do need that external validation more than I thought I did", more as a desire to be self-satisfied, or of a healthy state of mind, like (seemingly) other FI bloggers (the very fact they're bloggers may undermine the entirety of the argument, however).
OK, to put it into an analogy: if the Jones' were getting fit and healthy and looking after themselves would undertaking a health kick still be "keeping up with the Jones'" or would that be a good kick in the pants to get healthy yourself? (motivation and tenacity (w|c)ould be the differentiator).
If it's intrinsically positive, is that still pandering? If there's no perceived value other than the perceived value, then I'm on board with your argument.
It's likely to be a case of the ugliness of reality not often being blogged about, and so OP had an unrealistic expectation - in which case there's definitely an amount of Jonesing, but I'm maintaining there's a distinction between positive/healthy and negative/unhealthy Jonesing (so maybe I'm trying to move your goal posts whilst agreeing with you but still trying to appear to disagree).
This many words to justify my position. If it was anyone else I'd call denial.
One is the pursuit of wealth and the other is the need to seek validation and acceptance from your peers.
The writer (and you, it seems) believe the pursuit of wealth is unhealthy. This is a cohesive world view, and I feel the writer (and you) are fine for feeling this way. There are some compelling arguments against the constant pursuit of wealth, and nothing is hypocritical in the essay (or your comment) on that point.
The second point is where I have issue. Seeking validation and acceptance from your peers is present both in the people pursuing wealth and in the writer’s own life. He simply doesn’t see his own need for acceptance as being equivalent to other people’s, but it is. That is the part that I take issue with, not the anti-materialist stuff.
In addition, there is nothing wrong for wanting and seeking acceptance from your peer group. We are social animals, and this is normal and healthy (as long as it doesn’t lead to self destructive behaviors seeking validation!)
I enjoy working. I find purpose and meaning it. I do not let it dominate my life, but without it I would feel incomplete. I run my own business now, and that is very satisfying - but even when I was a corporate consultant I found a lot of enjoyment from spending time with my coworkers, solving problems, and having something to do every day.
For me anyways, a nice salary is also a form of validation and affirmation. That the effort you're expending is valued - at least by someone.
But to further clarify -
My point was that work/income generation can add meaning and validation for lots of folks. Even the author hints at this - his writing wasn't taking off, no one was reading what he wrote, and he was getting discouraged.
I dabble making music. I'm pretty good at it by hobbyist standards, but if I ever tried it "full time" no one would pay me and I'd never get huge. That's just the breaks in creative endeavors. My point is that I'd need a heck of a lot more validation and affirmation in my life than making music no one listens to. I suspect the same is true of the author and his writing.
I thought the condescension in the author's post was more towards getting validation from buying material things and basing their sense of self-worth on that, and a criticism of that part of our culture, not so much toward the idea of people working for money in and of itself.
But that's a very fair point you make, about the need for validation, and how people get it from a job.
I was thinking the same thing: geeze, isn't there anything between virtue signalling early retirement and conspicuous consumption?
What you are saying is in direct contradiction with what he says in the article:
> I encouraged her to explore her own life and find activities and goals that would help her feel better. I suggested therapy and offered to go with her. I was clear that if she wanted to go back to work I was eager to support her in this. I wanted her to do anything that might help. But my suggestions and support weren’t enough
If I wasn't married with a kid, I'd be retired right now. I'd be perfectly content buying a $25K plot of land in the desert, parking a mobile home on it, and living out the rest of my life on $10-20K/year, but there's just no way on earth they'd stick around for that! Your FIRE plan needs to work with your whole family.
The read I got was that the reality of retirement didn't suit the ex's personality. The lead-up was fine, being frugal, aiming for a long term goal, but the reality of it had unintended effects that the ex couldn't handle as well as OP.
And you are making the same assumptions the author did. Isn't there any other reason for her to realize she's unhappy?
Yes, some people spend money on Louis Vuitton bags and fancy cars to show off. But other things people spend money on do legitimately make their life better, more comfortable, or happier. A house in a quieter neighborhood helps me sleep better. A bigger house, where my spouse and I can each have our private space helps our relationship. Clothes that fit well make me more comfortable. A reliable car makes my life less stressful. Are these things "keeping up" or "conspicuous consumption" just because I was not absolutely required to buy them? Is my partner a bad person if she'd rather have a quiet hotel room than stay in a hostel?
I do think that it's worthwhile to be introspective about how you spend your money, and if the things you're spending your money on actually do make you happier. But this black and white thinking is really counterproductive.
Losing the status of being a higher up at a successful (small) company was extremely painful, especially because I didn't realize how much of a perk of the job it was. Like many others in this thread, I realized work provided a venue to solve interesting problems with interesting people, and I knew I would miss that (but also knew there were other, non-work ways to scratch that itch). Looking back, though, the ego/status aspect was probably the biggest benefit, and I never admitted that to myself.
Fairly soon into retirement, I made the choice to address the issue by decreasing my ego needs, rather than pursuing another high status non-work position. In some sense, it wasn't too hard to do (though I did find that I had to give up programming for a while, since it turned out that, despite my love of math and puzzle solving, the real biggest draw of programming was the megalomaniacal sense of being a god in a universe of your own creation). The issue is, I went too far, and experienced pretty significant depersonalization, which, from the inside wasn't terrible, but I think made me too weird to interact with my family and friends.
I've currently accepted more ego back into my life (hence this self-centered posting, for instance), but kept it below the old levels. I'm happy with my life, and find it much more even keeled and comfortable than when I was working, though I still miss the emotional highs of succeeding in a big work project.
Anyway, I think what really got me to log on here and post this was seeing the various other posters claiming work as a source of meaning and maybe poo pooing the OP, a bit, for giving it up. Now, on the one hand, I'm not really disagreeing, but I just wanted to add the nuance that, for me, turns out most of that meaning was not coming from nice pro-social things like cooperating with a team and working on interesting problems, but mostly just base status drive and ego. Now, I don't know how much my experience applies to the general population and most jobs, but I have a feeling it probably does apply to a fair chunk of the readers of this forum.
In both cases, 6-12 month long projects ended with basically being thrown in the bin. So, yeah, you can imagine any sense of purpose I may have assigned myself by being involved in these projects was an illusion. Nope - I just enjoyed getting good at something!
Then I spent six months unemployed, and spent some of that doing hobbies I enjoyed... even getting half decent at some things I've tried before. But by the end of the period, given the constraints of the pandemic, I was missing that feeling of doing something on work days that felt like accomplishment. I definitely think for anyone retiring, early or otherwise, you will have to spend a period of decompression and adjustment, either learning to accept consumption over creation, or finding new ways to create. You'll need to find a new balance, and you'll have a lot more time to do it.
I see this. Props for understanding yourself!
The number of status updates I see from former work colleagues who, pretty transparently, just want to Let You Know they are Still Really Important is astonishing -- especially ones close to normal retirement age. My reaction is something akin to (e.g) "what have you done wrong that you're over 60 and are still climbing the greasy pole?"
But it takes effort to check out of the game. I felt _exactly_ the same internal pressure after leaving one job to "update my status" once I started my own, next, Really Important Role - even when doing so was blatantly at odds with my values.
It takes a lot of knowing yourself and your own motivations to come to terms with this. It reminds me a great deal of Kung Fu!
‘Have you no ambition, Master Po?’ -Disciple Caine ‘Only one. Five years hence, it is my wish to make a pilgrimage to the Forbidden City. It is a place where even priests receive no special status. There in the Temple of Heaven, will be a festival The full moon of May. It will be the thirteenth day of the fifth month in the Year of the Dog.’ -Master Po ‘That is not such a great ambition.’ -Disciple Caine ‘But it is ambition, nonetheless. Who among us is without flaw?’ -Master Po
I wish there was a way to find a more balanced work culture (in the USA, other countries may have this already) to be able to continue solving interesting problems with interesting people, as you say, but also live life outside work.
I'd give anything to be able to work maybe 15-20 hours a week at half or a even a third of my salary. But employers will only take 60 hours a week of full-steam burnout, or zero.
Mind you I know several people who did that for a while and then decided insurance software is soul sucking and so they took a pay cut to work for someone else with more meaning in life. (But they didn't leave des Moines so still 40 hour weeks )
I did get into open source work, for a while, contributing to improving the software I used the most. Unfortunately, that mainly resulted in work on Chrome and vscode, and other pieces of software owned by giant, richer-then-god corporations, so the same frustrations applied :p
I actually did try joining a meditation group, but I had a very bad time. I have a loud and constant inner monologue, but when I calmed my thoughts, all I experienced was primal negative emotion. Some mixture of shame and terror. I don't mean this literally, but it felt like a demon was trying to posses my mind. The instructor was a very nice person, but not a professional, so maybe I could have had a better time with a better guide.
Finally, I've stopped trying so hard to suppress my ego. I'm very curious what living in a society that supports low ego would be like, but the one I live in doesn't. Ego has many used (especially in a corporate setting, it's a tremendous asset), and the experiences of ego and dopamine are part of the richness of life, even if, when viewed at a society level, they often seem so dysfunctional and defector-ish.
For meditation I worry your teacher or the type may have been a bad fit. Meditation teachers I follow encourage looking for joy and savoring the sweet feelings of being in the moment. It feels comparable to enjoying a beautiful sunset.
I immediately stopped meditating all together and slowly got my sense of self back. Since then I only briefly meditate when I feel I can use the benefits of it (e.g. enhanced emotional perception or more focus etc.).
I do like the conclusion though, we're social animals, and the issue with early retirement is that you're the only one with free time during work hours. They were lucky to have a partner to share their time with, but in my humble opinion, it isn't healthy for a relationship to depend on a single person that heavily. The lack of time spent with others means this one person is all you have to distract yourself, and I think that puts stress on a relationship.
I've never tried FI and early retirement, it's never really been something I've found appealing. That said, I've heard some takes on FI where they say it isn't so much that you'd stop working, but that you no longer depend on work. That means once you have financial freedom from work, you're free to see work as a hobby, and be much pickier about what work you do, where you work, how you allow yourself to be treated at work, etc. Since you know you can walk out at any time, since work isn't something you depend on. It gives you the big end of the stick in negotiating with employers, and that in itself is freeing. I think if I were to do FI, that's the type of FI I'd be interested in personally.
Best Alternative To Negotiation Agreement
I've only seen this acronym in a negotiation course at uni, I'm sure not everyone knows what it means ;-)
You can get this if your skills are currently in demand and have a few months of expenses saved up. You don't need to get to financial independence to have a healthy relationship with your job.
The second is a lot more relaxing.
- LeanFIRE in 2015 (~30Kish USD annual spend)
- first couple years were great, in the third year cracks started to show
- they and their partner's goals were no longer aligned and they ended up splitting
- OP was diagnosed with a genetic condition that changed their expenses and lifestyle
- Ended up getting a job again at the end, but while "retired" their net worth actually increased by 20%
"To me, these people on their exercise machines were standing still — nothing was happening in their lives". Um, ok.
One of the richest and busiest people I have ever met - like serious 0.1%-percenter rich - is always off hiking in Papua New Guinea and spending shit-tons of money getting wells dug in crappy areas and fighting dysentery and improving the lot of young girls by funding schools and so on. If that person gave me shit for my materialistic lifestyle it'd be one thing. I also know plenty of broke people who do incredibly righteous and interesting stuff, and I'd happily cop the same line from them.
This bozo? Not so much. It's like Holden Caulfield, but middle aged. He barely mentions anything outside himself aside from his partners, old and new (aside from the vague genuflection to CO2 as a justification for his lifestyle, which sits rather poorly with "A trip to Hawaii. Another to Portugal and France" if he's aiming for secular sainthood over an allegedly low-emission lifestyle).
In a shocking development, life spent as a bizarrely young version of one of those old retired people who doesn't do anything beyond travel and putter around isn't that great.
(a) he doesn't seem to have any particularly profound values aside from "avoid the discomfort of working" and "it's nice to travel", and
(b) he devoted large amounts of his post to slag off most of the rest of the world (including his ex-wife - and there's of course even more to read, if you're a masochist) in astonishingly adolescent terms. If you're looking for "unkind and uncharitable" takes, you might try rereading the article.
Maybe I read too much into that part, I've certainly seen it with some of my friends. Some of my friends hate their job, other friends of mine are okay with their job. In any case, it isn't hard to imagine a big group of his friends being unhappy with their job.
After having read this, I kind of come to the realization that some serious research needs to be done to the psychological state of people in general and working. The results are all over the place [1]. For example, Pew Research Center seems to claim that Americans as a whole are pretty satisfied with their jobs [2], whereas an article about a Gallup poll claims that 85% isn't [3].
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=statistics+us+people+unhappy...
[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2016/10/06/3-how-a...
[3] https://www.staffsquared.com/blog/why-85-of-people-hate-thei....
More important to this discussion is whether they would be happier if they could instantly retire, and whether this happiness would last. People like to complain about their jobs, but a lot of retirees subsequently complain about being bored.
His blog is morbidly fascinating. His previous post is a long, very detailed assessment of the prospect of Trump ending Obamacare - couched 100% in terms of what it means for him and people exactly like him. Then there was a huge post doing amateur psychoanalysis of his ex, with a heaping helping of Myers-Briggs types and (I kind you not) the Houses from Harry Potter. That's as far as I got.
Would love to hear his ex's version of all this...
One can only wonder what the literary world has lost, given that he abandoned the project of being a writer.
He had a wife and children, and had been retired for over twenty years. His kids were now all grown and out of the house, and it seemed like he was asking "what should I do now." In contrast to him, my kids were in middle school, and retirement was 15 years away, at a much lower standard of living.
My friend had spent the last two decades traveling; he would travel to a country, live there for 3-6 months and immerse himself in it. His family would stay for a while, but then return to the States when school started, while he would remain. He seemed very curious about "normal" life which he seemed to have growing up. His father was in financial services, and he had a stay at home mom.
I envied my friend's financial independence, but nothing of his retirement life other than the opportunity to travel on a whim. Life without moorings is to be adrift, forever seeking the oxytocin rush of new things, and then being disappointed when it fades.
I haven't spoken to him since, though he randomly posts to FB; I hope he's found real happiness and acceptance in his wanderings.
https://medium.com/personal-growth/travel-is-no-cure-for-the...
I sometimes have to force an alternative perspective when things feel like they're getting on top of me:
"this is just an unfamiliar challenge, which should be treasured, because the unfamiliar becomes less frequent throughout life"
For many people in many countries, there is no concept of "retirement". It seems so silly to me that people would go and say "I'll work really hard and do all this stuff for 40 years so I can sit around and do nothing for another 30 years".
What's the point? It's unsustainable. It's like doing a crash diet - it may work for a minute, but to have long-term results you need to have a lifestyle change.
Focusing on financial independence means you can achieve better long-term results. Living within your means over the course of 80 years instead of balls-to-the-wall for 30-40 and then a quick and silent death for 30 seems to be a better course of action and would lead to longer lifespan.
Once you reach financial independence - whatever that means to you - you can take on other interests. It could be working at a startup, or a non-profit, or volunteering, or gardening. You name it. But financial independence enables such things. FI > RE.
Having enough money that you don’t need to worry too much about work seems like 95% of the benefit. Spoken as someone fairly early working towards FI.
Having a paid off house, no debt, and enough money to survive tragedy unscathed is really the goal. I want to be able to work whatever job makes me happy without feeling the need to be competing for the highest salary. Take a few months off work here and there without sweating about getting a new job. To let my future wife or I stay home with the hypothetical kid without needing to think about the money.
This extends all the way down into little things. Maybe I'd like to go for a walk right now, but I can't because I have a work meeting in 10 minutes.
I doubt there is anyone in the world who can say they are 100% happy with their job 100% of the time. While you might not be 100% happy 100% of the time in retirement, that is something you can control and change. You generally can't change many of the things about a job that make you unhappy.
I just feel like most people are so socially conditioned to believe that working a job is The Correct Way To Live Your Life that they simply can't imagine anything different.
> I want to be able to work whatever job makes me happy without feeling the need to be competing for the highest salary.
Why does it have to be a job? Why can't you just do things that make you happy? Why is it necessary that happiness falls into the narrow range of an employer-employee (or freelancer-client) relationship?
I’m not saying having enough money to retire forever isn’t better. I get that you have even more options. But why not also be semi-FI all along the way and afford yourself those things that make you happy, even if it means you save more slowly and retire a bit less early. It’s about the right balance.
I’d rather take 3-months of unpaid leave to backpack Europe at age 30 than skip the trip in a saving-frenzy to retire. That same backpacking trip would be way less enjoyable at age 40, or even impossible with kids.
Plus, my job does make me happy — I know it may not forever, which is why I save so much money. But assuming I keep enjoying work, it doesn’t hurt to keep making money even after RE. I really just see FI as giving yourself options.
I don’t foresee it being a huge event when I hit my “FIRE number” since I’ll already be living the life that I want.
I'm lucky that I'll be able to retire soon and still be financially secure against all but the worst medical disasters (agree that the US sucks in this regard), medical disasters that would likely bankrupt me even if I was working (and would likely mean I couldn't work anymore anyway). I know this isn't possible for many people in the FIRE crowd, let alone most people in general. I've also been lucky that I've been able to travel a lot in my 30s and a decent amount in my 20s, despite working hard for most of it. So it's not like I've been all-work-and-no-play up until now; it's a balance I've been mostly happy with (certainly with some exceptions), but I know others might want a different balance (in either direction), and that's ok.
Just a bit on "enjoying work": I really want to make sure we're talking about the same thing. For the most part I enjoy and love the work I do, but overall I don't really enjoy "the job". I don't enjoy the meetings, the process that caters to the lowest common denominator, the politics, the fight to get things done the way I think they should get done. There are definitely some aspects of my current work that I probably couldn't do without all the other stuff (because they require a large organization with considerable financial resources). But there's a lot of it that I could do on my own, or (for example) in a small group of people working on an open source project. Retirement for me doesn't mean I stop being a software developer; it means I stop developing software on an employer's terms, and stop doing it for a profit motive. And if I get temporarily (or even permanently) tired of it, I can simply choose to do something else, on a moment's notice, without financial consequences. I'm not sure if this is the popular definition, but to me "retirement" means I do whatever I want -- including "work" -- without a care toward how it affects my income, and with the ability to shift my priorities on a dime.
Even so, the freedom to... saw/split/stack firewood when the weather was perfect, build a movie nook for my wife, go on bike rides on a Tuesday afternoon in a warm breeze, take our dog on a long, leisurely walk at a local park, read a book in the shade out on the deck...
...or pre/post-pandemic visit a brewery or winery on a slow Thursday (and all other forms of travel that are less ideal right now.)
But also FIRE doesn't demand that you "work extra hard" during the accumulation phase. At least, I have been fortunate enough to avoid that fate. I've rarely worked overtime in my entire life as a software developer. And of course, given this career and income, living within my means (actually well below them) doesn't mean horrible deprivation, either. Sure, I can't go on a $20k weekend trip on a whim (at least not regularly!), and we have to research our options for vacation so we don't blow a lot of money, but again - it doesn't take much creativity to have a really rewarding life that doesn't necessitate spending at or above your means. (Again some of this assumes you have a "good" income. There are stories of those with lower income making it work, but the challenges change!)
I had a job where I could do this. On any given week I worked normal(ish) hours, but I had pretty close to full control over when and where I worked, with significant autonomy on what and how. I spent most of my afternoons outside unless I really felt like working on my project. At the same time, being at a company gave me resources, teammates and scope I would have struggled to recreate working on my own open-source projects. I had just come off a one-year break and I ended up enjoying working more than I did not working. It's a real shame that we can't have more jobs like this; it requires giving people a level of trust and autonomy most organizations can't stomach.
If I could arrange a role like that into the indefinite future, I'd have absolutely no questions about working well into my 60s, and not at all thanks to a "lack of creativity".
I think you have two things wrong here:
1) Most people don't plan to live "balls-to-the-wall" for 30-40 years before retiring. They work hard (maybe too hard!) so they can retire early. They don't live like kings and queens for that time; that would probably make it impossible to build that nest egg and actually retire. To do this right, you need to build enough wealth to maintain your lifestyle post-retirement. For most folks this means that their pre-retirement lifestyle won't be particularly extravagant.
2) Just because you retire, it doesn't mean you have a "silent death for 30" years. That's absurd, and plays into the whole "life is meaningless without work" idea, which I categorically reject. Maybe life has no meaning for you without work, but that's you, and not everyone. There's plenty to do in those last 30 years of life that will keep me fulfilled, happy, and busy, and none of it needs to have anything to do with drawing a paycheck.
"Retiring" doesn't mean not living, or even not "working". It just means that you get to do whatever you want without worrying about whether or not you're getting paid for it. Which is essentially what FI is as well, just with the added bit that you've decided to avoid gainful employment.
I guess I’d say I would need to specify my definition of “work” a bit more. I wouldn’t view work strictly as employment, but as productive tasks with some means to an end, but that could also include hobbies like cooking, or wood working, for example.
I would definitely challenge from a general standpoint any life where you’re not doing something productive. Not in the hustle culture sense, but in the means-to-an-end sense.
I do think we are in agreement though. Financial independence is the most important aspect here.
This is why in part I think the distinction between "FI" and "RE" is pretty small. I absolutely agree with you that the important part is financial independence, getting to a point where if you quit or lost your job tomorrow, and never brought in any labor-related income again, you'd be fine. From there it's just defining what life means to you. You might stick with a 9-to-5 for a while because that makes you happy. You might drop to part-time. You might quit entirely and focus on personal projects and interests (like the hobbies you mention). Or you might take 5 years to focus on personal projects, but then take a full-time job for a couple years just because you feel like it, with the knowledge that you can quit at any time if you don't like it.
> I would definitely challenge from a general standpoint any life where you’re not doing something productive.
Eh... if someone decided to retire and spend every day of the rest of their life going to the beach and lying in the sun, that's... fine? It's not what I'd do with my retirement, but I don't think I'm qualified to tell someone else what to do with their life, especially if they're financially independent and aren't a drag on anyone else.
But yeah, for me, I do agree that I want to be productive to some extent. But I love the idea of even that being infinitely flexible. Right now if I don't feel like being productive I can dick around on HN for a little while (like I am right now), but I have to limit myself, and get back to work soon, hoping that my short break will help me gain some desire to be productive. My midafternoon time is not my own; to a very real extent it belongs to my employer. I feel guilty about not being able to focus on work right now, and I hate that feeling. If it were just me doing whatever I want to do, I might feel guilty about not finishing a fun woodworking project, but that guilt would be isolated to myself: I'm not depriving someone else (like an employer) of something they're entitled to.
And with that... back to work.
I definitely would say “doing nothing” - however we would define that isn’t something I’d put a moral judgement on. I think maybe the colloquial “relax on the beach” isn’t really possible long term. Maybe a year at most. I think most people historically at least just say on the couch. Contrast with maybe the idea (reality is questionable) of the old man in the Italian country side or woman in Okinawa tending to their gardens and walking to the market each day. At least maybe there are some items to discuss further when thinking about what retirement really means.
Really enjoying your posts. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
For myself, I'd probably be happy to tinker with open source software and small electronics projects for most of my days, along with some language-learning, cooking experimentation, and other random hobbies, and relaxing, therapeutic tasks like playing with my cat (perhaps similar in feel to tending gardens).
> ... when thinking about what retirement really means.
The nice thing about approaching retirement from a FI perspective is that retirement can mean whatever you want it to mean, within your financial projections, at least.
> Really enjoying your posts. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
And yours as well! Thank you!
But that’s my fault. I wasn’t specific enough. :) thanks!
Like the author of the article I have had some issues with finding "purpose". It can be hard to relax into this kind of nonemployed situation and when you do get relaxed then you start to wonder if you're losing purpose and drifting. This is the battle - you're going to face it whether you retire early in your 30s or if you retire at the traditional age of 65. I'm trying to keep reading papers and doing some coding but I often come to the "what's the point?" crisis while working on something. Many times that's led to just dropping said project and going on to find another, but now I'm trying to push through the "what's the point" point.
During the short gig last Fall, I did notice that working more than 24 hours a week is difficult at this point - fortunately it was a 24 hour/week gig, but I'd get to the middle of that 3rd day and be like "Yeah, I'm really ready to not be working anymore this week". This was after about a year of not working. I suppose that if that short gig had lasted longer I would have gotten more into the rhythm of work again.
He had a minor shock (breakup) and a major shock (health condition) and realized this error early enough to have time to correct. Not everyone who follows the “leanFIRE” approach is they fortunate.
I think the point is that even with health insurance you can be wiped out. I dont think any reasonable definition of FI/RE would suggest being without health insurance.
The thing is that in a small % of cases, even with health insurance, you get one bad examiner, one by-the-books administrator who denies coverage for something, and you're done for.
But most people significantly overstate future returns (particularly now), they significantly understate the effect that volatility can have on strategies with withdrawal rates (any strategy involving withdrawals has to optimise for returns AND volatility...this is counter to the "time in the market" logic that most people read so can end up going very wrong), and they model for average final period wealth rather than 5th percentile (generally speaking, this happens everywhere in finance...modelling percentile outcomes is tricky...so most people just don't do it). I am not in the US but health costs seem to be an issue, inflation is another "black swan" that tends to go unconsidered.
In my experience, the FIRE group are the most difficult to convince because the whole concept is a lifestyle or way of thinking not an actual strategy. I also don't understand what is so appealing about doing nothing...but that is maybe just me (I have had times in my life when I was doing nothing, those weren't choices and they weren't fun).
You could argue they should go into business for themselves and some appear to do so.
https://www.cfiresim.com/ (no connection, other than very occasional user)
The correct way to do it is a Monte Carlo simulation using either: a good parametric model (this is very tricky, something like a T distribution is least worst...but is still bad, the ideal is some kind of regime model, proper volatility modelling, and something that models expectation accurately between regimes...tricky), or using block bootstrap on good historical data (more robust quantitatively...but again, good long-term data costs $100k+).
So...it is straightforward if you have good data and understand how to build a proper event-based backtesting system (or code something good enough)...but, as said, 99.99% of advisers do not have the resources for this. In most cases, they are unable to buy software implementing this or even know they need it (I have seen this software but it is usually at advisers that require liquid wealth of $10m+...it isn't only the cost of the software but most advisers below this level have no quantitative skills/staff so don't understand why it is necessary).
Again, I would be cautious about any numbers that come out, and focus on the 5th percentile (and understand that it is a wild over-estimate if the data isn't good).
For me, I'd rather backtest against all the actuals than to look to a Monte-Carlo sim with a distribution which is the same as the per-year returns, because I don't believe that sequence of returns year to year are entirely independent, but rather have a relationship to each other because of the longer-term business cycles. This is naturally accomplished by using sequential year actuals.
I agree with you on focusing on the low-end/worst-case outcomes. I'm planning our family's retirement based on a 98% success rate as a minimum (and where the 2% cases can be managed by scaling down lifestyle rather than by starving).
You don't look at yearly returns. There are many reasons for not doing this but the basic one is volatility clustering. Yearly returns are mostly independent, but volatility is not...again, that is why you use a block bootstrap (you can vary the length of block but for this kind of analysis more than once decade makes sense).
I don't understand what you mean here, but I'd like to. Could you explain?
I'm using cFIREsim to simulate 100+ different retirement trajectories based on historical results and ensure that 98% of them exceed my desired spending in all years.
>> cFIREsim uses historical stock/bond/gold/inflation data from 1871 to present[1]
I am not an expert here buy my impress is that this data is publicly available. What data is this model missing?
[1] cfiresim.com/about/
The website says it is using Schiller's data...so the model is missing almost everything. Stock markets have existed in multiple countries for centuries, using one country makes no sense. It also looks like the bond data is totally wrong (prices rather than total returns).
There can be more to life than working for a paycheck, regardless of what we've been socially conditioned to believe from childhood.
So I don't think it makes sense to extrapolate "leanFIRE cannot sustain minor shocks" from his circumstances." It certainly cannot sustain a certain level of lifestyle inflation, or (more generically) big enough changes to your expense sheet.
Regardless, even if he was break-even or negative, that might be ok; most people don't expect their retirement savings to last forever, just until they die.
If you can’t guarantee you’ll be able to stay in your community, with your friends and family, for the rest of you days, what’s the point? Moving sucks. Not being able to eliminate moving is a huge lifestyle and stress liability.
He should build an aggressive stock portfolio of growth companies with about 60% IV each while he’s still young and going back to work is a good emergency fallback, but for primary income he could just sell OTM options against his stocks and be making about $2k to $3k a week fairly conservatively with little risk of assignment at low deltas.
Betting against volatility will *never* not be "picking up pennies in front of a steamroller".
Retail investors should not touch options under any circumstances, anyway. They're hedging tools for institutions and cannon fodder for day traders.
EDIT: I missed that the OP was saying to sell options for stocks already in your portfolio. I'll address that now:
I feel like this makes it even less worthwhile? Remember, black swan events happen once a month in trading. I think people would be really surprised at how far OTM they need to go to truly get to a "minimal" risk of their options being assigned. At which point the premiums are going to truly be pennies. If you're making any interesting amount of money off of a covered trade like this, it's because you're taking on an interesting amount of risk.
Depends on whether youre fully cash secured or not. If you are fully cash secured, you barely make $. If you're not, now you're leveraged and a steep draw-down can wipe you out.
> sell OTM options against his stocks
I don't see where you get the impression they were ever talking about selling uncovered calls. Selling out of the money calls has nothing to do with selling puts. As yes selling cash secured puts even with some leverage is considered very safe. Here is a fund that does just that.
https://www.nb.com/en/us/products/mutual-funds/us-equity-ind...
If you get assigned, that's great, immediately sell a put. I've been able to do this against SPY/QQQ, rolling and never getting assigned. So it's all gravy on top of the existing market returns.
You can eke out a few pct a year this way, but from a SWR perspective it's like doubling your hoard.
I think you're talking about the wheel strategy. Keep reading this at r/thetagang but I believe the premiums lately have been higher than normal so that's why lots of people suggest this. HN was one of the last places I would see this suggested.
If I'm underleveraged, on a weekly expiration date (MWF) I'll sell a bunch of options a few strikes out a few hours before expiration, with stops. Usually they decay down and you get a lot of premium in an hour.
Covered calls don't add risk of ruin, you just have potential to miss any potential further gains if you pick a bad strike. This could happen anyway if you were to sell a stock at the wrong time for example.
We're hardly living a bread and water lifestyle.
When we hit 67, the state pension alone will give us > £18k. You just need enough to bridge the gap.
The truth is - most probably don't need anything like what they think they need to retire early.
The system just wants them continually on the hamster wheel.
1.2M is more than most people earn in a lifetime, so seems he should be set up for leanFIRE.
That said, the article seemed pretty hilarious. I think this guy might be a little bit unobservant. The cracks form early but he insists that he's blissfully happy. It seems like he didn't really know his partner that well to begin with.
I recently learned there is this term called "Sigma male" where status is not interesting. Now, I don't know if it is real or just some label, but I do know people that don't care. I personally don't care, but this is after testing the waters of spending money for happiness (remodel house, changes, etc...).
The key that I hope to leverage is that for me money nor traditional status does not translates directly into happiness. However, working on my silly programming language and products that use it: very happy.
My hope when I retire is to work almost full-time with the flexibility to stop and go. I'll be tinkering on http://www.adama-lang.org/ whilst I try to bootstrap a board game company.
I've come to the realization that most of my ideas are going to be seen harshly from many technical people, and they will not be taken seriously at first. My strategy therefor is to balance the meta-game of language building with building actual games. For instance, I'm currently designing a two player deck builder game for husband and wives to play.
I gave a demo of a product that I am building with a friend, and his mind was blown. Sadly, this is the form of status that I seek. I don't see the lifestyle or the materialism, I seek demonstrating my cleverness and being ahead of the curve.
No, I think your ideas on fatFIRE are right and should be copied by everyone who can.
I imagine that I have a few years until I see some of my ideas being more mainstream. There are a few database offerings (like firebase) which are similar to the infrastructure that I am going to build, but I am targeting a completely new data stack.
Such a build doesn't make sense without products, and I'm limiting myself to board games because... that's what I want to ship.
If I push my ideas out as a replacement for... mongo or mysql, then I'm going to get a lot of push-back. IF, instead, I push my ideas out via new products like a deck builder for married couples, then I just took an eccentric path.
You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=community%20identity%20by:dang...
It just goes to show you have to pick the right peer group to achieve the things you want, as people will want most to impress their peer group.
I've often caught myself with that and Hacker News, dreaming of hacking together something that would yield a good scoring submission on HN, but ultimately would be unimportant.
> I seek demonstrating my cleverness
Uh, what? Status seeking maybe means material success by default, but I think you'll find there are many, many people who care more about the approval of others than material success. That's you.
I'd say materialism, achievement, and social standing are the de-facto defaults for what we mean by status in the broader sense.
We are tribal social creatures by nature, but we also play silly games like who can get the most cars or the biggest house.
For instance, I spent $7K on new quartz counter-tops, $5K on a new fireplace insert which I would rarely use, and then $70K on a bathroom that I never used. Now, I've come to the conclusion that perfect doesn't really exist and just to enjoy what you have. We went from home owners to renters.
All the external things that money buys tend to not provide lasting happiness, and there you are stuck with yourself. We all die.
I have a lot of thoughts on this piece as I'm in the FI camp, but not yet RE camp. The only reason I don't join RE right now is because I want to try to leverage my position to do something really big. However, I'll probably fail, and I'll retire and do my own thing.
I think this varies. I've had my fair share of purchases that made no difference and I'd probably not repeat if given the opportunity. But I also have a good number of purchases that made a significant difference in the quality of my life.
Honestly, I LOVE (love, love love) being a homeowner. Cheaper than rent and I can customize to my hearts content.
Spent 40k on a porch 3 years ago, and I don't really have any regrets - We knew we wanted it, we knew it would make a lot of things easier (pet care, laundry, chest freezer access) and it's a great spot to just sit and enjoy myself.
Plus, it's on a house I intend to own until I die - not because I plan to live here forever, but because I bought an affordable place where the numbers for renting it work with my mortgage. So for now, my wife and I will enjoy it, in 5 years we'll either still be enjoying it or it will be adding to the monthly rent the place can pull.
We're in the middle of spending about 55k on a bathroom remodel with a similar expected return - We get to enjoy it now, and if we decide at some point it's not working for us or we're no longer happy here, it becomes revenue generating.
The flip side of this was my car - I just didn't care at all about what I was driving as long as it could get me from point A to point B with minimal hassle. I have coworkers & family who don't understand why I'm still driving a crappy 94 mazda protege. Doesn't matter how many times I tell them I don't care.
Similar for the lawn - I grew up in a nice neighborhood, and I got to see first hand exactly how expensive lawn care is and how little time most folks actually spent in their yard. Its like a nightmare of keeping up with the joneses - So we bought in a place with no HOA, and we ripped up most of the grass and have put in beds and paths in the front instead.
Some of the neighbors judge us (or complain openly, to our faces) about how the yard looks, but fuck em. Its not their yard, and I'm not spending the time and money to make other folks happy.
And really - I think that's the crux of the issue. If you're doing something because someone else might judge you if you don't, or because someone else did something similar and you want to show off too... then you're probably doing it for the wrong reasons.
That's it; why do we do what we do?
When I mentor people, I ask three questions? (1) who are you, (2) whom do you want to become, (3) how can I help?
Who we are and what we value are... so interesting. Like, why did I have an urge to get a beautiful quartz counter-top? It baffles me that I would spend more on home improvements then beefing out my computer.
This is such a gross element of our culture—what's wrong with just living?—and I feel like it's not even really a matter of working vs. retired. I know folks who have worked the same job for decades, and they get the same harsh judgment from others as the author. But this used to be the norm! When did we switch into this thinking that we have to be constantly racking up gold stars in order for life to mean anything? Where did that idea come from?
That's my base level, for when I need it. Just exist, like the cat. As per desiderata[0]:
"You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here"
Financial independence doesn't have to be a binary thing. I'd like to achieve it not so I can sit around and do nothing but in fact so I can do whatever I want. I appreciate the author's candidness. It's important not to look at any of these things as fixed, and it's important not to oversimplify.
I, for example, found a great therapist on my second try. He helped me tremendously but then happened to decide to retire right around when I felt like I didn't need to see him as much anymore. However, he recommended a colleague who he thought I would do well with who I have seen a couple of times since and it has worked out very well.
I also see in it a common question which the author hints at but doesn't seem to land on, "What is my purpose?"
I get emails from people sometimes who write "I want to be rich! Tell me how to do that." and I always ask them "Why do you want to be rich?" It is however also the question the FIRE folks should also be asking.
Here is a clue, no amount of money will make you happy or satisfied with your life, if your life has no purpose. And that purpose has to come from inside of you, not from some external source. Having kids may align your brain with the 'purpose' of raising and launching those kids into the world.
But folks who retire "early" (what is early) and have no purpose find retired life fun for a couple of years and then it loses a lot of its luster. They need a 'job' which gives them purpose.
And the longer you live the more you realize there is no "win" square at the end of your life, your life just stops. While that can be depressing, it can also be liberating. Consider how you can fix one small problem, provide durable support for one person or group of people who need support, and you start to realize that even after you are dead they will still be supported, and the problem will still be fixed. That is "winning."
I didn't realize any of this until I had kids. I mean up to that point my path was "learn all the things, get rich, and retire to a life of leisure." But I did have kids, and I found I got much more satisfaction out of the path of "Help launch these new people into the world so that their impact is positive and your own contribution to the world lives on." Many writers have written, "We live on through the lives and deeds of our children." and I found that much more profound once I had children.
In my professional life I found I get the same sense of accomplishment when I help someone move to their next phase, when I was presiding over the robotics club it was great to help new members build their first robot and to see where they took it.
Doing those things doesn't require being "rich" or being "famous." It just requires me to take time to help on things when I can with advice and guidance. I found it was the difference between "having a purpose" and my earlier goal of "get rich and retire."
I spent some of my time while walking thinking about those comments and came up with the following thought; The author made those statements in a nearly 10,000 word blog post. So in many ways they are already a writer.
The difference I was trying to communicate is that a "purpose" in this case, which involve writing, might be "I want to share important stories that are impactful in people's lives." or "I want to entertain people with stories of fantastic worlds." or "I want to help people understand complex subjects without having to wade through tons of irrelevant things."
Those kinds of statements are purposes that are achieved through writing.
For me, the litmus test for whether something is a "purpose" or simply a "skill" is that a "purpose" generates tasks in service to that purpose. Skill building improves your ability to execute on those tasks.
I know, kinda meta.
Also - no kids - huge variable for FIRE obviously, but perhaps less obviously ALSO a huge variable for life's purpose.
Something I've seen in my friend and family group is that a lot of couples hit a point where the answer to the "what's the point of all this?" is to create a family. Sorry if that sounded crushingly heteronormative - but this also includes gay folks in our life.
Not suggesting that everyone should have kids, or that the childfree people are somehow bad, or even that it's not a rational choice to go childfree. All good to those thinking that way.
But. If your conclusion is that love and connection is what life is all about (assume Maslow's lower levels are covered), then having children is possibly the magical thing missing. Not necessarily for everyone. But it's a game-changer for many of us and provides some incredible direction and purpose (as well as very low low's and constant anxieties).
Having children also can change your priorities in how you spend your own life. For me personally, I'd want my children to see me working hard at something; having adventures; building things; changing things for the better. All of that can happen inside the typical FIRE life. But as he points out, your life gradually disconnects from things if you're truly independent and separate. And unless your wealth is large enough that your children will also be FIRE, you really want them to learn from you in how to navigate "the typical world" of jobs, managing finances, etc.
You might have heard the quote "To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken."
YMMV but the lowest of the low are the times when you feel the reality that you have become utterly, completely, impossibly vulnerable in a way that you've never felt before. Speaking for myself, I haven't loved anything in my life even remotely closely to how I love my kids. Closest thing is my wife (and I really love her).
You go from... not wanting your plane to crash because, you know, it would suck to die and your spouse would be wrecked... to... my kids will grow up without me there to teach them, keep them safe, show them love. The angst I feel towards that is about 10000x worse than in how I thought about dying before kids.
Heck even your understanding of "my parents would be sad if I died as a 30-year-old man" changes. No parent should ever have to outlive their child.
Every headline that right now seems like a "sad story" - a parent losing a child, a child losing a parent, kids in cages, a daughter and father who are estranged, etc -- becomes an absolutely wrenching sadness if you even FLIRT with the idea of "what if that happened to me/my child"? You develop sensitivities that you are surprised at. You realize you have inherited an impossible and awesome responsibility of providing for, protecting, loving little blank slates of humanity... in a chaotic and dangerous world.
There's no answer to it except to do your best, and hope/pray that you never have to face the unfaceable.
That feeling isn't always present. But that's the dark shadow that occasionally crosses the sun.
Oh and BTW - this love doesn't just magically appear for everyone right away. I know lots of fathers especially who don't feel much right away, but as you see your children go from blobs to little people, you fall in love with them. So don't sweat asking yourself if you're feeling it. Just let it happen. :)
I don't think I can define the "value of love" beyond saying that the upside is fairly basic stuff - fulfillment, joy, affection, pride, self-discovery, character building from not putting yourself first and from serving others, etc.
> kids in cages, a daughter and father who are estranged, etc -- becomes an absolutely wrenching sadness if
> you even FLIRT with the idea of "what if that happened to me/my child"? You develop sensitivities that you
> are surprised at. You realize you have inherited an impossible and awesome responsibility of providing for,
> protecting, loving little blank slates of humanity... in a chaotic and dangerous world.
This was something I was not prepared for when I had my son. I cannot watch media or news stories where kids suffer or get hurt.
Clearly people get desensitized to it, both as viewers and as writers. Christopher Nolan, for instance, is a parent but all of his movies have tough child dynamics (e.g. Inception and Leo's character trying to see his kids again).
Maybe by writing stories like that you can exorcise the demon a bit?
- If you get very unlucky (sometimes) or suck at sleep training (way, way more often) get ready for years of bad sleep, yourself. If you're good at this the dreaded "sleep zombie" stage of parenting is only ~2-3 months long, though, so no big deal in the scheme of things, and even better if you've got a spouse who isn't the kind of person to "punish" their partner any time they have to be awake by making them also be awake (lots of people truly are like this, and I think it's nuts, if you do some good trading-off with one another, then the first couple months are actually really easy and you'll only be sleep-deprived like half the time, at worst)
- If your kid is sick, at all, then sleep in those early weeks will be exceptionally terrible, as kid illnesses tend to manifest in frequent waking & crying that can't always be assuaged with milk or rocking or whatever. Even a mild illness can make those early nights damn dark, and you may have trouble figuring out what's wrong (may take shopping for a doctor to find one who won't just rudely brush you off as a newbie parent with a "colicky" baby and actually listen to you and try to figure it out)
- They can be incredibly expensive, for all kinds of reasons, including but not limited to healthcare expenses (in the US), damage (ours have done over a thousand dollars of damage to stuff around our house in some years, more if we counted the rate of wear on e.g. flooring or the cost to pay for repairs on all kinds of things that we were able to do ourselves very cheaply), education (paid directly or, more commonly, in much higher housing expenses than you'd otherwise have). Oh and as they get older, food. (clothes and toys are negligible expenses compared to the rest, unless you don't want them to be)
Basically if no-one gets sick and you take sleep training seriously, they're just expensive and everything else is barely a problem... until they get old enough to start going places on their own, and then you get a whole new set of worries :-)
You'll get over it after a few months, though, and then there is your beautiful baby smiling at you.
Some really good nuggets of wisdom in there, even if you are not planning on retiring early. I'm kind of in the same place as the author, although I don't think I would necessarily really retire. I'd just take lower-paying jobs that were more fulfilling so as to keep me interacting with others and giving me some sort of daily challenge.
My takeaway from the post is you really can't predict where your life will go in the future. It's good to recognize that and be okay with it. A lot of us, myself included, are caught up in planning and doing the right things, but even with careful planning, you really don't have total control over what happens to you. Being resilient is an important part of moving forward.
The inability to relate to those working is understandable. I wonder if the author had been doing something more fulfilling to fill his time, he would have related more to his friends? Maybe not on the "making money and buying things" side, but the feeling of progressing in something. If I were to retire early, I feel like I would need something to keep me occupied, some sort of "life's work" to keep me going. Otherwise, it just feels like living out the rest of your days, filling it with movies, video games, and books.
For example, explore a position that lets you work 4 days a week and take Mondays or Fridays off. Later, switch to part time or contracting 6 months on 6 months off.
I don't personally think gap years will be very fulfilling unless it's something like a whole family 1 year vacation where you all go and live someplace.
I have considered contracting or even freelancing too, but I've been a W2 worker my entire career. I'd have to look into how to do this.
How often do you take real vacations?
Your scenario comes up a lot in FIRE forums: People lead unsustainably stressful work lives and think the only antidote is to quit. Then they decide they're not ready to quit, so they continue working the unsustainably demanding job.
The real solution is to work on refactoring your career. You need to teach yourself how to work sustainably, manage stress, and take vacations. Job won't allow it? Time to start looking for another job. Other jobs pay less? Doesn't matter, it's still more than you'd be paid if you burn out and have to quit to get relief.
Re: Gap years: You can find stories of people taking gap years and then diving right back into the workforce, but many of them are either from young people or people who have a network that can get them back into a job. If you're making a clean break and re-entering the workforce without job connections, it's going to be difficult in your 40s and 50s unless you have some very niche skills that are in demand. Hiring managers might be concerned that you're looking for a cushy semi-retirement job to keep you busy, and that you might simply retire again if the going gets tough. They'd rather hire someone whose career interests are more aligned with staying with the company. Keep this in mind with how you frame your gap year.
Everything you say makes sense and I am considering all of it, especially taking a lower paying, lower stress job.
In a prior life, I took a few month-long trips to Nepal. No one ever complained although a few were a bit surprised I could do so.
When I was earlier in my career and was fed up at my then-current job, an older, wiser coworker of mine took me aside and advised me to leave for the right reasons. Be sure that I was running toward something new that excited me, and not just running away from something that made me unhappy. He wanted to make sure I wasn't going to just accept whatever first job came my way, or quit without any plan for the future at all.
The antidote to unsustainably stressful work is only quitting if you've thoroughly looked at what quitting really means and have decided that will truly make you happy.
Quitting might be an intentionally-short-term fix with a plan to find a better job with a healthier work/life balance. Quitting and retiring could be a long-term fix, too, but it's such a huge lifestyle change that it shouldn't be seen as simply a solution to the problem.
One of their jobs is crunching the numbers to answer the exact question you're asking.
We recently went through this with our financial advisor. We're the same age, only have one kid, east coast HCOL area, live well below our means, very similar savings as you.
Rough answer was we could do a normal retirement in our early 50s if we could get closer to $6M nest egg with an assumption of spending a bit higher than your current expenses in retirement.
FI/RE seems to be financial advising minus the personalized advice and the regulations and plus the silly social media influencer/huckster side of things with a side dose of "retire well below your normal standard of living" to retire early.
One of the tricks for me to balance things is realizing the startup game is too rigged.. it's way easier to make solid/reliable returns working at high performing public companies that award equity. I've been through quite a few exits, but as time has gone on each exit was worse and worse because the founders and investors get more and more of the pie. And working at the public companies tends to be way more life/work balance.
Assuming you're going to live from 50 until 80, that's $200k/year spending assuming your investments/retirement funds just keep up with inflation. Maybe I'm missing something?
I want to take some time off, but I've got significantly less to fall back on. I wish I didn't earn so little for so long. It feels like by the time I catch up I'll be regular retirement age anyway.
Can you explain the "can't" part of early retirement? The "won't" is of course your decision and no one else's. But why do you say "can't"?
Probably we've all seen the articles on how 100+K income in Silicon Valley falls as "low income": https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44725026
And those pre-teen kids will be college kids later at which point OP will need far more than 80K/yr.
But also understand that you're probably not going to make the best decisions about this from the perspective of extreme burnout.
First step might be to talk to your boss about your workload and see if there are some changes that can be made to make you happy again. If that doesn't pan out, maybe think about finding a new job. Even if you choose not to, just going through the process of seeing what's out there will give you some valuable perspective.
I don't have much idea as to how difficult it'd be to find another job in your 40s/50s if you take an extended break from work for a while, but my intuition is that it'd be harder than simply switching jobs now. An alternative might be to find a new job now, but negotiate a start date that is a month or two out from your planned last day at your current job. This won't work at some employers, but many will be fine with it.
On the other hand, consider that $2.8M at $80k/yr is 35 years of expenses. Your expenses will almost certainly grow over time, but even if they triple, that's still over 10 years of runway. If you wanted to take a year off, but then had trouble finding a job right away, you'd have no problem (financially) taking 6 months (or 12 or more) finding your next job. Hell, you could train for an entirely new field and work your way up from an entry level position to something mid-range in that time.
> But also understand that you're probably not going to make the best decisions about this from the perspective of extreme burnout.
I'm (overly) aware that my burnt out state may not lead to the best decisions. That's why I'm stepping cautiously and not making any rash changes.
> First step might be to talk to your boss about your workload and see if there are some changes that can be made to make you happy again.
I'm currently in talks with management to see what can be done. It's not really the workload, but the type of work I'm doing that's been the problem. But because I'm burnt out and diminished, the normal workload which is not normally a problem is becoming one. But I also fear I'm just too burnt out to remain working here in any capacity.
I'm gearing myself up to find another job, to avoid having to job hunt while unemployed in my 40s, and hopefully be able to take a month or two before starting. Job hunting/interviewing is hard in the best of circumstances; it's doubly so in my current burnt out state.
> [Long runway, can retrain in another field]
Also under consideration. Front-runner is GIS. Always had an interest doing geo-analysis/maps.
That's a key (unfortunate) insight. Sometimes the only way to fix burnout is to step back and just not do what you were doing for a while, sometimes a long while. Employers usually won't be ok with that, though :(
And yeah, totally get that interviewing while being burned out is really hard too.
Best of luck to you. I really hope you manage to figure things out. The important thing is that you know there's a problem, and you're taking steps to try to fix it. Even if that process is not easy, things will get better.
But you can take a comfortable number of years off though and it is very nice to do that. Decompress, spend tons of time with those pre-teen kids while they still are that age.
I took about 3 years off in my 40s when my child was starting elementary school. Spent all my afternoons playing with the kid and all mornings (school time) working on my personal projects at home. Highly recommended!
With 2.8M while you can't retire forever, you also won't have any urgency to find a new job so you can be picky when you start looking, like I was. Finding a new job can be difficult if you're desperate for it, but with no urgency you can hold out for a great job.
Yeah, I think I realize this deep down, and part of why I don't want to.
> I took about 3 years off in my 40s
How did your job search go when you decided to go back to work? What was your last job before taking a break and what was the new job that you found? Were they similar or completely different? Did you have any trouble with a 3-year gap? You obviously didn't have any major issues, like not finding a job. But were you questioned a lot about the gap? Sorry so many questions, but I'm intensely interested in how it went for you because I might be doing the same.
If I do take a year off, I figure I could explain it partly with the pandemic, and wanting to take care of my kids (not untrue).
I know my savings allow me a long runway and if I take a career break, I'm sure I could figure something out during that time. But still, actually stepping off that cliff is nerve-wracking, for me at least.
I suggest setting up a solo consulting business up front. I didn't think of doing that, did it in the third year and only after someone contacted me asking for some consulting help. I did then have a couple clients for consulting but I only worked a couple hours a week and not every month so it was minimal-to-none at best. But it did give me a legitimate entry in the resume as consulting business owner. Maybe that helped.
I was very worried about the gap but it was a non-issue. Most places didn't ask at all. The few that did, I told them I wanted to be a stay-at-home-dad for a while and spend time with the kid (true) and everyone was "wow, very cool!"
(I'm in Silicon Valley, culture might be different elsewhere.)
It's hard to say how long it took me to find a new job because I didn't exactly look for one. After setting up the consulting gig I started thinking it would be great to find enough consulting work to fill about 20hrs/wk and just keep doing that. So I started reading my linkedin messages instead of ignoring them. I'd respond to the recruiters saying I'm not looking for a full time role but I'd be open to part-time consulting for their project. No takers, I wish companies were more open to part-time help. One of those recruiters ended up being more persistent and convinced me to go in for interviews even though I didn't want a FT role. Ended up liking the team so took the offer. I was at a principal engineer/architect level before and after.
I obviously don't know your situation but given your high savings and the age of the kids, it's a great opportunity to spend time with them now.
It's a lot cheaper for two people to live together, than it is for two people to live apart.
Either way, FIRE on a million dollars, even in a lower-COL state is... A bit optimistic, because of short-term market fluctuations having the potential to coincide with surprise expenses.
Here is an article that readily turned up about the "overwhelming" expenses involved in the diagnosis listed in the article:
I had a bit of an ugly meltdown last week, because I realized the medicine used to treat my tachycardia had quadrupled in price. Quadrupled. You know, because I had an extra $180 a month that I had been hoping to spend on medication.
https://globalgenes.org/2017/02/08/my-life-with-ehlers-danlo...
The first one, I intended to write, but ended up playing World of Warcraft. The second one, I significantly improved my coding skills (I was primarily doing finance immediately before this, and as a result of this period, my career became concentrated in product management + data + BI). The the third one I spent learning to trade. I even flirted with starting a hedge fund for a bit, but have since backed off those ambitions. I'm currently back at a full time job doing data + BI + finance + product for a small startup.
My biggest takeaways from all these experiences:
1. That kind of freedom is challenge in and of itself. It's amazing to have 12-18 months to dig in deep into a new area (I call these my self-directed masters programs). The feeling of freedom and mastery can't be beat--but most people can't sit in a room by themselves 8-10 hours a day and not go crazy or just waste it on distractions. That in itself is a skill. My first attempt ended up in gaming instead of writing, which turned out okay--but I still wonder where I could have ended up if I had my current level of ability to stay on course.
2. No matter what you do, if you go deep into an area, it seems to add to your overall career progression (for example, I got into video-game product management largely because of my year playing WoW). I doubt you can do nothing--or anything--but at least for me, my desire to want to learn something seemed to be guiding light enough.
3. It's really lonely. Like in undergrad or my MBA, I was learning a ton of new stuff--but unlike those times, there were few people in my life to share the journey with. People were either busy/disinterested or much further along. I really wish I had understood the value of being part of a cohort when I had the chance.
4. I should have spent more time working out. At my age now, I can't believe I found it so hard to dedicated 5-10 hours a week for exercise, especially when my body responded so readily to it (compared to now--I guess youth is wasted on the young once again).
5. Going back and forth between these times and full-time jobs is a great way to level-up and then lock in a new backstop for your next career move. Adding in a little consulting also makes the interviewing story better and gives you some real-world problems to tackle with the new skills you're developing.
For me, while financially independent, I must have something that gets me out of bed every day - give me too much open-ended time and I wither.
I suspect that a lot of introspection is valuable in order to successfully navigate the withdrawal from typical society.
Financial independence, or at least some freedom, sounds great. But money is just a tool to some end. What end?
Ultimately, having some output and being helpful to others is pretty basic to happiness. A job is a good vehicle for that, though not the only one.
It sounds like he and his wife had a shared goal and developed a great relationship. Then they never really had another goal after they accomplished that one. No kids, no charity, no research, not helping the community.
Wouldn't it be a lot better to get close to independence, then just take off a couple months at a time? Or at least build up some real goals you care about? Or make/adopt some kids/pets that can use all that attention?
If the need for income goes away I still need to replace the other two.
Is that all you wanted to do? I'm pretty sure if I could afford to be retired it would be a long, long time before I got bored. Yes I would exercise more and catch up on TV and movies that I've missed over the years, but I also have a lot of hobbies that I would like to work on. There are local organizations I would like to volunteer for. There are lots of classes I would want to take or audit. I'd visit friends and family I haven't seen in years.
I might even be like your dad and find a job that I enjoy doing. That's a whole different thing than working because you have to.
I like doing things and solving problems but generally lack enough self-drive to do so on my own except on sporadic projects. A day job give me a focus, external motivation and deadlines which I actually enjoy having.
I listen to a lot of FI podcasts and they acknowledge that the transition from $day_job to FI can be hard for a lot of people. They say the key thing is make sure you're retiring _to_ something rather than _from_ something.
I'm about halfway to FI and simply cannot _wait_ to start spending most of time working on all the gajillion projects that interest me but (probably) won't make much money.
There is something deep in there about social bonds and being able to relate to people. As long as most people work themselves to death, people that go the FI route will always feel ostracized/left out. It’s just how social things work :(
I also like how the author recognized the issues that were cropping up and actually course-corrected. I find this highly unusual and I am really happy it worked out.
I found the concept of "funded contentment" by Brian Portnoy[1] useful:
> ... wealth and investing are about funding contentment and underwriting a meaningful life, as defined by you. Not about getting rich, having "more," and losing yourself on the hedonic treadmill.
So without having defined "contentment" first, you'll be unhappy either way, retired or working. Contentment itself seems to come from a combination of three things. The weights tend to be different for each person: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.[2]
I found this a very useful framework for myself and I don't see early retirement as a goal any more. Instead, I focus on the things that make me content, which is mainly mastery and autonomy for me.
1: https://www.alexjhughes.com/books/2018/7/4/the-geometry-of-w...
The OP seems content to live a life without work. For him, by far the main reason to work was for income. If you don't want to work, then why keep doing so when you no longer need income to fuel your lifestyle? Obviously people are different here, and many (esp. on HN) derive other values from work.
The wrench comes when you're surrounded by people who aren't on the same page. Like OP pointed out, you become more disconnected as you both can't relate to the other's chosen lifestyle. OP sees their peers' lifestyles as consumption-focused. And I'd bet those friends couldn't relate to OP either.
OP's spouse probably felt caught in the middle between freedom and social inclusion. If you can't relate to your peers, early retirement could feel more like stagnation than freedom. Social inclusion is a hard thing to give up.
It's possible his spouse just didn't have that. Sure, you can always say "get better friends", but that's easier said than done, and it has to be a huge shock to be unable to relate to all of the people you've counted as friends over the past decade or more, and watch your friendships die away. It's even worse if those former "friends" are judging you negatively for not "keeping up" with them.
I do expect that to happen with some of my friends (I'm FI, but haven't yet pulled the RE trigger). Some of them with similar levels of FI (or at least the potential) are still very focused on work and building (or helping to build) companies, and don't seem to want to change that. I'm happy for them that they're able to do that freely, without financial worries, but I'm (sadly) sure that we'll drift apart once I retire. Fortunately I do have a solid group of friends who have similar goals as I do, or at least understand and support the life I want, so I expect those friendships to remain strong.
- Problems come to me instead of me fighting with other teams for fun projects.
- Abundant opportunities for career growth, be it tech leadership or managerial hierarchies.
- Surprisingly high cumulated chance of getting meaningful equity, as long as you switch company quickly when you no longer enjoy your work.
What do I have to do to get into such startups? Well, getting good at leetcode in the early years, and working hard to get a reputation so I don't have to do hard leetcode problems nowadays. I enjoy working on CS fundamentals and applying them, so working on leetcode is never an issue, and working hard is what engineers enjoy anyway.
Engineers enjoy building architectures to minimize human effort while still producing maximal results. I try to solve problems as efficiently as possible to minimize the amount of work I have to do and minimize the amount of effort some future maintainer will have to do. This will allow a company to reach unlimited economies of scale as the limit of the amount of work required approaches zero.
There are different type of engineers. I think people will almost always miss the mark when they state "engineers enjoy xyz" even when it's something like "engineers enjoy problem solving". I actually enjoy fantasizing and being the idea guy, but I was too lazy to find a programmer so I taught it to myself instead. But I still enjoy being the idea guy much more than being a programmer. I like programming (and at times love to dive deep, deeper than a lot of web devs anyways), but I love being the idea guy.
But speaking a little more concretely, markets have been on a tear: stocks, crypto, bonds, whatever.
With that condescending attitude to have toward other people's personal tastes and preferences. It's great that this person doesn't care about material goods. But the fact that he so clearly thinks that his choices are "better" than the ones others have made makes it no mystery to me why those "friendships" suffered.
Late 30s/early 40s: 4 days a week with Fridays or Mondays off. Late 40s through 50s: contracting with increasing time off between contracts. E.g., 6 on 6 off, 3 on 9 off, 1 on 11 off, etc.
Reading his piece, my impression was that this guy can formulate his ideas fairly well, but his writing is horribly stretched and, at times, outright boring and bland. IDK if this can be fixed with enough practice. Maybe. Maybe he just does not have enough "internal energy" (for the lack of a better term) to spout some engaging prose spontaneously.
That could have been fine in the 19th century, when long and low energy novels were the norm, but contemporary standards and expectations are very different.
Accidentally, I feel that my writing flows better if I have something else to do, too. Maybe being retired just does not help you get things done.
[1] 'Uncertainty and the welfare economics of medical care - 1963'
Oh, you sweet, innocent babe.
Praise your lucky stars for every single day that you don't have to deal with our "health care" system.
Someone who is in an unfulfilling job and cannot make the move to fulfillment working is likely also not going to find retirement fulfilling. I'd venture that our hero actually isn't completely clear on what makes him tick.
Even if you buy the best insurance available in the individual market the provider network is likely to local whereas employer-provided insurance will have a nationwide network. If you get a rare disease for which the best experts are in another state you'll regret buying insurance off of the individual market.
Each time I return to work. But each time it was for different reasons.
I most recently left "retirement" to start a company. I don't need more money, but work keeps me sharp. My father retired in his sixties and immediately declined. I don't want to be like my dad.
My dad has been retired for almost 20 years and is as sharp as ever. He spends most of his days making things in his shop.
I can't imagine living a life with nothing to look forward to outside of work.
The problem in the US is that proper healthcare is tied to a job. If the author had proper healthcare (say offered by the Government), he may still be in retirement.
For our European counterparts, ask yourself this. Would 900k euro in savings be enough for retirement in Europe?
My strategy (NL) would be: buy a house/apartment for around 300K to 400K to live in (to combat rent inflation). Use the other 500K * 0.03 = 15K to live from.
For me personally:
- food is 100 euro's (buy things in bulk, buy cheap and micronutrient dense veggies like spinach, don't buy meat, buy frozen fish, etc.)
- utilities is 300 euro's (water + electricity + heat + internet + phone)
- health insurrance is 150 euro's
- disposable income is (15K / 12) - 550 = 1250 - 550 = 700 euro's. Property taxes still need to be paid, entertainment and transportation.
I may or may not have forgotten a few things, if it's still too little, then up the withdrawal rate to 4% instead of 3% and buy the 300K house/apartment.
It would seem a lot about this journey was all about him.
If ones model financial independence is so fragile that "comfort spending" is not included in the analysis, then I am not quite sure one can call that strategy financial independence.
Then again, there are some medical diagnoses that will bankrupt you (in the US) even if you're employed and have good insurance, so I think there are some things you can safely not make part of the equation.
I can totally understand and forgive not modeling "what happens if my partner and I divorce", but it's something people need to consider.
Disclaimer: I've never been married. I might, later in life.
If there would be no women, we would all still be hunter gatherers. Hunting for a small bit of the day, and for the rest doing nothing and sitting in the tree.
If you put women into the equation, they want a roof over their head. So they pick a partner who can provide that. So now we all work a bit extra to get the roof. But now the most wanted woman is most interested in the guy with the biggest roof. So now there is a competition. Women picking the most capable guys. Now the race is on.
If you think the modern women think differently now, you are very wrong.
Now, after this story, you might think I am a very sexist person. But you think wrong. I took care of my 3 kids during my fulltime job, while my wife was constantly on business trips. I love taking care of my kids, I help out in the household, etc. I am what they call a "new/modern man".
But don't think that any women has any respect for a guy that is not a "real man", getting ahead of all the others. If she thinks you are a lazy loser, she will make the jump.
To keep it short, men want "pretty", women want "successful".
You cannot just discard evolution and biological differences when it comes down to partner preferences. I believe in gender equality, and gender differences. Both can coexist.
But I hope I made my point that women are attracted to successful men. And if you don't belong in that group (anymore), they will quickly lose interest.
Now imagine you got paid for running, reading, watching Netflix or sleeping. Something you really enjoy. I think we would see more people dropping a homeless man a $5’er thinking I’m planning to run/read/sleep later anyways. There is no sacrifice to get that money back. It was what I would have done anyways.
Edit: now that I think about it, social status probably keeps people clinging to that money.
It's like immortality and why you wouldn't want to be immortal according to Neil deGrasse Tyson - when there's no sence of urgency, there's nothing to make you do anything, so you just sit there and stare at the wall.
Really depressing come to think of it.
Sometimes acronyms are not immediately easy to guess.
> "I see our current lives as better. Theirs appear to be a constant struggle most of the time."
Magically his opinion about being a wage slave changes the moment he realizes he needs money.
> Overall, though, I find I’m mostly okay with working again, especially because I suddenly need and value the money.
Amazing insight here.
So sorry for seeing reality catch up with you, and nice to see you admit it.
> I just love to work
I think your own personal circumstances apply to you. Have you met any people who do not love to work?
Also, understand that in Financial Independence, "independence" means having complete control over your decision-making. You can attain it, and then choose to work, or choose to vacation, or choose to read books, or choose to play video games, or choose to write a novel, or choose to take up some other creative endeavor, or choose to push your body to its limits - and you will not be constrained by the remainder of your hours left after your work day is over.
but even if you do enjoy working, it's still great to be FI. you can choose the most interesting job and ignore the salary.
I've got tons of ideas and cool projects I want to work on (some I've even made decent progress on in my spare time), but I don't know if they'd be profitable, nor do I want to worry about that. I just want to code on stuff I like.
Do you love to work, or do you love something else about your job?
Also consider that many people do not, like you, love to work.
Money doesn't buy happiness, but not having enough of it is a great recipe for being unhappy. I think there are coarsely three levels of personal finance:
1) You live paycheck to paycheck (or worse) and are constantly anxious about your finances.
2) You have some savings and live comfortably enough. You might want more, but not having more doesn't outright kill your happiness.
3) You have enough money that you can live comfortably, even if you decide to stop working, without much (or anything) in the way of unmet wants.
The vast majority of people are in one of the first two buckets. Getting to the third one isn't possible for most people, unfortunately, and trying to get there could actively make some people's lives worse. But all other things being equal (which is admittedly rare), the third bucket is objectively better than the second.
The other problem is that extremely frugal people are going to have a harder time making and maintaining friendships, because people bond over activities that cost money. I would argue that being able to quickly and systematically create deep, high-quality relationships is as important if not more important to FIRE than actually having the money.
First of all, you can't "learn a language" in a year. It takes multiple years, and it's really a journey not a destination. I guarantee you his partner doesn't speak French at, say, a C1 or C2 level. Impossible.
Second, I feel like it exposes something about the writer here. Too much emphasis on state, too little on the transitions between state.