Downsides to not having a job

[johnintaiwan]

http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-benefits-your-job-that-are-more-important-than-money/

Yes, this is a comedy article, but they try to use comedy to talk about real things. I wonder what you all think about the benefits of having a job even when you are FI. The only one that really makes sense to me is the first point about friends, but I think if you are retired you will have more opportunities to make friends. All the others should be taken care of with an active ER rather than sitting on a couch watching tv.

[innerscorecard]

I have never ever felt bored not working or being idle. I know many other people, on the other hand, who cannot imagine not having a job to go to.

I think the secret - in the accumulation phase, and something I am struggling with - is to combine the driven work ethic of the second with the ability to enjoy life of the first. I suspect the answer in the end will have to be doing for "work" something that is enjoyable and that I do for fun anyways. And finding a way to be paid for it.

[Ian]

I think this article could be considered "four benefits that most people only get from their jobs." Those are important things to consider, but they're things you can and should get from other sources.

[Threshkin]

Another benefit of having a job is that it makes it easier to get a loan.. Now i know going in debt is anti-mustachian but in some cases it is the right thing to do.  For example, if you want to buy a rental property to generate cash flow and get a better return on your investment capital, you may be better off getting a loan than just paying cash.  If you pay cash, you have to take all of the income from the rental (less depreciation) as taxable income.  You also have more equity at risk if you get sued by your tenant. 

Also, with today's still low interest rates and still low housing prices in many parts of the US, you can make your investment cash go further and generate more income.  For example, it you can but a rental property for $150K and rent it for $1K/ month (as you can do in my area of the country) if you have $150K to invest, you could buy 1 property and generate $1K in income or you could put 33% down on 3 properties and earn $3K per month in rental income minus ~$1400 in monthly interest on a $300K commercial loan for $1600 net.  (Commercial loan estimate is 1% over the national rate for a primary residence.)  Every month the interest paid goes down while the rent stays the same improving your return.

Try getting a $300K loan without a job.

Disclaimer - These are rough estimates for illustration purposes.  If you believe my logic is incorrect, please let me know because I am considering a similar situation myself.  I am FIRE ready but am considering keeping my job at least until after I get the loans.   

[2527]

^ I got a $250,000 mortgage without a job.

[CarDude]

You don't get that shared sense of suffering on Mondays.

[Dr. Doom]

Although I agree with the point that most friends that you discover later in life are found in the workplace, that's because the vast majority of your time is spent in the workplace.  You'll make friends wherever you're hanging out.   (duh)

Yeah, I've made a few decent friendships during my 13+ years of work (one even turned out to be terrific), but overall the folks I work with are unbearably douchey.   Work socialization has always felt forced and unnatural, like putting two pandas in the same cage and expecting them to fall in love.  Big surprise: most don't.   I take the opposite view -- shedding obligatory interactions with a large number of people that I don't particularly care for works out to be a big win.

There are better ways to meet people.

[Thegoblinchief]

My relationship with coworkers slides on a scale from indifferent to actively loathe.

I love that panda analogy, hah!

[2527]

One of the biggest reasons I still have a job is so my children see me having a job.  I could have stopped working when they were 7 and 4.  I think there is something good about them seeing their father have a job, manage life, get up in the morning, successfully interact in the world, etc.  I'm modeling for them what they do now with school and will need to do as adults.  My job is not overly demanding.  I work 40 hours per week, and have evenings and weekends off.  If my job was very demanding, I may feel differently.

[dcheesi]

You find that social entertainment is mostly geared toward teenagers, so showing up to, say, an arcade to meet new people probably puts you on some kind of watch list.

Social entertainment is geared towards teenagers? Since when?!  One of the biggest problems I recall with bring a teenager is that there was often nothing for us to do around town. All the cool hangouts were geared towards people of drinking age, and we didn't have enough money to go to actual concerts, etc. Even eating out was a problem, cause they tend to get annoyed when you hold down a 20-top for three hours ordering nothing but appetizers and water...

Heck, in the town I'm in now, my main problem right out of school was that I was too young for the social scene here. It's not a major college town, nor hip enough to attract young professionals, so most of the nightlife was geared toward married 30+ couples and businessmen.

Edit to add: I will admit that my earliest friendships here were with coworkers, but they've been a decidedly mixed bag. For the most part it's the friends I don't work with that have turned out to be the most valuable, and of course caused fewer complications at work.

[begood]

Another benefit of having a job is that it makes it easier to get a loan..

This is a big concern for me. We live in employer-provided housing right now, so if my husband chose to stop working, we would have to move. And yes, we could rent, but rents are super high in my area (like, $2000+ for a three-bedroom apartment and more for a condo, and even more for any detached residence). A nice two-bedroom would be $1400+. And honestly, would my part-time contract work even be acceptable as a guarantee for a lease? Of the things that keep me awake at night, that is the biggie: What do we do if we have to find a place to live and only I have income coming in? The income is fairly predictable (and I have been doing it for four years, so I have some history) but it's not steady like a corporate job.

[deborah]

How wrong can someone be? Yes, before I retired, I was worried about each of these things - and it might be a problem if I retired younger (I am in my 50s).

Working improves mental health - ha ha! Work has definitely not done that for me! Retirement has been a wonderful improvement of mental health. I am involved in several clubs - with people who all LOVE what they are doing, are generally cheerful, and this is a wonderful mental health improver.

Work exercises your set of standards - I guess it does. When I managed people it astounded me what people expected to get away with - at one stage, I managed a person who expected to be able to work for 3 hours a day and be paid for working 8, a person who thought it was OK to get kickbacks... Now, the people I interact with have a much more healthy set of standards - look at the MMM forum!

Work experience makes you more valuable - who to???

Work allows you to find and make more friends - rubbish! One of my work mates once said he had made more friends and met a more diverse set of people at his children's school than he had in any other part of his life. I have found that particularly in later years (when a woman is the grey haired frump - I don't know about elsewhere, but there is definitely ageism in the Australian workplace - particularly against females - well documented by our discrimination office) no-one at work wanted to be friends. I developed many friendships at this time outside work, and am developing more friends in retirement than I did in the last 10 years of work.

Thanks for the laugh!

Yes, it might be more difficult to get a loan - but do any of us in the MMM community need a loan after we retire - we have our stasche and can buy things for cash. And we can point to our investments, showing a more regular income than work. Any company can fail, and its employees loose their jobs.

Last year, I went on a holiday during winter (the time the "blue rinse brigade" go touring) into outback New South Wales. I met many other retirees at all the caravan parks and national parks I visited. They were all astounded at my set up (they had enormous 4WD towing enormous caravans - I had a little car which I slept in), but there was definite comraderee that was missing at work.

[Osprey]

This article makes me cringe.
Slightly OT, when I opened this thread I was looking forward to complaining about things like "Downside of not having a job: People keep asking you to fetch them from the airport."

[Eudo]

^ I got a $250,000 mortgage without a job.

Do you have more details (without revealing anything that you want to keep private, of course)? I was under the impression that banks typically lend against your cash flow, not assets, so you're going to have to show less than, say, 25% debt to income. If you just have a stache, then you'd only be able to include dividend and interest, which isn't a lot these days, and if much of your assets were in your IRA or 401k, those dividends wouldn't count. Did you have to do anything special or jump through any hoops?

[Freckles]

I wonder, do housewives and stay at home mothers get depressed, like long-term jobless people do? It seems like what you need is a driving Purpose in life, something to get you out of work in the morning. For most people that's work, but it doesn't have to be. Already something like 30% of married women are out of the paid workforce entirely, and that percentage has been higher in the past. But there's a big difference between "unemployed" and "not seeking to participate in the moneymaking labor force."

It would seem to me that a stay-at-home parent has a lot of purpose.  It's a lot of work to raise children and run a household.  For me, personally, that would be the best purpose I've ever had.  I can't think of anything more important to me than the job of raising my children.  And I work as an elementary school teacher, so there's a lot of purpose already tied into my career. 

I do know that a lot of my friends who are lucky enough to stay home with their kids instead of working outside the home do get bored.  And lonely for adult interactions, particularly when their kids are too young for school.  I don't know about depressed, though.  I sure as hell wouldn't be!  I love being home with my kids; I absolutely live for summer vacation.

[soccerluvof4]

Have not found one ! I love being ER and having the quiet! all hell breaks loose when the kids get home.

[Dr. Doom]

I think the distinction needs to be made between being unemployed and being RE.

If you're RE, you've made a conscious decision to leave the workforce and you have almost certainly taken care of the practical side of not working -- you have a stash, you have some plans or passions to keep you busy, i.e. you Have Your Shit Together and Things Are Going To Be Great.

If you're unemployed, you need a job but can't get one.  You probably have huge financial stresses in your life, maybe some issues with health care.  These issues also have the potential to hurt current relationships with friends and family. No surprise, this sucks all around.

My take is the author focused on involuntary unemployment.  Still funny though.

[2527]

It was a refinance to a lower interest rate and monthly payment and I was doing business with somebody I had gotten a mortgage with before.  Even though I was unemployed, I had made all my mortgage payments and it was reasonable to assume I would continue to do so with a lower monthly payment.  I had to show them my assets, which were several times higher than the mortgage.  House equity was around 25% of the value of the house.  I also had my military pension, which was some income, but not nearly enough to qualify for a mortgage.

^ I got a $250,000 mortgage without a job.

Do you have more details (without revealing anything that you want to keep private, of course)? I was under the impression that banks typically lend against your cash flow, not assets, so you're going to have to show less than, say, 25% debt to income. If you just have a stache, then you'd only be able to include dividend and interest, which isn't a lot these days, and if much of your assets were in your IRA or 401k, those dividends wouldn't count. Did you have to do anything special or jump through any hoops?

[Thegoblinchief]

One of the biggest reasons I still have a job is so my children see me having a job.  I could have stopped working when they were 7 and 4.  I think there is something good about them seeing their father have a job, manage life, get up in the morning, successfully interact in the world, etc.  I'm modeling for them what they do now with school and will need to do as adults.  My job is not overly demanding.  I work 40 hours per week, and have evenings and weekends off.  If my job was very demanding, I may feel differently.

I don't think that's necessary at all. There was a really good article that shot that down a few weeks back but I can't recall where I read it.

Granted, both my wife and I still work, but even when I'm homeschooling during the week, they see me working all the time on house stuff and whatnot. Plus, kids have very little sense of what a job entails. Instead, Mom/Dad leaves the house, is gone for 8+ hours, and comes back. When you work at home, DIY, etc they actually SEE work.