Maybe this should take a back seat to the more substantive topics, but I would be interested in hearing ARS's perspective on the growth and evolution of the early retirement community (especially since he seems to be an omnipresent member of it).
That'd be a good question for Nords, IMO (who should be added to Joshua's interview list). I mean, I have some thoughts on it, but he's been around it years longer than I have.
I'm happy to show up for anyone's podcast. Being a guest is the easy part!
I didn't get started on ER forums until 2002, and I didn't put up my first post until 2004. However The Motley Fool used to have a busy financial independence forum in the 1990s. TMF shot themselves in the head by starting a paywall, so everyone in the TMF ER forums decamped for a number of other forums. A few of you MMM members were there and may wish to post your own recollections of those pioneering days.
John Greaney's RetireEarlyHomePage.com was one of the first sites to appear out of the interest generated by "Your Money Or Your Life", and it accelerated after TMF's paywall. He started it in April 1996 (as you can tell from its layout) and he still puts up quarterly posts:
http://retireearlyhomepage.com/chronidx.htmlGreaney put together a ER spreadsheet which later evolved into FIRECalc.
Greaney has largely disappeared from the ER public to enjoy his own life. From what I can see of his online activity, most of it revolves around a macabre and personal obsession with a notorious troll. I'll say no more about that because it just puts a spotlight on the problem.
Raddr (a radiologist) did some popular research in 2004 and started his own forum which is still in business:
http://raddr-pages.com/research/http://www.raddr-pages.com/forums/His most popular thread is the hapless Y2K retiree who blithely follows the 4% SWR no matter what:
http://www.raddr-pages.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1208&hilit=Y2KThat withdrawal rate has risen over 10% for the last three years, and the portfolio will probably not recover.
Note: Nobody blithely follows the 4% SWR. The thread is intended to demonstrate how easy it is to detect the problem years in advance and adjust as necessary.
Morningstar also ran a number of ER forums (maybe they still do, but they were terrible), and one of the more popular ones was Vanguard Diehards. In the mid-2000s the notorious troll began posting there and M* was very slow to moderate him. M* also had a number of site administration problems, so nearly a third of those posters broke away to form Bogleheads.org. One of its most valuable assets is the Bogleheads Wiki.
One day a co-worker of "Dory36" was retiring, and someone jokingly taped a printout from REHP to the co-worker's office door. Dory noticed that and joined the TMF and REHP forums, eventually starting his own in 2002. Here's a history of the ensuing chaos:
http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f32/the-history-of-early-retirement-org-53657.htmlHere's the first post on E-R.org:
http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f29/retirement-afloat-13853.htmlBelieve it or not, Dory used to run E-R.org with only himself as a moderator-- via a cell phone from his boat for an hour or two in the afternoons. By 2005 the forum had grown from a quiet neighborhood bar to a raucous Studio54, so a half-dozen of us formed its first moderator team. A few of us original E-R.org moderators still stay in touch on a private forum nicknamed "The Bar".
One of the early E-R.org posters, Bob Clyatt, was newly ER'd but interested in the idea of semi-retirement. In 2005 he wrote "Work Less, Live More" with a lot of feedback from us other posters. Bob created one of the first variable-withdrawal schemes, the 4%/95% system which leads to a higher overall SWR (perhaps 4.5%). Bob is still happily retired and a world-class sculptor (his high-school avocation) near NYC:
http://www.clyattsculpture.com/ He rarely posts on E-R.org these days.
Dory took Greaney's ER spreadsheet and programmed FIRECalc, eventually growing it to v3.0. In 2007 he sold both the E-R.org forums and FIRECalc to an entrepreneur who runs a collection of various forums. Dory is still happily ER'd today although he's a partner in a web design firm. MMM may work on houses, but Dory works on websites and spoils his grandkids.
Bob's WLLM project led to a side discussion on E-R org about how somebody should write a book for military ERs. The "REWahoo!" character who compiled that E-R.org history linked above is a military veteran and a big contributor to Chapter 6 of The Military Guide to Financial Independence and Retirement. He's also a good friend.
E-R.org has been a life-changing experience for me in more ways than the book and the blog. I've met up with a number of E-R.org posters here on Oahu and during my travels. When my daughter was a high-school sophomore doing her college search, a large group of E-R.org posters in Houston pointed out that she should seriously consider Rice University. (I met up with those guys during just about every annual Family Weekend from 2010-2013.) I no longer start threads on E-R.org, but I check on it every week or so and post once in a while.
A few of you MMM posters may have been around E-R.org as long as I have. (I'm lookin' at you, FUEGO!) I won't reveal your alter egos here, but feel free to share your own recollections...