Somewhere along the line Sam/Financial Samuri went from writing quality articles to click-bait trash. His early approach was to use math to make sense of finances and retirement. Now his posts are littered with mathematical mistakes that I can only describe them as gross-negligence. And he doesnt’ seem to care. His articles are the epitome of confirmation bias - he starts with some conclusion (that will get clicks) and then cherry-picks odd datasets that will help him reach that conclusion.,
He monetized his blog Right around when he decided that he was bored with FIRE and didn’t like the ‘constraints’ of living off a couple million in a HCOL (SF Bay) area.
I've said this before when Samurai gets brought up, what I think is unfortunate is that what's driving his crap is really worth discussing.
This guy did it, he managed to FIRE, and yet, he's not happy with it and he finds its not enough, and would rather turn the fire hose of cash back on because working for him is better than living frugally compared to those around him.
He's basically the opposite of MMM who FIRED on far less, built a really exciting and rich life, ended up with massive amounts of extra money, and still really enjoys his frugal lifestyle.
But what made one of them FIRE into his best life and the other feel so let down by the whole experience? What's the cautionary tale here? I'm really quite fascinated by the whole thing, but now that he's just writing nonsense click-bait, it's hard to parse anything meaningful behind it.
It's really too bad, because I think there would be a lot of value in seeing inside why FIRE doesn't work out for some people.
I see what you see, poster formerly known as Malkynn. And the juxtaposition between Pete and Sam does fascinate me as well.
But where I really get angry at Financial Samuri is what I call blogging malpractice - using absolutely ludicrous data to prove his point*.
Here's just one example: In his case for why a FIREd couple with one toddler cannot live comfortably on 'just' $200k/year of investment income, he inexplicably i) ignored forever $750k in retirement accounts as 'inaccessable', ii) calculated $24k/year in college savings
forever and iii) assumed over $10k for child care
forever. Ironically his sample 'budget' showed a slight surplus despite a huge amount of fat. What's head-smackingly ridiculous (and why I call it "financial-blogging malpractice") is that these calculations assume $504k invested towards higher education, the assumption that two adults
with no jobs still need considerable childcare (and that childcare will not go away in a few years when toddler goes to elementary school) and that, even at 15 years later that $750k in retirement accounts should be meaningless (at a minimum it makes saving $504k for your only child's college fund a bit redundant, no?)
And that's just one example. As Telecaster and others have pointed out, he's made a recent habit of using math to obfuscate rather than enlighten.
