The best post I saw today on the Mr Money Mustache forums was...

[Loren Ver]

That was a fun look through, thanks for posting.  :)

[DadJokes]

You're amazing - thanks for posting all of these.

[RWD]

While a doomsday prognostication will eventually be correct the following threads show how they can be wrong.
The logical bases of the threads are often identical to new threads. So you can judge the likelyhood of truth of current threads by the fact that prior threads have been wrong.

1/2013  [SP500 = 1462]
https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/investor-alley/is-now-a-bad-time-to-invest-in-stock-index-funds/
[...]
7/2019 [3026]
https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/investor-alley/would-you-106836/

Found at https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/investor-alley/would-you-106836/
and represents a S$&@@load of work by @RWD, THANKS!!

That was a fun look through, thanks for posting.  :)

You're amazing - thanks for posting all of these.

Welcome! I just got tired of seeing the same thread over and over again so I decided to make that compilation. I'm sure there will still be plenty more in the future too. And of course since a thread pops up every month or so one will eventually coincide with a crash, but not because of brilliant market timing.

[Brother Esau]

Top is in!

[Brokenreign]

Hopefully I did this right....really enjoyed this post by wenchsenior:

Wow, this hits home. Right from the blog post.

"Then something strange happened.  In early 2012, I got a job that gave me a lot more free time.  It sounds great, but here’s the weird part:  After initially feeling much better, about a year after I started, I developed a mild case of depression."

[ADDED] - But after reading through 8 pages,  doesn't feel too familiar. It seems like Dr.Doom had a small number of challenges... I suspect that my therapy may last longer than 5 sessions, but who knows.  Maybe there's a lynchpin?

I think he had more than 5, he doesn't really even start working on the specific problems until he says appointments "5-6". But yes, his specific issues may well be different. I think the point I was trying to make is more that you're not alone in this, lots of people have issues when confronting middle age, retirement, and other massive life changes. Lord knows I do. Hang in there.

Yes, I do see that.

I have my first therapy next Wednesday and had an initial conversation with the therapist today.  I'm hopeful.

I was listening to the radio today and the announcer said something to the effect that Eminem turns 50 in only a few short years.

<blink><blink> No, that can't be true... He grew up in a trailer park with his mom... That was only a few years ago...

So yeah, still feeling like I literally blinked and all of a sudden, old, not young. It's almost like my brain is capable of time travel but can only seem to go forward and feel nostalgic about the past.

This is truly messing with me. I was at the dentist today...  Looked at the dental hygienist that 6 months ago I would consider being around my moms age... only... I realized that she was my age.....

W.....T.....F....???

Was watching American Beauty last night...  I'm the same age as Lester Burnham (played by Kevin Spacey) in the movie...  He makes a comment about how much the price of weed has gone up since 1973 (movie came out in 1999).  25 years...   The difference of 1973 to 1999 is the same as 1993 to 2019...  One timeline seems like ancient history...  the other seems just like yesterday.

Lester Burnham looks and acts like a grown up to me.  I much more relate to Paul Rudd in "This is 40." Perhaps it's a generational thing?

Mind...blown...   I didn't see this coming. Like a rabbit punch out of nowhere.

Kill me when I start wanting to decorate the home with "old person" paintings of a horse looking at a sunset over a barn.

Welcome to middle age LOL.  I kid (gently), but with real sympathy.   A couple years ago I realized that I was now older than the age of most of the celebrity 'sexy older men' crushes I had in my teens and 20s.  In fact, some of those crushes are DEAD now. 

Life seems to go faster and faster as we get older. I routinely now 'forget' an entire decade when trying to remember dates (it's like my brain just skips the 2000s...I will think: "Oh, that album came out about 15 years ago," when it will actually be 25 years ago). But of course, the 1990s stay vivid in my mind, it being the decade I was in college/having fun/becoming an an adult.  It seems more 'real' to me than the 2000s, in many ways.

I think this is very typical. Midlife crisis is a cliche for a reason.  The 40s are tough psychologically.  For those with kids, many of the kids are approaching college and getting ready to leave the nest.  Most of us are start to deal with the unpleasant realities of our parents' aging/health/financial issues, and sometimes need to restrict our own freedom to help them.  Time seems to rocket by, and yet we often have trouble engaging in/enjoying the moment we're in.  We've made a lot of crucial life decisions by our 40s, and therefore closed off a lot of life possibilities; this can be a shock when we realize it...it can make us feel trapped in a way we weren't in our youth when more options were still 'live'.  Women usually start perimenopause and are beginning to contemplate a future of actual menopause. Men's testosterone levels are dropping, which can lead to body changes and depression. 

Then there's the advent of health problems. My health also took a serious nosedive at age 40 (no more carefree assumptions that my body would just continue functioning as I took for granted for so long). My situation is unusually complex, but many people still deal with sudden realization of consequences of being overweight, or nagging injuries, bad diets, high cholesterol/blood pressure, etc., by their 40s. 

None of this should be a surprise to us: after all, evolutionarily speaking, humans are built to be 'done/cannon fodder' by their mid-40s, post reproductive prime.  But it still feels shocking, almost like we bought into a bad deal, or got scammed.

The good part is that for most people, the psychological turmoil associated with the 40s does ease off eventually, and can be actively worked through faster than that.  My husband (who is 9 years older) struggled with malaise in his 40s, and didn't really try to address it except by increasing his fitness level.  But since hitting his 50s he's been much calmer, happier, more mindful, and more emotionally resilient to the realities of his body and life.    I had all sorts of emotional turmoil from 40-45, as my body seemed to constantly betray me.  I wish I'd really started to attack my psychological state immediately, rather than waiting half of my 40s for things to just work themselves out (news flash: they didn't).  However, once I took the opportunity to try to learn new psychological coping tools (mostly based on mindfulness and cognitive behavioral therapy techniques), as well as starting to prioritize health/exercise, etc. more, things improved notably.  Now, in my late 40s, I feel more optimistic and (especially) resilient than at any time since my 20s. And that's a big deal b/c my baseline had long been to have relatively high anxiety and mild dysthymia.  It's also important b/c the challenges of the 40s are just the beginning of many similar challenges I am going to be facing as I age, assuming I'm lucky enough to live a long time.  And I need these new skills to cope with those inevitable challenges! 

Aging also gives perspective that can be really helpful. It helps you prioritize what's important in life.  It helps you communicate better and with a broader array of people.  E.g., I was recently thinking how much better I can connect to older people emotionally than I could just a few years ago.  No matter how empathetic I tried to be, my younger self couldn't directly relate to a lot of the issues that my older friends and relatives were dealing with. I hadn't lost friends and family, I was healthy, I wasn't grappling with life's disappointments as much.  But all of those are part of life, and now that I've had to deal with some of that myself, I can connect emotionally to an entire chunk of the population in a way I formerly couldn't. Conversely, when I'm doling out life advice to my husband's grad students, I now need to remind myself that they can't necessarily relate to everything I'm telling them, and I can understand why.  It will come to them in time, just as it did me.

I also am definitely much better now than I was in my 20s and 30s at just living in the moment, and appreciating the small things as well as the big things in life.

If I were you, I'd try to tackle this life stage as a crucial opportunity to learn new skills and try new things to actively improve your emotional well-being.  Make sure you don't have any obvious physical problems (e.g., thyroid imbalance) that might be exacerbating your mental state.  Try to absorb yourself in new projects or hobbies that give you a feeling of progress and accomplishment, etc.  Consider cbt therapy or mindfulness practice, etc.

It does get better, with some effort, for most people.  Though I should warn you, some of this mental disorientation never really leaves us.  My 75-year-old mother notes that she still 'feels mentally like she's a 35 year old woman, and has no idea who the hell that wrinkled old lady in the mirror is...sometimes can't even relate to that person at all'.   We just learn to accept it, hopefully with grace.

[former player]

[…]

 It's better that they think you're crazy than to actually send yourself over the edge trying to be what they think is normal.

[Cache_Stash]

From the IPCC report thread: Kyle Schuant dropping the microphone


Quote from: Cache_Stash on October 09, 2018, 07:07:31 AM

    Population is the problem, not mankind's contribution to carbon dioxide in the air.


I have a friend who makes this argument. He is childless and his hobby is flying aircraft. It is perhaps possible that this is a self-serving argument.

It doesn't matter if what we do has an impact or not. "It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support." - your countryman Henry David Thoreau.

Now, what sort of lifestyle might we choose if we wished to wash our hands of personal contribution to climate change, and not to give it practically our support? I would suggest that many of the things we could do are things which would also help our finances and our personal health: stop flying, home and work closer to each-other and walk and cycle rather than drive, eat less junk food and meat, use less natural gas and electricity, and so on. If you care only about finances, these are all good things to do; if you care only about health, these are all good things to do; and if you care only about the environment, these are all good things to do.

Further, once you consider the environment of other countries, and how places like China have worse environmental practices than most of the West, and then consider also the collapse of manufacturing in the West, "buy local" is both an environmentalist and a patriotic maxim.

I'm old-fashioned. I believe: duty first. Whether or not I pay my taxes, do jury duty or military or civilian service of some kind, whether I speak well of my wife behind her back or not, whether or not I call people by racial epithets when out of their hearing, the practical impact of these things is almost zero. Nonetheless an adult in a civilised society has duties. A duty is something which whether you like it or not and whether it makes a difference or not you simply must do. A society is nothing but an accumulation of kept promises and duties met.

Now, some may reply that we as humans have no duties to one another. And I would answer that this is indeed a popular point of view, and explains much of the world's problems now, but I wash my hands of such an idea, and do not give it practically my support.
« Last Edit: Today at 12:25:46 AM by Kyle Schuant »

All good points which are true.  I never said that Carbon footprint shouldn't be dealt with, nor do I condone flying your own personal plane for pleasure.  Yet you threw me under the bus without consideration of anything else I might think.  I'm just pointing out the root cause.  Not the contributing factors.

[solon]

@caleb explains why student debt is so evil

What have I missed here?   

17 year old commits to going to a college.  Because they're 17, they don't really know how money or credit work.  The big tuition numbers are just abstractions.  Assume they come from a family that lives an upper middle class life and money isn't an issue they discuss, even though the family is living paycheck to paycheck.

Comprehensive fees (tuition, room, and board) run from the high teens to low twenties at state flagships.  Privates average about 30k/year after discounting, which is about half of the sticker price.

Let's assume the 17 year old manages to graduate from college in four years.  At a state flagship, that's going to be 60k out of pocket, and at a private more like 120k.  Federal loans cover 31k.  Depending on the state, there might be another 10k or so of state-based loans available.  So maybe there's $40k of Federal and state loans available on average, which have an historically high interest rate of 5%+ (in the late 70s and 80s the Dept of Ed was originating loans at 2% interest when inflation as above 10%). 

Where does the extra $20-80k come from?  Parents?  That's how it's supposed to work with the Parent PLUS loans, but plenty of parents don't take the debt on themselves.  Instead, they cosign private loans for the student, often at 8-12% interest that begins accruing immediately.  Even 20k at 8% interest balloons in a hurry. 

Now the student is on the hook for a bad loan taken out to shift the expected parent contribution to them, that's been ballooning the entire time they've been in school.  There's no IBR, PSLF, or often even a forbearance option.  The repayment timeline is 10 years for most of these loans.  Not only is their credit on the line, they're also in the awful position of having their parents' credit on the line, too.

What you're missing is that the student I describe above is common, and that student has gotten f'ed by every adult in the room, from their parents, to their financial aid office, to private banks, to the Dept of Ed.

[monarda]

Hilarious post by nereo

Crooks are stupid

...or at least occasionally very disappointed

Funny thing happened today:  I'm moving, so I've got the last load of random stuff that we didn't think highly enough to box up during our packing marathon and put into our temporary storage locker.  Among that is my worm bin, which I use for converting kitchen scraps into 'black gold' for gardening.  I built it out of an old plastic tool case that I bought at a flea market... the kind that's a big plastic box with an upper and lower shelf once you open the lid.  I drilled holes in the two trays and the compost goes in the top and the worm casings drop down into the large compartment below.

Anyway, when I was at the Y swimming some a-hole decided to swipe the 'tool box' from my vehicle and (presumably) run away with their load of new tools.  On one hand I'm kinda pissed that I lost all my worms (though they're basically free).  On the other hand it's one last thing I need to move.  And I really, really wish I could have seen that thief's face when they discovered their stolen toolbox contained worms, worm casings and a bunch of half-decomposed veggie peels.

[nereo]

On the "4% rule" - and how it's not infallible:

It's like every week someone is shocked to discover that the 4% rule isn't infallible.

I'm absolutely fascinated by this.
No WR is safe no matter what mathematical model you use.
You can't Boglehead your way to total financial security.

The models are a best guess at how to make decisions today to anticipate the financial needs of tomorrow and to assess the possible risk mitigating effects of different options.

It's all just probabilities and not dissimilar to the weather forecast. The calculations behind it are solid and the best we've got for deciding whether or not to bring an umbrella.
Though, that decision will depend far more on the individual's willingness to risk getting wet.

Is it wise to retire on exactly 25X your base expenses and  to spend every single cent of your budget every single year, plus inflation, while blindly ignoring what the markets and global economy are doing, while keeping no doors open for future earnings if necessary???
Lol, probably not.

What these models do is allow us to decide today what mitigating strategies we think best fit our particular risk tolerances for what might happen tomorrow.

For one person, ageism might be a huge factor in their industry, so banking on going back to their career is a bad mitigating strategy. They may choose to be more conservative, or they may choose to build skills that aren't subject to ageism, or both.

For another, they might have citizenship and family in an extremely low cost geographic region and can easily geo-arbitrage their way to a much lower spend rate.

For yet another, they might not have a lot of flexibility and may have a lot of high fixed costs, say, for a medically complex child whose specialists are only in HCOL areas of a country with expensive healthcare. Their best bet may be an extremely low WR and a large cash reserve.

For someone whose stache is primarily in index funds, AA based strategies might be best for mitigating risks like SORR. For someone with a rock solid defined benefit pension that covers their entire bare bones spend, a bond tent or cash reserves might be overkill.

For someone whose stache is primarily in real estate...well, I have no idea what they might do since I don't read much about primarily RE strategies. But you get the point.

All plans can fail.
The best thing you can do is try to understand your possible and probable failures, know your particular risk factors, and modulate accordingly.

The 4% rule is a starting point, not an end goal.
If you just got a perm and wear a lot of silk, grab an umbrella. Me? I don't mind getting rained on and I don't worry about the 4% rule. YMMV

[Loren Ver]

^^^  This is really good.  I like the umbrella analogy!

[Not2Late]

TGS on difficult family dynamics, pure gold...

This sounds like a situation for @TheGrimSqueaker

Actually, @mm1970 nailed it by saying that formal safety nets and support systems have rules-- that is to say, expectations for the people who receive help. Family, friends, and some charitable ventures often do not, because they have a messed-up moral structure that tells them that it's spiritually good and beneficial to give without having any particular standards or expectations with regard to the other person. The kind of doormat-as-moral-obligation thing is embedded deeply into Western culture. From an atheist perspective I think that organized religion, particularly Christianity, is at least partly to blame for this phenomenon.

So, what do people do when someone from the past comes around with their hand out?

Well, first you have to understand that by the time the person from the past shows up, they have already burned through every other person who was close to them. Nearly all human beings have other humans in their network who are at least mildly or occasionally supportive of them. I'm not talking "supportive" in the sense of a functional parent providing care for a minor child, I'm talking "supportive" in terms of providing an occasional loan, job lead, or meal.

@JestJes you are doing the right thing by making sure you don't enable your parents' addictive practices by giving them money or things that can be turned into money. You are also right to not consider taking them in or otherwise making their problems into your problems. Whatever aid you provide them must be the kind that won't make their situation worse or create artificial dependence. It sounds to me like you're already on the best possible track.

The second thing you must do is not accept responsibility for doing the things that are theirs to do. You've described how, when you don't take responsibility for holding up their end of communication, they find a reason to not call and then find ways to explain why it's Not Their Fault. These are people with years of experience in deflecting responsibility and trying to get others to assume responsibility for their behavior. Don't fall for it, no matter how much they cry and plead (because they've learned from other people that the more pathetic they become and the more they melt down, the more responsible people around them will dig deep and help out). You're 100% right if you think that kind of behavior is manipulative. It's also habitual for them at this point. It's unlikely to change, and if it does the impetus for the change must come from them, not you.

It's not your fault your dad had a traumatic past, however he's now an adult and can make decisions to move beyond it.

The societal norm of helping people when they are down? You have now satisfied it. Further help must take the form of directing them to resources, social services, etc. where qualified social workers and service providers can put them on the right track. If they are too "proud" to accept direction from professionals even when there's obviously a problem like a year of missing mortgage payments, you don't have the power to help them. They have made the choice to put their pride and self-image ahead of having a roof over their heads. It's an odd choice, but they have the right to make it. They also have the right to the consequences of that choice, which they are now experiencing. Don't deprive them of their autonomy by interfering.

You also don't have to become an out of state social worker by taking responsibility for whether they access services they are fully capable of accessing on their own. Their Lackawanna syndrome will no doubt kick in, but you're doing right by not enabling that.

The whole moral/religious/societal thing about helping people who are down kind of assumes that the person who is down is a basically functional individual who wants to interact in a positive way, and who wants to get back to normal ASAP because he or she is a reasonable and well socialized individual. When you're dealing with someone who is not reasonable or well socialized, the more you do for them the less they will do for themselves, and the more bad behavior you tolerate from them the more they will dish out. The solution is to dial down your help until you're not being abused.

The more you wipe butt, the more you can expect to be treated like toilet paper.

Good luck to you.

[Radagast]

If inflation is much higher than the official published rate, as Shadow Stats claims... then why hasn't Shadow Stats raised their subscription price since 2006?

This was pretty good!

[DavidAnnArbor]

Radagast provided an excellent description of the pitfall of going from 95% certainty to 99.9% certainty. This issue relates to how one might decide to pull the plug in a job situation that isn't satisfying and getting ready to FIRE.

I recall there was a discussion once before about the false precision of going from a success rate of 95% to 99% to 99.9%. Though, I don't remember all the details of that discussion.

I don't recall the forum discussion either, but Taleb covers it in The Black Swan. His analogy is pulling colored balls out of a tub of unknown and possibly infinite size. Some of the balls are red, and some are black, but you can't see into the tub so you don't know what the color distribution is, you have to infer it by pulling them out one at a time. If you pull out 45 red and 55 black, you have a pretty good guess that the distribution, even if it is not 50/50, is pretty close to that. But what if you pull out 99 black balls and 1 red ball? Based on your single sample of a red ball's existence, you don't have the slightest freaking clue what the distribution of red balls actually is. Maybe it is 40:60 and you had an odd coincidence? 1 in 10? 1 in 100? 1 in 100,000? 1 in 10,000,000? Maybe they somehow migrate to the surface and appear in clusters? It is impossible to guess what reality is.

And what if you pull out 100 black balls in a row, and in fact have never even seen a red one? You may not even realize that red balls, as a concept, can exist. Which is where the name of the book and concept of "black swan" come from. In ancient times a black swan was a phrase used for an impossibility, similar to a pure black zebra. "Ha ha, silly person. By definition, zebras have stripes. If it is pure black it can't be a zebra." Taleb notes that AfroAmerEurAsians had perhaps billions of independent observations of white swans and knew with near statistical certainty that all swans were white (seriously, a billion observations with zero negatives can generate a high degree of statistical certainty). Then they discovered Australia, which had actual black swans, and the impossible happened.

Then consider being in a natural, social, and economic system which adapts to past events and in which every single new year may have no relationship to the past, and you realize that predicting extremely unusual events is basically just a funny movie. The actual odds of success of any withdrawal rate with a low historical probability of failure is unknown, and 95% is statistically nearly identical to 99 or even 100%.

[Abe Froman]

Solid life lessons.

I still struggle with this now that I am 1 year in after leaving full time work.  Not FIREd but similar - wife working fulltime still, I left high tech after 25 years (47 YO now), to help my wife since we were both doing 12 hour days when we realized we didn't both need to.  We now have less stress and share her work (from home) so no more >12 hours days.

I have the same ups and downs as you describe, when busy, up early, exercise (as when I was at work), getting daughter to school, doing admin tasks with wife's work, yard work, all house work, and the busyness keeps me from thinking what to do next.  But then when slow, same 'what am I doing and going to do with my time'? feeling.

I keep these items in mind from https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2018/10/05/the-fire-movement/

- Physical health FIRST: your brain is a system of meat and tubes, just like the rest of your body. The whole system will only perform well if you place its wellbeing first, before anything else. Salads and barbells every day, no goddamned excuses.

 - Mental health NEXT: feed your mind with happy input and learn to practice mindfulness, educational reading, and meditation daily, which is simply a workout for the brain.

- Daily hardship and Learning: if you are not sweating and learning and doing something difficult and solving problems, you are not living fully. Find a way to scale back the pampering and achieve more with your own body and mind.

- Indulge, but only with Moderation and Self-Mockery: this country is rich enough that you can become wealthy even without perfect self-discipline – even on minimum wage. But the moment you think you deserve or need whatever indulgence you are currently treating yourself to, you have lost the game. Luxuries and treats are just short-term pleasurable distractions, like any other drugs. Indulge if you can afford them, but you’re not missing one ounce of happiness if you choose to go without at any given moment.

Also relates to the 3 P's - we naturally need to replace the 3 P's once we leave company work - people, purpose, and patterns.

So I use our work routine, together with household work, and raising our daughter to provide most of this.  Thing is, this will need to be confronted again once the kids are >12 YO and independent, which is what I am dealing with now.  The daily learning/hardship is key - we are hard-wired to want to work for something to 'earn' it, from making spreadsheets to building a garden.  Work provides this by default - but we need to find our own way to provide it once FIRE'd.

GB

[Dicey]

From the DPOYM thread:

I feel like I'm at an AA meeting,

"Hi, I'm SwordGuy and I'm debt averse."

We should hijack that moniker:

"For today's Asset Allocation meeting, we'll discuss with SwordGuy the pros and cons of paying off his mortgage versus investing it in tax-deferred equities. Step one: Admitting that the instinct to pay off debt is a healthy one, though being able to use intellect to overcome instinct when circumstances favor debt is the path to wisdom."

[deborah]

On how to build a life after FIRE

Stepped up to be downsized back in May when I was going to retire/resign this December....all good.

I liked my work(software) but still pursued extracurricular things that I wanted to do all through my life.
I never, ever waited to do  whatever it was that I wanted to do....within the constraints of
married life,  raising our kids, family things....whatever.

I decided to start riding and have spent well over 20 years growing in that direction.
I did various aerobics and other structured exercise programs and the moved into swimming.
Have done a lot of church volunteer things all through the years and am still in it now.

I didn't have a job/career that caused me to typically have to work inordinately long hours.
I did have periods of travel overseas and domestically but have a great husband who
took care of things with the kids and the house while I was gone.

Each day seems filled with whatever I want it to be.
I have the freedom to ride, swim, do house projects on what turns out to be an earlier in the day schedule.
I'm pretty much doing what I've always done but with much more time to do them.

It must be difficult to RE or just plain of retire and have to somewhat start from scratch in creating a vision of
life that has up until that time been a dream or optimal plan.   
I feel that it's something that has to be constructed and built over a period of time.

[arebelspy]

On not committing to a life you don't like because you won't find another rrjob that pays as much (or whatever other excuse you're using to delay present happiness for future happiness):

I used to say "once we're debt free", "once we're more financially settled", "once we're close to FI", and "once we retire" A LOT.

Then some serious shit hit the muther-fucking fan and I just stopped making excuses for not being happy now. As a result, I really stopped caring about FIRE and consider my present happiness a far more urgent concern.

I'm not saying that you have to do anything drastic, but it seems insane to me to not thoroughly consider other life options if you aren't happy with the one you are living right now.

Honestly, I now see Pete's story as almost a cautionary tale: the story of a dude who worked for an entire decade in a job he didn't really want to do to save a bunch of money he didn't really need because he didn't feel comfortable just living the life he actually wanted until he reached an arbitrary goal that he defined for himself that no one pushed him to reach.

The option is always there to just start living your best life now. It's critical that you consider that option very seriously before concluding that hunkering down for x number of years is actually your best option.

Happiness doesn't have to be this rarified state that can only be achieved through extraordinary measures like retiring extremely young.

[Sanitary Stache]

On not committing to a life you don't like because you won't find another rrjob that pays as much (or whatever other excuse you're using to delay present happiness for future happiness):

I used to say "once we're debt free", "once we're more financially settled", "once we're close to FI", and "once we retire" A LOT.

Then some serious shit hit the muther-fucking fan and I just stopped making excuses for not being happy now. As a result, I really stopped caring about FIRE and consider my present happiness a far more urgent concern.

I'm not saying that you have to do anything drastic, but it seems insane to me to not thoroughly consider other life options if you aren't happy with the one you are living right now.

Honestly, I now see Pete's story as almost a cautionary tale: the story of a dude who worked for an entire decade in a job he didn't really want to do to save a bunch of money he didn't really need because he didn't feel comfortable just living the life he actually wanted until he reached an arbitrary goal that he defined for himself that no one pushed him to reach.

The option is always there to just start living your best life now. It's critical that you consider that option very seriously before concluding that hunkering down for x number of years is actually your best option.

Happiness doesn't have to be this rarified state that can only be achieved through extraordinary measures like retiring extremely young.

I connected with this quote also.  I find the math aspect of MMM's version of FIRE easy to understand and the optimization of his FIRE'd lifestyle to be appealing, but there is a huge space in the middle - the space occupied by working for 10+ more years to reach the point when I can start doing what I really want to do.

[Linea_Norway]

Well, when someone wants to retire and doesn't have any money, it is not surprising that you get some stories that are not all unicorns and rainbows.

To be nice: you definitely have my sympathy. Many of us have relatives who did not save for retirement, so you certainly have a lot of company here!

If I pull out my crystal ball, here is what I see happening:
1. MIL stops working and agrees to take care of your baby/toddler.
2. She decides to start drawing social security at 62 anyway because what you are paying her is not actually enough to cover what she is is used to spending.
3. In a few years, you no longer require child care and don't want to pay her any more.
4. Since she doesn't have a big enough social security check to live and still desperately needs your money, she then plays the "but I only stopped working at your request to take care of your little ones, and now you are betraying me!" card. It is all your fault, of course, and not your spouse's fault.

In her mind and in the story she spins to those who will listen, her lifetime of poor financial habits are irrelevant at that point. All that will matter at the point is that she sacrificed by giving up her day job to help you, and now you are not helping her enough in return.

Each of my parents was in the same situation as your MIL. I have chosen to help them by providing solicited advice only. When they have asked me what I thought they should do, I have shared my opinion (which they have promptly ignored, which is well within their rights.) When they have asked me for money directly, I have said "no."

My Mom has chosen to live out her golden years in poverty. This is her choice. She was healthy as a horse and gainfully employed when she decided to do what your MIL is thinking about doing: quit her job and start taking social security at 62. When she asked me what I thought, I advised her to keep working and delay social security until 70 since she had a good job and could still work, had no savings, and all of her relatives lived well into their 90's (at the time her parents were both still alive).

But, although she was 100% healthy, she wasn't interested in continuing to work. She felt she deserved to not work. She felt that she would be fine in an extreme frugal living situation, underestimating her expenses just like I see your MIL doing. So she made her decision. When her parents did die, she had a little reprieve as she inherited modest sums which are now gone. Eventually she sold her $200K house and moved to a cheaper house. Again, with some cash in her pocket, she felt like a high roller and she burned through most of it in a couple of years. Now, in her 80's, she has told me that she will run out of the remaining money from the home sale. It is what it is. Is it a negative story, or is it just the facts of the matter?

My Dad made a different decision. He never saved much money either, but he also never fully retired. In his 70's, he still has a huge mortgage on his home of 20+ years because he has continuously refinanced it. He also started drawing social security at 62 while he cut back his work hours to part time. Now he wishes he could retire. But, again, he can't. He knows this situation is the direct result of a series of his own decisions, and he has resigned himself to working until he dies.

I know these stories are sad, but these are adults who made independent decisions. I am not going to divert money from my own retirement and my own children's futures to pay other adults who have continued to make very bad decisions.

So, my best advice is that you urge her to continue in her current job and delay taking social security for as long as possible. If you make any other decision, then you need to understand that you are making a conscious decision to make her your family's dependent for the rest of her natural life.

[solon]

You can't do this right now, but you might want to plan this outing in the near-ish future. There's a place called "I-fly". It's indoor sky diving.  You suit up and "jump", with a guide. It's just a giant turbine that keeps you aloft. The prep takes much longer than the "dive" itself. But man, the "dive" seems to last forever. There are a couple of locations in the Bay Area and Costco sells discounted tickets.

When DH were on our bargain* honeymoon in FL, we weren't interested in the Mouse House, so we stopped into a Costco  to see what deals they had on other experiences, and this is what piqued our limited sense of adventure (i,e. We have no desire to do actual skydiving). It was a total thrill. The feeling of being buoyed by such a strong force was amazing. Only later did I realize that's what FIRE feels like, financially. Your big number will lift you up and hold you aloft for the rest of your life. Want to spin left or right? Want to do a front flip or a back flip? Want to do anything you want to do? The force of your assets will let you do so with ease, once you get comfortable with this strange new sensation.

In the unlikely event that life hands you a shit sandwich, being FIRE will give you coping skills you'd never imagine. As you know, my MIL has ALZ and has lived with us for over six years. ALZ is a total pain in the ass, yet I still believe I have a damn great life with plenty of options. The fact that I never have to worry about money makes me feel like I'm "flying" no matter what the mundane reality of my life is. It is so unbelievable that it never gets old. December 5th is my seven year FIREversary and so far, it's been better every single year.

*We scored a "deal" on a luxury timeshare week at a charity auction without realizing it was for an exact week. Duh. But the timing was okay and we made it work. My cousin works for a [fast, primary color] airline and gave us a couple of buddy passes, woo-hoo! The whole thing worked perfectly and was easy on the wallet. It's also the first time we'd ever seen an Aldi in real life. Since we had a kitchen, we shopped there twice during the week and a third time to stock up on stuff to take home. Win!

Genius, @Dicey! I'm going to go try this!

[frugalnacho]

You can't do this right now, but you might want to plan this outing in the near-ish future. There's a place called "I-fly". It's indoor sky diving.  You suit up and "jump", with a guide. It's just a giant turbine that keeps you aloft. The prep takes much longer than the "dive" itself. But man, the "dive" seems to last forever. There are a couple of locations in the Bay Area and Costco sells discounted tickets.

When DH were on our bargain* honeymoon in FL, we weren't interested in the Mouse House, so we stopped into a Costco  to see what deals they had on other experiences, and this is what piqued our limited sense of adventure (i,e. We have no desire to do actual skydiving). It was a total thrill. The feeling of being buoyed by such a strong force was amazing. Only later did I realize that's what FIRE feels like, financially. Your big number will lift you up and hold you aloft for the rest of your life. Want to spin left or right? Want to do a front flip or a back flip? Want to do anything you want to do? The force of your assets will let you do so with ease, once you get comfortable with this strange new sensation.

In the unlikely event that life hands you a shit sandwich, being FIRE will give you coping skills you'd never imagine. As you know, my MIL has ALZ and has lived with us for over six years. ALZ is a total pain in the ass, yet I still believe I have a damn great life with plenty of options. The fact that I never have to worry about money makes me feel like I'm "flying" no matter what the mundane reality of my life is. It is so unbelievable that it never gets old. December 5th is my seven year FIREversary and so far, it's been better every single year.

*We scored a "deal" on a luxury timeshare week at a charity auction without realizing it was for an exact week. Duh. But the timing was okay and we made it work. My cousin works for a [fast, primary color] airline and gave us a couple of buddy passes, woo-hoo! The whole thing worked perfectly and was easy on the wallet. It's also the first time we'd ever seen an Aldi in real life. Since we had a kitchen, we shopped there twice during the week and a third time to stock up on stuff to take home. Win!

Genius, @Dicey! I'm going to go try this!

Indoor skydiving, or FIRE?  Both sound great honestly. 

[fuzzy math]

You can't do this right now, but you might want to plan this outing in the near-ish future. There's a place called "I-fly". It's indoor sky diving.  You suit up and "jump", with a guide. It's just a giant turbine that keeps you aloft. The prep takes much longer than the "dive" itself. But man, the "dive" seems to last forever. There are a couple of locations in the Bay Area and Costco sells discounted tickets.

When DH were on our bargain* honeymoon in FL, we weren't interested in the Mouse House, so we stopped into a Costco  to see what deals they had on other experiences, and this is what piqued our limited sense of adventure (i,e. We have no desire to do actual skydiving). It was a total thrill. The feeling of being buoyed by such a strong force was amazing. Only later did I realize that's what FIRE feels like, financially. Your big number will lift you up and hold you aloft for the rest of your life. Want to spin left or right? Want to do a front flip or a back flip? Want to do anything you want to do? The force of your assets will let you do so with ease, once you get comfortable with this strange new sensation.

In the unlikely event that life hands you a shit sandwich, being FIRE will give you coping skills you'd never imagine. As you know, my MIL has ALZ and has lived with us for over six years. ALZ is a total pain in the ass, yet I still believe I have a damn great life with plenty of options. The fact that I never have to worry about money makes me feel like I'm "flying" no matter what the mundane reality of my life is. It is so unbelievable that it never gets old. December 5th is my seven year FIREversary and so far, it's been better every single year.

*We scored a "deal" on a luxury timeshare week at a charity auction without realizing it was for an exact week. Duh. But the timing was okay and we made it work. My cousin works for a [fast, primary color] airline and gave us a couple of buddy passes, woo-hoo! The whole thing worked perfectly and was easy on the wallet. It's also the first time we'd ever seen an Aldi in real life. Since we had a kitchen, we shopped there twice during the week and a third time to stock up on stuff to take home. Win!

Genius, @Dicey! I'm going to go try this!

Indoor skydiving, or FIRE?  Both sound great honestly.

Shopping at Aldi

[Loren Ver]

**SNIP**
*We scored a "deal" on a luxury timeshare week at a charity auction without realizing it was for an exact week. Duh. But the timing was okay and we made it work. My cousin works for a [fast, primary color] airline and gave us a couple of buddy passes, woo-hoo! The whole thing worked perfectly and was easy on the wallet. It's also the first time we'd ever seen an Aldi in real life. Since we had a kitchen, we shopped there twice during the week and a third time to stock up on stuff to take home. Win!

Genius, @Dicey! I'm going to go try this!

Indoor skydiving, or FIRE?  Both sound great honestly.

Shopping at Aldi

*Giggle-snort*

[RWD]

@Laura33 on point again. Relationships are a two-way street.

And if you have any tendencies towards OCD or anxiety, some of this could be a symptom.

I have a lot of OCD tendencies. On one hand, I don't see this as a problem, because I know exactly what I want. On the other hand, it can put stress on my wife, who feels that my standards for certain things can be very high. To find the balance, maybe incorporating jlcnuke's question into my decision-making process will be helpful.

Your answer exemplifies the problem.  You know exactly what you want financially.  But your gut response ignores other aspects of what you want -- like, say, your wife to stick around and love you and to be happy together.  Right?  Your rational brain knows this (which your "on the other hand" demonstrates).  But the way you frame it up is really "what I want" as the baseline, with "what other people want" as the other side you are (grudgingly) forced to negotiate with.  That is an artificial construct that allows you to view any decision to spend money as a concession to your wife; and that, in turn, makes the whole thing "me vs. her," so you naturally gravitate to giving as little as you can get away with, so the baseline can stay closer to what you want.  And that leads you right down the path to thinking like a miser -- your priority gets to remain all about the money, and you just "give" as little as possible to keep your wife happy enough to stay put. 

As I wrote above, that is not doing you any service.  Because your real priorites aren't just about the money, are they?  They also involve relationships with other people.  Like your wife.  And the way to develop and maintain a happy relationship with your wife isn't to view every individual decision as "what I want vs. what she wants"; all that does is turn every single decision into a source of conflict and dissatisfaction -- as you saying no to something she values, or as you grudgingly being forced to spend "your" money on something you don't want.  A relationship is happy only to the extent it meets the needs of both parties.  That means your baseline in everything needs to be the unit, not you individually.  You and your wife need to work together, in advance, to talk about what each of you values, and to reach an overall compromise between saving/spending/charity/friends that meets both of your needs.  Then, when a specific issue comes up, your discussion begins with "how does this fit with our overall plan?" -- not "how little money can I get away with not spending.

[Dicey]

So much has been written on this topic, but @Tyson really nailed it succinctly. This is a controversial subject for many, but it really shouldn't be for Mustachians, particularly for US based followers.

I can't pay off my mortgage with pre-tax dollars.  But I CAN invest in my 401k with pretax dollars. That alone is a no brainer for the $18k that I can into a 401k every year.  The fact that I get an employer match for another $6k to get to $24k per year makes it a double no brainer. 

Add to that the fact that my investments yield an average of 8% return over the long term and paying the mortgage only nets me 3.9% and it's a triple no brainer!

For the record, I have nothing against living mortgage-free, as long as one chooses the most optimal method of achieving that. It's pretty counter-intuitive, but so is the entire concept of FIRE. The benefit of understanding this math is huge, especially for those who aspire to FI and RE as efficiently as possible.

[Dicey]

And here's another winner.  Welcome back, @wellactually!

I just re-registered after years out of the forum because of this thread.

You have got to work on your perspective and attitude. You are comparing yourself to peers who you say you've done so much better than. Okay cool. But it seems like you and your wife have enjoyed some really great privileges. It looks like you were both able to go to college and graduate without debt. Did you each pay 100% of your higher education costs? Even if you got scholarships, can you acknowledge that you had advantages that got you to this point? You graduated at a time when the job market was mostly recovered. Myself and many of my peers just a couple years older than you graduated into the worst job market of the era. Your wife, who I'm sure works hard and earns her salary, has the benefit of flexible employment in a family-related business with a company car. You both get free phones even.

Through what I expect is a combination of your hard work, good decisions, luck, and advantages, you and your wife started out in good paying jobs with no debt. You then did not squander that situation and made some good decisions. Comparing yourself to others who have likely had a whole range of situations that they started from is unhelpful.

Just for a small dash of reality, even getting pregnant easily when you wanted to is a privilege. I spent $25,000 in the last 2.5 years to finally get pregnant. I certainly would have loved to put that money towards savings or home remodeling, but I also recognize that being able to have the choice to spend that money on fertility treatments was a privilege. That doesn't mean we didn't make great decisions to be financially stable and work our butts off to save up while denying other wants. But it does mean that we had a choice and so we can be at peace looking at our networth numbers and knowing that spending that money was the right choice for us.

You are choosing to do "normal" things like living in a very expensive house, going out to eat a lot and getting new clothes regularly. Why should you get an even more abnormal RE date while making those choices?

Anyway, stop comparing yourself to others, it will only make you more judgmental and entitled. And I say this as someone who has at times in my life been "the asshole" who had to be right and who knew the best way to do things. It is not a fun person to be nor a fun person to be around. You might think your peers don't realize you're judging their choices, but they either already do or will. And frankly, you're judging them based on your own measuring stick which is retiring very early, meanwhile they are okay working until their 60s and choosing to spend money differently now.

If you enjoy podcasts, I really recommend this episode of This American Life: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/504/how-i-got-into-college. Acts 2-3 talk about a man who identifies all the lucky breaks that took him from a fleeing Bosnia to graduating Harvard. I don't want to spoil too much, but his perspective on life really changed the way I approached the world and I think it would benefit you too.

ETA: Also recognize the privilege of your childcare option! That's over $1000/month expense in most parts of the US which you are avoiding because of the privilege of available and willing family!

[ender]

@Malkynn is a pretty regular in this thread I think ;-)

I think a big part of the problem is that no one really seems to know what "rich" looks like.

People have an image of what ultra rich looks like from TV and movies, but actual "rich" really looks A LOT like middle class life, it just costs a lot.

Two people can live essentially materially identical lives:
-nice detached home
-two cars
-kids in good schools and activities
-yearly vacations
-maybe even own a cottage

And that life can range from costing mid 5 figures to several hundreds of thousands depending on location, what finishes are in the house, what kind of cars, what the public vs private school situation is, what activities the kids are into, etc, etc.

Until someone gets to the level where they have a house with maid's quarters and multiple live in domestic staff, and a private jet, then the lifestyle of the rich really isn't really any different from what everyone pictures as a normal, middle class life, at least not in the broad strokes.

A different way to put it is the "normal middle class life" can be really, really god damn expensive. Pete has written about how a low 5 figure life can be virtually identical to a high 5 figure life depending on how wasteful someone is with their spending. Well, that logic extends well into the hundreds of thousands life as well.

DH and I have a low 5 figure base spend and most of our friends spend at least a hundred to a few hundred thousand per year, and our lives really aren't so appreciably different.

Like sure, a colleague and I just both bought new homes (mine under 150K, her's 1.4M) and both kitchens were dated and had bad layouts. She dumped 45K into hers, and I spent about $500 on Ikea modular cabinets, bars to hang pots on my wall, and a plug in chandelier so I wouldn't have to hire an electrician.

Her kitchen is like something out of a magazine, mine is a franken-kitchen with half of the cabinets nearly 50 years old and original to the house and the other half from Ikea, and no, they don't match at all.

I'm a former chef who knew exactly what she wanted and mine is actually my dream kitchen now, and the mix of elements is actually so eclectic that it looks kind of cool. It's perfect for me. Her kitchen looks like something you probably shouldn't touch, and the layout the designer put together is, well, okay, but not overly efficient for actual cooking.

In the end, she spent 90 times what I did, and the real life difference between the two is that they have a different esthetic style and slightly different efficiency in layout.

Both kitchens are solidly, middle class lifestyle. Neither are overly huge or overly small. Both are customized for women who will stand over hot stoves cooking for their families (her's a several thousand dollar Bosch gas range, mine an 'apartment size' cheap thing that came with the place.)

I'll spend about $200 per month on food, she'll spend over $2000 because her two sons and friends like a lot of brand name stuff and they eat pounds of it, and her husband insists on a lot of steak nights, plus none of them will eat leftovers, so their food wastage is massive.

We both love a good restaurant meal. I just went to a local Ethiopian place and shared an amazing meal with my dad for $20 including tax and tip. She just took me out for a meal at her favourite restaurant, where a mediocre glass of wine costs more than my Ethiopian meal. The food was pretty good, both were nice experiences.

I drive a used Corolla, she drives a leased Range Rover. We both have remote car starters, but I have heated indoor parking at my building, so I don't have to clear off snow all winter.

I have a $30 Aeropress and a $100 Breville milk frother. She is known on sight by every Starbucks employee at the locations near her house, work, and gym.

I just booked a trip to Europe, which will be a self-guided road trip through small towns, off season, for $2600 for two, including breakfasts. She is taking her brood to Italy over Christmas, and the business class flights alone will be at least $16K.

I colour my own hair and maintain a low maintenance hair style, she gets her hair cut and coloured every 4 weeks for $600.

Both couples are active. I have a gym and pool in my building, public baseball diamond, tennis and basketball courts across the street, and DH bikes and runs all winter. She and her DH have $800/mo gym memberships each, she has a trainer, he also has a golf membership, and the whole family loves to ski ($$$$$).

Her household spending is enormous, but really, our lives aren't appreciably different in functional terms.

The thing is that as you go up in luxury in life, the cost rises astronomically, but the outcome changes only marginally.
A stone countertop is only so much nicer than a laminate, an expensive restaurant has food and service that can really only be so good, an extremely expensive car in morning traffic is still just a car in traffic, a several thousand dollar chandelier doesn't light much better than a $100 plug-in chandelier from Ikea, a several thousand dollar watch and a drug store watch both tell time, and the latest iPhone vs an older phone both work pretty comparably.

The incremental increases in quality and experience start getting proportionally so much more expensive that it can cost nearly 10X to live a life just superficially better than someone else's.

My colleague and I have the same job, and per hour, I actually bill more than she does. I said that our lives are pretty similar despite our wildly different spending, but that isn't strictly true. She works 6 days a week, and I work 1.
So in truth, our lives are RADICALLY different because of our spending differences, just not in the way people might think.

So yeah, it's very difficult to define "rich" because you need to be rich to afford a lot of seemingly middle class lifestyles.

[nereo]

The latest (and perhaps last?) post by @sol. 

tl;dr - spending your time doing things you love in real life is more important than spending it getting angry on forums.

I skimmed over this thread but it looks like it quickly went OT, like all good mustache forum threads.

So hey there forum peeps!  I've been off the MMM forums for a while, but have been receiving semi-regular PMs from some of you inquiring as to my whereabouts.  I'm still alive! 

And I'm checking in just to say as much, but I'm not planning to stick around.  The forum has changed so much over the years that it just doesn't fit me very well anymore.  This community has grown so much, and has had to incorporate so many new and diverse voices, that it no longer serves the purpose for which it was created and which drew me here in the first place from ERE.  Fortunately, the internet is a BIG place with lots of room for everyone to say their piece, without those pieces ever having to get too close to each other. 

I can take my one little voice to other dark corners.  This one is too noisy for me, but that doesn't mean it can't be perfect for someone else.

My partner and I are still retired, and I'm still grateful for all of the financial guidance and advice I received here over the years.  We sold one of our rental houses, and took up some new outdoor hobbies together.  The time that I formerly spent here, talking to all of you, is now most often spent at home with my kids or out and about playing with that "IRL" world.  I have an ever-changing list of volunteer and/or charity gigs that keep me as busy as I can comfortably tolerate.  I am practicing being a better parent and husband, I read more books, I get more exercise, and I'm generally a happier person than I was back when the forum was a bigger part of my life.  Sometimes I miss the entertaining conversations that a few of you provided me over the years, but like I said the internet is a big place and ya'll aren't the only smart people around.

Once upon a time, I mentioned on the forum that I didn't really realize how much of my time and attention had been consumed by my 9-5 until I gave up my 9-5, and suddenly everything else in my life just kind of started to fall into place when those things started getting the attention they really deserved, after retirement.  In a similar fashion but perhaps to a smaller degree, giving up the MMM forums also cleared off another huge chunk of my mental counterspace.  Other areas of my life magically improved when I curtailed my internet usage.  I highly recommend trying it out.

Retirement has only continued to get better the longer I practice it.  These days, I struggle to understand how I survived the professional world for as long as I did. 

You can still reach me via PM, but I can't write back unless you send me some other form of contact info.  Like an alcoholic, I'm aiming for a zero-tolerance rule for MMM forum use every day.  Today is a failure, obviously, but to everyone who's written to say hi over the past ~6 months I wanted to say that yes, life goes on and it's still amazing.

[Bloop Bloop]

One wonders why anyone would get angry on a forum like this populated by intelligent and articulate people. I think my views make me an outlier in most respects on these forums but I can't remember getting angry at others whether they agree or disagree. Robust conversation is something that usually gives me pleasure. That said, your mileage may vary, and Sol's evidently does.

[Fresh Bread]

One wonders why anyone would get angry on a forum like this populated by intelligent and articulate people. I think my views make me an outlier in most respects on these forums but I can't remember getting angry at others whether they agree or disagree. Robust conversation is something that usually gives me pleasure. That said, your mileage may vary, and Sol's evidently does.

I don't remember him getting angry as such, but he did join in some heated debates. He did write long and considered posts that definitely would have been a time suck.

Thanks for posting this nereo, I'm glad to hear he is doing well. I also aspire to less time online.

[RWD]

Learning in school is not just about the grades.

If doing well at school is still a big deal in a person’s life, then that’s great for them!

You aren't listening.    You've got a smug idea and it's interfering with learning something.

We're not talking about doing well at school "being a big deal" like we're proud of winning a touchdown or something.   We're not talking about being some boozy, paunchy and balding ex-football player still pining about our glory days in high school.

We're talking about what we learned in school making a real difference in our success.

I self-taught myself to design databases and program because times were hard, the town I moved to for love was in double-digit unemployment and didn't like strangers, I needed to make a living, I found an opportunity and I ran with it.

Professionally, I've written 1 book and published and/or presented about 80 professional technical articles or papers.
I was invited to speak at technical conferences in four countries and I've been published in 3 countries that I know of.

Generally, to present at major technical conferences, one has to submit an abstract that sells your presentation idea to the conference committee.   There were a number of conferences where they just contacted me and asked me what I wanted to talk about because they assumed if it was worth my time to present it, it was worth their time to learn it.

I've published two different technical publications, been the editor of another, and a contributing editor for two others. 

One US government agency designated me personally as a "unique, sole source provider" of the information that they needed, which meant they did not have put that particular contract out for competitive bidding.

A major international company invented a job for me because they wanted my unique professional skillsets.  I turned them down because my current employer gave me a better deal.   That included sending my wife, daughter and I to Europe for a month, most expenses paid, to write material for them simply because my wife needed to do research for her degree over there.

I wrote most of a report to a commission set up by the US congress on behalf of an entire branch of the US military, and I edited the other 40% of the report.

Oh, yeah, I made a bunch of money and after I learned about MMM, I invested enough to FIRE.

That's a fair bit of professional success.

Those English classes where they taught reading, writing, spelling, grammar and textual analysis?    I paid attention and I learned it!   Plus I did lots of extra reading on top of my assignments.    All that writing I did?   It was a whole lot easier because of it.

Those math classes where they taught arithmetic, trigonometry, and algebra?   I paid attention and learned it.   It was invaluable in my programming work and in business. Ditto with the economics courses.

Those history, sociology, anthropology classes?    I paid attention and learned it.   It gave me a wide range of experience and lots of real-life examples to use when thinking thru "what could happen?" when I was designing a software or business system.   It helped me communicate better with coworkers from other countries and cultures..   

Those political science courses?   I paid attention and learned it.   I got better database design training from Political Science classes than programmers got from computer science classes.    Socrates kicks butt! 

History and Political Science also got me interested in simulations.   Learning complex simulations meant reading complex game rule manuals and then turning those rules into strategies and tactics to win the simulation.    Software language manuals were a cake walk compared to some of the simulations I worked with.

Shop class made it a lot easier for me to renovate real estate property for profit and to keep repair costs on my own home lower than otherwise.

Because I took the time to learn lots of things well, I had a lot of different knowledge and skills I could draw upon to improvise, adapt and overcome whatever difficulties were in front of me.   I don't compartmentalize what I know, I try to use anything useful I've learned in everything I do.   

All those things made it possible for me to succeed and flourish professionally.   

Not because I made an "A" or got inducted into some silly club in high school or college, but because I learned lots of useful
information and I then made use of it.

Lots of people I went to school with never bothered to learn much in school and, after awhile, they lost the skills and willingness to learn.  They lacked the knowledge to recognize opportunities and lacked the habits to take advantage of them anyway.

That's how "what I learned in school" was a major driver of the success I have achieved.

I hope that clears things up.

[Moonwaves]

Lots of good replies on this thread but for me, @Sailor Sam said it best:

Maybe they're too high, but I'm curious if there are other people with similarly high standards and a lack of desire to work their life through.

Yes, though it’s possible you don’t agree with my standard. I’ve given away tens of thousands of dollars, certainly greater than $50k, certainly less than $100k, though I’ll get there eventually.

I’ve also chosen a public service professional path that pays me far less than doing the same thing in private industry would pay. I did this because I believe in my organizations motto of: Honor, Respect, Devotion to Duty.

That said, when I hit my 20 year cliff vesting of my retirement benefits, I’m fucking gone. Twenty years is enough sacrifice. I don’t know how I’ll adjust my donations once retired, but I’ll figure it out.

Again, I'm talking really high-impact here. Even if I were on the board of a soup kitchen or doing pro bono consulting or whatever... part of the schtick of EA is that there is only a handful of really, truly effective charities. Maybe I'm taking this to an extreme (would not be the first time), but it seems like if I were doing charitable work and it were not part of one of those highly effective charities doing data-proven work in the developing world where a dollar goes farther... it seems like it wouldn't really be worth the effort.

I mean this with the upmost of compassion, but what a terrible fucking paradigm to force yourself into. Effectiveness is nothing but metrics, and humans are the flawed meatsacks that doing the choosing. Charity is charity. Full stop. Period. There are certain charitable organizations that can convert donations into a larger amount of stuff - nets, inoculations, units of gonkolators - than the same $10 used to feed the neighbour kid. Deciding that neighbour kid is unworthy of charity, because feeding the little shit dinner is ineffective is a stance that had never sat very well with me. It does not strike me as humility.

Trying to shoehorn a metric of ‘effectiveness’ onto charity, and then use that as the only metric, kid, that’s turtles all the way down. You need to figure out your own morality, and stand by that harder than you stand by anything else in your life. Posting this means you’re thinking, and that’s great, you’re ahead of most fuckers, but right now you’re wholesale adopting someone else’s morality, and that’s why you’re so uncomfortable.

[Linea_Norway]

I've been surprised by how often people (at least half of whom are retired themselves!) ask me what I'm doing with all of my new-found free time. I've given all sorts of answers ranging from "whatever I want" to "I think I'll take up knitting, buy a rocking chair, adopt 6 cats, and start yelling at kids to get off my lawn," but I really should asking them the following:

How would your life look if you...?
1. Never rush anything
2. Take the time to do things right, or at least up to your own standards, rather than having to choose some things to half-ass due to lack of time
3. Spend as much time as you want (within your budget) on activities you enjoy

I think most people would see how this massive amount of extra time they think I have just evaporates. I don't know why people seem to expect me to have embarked on some huge, grand lifelong project. That's great for those who have a passion for something like that, but I'm just enjoying life's little details.

[monarda]

Today in the 1M to 2M thread:

In the first million run up it's fear of running out that keeps you working.  You remain frugal and save aggressively.  Post one million fear of running out is still there, but you know in just a few more, one more years you can eliminate that almost entirely.     Post two million fear of running out no longer dominates your desire to OMY.  Now fear of missing out creeps in.  Your accounts are now growingat $500 or more dollars a day.  You start to justify trading a few more years for a level of security and wealth you didn't dream possible.   All the while you're ageing and time is rapidly becoming the most precious possession.  Perpetual, generational wealth can be achieved. It's a MMM to Boglehead transition.   Maybe most of you can avoid it.

[maizefolk]

Wow, that is a good one! Thanks for posting it here, monarda.

[dandarc]

Don't really like the question this thread asks, but this post from @Laura33 is fantastic:

First, I don't really think I am "officially" Mustachian, because my StupidCar disqualifies me.

But to the extent I appreciate and follow the tenets, I think it goes beyond "mindfulness,"* or even mindfulness + environmentalism.  It's really mindfulness + environmentalism + stoicism.  It's the fundamental realization that the easy way is very often the least-satisfying way in the long-term.  So it's not just, "hey, being lazy and grabbing takeout isn't giving me a good return on the happiness-to-dollars-spent scale" and/or "all that packaging and driving is really wasteful."  It's also "and when I give in to the laziness of blowing extra money to pay some poor schlub to cook a pizza and drive it to my door instead of taking 5 minutes and $1.50 in ingredients to do it myself, I am creating a lazy life and building habits of sloth and telling myself it's ok to put bad food in my body because I'm sooooooo tiiiiiired -- fundamentally, I am infantilizing myself.  I need to get off the path that leads to spending my life driving my motorized recliner everywhere while watching cute kitty videos on YouTube, because I will be far better off in the long run if I just suck it up, deal with the temporary discomfort, and make my own damn food that is better for me in so many ways." 

It's choosing to do the hard thing, not just because the hard thing is cheaper and better for the environment, but because you know doing the hard thing is better for you in the long run and will make you a more competent, satisfied, healthy, happy person.


*Which, btw, I appreciate and is important, but is becoming such an overused term to describe so many versions of woo-woo that it has become meaningless and trite and is starting to drive me batshit.

[BNgarden]

I loved payday too.  It was the reason I worked.  The art is to pretend you don't care and be a good sheep like the others so you can enjoy bigger and uninterrupted paydays.  Never underestimate that sniffy manager who would put your name on a short list to be booted with a downturn-  many people are jealous egocentric jack wangs who secretly harbor darkness in their hearts.  They are not happy for you, they don't want dancing over paychecks, they don't want drama in the workplace if dancing offends others.  They want sheep who stay in their place. 

I had the conversation once at age 25 with a boss who gave me the "I work for noble reasons" bullshit and when I asked if they would keep working the day after they won the lottery the answer was a hard NOPE.  But until that jackpot arrived that boss was going to keep the noble stick up their ass and pretend to be above it all.  And my name was put on the short list of uppity workers who were trouble and things were not very pleasant for me afterward.  Fortunately I left on my own accord but I learned the lesson.  I learned to fake it as long as required while keeping mental clarity that I was there for the little green rectangles.  Keeping it clear in my mind that I was trading bits of my life for those little green rectangles is what made FIRE an option at all.         

Good reminder; I think my employers at a family-based business viewed me as a bit disloyal for being oriented to retirement.  I got some brownie points early by stating I had planned to retire / leave earlier but they treated me so well, I chose to stay longer.  But, eventually, they forgot about that... and do did I;=}

[mspym]

Glad to hear you're doing well! I don't spend as much time on here as I did before I retired, and haven't felt the need to quit cold turkey.

To Dicey, seattlecyclone, soccerloveof4, spartana and the rest of the old timers who expressed similar sentiments, I didn't mean to suggest that you have to jump ship once you're retired, only that it turns out to be totally awesome if you do.  Time is a limited resource for all of us, which is kind of the driver behind pursuing ER in the first place, right?  I can't imagine finally achieving that goal, after years of diligent effort, and then just half-assing that golden opportunity by frittering away my newfound freedom.  Go!  Live free!

And honestly, I feel like I have less to contribute to the forum these days anyway.  In 8000 posts I think I've kind of said my piece on a few key topics.  Nobody should be confused about my feelings on market timing or shitty overpriced kitchen appliances, for example.  That horse is dead.  I used to write in detail about the process of putting solar panels on my house, but they're still there and they still work great and they're still making me money.  I used to write about why I chose an electric car, but I still have the same one and probably will for ten more years and it still works great and I have no regrets about it.  So what's to write?  I read less news these days than I used to, so I don't have the same burning desire to eviscerate whichever politician or media figure is currently making an ass of themselves.  I've learned a ton of stuff since retiring but just about non-financial topics, and while I'm still overflowing with unpopular opinions about those topics I don't think anyone here really cares about them as much as I do.  Mostly what I've learned in retirement is how to kick back and live in the moment, and that's probably helped smooth over some of the rough edges that once made me so eager to pound the keyboard for all of the forum participants every single day.

You know how they say "you can't go home again", because the home you remember has changed so much in your absence as to be unrecognizable?  This community has changed a bunch since we started it, but more importantly so have I.  I'm not the same person I was way back then, the new me isn't really an internet forum person anymore, and I'm pretty happy about that.  I do miss some of you, but then again I have a bunch of new IRL friends too so it kind of balances out.

So keep at it, my FIRE friends.  The burning desire for financial independence is a beautiful and transformative thing.  It can change your life for the better, and this community can help you do it.  In my case, all of the advice and guidance I received here set me on a path that freed me from a cubicle, but also from giving a shit about most of the other things that people give shits about.  Most of it just doesn't matter!  Work hard, stay healthy, cultivate your relationships, and pretty much everything else is like three levels below that.  We're all gonna die eventually, but in the meantime I'm grateful that I was able to be part of this community.  You give a little, you take a little, and hopefully everyone has fun along the way.  Then once it stops being fun, or as fun as the alternatives, you move along.

I'm moving along.

[nereo]

Amazing.  Guy’s been off the forum for over a year, and he still manages to get a “best post today” when he does pop in to say ‘hi’.  This thread’s got a number of ‘best post’ by Sol

[Dicey]

Ha! As soon as this thread popped up, I knew it was going to be @sol's latest post. Thanks for shouting it out, @mspym!

[Sanitary Stache]

From the Coronavirus contrarian thread, this was a good use of words:

This reminds me of the conversation around IPCC climate scenarios, and the use of “business as usual” and “worst case” scenarios.  The Energy Transition Show with Chris Nelder just did a great podcast on the topic, and I highly reccomend that show and the entire series.

A key takeaway for me was that the modelers and statisticians think in terms of sets of scenarios, with different probabilities attached to them — whereas those pushing for policies, or trying to understand risks and generate urgency (activists) latch on to specific scenarios. This simplification from an array of possible outcomes is also driven by headlines and journalism’s attempt to deal with short attention spans and the readers desire for conclusions.

The result is that we latch on to the biggest numbers, which are within the realm of possibility, but not so probable.  This happened with the numbers we have seen thrown around for the impact of COVID-19 — just as they do for the “business as usual” scenarios in the IPCC.

In both cases, we also have action taken to mitigate, and a changing landscape for the scenarios to unfold, which change many of the assumptions of the “business as usual” scenarios, and make them even less likely.  For example, oil and coal usage in some of the IPCC scenarios reflects growth rates that industry itself says are ridiculous and are also against current trends downward in oil and coal use, and the growth of renewables.  We also see that testing and isolation works to slow the spread of  COVID-19, and few polities are doing nothing at all.

Combine these effects rooted in the difference between common language and rhetoric, and the language and rhetoric of science and modeling, add a dash of fear and political rhetoric, and you got a shit storm of sensationalism, blame, fear mongering, over-simplification and confusion.  The storm lays a blanket of shit on top of an already unknowable and complex situation that will play out on an ever changing board.

I’m not suggesting we should all be agnostics on the topics, giving up to marvel at the unknown and mysterious.  I would argue that we should understand more the rhetoric and structure of the science behind this, and learn how to make decisions and act to manage probable risks, bend the envelope of outcomes away from the worse case, and recognize that our actions impact our reality and thus previous models and predictions.  This is IMO, a much more productive use of our collective power than arguing over wether a prediction was right or wrong, or about a policy decision made by politicians was correct or not.  We’re all embedded in communities where we have resources and social power to act and influence — even if we may have not cultivated that knowledge and connection, we can rekindle it.

I also think we should start to imagine what a society that was resilient to two weeks or months of this kind of disruption would look like.  We’re a global economic system with circulation of currency, goods and people at massive levels of mixing — optimizing for maximum extraction of profit from minimal cost of labor was one of the drivers shaping our current system.  We have citizens with no margin to absorb the disruptions.

I think it's the last paragraph I found to be the most relevant to the MMM forums.  For me MMMs version of FIRE is about optimization, environmentalism, and financial independence.  If we can start talking about a resilient economy and what that meands, I think we will be moving in the right direction. 

I am also partial to @verfrugal 's Vermont influenced world view.  Being snowed in frequently might be good training for breaks in the break neck pace of maximum extraction of profit.

[dandarc]

With a highly communicable disease, you are also responsible for the health of all those around you too.

One sentence posts don't often make it here, but I think this one is perfect.

[maizefolk]

This post from Finances_With_Purpose on how life has changed living in a coronavirus lockdown world, hopes for what FIRE life might actually be like, and gratitude.

It's made me less interested in investing in financial options, and more interested in setting up a lifestyle - garden, chickens, no ****ng neighbours.....

This situation has made me thankful above all.  Thankful that we have secure jobs.  Thankful that we set that type of lifestyle beforehand.  (And sad to hear friends in tiny urban condos and apartments, like we were not many years ago, who are struggling.)  Thankful that we have savings.  (Our A/C unit died the week we began working from home.)  Thankful that we no longer commute: we sleep more, exercise more, and take daily nature walks surrounded by birds, deer, and forests.  Thankful that I'm wired to consume information and think strategically, so we made some additional preparations before things even began getting crazy, as soon as this situation seemed possible: it was so cheap to do (just bumping forward food costs, really) relative to the likely pain if we didn't.  (So now I'm thankful that we haven't even dipped yet into our *real* emergency supplies.)  Thankful that now our relatives are mostly safe and isolated, just as we are.  Thankful that, as this began, we were able to take in a suddenly-jobless relative to shelter the storm.  Thankful for God, and for our church family who we visit with (digitally) regularly.

Tomorrow night, I'll be doing the same thing I did yesterday tonight: sitting by a campfire after a long evening surrounded by close family and surrounded by nature, watching the stars.  Before that, I'll pick some fresh fruit that we've grown--now the only fresh and healthy stuff that we're reliably getting--and try out a new type of fruit pie.  In the past month, I've been able to do more physical labor and build more productive things than I had in almost an entire year before that, with all of the commensurate rewards, and still be even more productive at work. 

If anything, I am hopeful that this is a good preview of what actual early retirement will look like: more freedom, more productivity, more enjoyment, more exercise, more health, and more leisure.  I wouldn't mind that at all. 

Sure, we could have done a few things better: we might have bought more bonds ahead of time (I had been thinking about adding significantly to our position) or had more cash sitting there to pile in at market lows (wherever they end up being), but there's nothing in the world that I can complain about right now.  Or even anything I regret about our situation thus far. 

I'm reminded daily of how little I have to complain about and how much I have to be thankful for.

[deborah]

I really liked this post about weathering COVID 19 and the associated economic ramifications...

I firmly be-leaf you will be able to weather this storm :-)

I very well understand how you're feeling - this has thrown a major wrench spanner into my plans as well. Sabbatical is over, time to get back to work - whoops, pandemic and worldwide depression! Didn't see that coming. Who knows what this will do to my long-term plans? Nothing good. Who knows what it will do to the economy? Again, nothing good. But all we can do is the best we can. We're both set up very well compared to most people our age. We may have to adjust our plans, but we do have sensible plans and we will complete them or update them one way or another. We knew all along that our plans could be affected by the world at large. We just didn't know how. Money is about the only thing I'm NOT worried about. As long as you keep healthy and keep your parents healthy, the rest of it is likely to work out fine - because you're better prepared than almost everyone else, and even in a financial disaster you'll have it easier as a result.

Of course you can't stop yourself from worrying about this stuff anyway. I know. I find that it helps if I just take it one day at a time. The big stuff is out of my control, but I can keep myself safe and try to stay calm and talk to my friends. And I can do that tomorrow, and Sunday again, and Monday too. And we'll deal with whatever happens when it happens, because our preparations have made us able to take on the worst case scenario.

[oneday]

Emphasis added.

was added to a WhatsApp group of cousins (1st and 2nd cousins)...

during some topic chat, I mentioned I'm planning on retiring around when my youngest goes to college (in 12 years). I'd be ~54. Responses were majority negative, from mild to disgust.

Many of my cousins are entitled and have EOC, and work for their parents, or they married into money, while my bro and I are successful without grants and loans from Bank of Dad & Mum.

I politely wished them the best and noped the fuck out of that group chat. One cousin keeps on trying to add me every month to the group.

My brother asked me why I keep on leaving the group. I said I didn't ask to join, hence I left, and I have nothing in common with our cousins. The less I know, the happier I am.

My wife wonders how I'm not materialistic and am an outcast; she's happy that I focus on my family and building the little green army.

Just mute the group. No reason to offend people by leaving over and over.

His cousins are vocally upset at his retirement plans and he should be concerned about coming across as offensive?

No need to sink to the level of the rudest person around.

I'm rude? You said he was offending people by not wanting to be in the chat group.

And if you think my little comment makes me the rudest person around, you haven't spent much time in this forum.

Lol, they weren't calling YOU rude. They were just saying that the rude cousins don't justify a rude response.

Maybe yes, maybe no.   It all depends.

If it's out of character for them to be rude, let it go.

If it's routine for them to be rude, it's time to establish boundaries.  Those boundaries might be as gentle as

"I'll ignore it, they don't know better."
"I would appreciate it if you refrained from doing that again."
"You forgot to be polite, I expect you to do better next time."
"Be nice to me and mine or I'll show you up for the asshole you are."
"I don't want to hear from you again until you learn manners."
"Good riddance, I want nothing more to do with you."   
"Here's your restraining order.  Violate it at your peril."

Obviously, it's rarely appropriate to go to the upper end of the scale and even more rarely appropriate to leap to it.

It all depends.

What I have learned is that a repetitive, frequent pattern of INTENTIONAL rudeness is a form of willful abuse.  And no one should have to put up with that shit.   I've also learned that ignoring intentional rudeness/abuse is the functional equivalent to giving consent to further treatment like that.   "Silence implies consent" is the old maxim and it applies here.

[dandarc]

clarkfan1979 on the phases of interacting with your "normal" coworkers / friends:

To me, the weird dynamic occurs in three phases.

Phase One: you avoid buying stupid things like status symbols that do not help your net worth. The most noticeable things to others is that you avoid the fancy car and fancy dinners. You are encouraged to do these things from others, but politely "opt-out". This typically results in people assuming that you are poor. People make fun of you, but it's light-hearted, so you do not take offense.

Phase two: other people get confused when your primary house is not a shit hole and then a couple years later you buy a rental house. You still do vacations but it's with credit card points. Instead of jokes, you start to get questions. How are you able to afford this when your car is only worth $3,000? Well, because I spend less money on liabilities, I have more money to spend on assets. It's pretty simple. Well, that is cool that you can do that, but I could never do that because.... (fill in the blank)

Phase Three: You get anger from co-workers because you start opting out of projects at work that do not interest you. Co-workers are struggling to pay their bills and cannot afford to get fired, so they take on all the shit jobs.  Instead of jokes from others, you get sarcastic comments along the lines of, "must be nice."

I had a college professor share a similar story to his class and I didn't believe him at the time. He was good friends with a co-worker for about 30 years. They were the same age, had similar careers and made the same amount of money. His friend inflated his lifestyle and he did not. After 30 years the friendship ended because my professor had too much money (10 million) in his late 60's. According to the other person the friendship was not sustainable because he had become an "evil rich person" and they could not affiliate with such a person.

[Gremlin]

Some really fine work from mathlete...

We've talked a lot about emotional leverage in this thread in terms of people ostensibly "controlled by fear", but spent a relatively smaller amount of time talking about what is in my view, more abundant emotional leverage.

People (myself included) like being right on the internet. Some people (myself not included) do this by adopting and dying by contrarian takes to the point of silliness. Examples include;

-Deciding that a source they previously derided, like the CDC, now has it right when they come out with an estimate that we like better
-Making a majority of their posts on a forum about a single contrarian take
-Selectively deciding to feign concern for food insecure African grandmothers

You guys ever notice how much time we spend on the Imperial College study? That is so obviously because it's a big number that probably won't come to fruition. Never mind that it was caveated by twenty pages of work. Never mind that it was only one of now dozens of white papers put out on the virus. Let's go ahead and use it to discredit the notion of trying to quantify the impact of assumptions to support decision making.

You ever notice how little time we spend talking about the statement from late March by Dr. Fauci that we could see between 100K and 240K deaths? Unless something drastically changes, the US death toll will probably fit comfortably in that interval. At least in the first (hopefully only?) wave.

You ever notice how much time we spend on presumptive asymptomatics vs. the reporting that excess mortality may be greater than reported COVID deaths? It's because on balance, we're emotionally leveraged more towards one side than another.

Statements like, "We should make policy decisions based on better data" are truisms. No one would disagree with this. But where is this better data? Or more specifically, where was it in late Feb/Early March? The answer is that it didn't exist. We had deaths and we had limited testing data. We can study that to make educated guesses about IFR, R0, and presumptive asymptomatics. Of course the possibility was always there that the latter two metrics were higher, meaning the IFR could be lower and still support the number of deaths we're seeing. But no one effectively made an empirical case that this was more likely than not.

While I don't agree that IFRs in the neighborhood of 1.0% are completely out of the picture (see antibody studies), I'd be thrilled if the CDC's latest estimates based on scenario testing are accurate. Because it probably means fewer deaths and opening up sooner. Who could be against that? But what does that mean in the context of three months ago?

It means that the cost of inaction was merely hundreds of thousands of US lives instead of over 1 million.

You see similar, anti-intellectual attitudes in elections polling. People reduce a very complicated system to, "Polls said Clinton would win/Brexit would be defeated. Polls are useless." I would love to make wagers with these people. We put money on 100 election results. They can leverage media coverage and other heuristics, but must black out polling data. I get to use the polling. I would clean up.

Similarly, if you're offering me the practice of statistical inference and empirical modeling, I'll take it every damn time.

When scientists publish research or white papers or build models, they open themselves up to criticism. As they should. They are and should be held to a high (but not unreasonable) standard. When people make comments on the internet about how this is no deadlier than the flu, or talk about how Swine Flu killed more people, they're not opened up to very much critics because no one holds them to any standard or expectations as at all. I'm eternally grateful when public policy is driven by the former, rather than the latter.

[Spud]

A post from Ananas that made me think and reflect:

On an anonymous internet forum I can share some of my own thoughts on this, because I am someone who benefited enormously from generational wealth. We weren't rich when I was a small kid, but became quite wealthy during my teenage years.  I think there's a major difference in being the first recipients of generational wealth or further down the line. I live in a Nordic welfare state and will soon turn 40.

Personally I have received a large inheritance and will probably receive another within the next 20 years. One of my parents died about 20 years ago and their inheritance passed to me and my brother. Most of that inheritance was part ownership of the family company, which my father built. The company business is unfortunately in a sector of the economy that has no long term future, so my father took the decision to sell the company about 10-15 years ago for a healthy amount (10-15mil. euros)

I was 18 when I received the first part of the inheritance, which was about 1 mil. euros in liquid assets and then the ownership of the family company.  About 10 years later, when the company was sold, I received another 1 mil. euros in liquid assets and the holding/investment company that I own with my brother had assets of around 3-4 mil. euros. That had grown to about double before Corona hit.  So my own assets are about 3 mil. euros and 50 % ownership of an investment company with about 6-8 mil. euros capital.  On top of that my father has another similar amount in his investments, which I know the contents of, so its likely that I will inherit some millions more at some point in the future.

What impact has this had on my life? (in completely random order)
- Is this enough money that would make me a super rich person who flies on private jets etc? No, but it has made my life secure from just about every possible negative downside of normal life in a capitalist system. With the exception of a bad gambling or drug habit, I don't think I will ever even spend even as much as I gain on average every year and even a negative return of -20% or whatever Corona will end up with, will not leave me worse off.
- I spent the age from 19 - 27 drifting around, studying, playing computer games, traveling some and then going abroad to study and live for a year. I have 2 masters degrees (Social sciences and law) the first I made with minimum effort and the second I did with gusto and finished in 3,5 years (normal study time would be 5,5 years). Studying is free here, which is nice and something that should be the norm everywhere.
- I work for a living and earn enough to pay all my monthly / yearly expenses. I did decide when studying that I would work in a place that helped people less fortunate than I am. I studied to be a lawyer, so I currently work for a Union representing workers when their employers don't pay the salary, fire them without cause etc. I used to work for the legal aid office, but I couldn't handle the emotional baggage of family cases (divorce + fighting about the kids).
- I don't really have any career goals and sort of float around. If I get bored of my current employment, I will probably just change jobs. I might move to a more court litigation type of role since I find myself liking that. I think of retiring at around 50 or something, maybe when my kids are teenagers. If possible I might change to a part-time job, so I have more free time.
- I also take all the holidays that I can. I live in a Nordic welfare state so I get 5-6 weeks of holidays a year by law. On top of that I usually change the holiday bonus into more holidays, which gives 2-3 weeks extra depending on the employer. On top of that my current employer gives overtime pay or equivalent time off, since this job is quite seasonal I usually wind up with the equivalent of 2 weeks of extra holidays. So this year I will have 10 weeks of paid holidays and might take 2-3 weeks unpaid holidays, if its possible.
- I'm a happy taxpayer and find it disgusting that a lot of rich people spend their time complaining about having to pay taxes on income. I would rather we have a robust welfare state than me having a bit more money.
- There is a sort of existential ennui to my life, that I'm sort of trying to manage. I have a hard time getting really excited about stuff. I can (within reason) buy whatever I want, so there is no waiting for saving up for something and no sense of accomplishment related to that. This is something I think people forget with inheritances.
- I have been looking for something new that excites me for the last few years. Earlier I loved travel, so I traveled a lot with partner, but now even that doesn't excite me as much. With kids adventure travel is not really possible. Never really was into 5* travel stuff, but more along the lines of lets go to Australia for 6 weeks, rent a car and stay at a motel / campground type of travel.
- I'm terrified of my kids becoming even more jaded and comfortable than I am with always having everything they want, so we try not to give them everything, but they are still at an age where its easy (not in school yet). I don't know how it will work out when they become teenagers. We also decided to live in a neighborhood, where not everyone is rich or wealthy, if that would help ground us and the kids more.
- As I get older, I care less about what other people think and don't really want to live in a place where I would feel the pressure to keep up with the neighbors.
I also don't want to only associate with other rich people. Most of my friends are comfortable upper middle class, from my childhood or from university. A few of them have some inherited money and a few are entrepreneurs, who might make it big, or might not.

I often feel that my life is on easy mode and I don't know if that is a good thing or not. I am happy answer any questions, within reason and keeping my relative anonymity.

[nereo]

This lengthy post from @IslandFiGirl about her personal experience into FIRE is at the heart of what this forum is all about:

I always love reading other people's stories about FIRE, so I thought I'd share what mine has been like over the past 4 months since leaving my job.  I like to talk, so this will probably be long, fair warning!  (Not sure if this matters but I'm a single mom of 3 kids (2 are adults) in my mid 40's)

Leaving Work
I left my job on February 4th, 2020 after becoming completely, totally crispy fried and burnt out.  I was about as close to having enough money to FIRE as I thought I could get without going insane, so I decided it was worth my mental (and physical) health to get out of there before I completely melted down.  (I managed a 911 dispatch center and had been there for 15 years and although I loved the job in so many ways, I was tired of being the public's punching bag, and was tired of being on call every stinking minute of my life!)  Giving my notice was by far the scariest part.  I stressed so much over the fact that I was "leaving my people" behind and what would they EVER do without me, how could they manage, this was such a betrayal!  HAH!  How wrong I was!  If I can impart any wisdom to anyone...here it is.  They can do without you, they WILL replace you, they will get along, it will be FINE.  Live your life for you.  That's the advice I had to give myself and I'm so glad I took that advice because here I am 4 months later, with no panic attacks, no work stress, it's great!  Anyway, after giving notice, I only had to deal with 2 weeks worth of questions from EVERYONE...Why are you leaving?  What will you do next?  That part was hard for me because I really didn't want to tell anyone anything but people want to know!  At first I said I was keeping my future endeavors to myself...people didn't like that.  They wanted to know!  When I gave my notice, I told my boss I was leaving for a new opportunity...I didn't mention that the opportunity was to do whatever the hell I wanted and not work!  Eventually I just said I was taking some time off to spend with my family because 2 of my kids would be moving on to their adult lives this year and I didn't want to spend the last few months I had with them stuck at work for 12-14 hours a day.  Thankfully the 2 weeks ended and I had my last day of work, which was kind of emotional because all of the people I had worked with for the last 15 years did a final call for me over the police radio, all saying goodbye and thanking me for my service.  It was very sweet and unexpected but it didn't stop me from running right out of that building like my ass was on fire!  I can laugh about it now, but after getting home from work on my last day, I got a text from the interim manager asking if I could possibly work a shift tomorrow since someone had called in sick.  HAHAHAHAH, NO!  No, I could not!  I just quit this job, remember? Somehow they managed.

First few weeks after FIRE'ing
For the first few weeks after leaving work, I woke up super early.  Like 4:30 to 5:00am.  I didn't have anywhere to be so I tried to learn how to sleep in.  That didn't really work, so I just went with it and figured at some point, I might start waking up later.  I went to the gym almost every day, sometimes twice a day.  I wanted to lose weight, but somehow it wasn't really working.  Maybe I forgot about the eating less part of losing weight, haha!  The transition was a little difficult.  I think I was still stuck in the mindset that I should be working or doing something with my life.  Or that I thought someone might tell me that I should be working or judge me and that I would have to find a way to defend my choices.  I know that people always say you should retire TO something rather than AWAY from something, but hey, these were my circumstances and I was doing the best I could.  My big plan was to buy a truck and a small travel trailer and get out and explore, and this was going to be easy because summer was coming and I'd only have one kid left at home, so coordinating all of this would be easy, right?  During those first few weeks (and even now) I was also feeling some guilt.  Not some...a lot of guilt.  I had saved money for a long time, but a good portion of my money came from an inheritance from my parents who had died within the last few years.  I was really struggling with what a jerk I was being for just using that money to live off of when they were dead and couldn't enjoy it for themselves.  They both had retired and died almost immediately after retiring.  It was so heartbreaking to know that they couldn't go on any more cruises, no more fun trips...they worked all their lives and it ended so abruptly.  I had nightmares every night, in fact, I still do, but not quite as frequently.  My recurring nightmare is that one or both of my parents somehow come back to life and I had to scramble to explain that I had sold their house and give back their money and explain why I had it and why I was so selfish to think I could use that money to live on when they needed it.  It's still something I struggle with, but I am doing what I think is right for me and my family and I can only hope they would think that what I'm doing is good.  Ok, Enough sad stuff...

How quickly plans change!
I was just starting to think I could settle in to being fired, started making plans to go camping and have adventures, carefully watching my budget, when I started hearing rumblings of a pandemic.  I usually don't get too worked up about things but around the first week of March I felt like this would be a big deal, so I went out and spent about $1,000 on groceries.  During that week my next door neighbor moved out and left a perfectly good fridge outside his house for free, so I snagged that and filled it up too.  During this time, my daughter's college boyfriend was in town visiting her from his Cruise line job and they got engaged.  Super exciting time!  When he was scheduled to go back to work, they told him not to come and he ended up losing his job, so now I had an extra person living with us and another mouth to feed.  My budget was blown instantly...I stocked up on food, medicine, anything I could think of in case things went bad, but I was grateful to have the money to do this and happy that I didn't have to go to work during scary times.  It didn't take long for my oldest daughter to lose her job and suddenly nobody in the household had a job.  Now I was supporting a household of 5 people and I was getting nervous, especially when the stock market took the first big hit.  I didn't allow myself to look at my accounts, knowing it would make me sick and scared, so I just decided that I had enough money and we would be ok.  This strategy proved to be effective.  If I've learned anything from here it's to set your plan and stick with it, if you set it up right, outside influences shouldn't effect you much.  Live frugally and you should always have enough.  That about sums it up...even though the pandemic stock market hit initially set me back about $95k, I'm now back to within about $4k of where I was at when I fired.  I'm soooo glad the pandemic happened a month after I FIRE'd though because I am not sure I would have had the guts to leave knowing my investments were losing so much money.  Pandemic living has evened out here.  At first it was hard having an extra person living with us, but after some time, we have adjusted, and I think it probably has brought us all closer together.  I'm glad I got to spend this time with my daughter and her fiance before they move away this summer, I feel that it has made our bond stronger for the future, and for that I am grateful.

Money, bills, health insurance, oh my!
As soon as I left work, I got to work on getting health insurance.  I decided that no matter what, I was not going without insurance, I've seen too many people get into deep doo doo because they didn't have it and I didn't want to get some terrible illness or injury and wipe out my savings.  I ended up getting no subsidies on the marketplace because I qualified for Medicaid.  I didn't want Medicaid and didn't feel I needed to be on that so I went ahead and purchased my own insurance for about $350/ month.  I hated that it cost that much but a lot of docs do not take Medicaid around here so I decided to buy the insurance.  Peace of mind is what I really bought, and that is ok with me.  I have to say it's really weird to not have a paycheck hit my account every month.  I've been using credit cards to pay bills so that I get the points from the cards.  I don't really like this method though, and I think this month I will just go back to paying cash for things.  Having to pay the credit card balance off every month is not a huge deal but I don't like the idea of owing anybody anything.  It's unnatural to me and doesn't feel good, even with the tiny perks I get from the cards.  I also think I spend a bit more knowing I'm using a credit card.  All in all though, I don't have many bills and even though the pandemic hurt my budget for a little while, it's not near as bad as I thought it would be.  I wanted to track everything so I could say, oh, I spent this much on food and this much on this or that, but it's become exhausting.  I know myself and I know I am careful with money so even though I have a general idea of what goes out every month, I don't obsess over my budget like I used to.  It just became too exhausting to worry about it.

Fun!
As spring approached and the weather got better, all I could think about was having fun outside!  I love warm weather and couldn't wait to get out on the water with my paddle board.  Wanting to have fun is usually what makes me spend the most money.  This time was no exception.  I sat here in my living room thinking of all the fun I'd like to have on the lake and realized I wanted a new toy!  An inflatable paddle board.  I did tons of research and found a really good one and knew I had to have it, an inflatable fits in my car so easily, so it is so much better than a hard board that you have to strap on top of your car.  After I bought the board, I realized I needed an electric pump...and a cooler...and a special quick drying towel...and a waterproof phone case...and another cooler.  I could see myself quickly getting out of control so I decided to stop spending money and just be happy with this toy!  If I let myself, I would keep finding new cool things to buy, so it was time to nip it in the bud!  Not long after that, I decided I wanted to build a shed in my backyard with my son.  Neither of us have a clue what we are doing, but I bought plans for the shed, bought the wood, borrowed some tools and we went to town.  The shed is still in progress, but we are learning a lot...mostly what not to do with things like nail guns.  Needless to say, safety is first and foremost in our minds after the nail gun incident of 2020, when my son's pinky got nicked with a nail.  Whoops!  I am not sure if I am not doing much outside the house because of the pandemic or because I am more of a homebody.  It's hard to tell.  But I end up spending a lot of time in my comfy chair in the backyard, watching the butterflies, birds and squirrels, sprucing things up, watching the fire in the fire pit and grilling food.  I spend at least an hour every day studying the Korean language, it's something I learned back in my Army days and I try not to lose that knowledge.  It's only recently that I have had the time to study, and it's nice to be able to understand it.  I meet up with one or two friends on occasion and we typically just talk and eat or go hang out at the lake and fish.  I can't say I've done anything terribly exciting, but again, this is during an odd time.  Nothing is normal during a pandemic, I guess.

Future plans
On occasion I will think about getting a job, maybe something part time, just for fun.  I did commit to not working for at least one year to really give myself a chance to just chill and find out what I'm all about, so I'm not going to think about that too much until next year.  If my youngest daughter is not able to get scholarships for college, I may consider going to work at the University in a couple years to get a discount for her.  We shall see.  But mostly what I think about is how awesome it is to not have answer to a boss or a schedule and how can I keep doing this for as long as possible.  If that means working sometimes to keep from depleting my stash (stache?) I can manage that.  But full time work, I don't know if I can ever stomach that again. 

Goals
My biggest goal was to lose weight and improve my health, and I'm happy to report that I have finally figured out what works for me and I've lost 20 pounds since February.  My gym has reopened and I'm so happy to get back there to see people and socialize and workout and just finally be able to have more options to focus on my overall well being.  I feel like removing the stress of work has helped me be better able to plan meals, shop, cook more often (almost never go out to eat now), and just be available to focus on feeling good and doing good things for myself.  Everybody in my family benefits when I am doing well and it has been soooo worth it to put effort into me for once.

Friends, Connections, etc.
I've always been kind of on the fence about social media.  At times I find it strange, the things people will post, the humble bragging, the dirty laundry being aired, the cattiness, back biting, I don't really like it.  However, it seems there has been a huge shift in the way people deal with each other and not having a social media account has kind of made it where I'm obsolete with a good portion of my friends.  I seem to get left out of a lot of things.  I always wonder if I should try to use it again, make a facebook account, so I can better connect with people, but I remember how it was the last time I used it about 5 years ago and I didn't like how you could so easily post something to someone, but not really get more in depth with them, and I don't want to have that superficial type of thing with people again.  It's food for thought.  I have a few best friends that I talk to frequently and that is satisfying, so maybe one doesn't need social media at all. 

After having been FIRE'd for 4 months, I can safely say, I like it.  I don't need to be defined by a job.  I don't need to impress other people or conform to how they think I should live.  If I am able to I would like to continue this lifestyle and I'll continue to find ways to hang on to it. I wish I had figured out a way to do it sooner.  I love that the possibilities are endless and if there's something I want to do, I can probably figure out a way to make it happen.  I highly recommend this and wish I could convince everyone I know to do the same!  Thanks for reading my long long long story!  :)