Escape FIRE - How to get a job in corporate America

[Skyhigh]

You keep repeating the same thing over and over here, skyhigh.  You say your goal here is to help us all learn this, as though you are going to lift some veil from our benighted eyes. And yet, that is not happening.

Your posts are extremely redundant and if anything everyone here is getting less receptive to your arguments which seem less and less credible the more you repeatedly make them in the exact same way. So I ask you, what are you really trying to accomplish here?

If it is as you say, as I reference above, would you perhaps reconsider your approach? Because at this point, not only are you not succeeding at your goal, but if anything I think you are turning people further away by your approach. Every redundant post you make is just another nail in the coffin of the goal you had hoped to accomplish by posting here.  Please do reconsider and while you are doing so go look up that old cliche definition of insanity.

All I can say is that my situation here is akin to running for office. Candidates repeat their message over and over again to an ever-changing audience. I am glad that you are paying attention though.

[Skyhigh]

“What do you do?”

Here are ways I could answer that question from the first 1.5 years of FIRE under admittedly unusual circumstances (Covid).

“I am really enjoying learning to bake my own bread. I’m mastering one recipe and now I’ve started grinding my own wheat to make fresh flour. Pretty cool to learn about all the variables that go into it. I hadn’t even known there was such a thing as dough enhancer until recently!”

“My husband is exploring gardening with local edibles plants. Come February he will be pms ting a veritable forest of fruiting trees and berry bushes. I figure I’ll have to learn canning in another year or two once the harvests start coming in.”

“We are remodeling an old house we recently bought. It feels empowering all the new skills I am picking up from YouTube videos and just giving it a try. The second time we replaced the kitchen faucet was a lot easier than the first time!”

“A friend got me indoor bouldering. It is like rock climbing but without the ropes. I’m new muscles as a result and I find it is a lot of fun, like a giant jungle gym at the park but for adults.”

“My husband has decided to get back into learning Brazilian ju jitsu now that he is vaccinated and booster. I suspect he will be complaining soon about aches and pains he didn’t have when he was 18, but I know it makes him happy.”

“I managed to teach my kid to read in French over the Covid shutdown. I was impressed with her effort and how well she is doing now. It is cool to see her take to books as quickly as I did as a kid. “

“I never learned cursive as a kid so on a whim I picked up a French kid workbook for learning and taught myself. It was surprisingly meditative in that I only focused on the paper and pencil in front of me, making the same slow, deliberate motions again and again. The result is pretty cool and I’m proud of myself for having finally done something that was always a bit of a mystery to me.”

Life is so interesting. There are cool things to learn and great ways to get outside and move your body. I feel blessed that we get this time to pursue these activities.

I appreciate your comments and shall take them to heart. In my case it feels diminished to share my appliance repair accomplishments to a professional. I can literally see their eyes glaze over.

[Moustachienne]

Very, very cool!  It would be great to hear from other happy FIREES how they answer this question.  I'll start a separate thread.

“What do you do?”

Here are ways I could answer that question from the first 1.5 years of FIRE under admittedly unusual circumstances (Covid).

“I am really enjoying learning to bake my own bread. I’m mastering one recipe and now I’ve started grinding my own wheat to make fresh flour. Pretty cool to learn about all the variables that go into it. I hadn’t even known there was such a thing as dough enhancer until recently!”

“My husband is exploring gardening with local edibles plants. Come February he will be planting a veritable forest of fruiting trees and berry bushes. I figure I’ll have to learn canning in another year or two once the harvests start coming in.”

“We are remodeling an old house we recently bought. It feels empowering all the new skills I am picking up from YouTube videos and just giving it a try. The second time we replaced the kitchen faucet was a lot easier than the first time!”

“A friend got me indoor bouldering. It is like rock climbing but without the ropes. I’ve got new muscles as a result and I find it is a lot of fun, like a giant jungle gym at the park but for adults.”

“My husband has decided to get back into learning Brazilian ju jitsu now that he is vaccinated and boosted. I suspect he will be complaining soon about aches and pains he didn’t have when he was 18, but I know it makes him happy.”

“I managed to teach my kid to read in French over the Covid shutdown. I was impressed with her effort and how well she is doing now. It is cool to see her take to books as quickly as I did as a kid. “

“I never learned cursive as a kid so on a whim I picked up a French kid workbook for learning and taught myself. It was surprisingly meditative in that I only focused on the paper and pencil in front of me, making the same slow, deliberate motions again and again. The result is pretty cool and I’m proud of myself for having finally done something that was always a bit of a mystery to me.”

Life is so interesting. There are cool things to learn and great ways to get outside and move your body. I feel blessed that we get this time to pursue these activities.

[FIRE 20/20]

My whole young life I resisted the allure of easy living through FIRE, but when my professional end came I was forced to take a different path in order to provide for my family. It was like falling into what I was meant to do all along. I did not save my way to get here. Professional entry-level jobs don't provide enough to save anything. I built my real estate empire with my two hands from scratch. My early days of FIRE were hard and full of grotesque manual labor but I was able to quickly create a situation for myself where I did not have to work for someone else anymore.

Skyhigh, can you please explain something to me?  Pretend I have serious reading comprehension issues and you have to dumb down the answer for me because in 4+ pages of this thread and your many, many posts I still don't understand. 

You've said repeatedly things like you posted above, specifically, "when my professional end came I was forced to take a different path in order to provide for my family."  Are you considering this FIRE?  Because according to the definition most here have, if you are forced to do something to provide for your family then you're not FIREd. 

So my question is, can you tell us approximately when and how long you had sufficient assets that you knew you never needed to work again, *and* after that time how long you had absolutely no income from any kind of work?  Put another way, how long were you earning *zero* income because you had more than enough saved? 

I'm really looking for specific details, like, "In 1994 when I was 45 I was laid off and I had enough to never work again.  I continued to earn zero income for 2 years, at which point I started my repair business."  Or, "from 2003 I sold the business I had built and didn't work for 3 years from ages 52-55, at which point I felt I needed to do something so I started a new business." 

Thanks!

[ysette9]

“What do you do?”

Here are ways I could answer that question from the first 1.5 years of FIRE under admittedly unusual circumstances (Covid).

“I am really enjoying learning to bake my own bread. I’m mastering one recipe and now I’ve started grinding my own wheat to make fresh flour. Pretty cool to learn about all the variables that go into it. I hadn’t even known there was such a thing as dough enhancer until recently!”

“My husband is exploring gardening with local edibles plants. Come February he will be pms ting a veritable forest of fruiting trees and berry bushes. I figure I’ll have to learn canning in another year or two once the harvests start coming in.”

“We are remodeling an old house we recently bought. It feels empowering all the new skills I am picking up from YouTube videos and just giving it a try. The second time we replaced the kitchen faucet was a lot easier than the first time!”

“A friend got me indoor bouldering. It is like rock climbing but without the ropes. I’m new muscles as a result and I find it is a lot of fun, like a giant jungle gym at the park but for adults.”

“My husband has decided to get back into learning Brazilian ju jitsu now that he is vaccinated and booster. I suspect he will be complaining soon about aches and pains he didn’t have when he was 18, but I know it makes him happy.”

“I managed to teach my kid to read in French over the Covid shutdown. I was impressed with her effort and how well she is doing now. It is cool to see her take to books as quickly as I did as a kid. “

“I never learned cursive as a kid so on a whim I picked up a French kid workbook for learning and taught myself. It was surprisingly meditative in that I only focused on the paper and pencil in front of me, making the same slow, deliberate motions again and again. The result is pretty cool and I’m proud of myself for having finally done something that was always a bit of a mystery to me.”

Life is so interesting. There are cool things to learn and great ways to get outside and move your body. I feel blessed that we get this time to pursue these activities.

I appreciate your comments and shall take them to heart. In my case it feels diminished to share my appliance repair accomplishments to a professional. I can literally see their eyes glaze over.

Maybe it is a similar eyes glazing over that I probably get as I enthusiastically mention how cool I think personal finance and investing is. ;)

You don't have to impress other people and while it is nice to have other people like us, as adults we don't need to have our self esteem built around that. That is one of the liberating things about getting older, I find, is that I feel more free to be true to who I am inside and care a lot less about what others think.

Related to that point, I find that people respond instinctively to confidence, or the lack thereof. I think the whole reason you are uncomfortable in those social settings answering "what do you do?" is because of your own discomfort with what you are doing in life, not because of what others actually think of you. Can you try an experiment of "fake it until you make it"? Meaning, talk about whatever it is you have been doing with confidence and enthusiasm, even if you don't feel it inside, and see how people respond.

I'm thinking of @nippycrisp 's journal where he writes about things like when his fat landlord met his hairless cat, or when he was stuck driving in a small car with an irate primate in the backseat that started throwing feces. He has a ton of somewhat embarrassing or uncomfortable stories that are freaking hilarious because he fully leans in and owns it. (And because he is a good story teller). I could completely see myself being humiliated reflecting back on when an animal threw shit at me, or I could also remember it fondly knowing I had the BEST story to tell at the next happy hour. It is all in how you package the same thing.

[Sailor Sam]

You keep repeating the same thing over and over here, skyhigh.  You say your goal here is to help us all learn this, as though you are going to lift some veil from our benighted eyes. And yet, that is not happening.

Your posts are extremely redundant and if anything everyone here is getting less receptive to your arguments which seem less and less credible the more you repeatedly make them in the exact same way. So I ask you, what are you really trying to accomplish here?

If it is as you say, as I reference above, would you perhaps reconsider your approach? Because at this point, not only are you not succeeding at your goal, but if anything I think you are turning people further away by your approach. Every redundant post you make is just another nail in the coffin of the goal you had hoped to accomplish by posting here.  Please do reconsider and while you are doing so go look up that old cliche definition of insanity.

All I can say is that my situation here is akin to running for office. Candidates repeat their message over and over again to an ever-changing audience. I am glad that you are paying attention though.

There is none but he,
whose being I do fear; and under him
my genius is rebuk’d, as, it is said,
Mark Antony’s was by Caesar.

[Metalcat]

You keep repeating the same thing over and over here, skyhigh.  You say your goal here is to help us all learn this, as though you are going to lift some veil from our benighted eyes. And yet, that is not happening.

Your posts are extremely redundant and if anything everyone here is getting less receptive to your arguments which seem less and less credible the more you repeatedly make them in the exact same way. So I ask you, what are you really trying to accomplish here?

If it is as you say, as I reference above, would you perhaps reconsider your approach? Because at this point, not only are you not succeeding at your goal, but if anything I think you are turning people further away by your approach. Every redundant post you make is just another nail in the coffin of the goal you had hoped to accomplish by posting here.  Please do reconsider and while you are doing so go look up that old cliche definition of insanity.

All I can say is that my situation here is akin to running for office. Candidates repeat their message over and over again to an ever-changing audience. I am glad that you are paying attention though.

Have you ever considered that everyone is disagreeing with you because you *might* be able to learn something from us and not the other way around??

It's not that we don't understand you, it's that we don't agree with you because what you are saying is wildly unhealthy.

[youngwildandfree]

“What do you do?”

Here are ways I could answer that question from the first 1.5 years of FIRE under admittedly unusual circumstances (Covid).

“I am really enjoying learning to bake my own bread. I’m mastering one recipe and now I’ve started grinding my own wheat to make fresh flour. Pretty cool to learn about all the variables that go into it. I hadn’t even known there was such a thing as dough enhancer until recently!”

“My husband is exploring gardening with local edibles plants. Come February he will be pms ting a veritable forest of fruiting trees and berry bushes. I figure I’ll have to learn canning in another year or two once the harvests start coming in.”

“We are remodeling an old house we recently bought. It feels empowering all the new skills I am picking up from YouTube videos and just giving it a try. The second time we replaced the kitchen faucet was a lot easier than the first time!”

“A friend got me indoor bouldering. It is like rock climbing but without the ropes. I’m new muscles as a result and I find it is a lot of fun, like a giant jungle gym at the park but for adults.”

“My husband has decided to get back into learning Brazilian ju jitsu now that he is vaccinated and booster. I suspect he will be complaining soon about aches and pains he didn’t have when he was 18, but I know it makes him happy.”

“I managed to teach my kid to read in French over the Covid shutdown. I was impressed with her effort and how well she is doing now. It is cool to see her take to books as quickly as I did as a kid. “

“I never learned cursive as a kid so on a whim I picked up a French kid workbook for learning and taught myself. It was surprisingly meditative in that I only focused on the paper and pencil in front of me, making the same slow, deliberate motions again and again. The result is pretty cool and I’m proud of myself for having finally done something that was always a bit of a mystery to me.”

Life is so interesting. There are cool things to learn and great ways to get outside and move your body. I feel blessed that we get this time to pursue these activities.

I appreciate your comments and shall take them to heart. In my case it feels diminished to share my appliance repair accomplishments to a professional. I can literally see their eyes glaze over.

@ysette9 thank you for sharing, your last couple of years sounds fantastic!

@Skyhigh I regularly interact with some of the most accomplished scientists in my field. They LOVE discussing home repairs, coffee roasting, workouts, and skiing when at social or networking functions. They have zero interest in discussing someones recent promotion. Just another perspective for you. :)

[charis]

I have children and you have really overblown the concern. I don't ever discuss what it takes to get ahead at the office, lol, and barely discuss my work at all because it's not appropriate.  They go to school during the day, so they don't know if I'm the office, working from home, or kayaking during the day. Plus we all did school and work from home for a year, so they are used to alternative situations.

When I referred to your ego, I didn't mean professional identity, I meant posting style.  Whatever you are doing, it's not FIRE, so maybe bark up another tree rather than repeating yourself.

[Kris]

@Skyhigh , two thoughts:

1) You are not FIREd. You have not been FIREd. You were self-employed. So if you don’t even know what FIRE is, how do you expect us to believe you are an expert in it?

2) You are teaching your children some miserable lessons about identity, self-actualization, and finding meaning in life. I know, because my dad was like you. It is an awful thing to see in a parent. Please consider  what they will take away from your life. Maybe watch or read Death of a Salesman.

[SailingOnASmallSailboat]

@Skyhigh you've posted this in the wrong section. This is not "post-FIRE". It's maybe "ask a mustachian" or the (non-existent) "my life sucks and I want to whine about it but not do anything about it".

It is "post-fired" (not caps). You lost your job, had to take something else to make ends meet, and are throwing yourself a pity party because it's not important enough for someone else.

There's a lot of projection. You wish you had an impressive job title, so you think others care that you don't. You think your life is useless, so you think others think your life is useless.

Not sure why I'm even writing. You've shown over and over again that you are way stuck in your story to listen to anyone else. And you hate the whole idea of (your version of) FIRE that you want to make a business of showing other people how to do it? Yes, let's encourage more people to be unhappy. Sign me up (/s)

[Skyhigh]

My whole young life I resisted the allure of easy living through FIRE, but when my professional end came I was forced to take a different path in order to provide for my family. It was like falling into what I was meant to do all along. I did not save my way to get here. Professional entry-level jobs don't provide enough to save anything. I built my real estate empire with my two hands from scratch. My early days of FIRE were hard and full of grotesque manual labor but I was able to quickly create a situation for myself where I did not have to work for someone else anymore.

Skyhigh, can you please explain something to me?  Pretend I have serious reading comprehension issues and you have to dumb down the answer for me because in 4+ pages of this thread and your many, many posts I still don't understand. 

You've said repeatedly things like you posted above, specifically, "when my professional end came I was forced to take a different path in order to provide for my family."  Are you considering this FIRE?  Because according to the definition most here have, if you are forced to do something to provide for your family then you're not FIREd. 

So my question is, can you tell us approximately when and how long you had sufficient assets that you knew you never needed to work again, *and* after that time how long you had absolutely no income from any kind of work?  Put another way, how long were you earning *zero* income because you had more than enough saved? 

I'm really looking for specific details, like, "In 1994 when I was 45 I was laid off and I had enough to never work again.  I continued to earn zero income for 2 years, at which point I started my repair business."  Or, "from 2003 I sold the business I had built and didn't work for 3 years from ages 52-55, at which point I felt I needed to do something so I started a new business." 

Thanks!

FIRE 20/20

I was laid off in the fall of 2002 as an airline pilot. I had zero ability to find another flying job let alone one that could support a family. I tried to get another job outside of aviation but people looked at me as though I had two heads. I could not even get a job at the grocery store. Employes just thought I was a primadonna airline pilot who was incapable of a real job. As a result, we left the big city and returned to our rural home.

Without employment options, I had to reinvent myself as a general contractor. (construction was my only other work credential) I built a few homes for others before determining that I could build homes for myself as rental investments. Fortunately, we were able to sell our home in the city for a high price and used the equity as seed money to get my investment portfolio underway.  It cost me 65% of the appraised value of a home to build it myself. I was then able to cash-out refinance the property at an 80% loan-to-value, thusly repaying my initial investment plus 15% that I used to live on.

I continued like that building perhaps three homes a year until I was able to speed up the process by also buying existing homes. My target house to buy was one that had been mismanaged by novice investors and refinanced after I had repaired them back to a high standard.  Eventually, the market imploded after 2008, and I had to start over again. While mowing lawns the idea struck that all the vacant and foreclosed homes needed management. I launched a property management company and was able to build it up to a degree to employ several people.

About 6 years ago I was able to resume building new homes again. I guess you can say that I became financially independent the day after my unemployment insurance ran out in 2003. In 2014 I was able to return to part-time work as a pilot. A few years later I secured a full-time compensated position as a corporate pilot that is more like a part-time obligation.

My portfolio of rental homes grew to a point long ago where I could have hired it all out and sat at home. My dream however is to remain gainfully employed until I can't physically do it anymore. Hopefully, I can remain employed in my career objective, but if not, then by mowing lawns.  I have a work ethic, ambition, and drive that I can not shut off.

[Skyhigh]

@Skyhigh you've posted this in the wrong section. This is not "post-FIRE". It's maybe "ask a mustachian" or the (non-existent) "my life sucks and I want to whine about it but not do anything about it".

It is "post-fired" (not caps). You lost your job, had to take something else to make ends meet, and are throwing yourself a pity party because it's not important enough for someone else.

There's a lot of projection. You wish you had an impressive job title, so you think others care that you don't. You think your life is useless, so you think others think your life is useless.

Not sure why I'm even writing. You've shown over and over again that you are way stuck in your story to listen to anyone else. And you hate the whole idea of (your version of) FIRE that you want to make a business of showing other people how to do it? Yes, let's encourage more people to be unhappy. Sign me up (/s)

I qualify as Financially Independent and Retired Early to the same degree as most here. I have experienced a post-FIRE life since 2002. I could afford to sit at home and do nothing long ago if I choose.

[DaTrill]

My whole young life I resisted the allure of easy living through FIRE, but when my professional end came I was forced to take a different path in order to provide for my family. It was like falling into what I was meant to do all along. I did not save my way to get here. Professional entry-level jobs don't provide enough to save anything. I built my real estate empire with my two hands from scratch. My early days of FIRE were hard and full of grotesque manual labor but I was able to quickly create a situation for myself where I did not have to work for someone else anymore.

Skyhigh, can you please explain something to me?  Pretend I have serious reading comprehension issues and you have to dumb down the answer for me because in 4+ pages of this thread and your many, many posts I still don't understand. 

You've said repeatedly things like you posted above, specifically, "when my professional end came I was forced to take a different path in order to provide for my family."  Are you considering this FIRE?  Because according to the definition most here have, if you are forced to do something to provide for your family then you're not FIREd. 

So my question is, can you tell us approximately when and how long you had sufficient assets that you knew you never needed to work again, *and* after that time how long you had absolutely no income from any kind of work?  Put another way, how long were you earning *zero* income because you had more than enough saved? 

I'm really looking for specific details, like, "In 1994 when I was 45 I was laid off and I had enough to never work again.  I continued to earn zero income for 2 years, at which point I started my repair business."  Or, "from 2003 I sold the business I had built and didn't work for 3 years from ages 52-55, at which point I felt I needed to do something so I started a new business." 

Thanks!

FIRE 20/20

I was laid off in the fall of 2002 as an airline pilot. I had zero ability to find another flying job let alone one that could support a family. I tried to get another job outside of aviation but people looked at me as though I had two heads. I could not even get a job at the grocery store. Employes just thought I was a primadonna airline pilot who was incapable of a real job. As a result, we left the big city and returned to our rural home.

Without employment options, I had to reinvent myself as a general contractor. (construction was my only other work credential) I built a few homes for others before determining that I could build homes for myself as rental investments. Fortunately, we were able to sell our home in the city for a high price and used the equity as seed money to get my investment portfolio underway.  It cost me 65% of the appraised value of a home to build it myself. I was then able to cash-out refinance the property at an 80% loan-to-value, thusly repaying my initial investment plus 15% that I used to live on.

I continued like that building perhaps three homes a year until I was able to speed up the process by also buying existing homes. My target house to buy was one that had been mismanaged by novice investors and refinanced after I had repaired them back to a high standard.  Eventually, the market imploded after 2008, and I had to start over again. While mowing lawns the idea struck that all the vacant and foreclosed homes needed management. I launched a property management company and was able to build it up to a degree to employ several people.

About 6 years ago I was able to resume building new homes again. I guess you can say that I became financially independent the day after my unemployment insurance ran out in 2003. In 2014 I was able to return to part-time work as a pilot. A few years later I secured a full-time compensated position as a corporate pilot that is more like a part-time obligation.

My portfolio of rental homes grew to a point long ago where I could have hired it all out and sat at home. My dream however is to remain gainfully employed until I can't physically do it anymore. Hopefully, I can remain employed in my career objective, but if not, then by mowing lawns.  I have a work ethic, ambition, and drive that I can not shut off.

Become a flight trainer, crazy demand now.  Stop whining and feeling sorry for yourself.  Almost everyone has been fired from one or more jobs for reasons that nobody can control (economy/industry shift), for job related performance or office politics (all boxes checked in my case).  You could also probably get a teaching certificate and teach Physics if you like the physics of flight and simple high school level physics. 

I prefer not to drag my dirty laundry into the public but could swap firing stories with almost anyone that I have witnessed and been subject to (a friend in a right to work state was once fired from a high-level corporate job on Friday hours before the office Christmas party that night for example).  When fired, I looked for juicy severance packages and realized my talents were not being properly used at the current employer and moved on.  Having a stash to afford to do anything else (FIRE) was only a positive that allowed flexibility to pursue other opportunities.   Same is true now where my current industry has drastically changed in the last few years and job prospects in this industry have plunged due to the virus, will FIRE for the 6th time in 2022.  Currently trying to max severance from current employer (but bleak as firm and industry are faltering, no deep pockets).

Good luck, hope you find another passion that FIRE allows you to pursue.             

[seattlecyclone]

@Skyhigh you've posted this in the wrong section. This is not "post-FIRE". It's maybe "ask a mustachian" or the (non-existent) "my life sucks and I want to whine about it but not do anything about it".

It is "post-fired" (not caps). You lost your job, had to take something else to make ends meet, and are throwing yourself a pity party because it's not important enough for someone else.

There's a lot of projection. You wish you had an impressive job title, so you think others care that you don't. You think your life is useless, so you think others think your life is useless.

Not sure why I'm even writing. You've shown over and over again that you are way stuck in your story to listen to anyone else. And you hate the whole idea of (your version of) FIRE that you want to make a business of showing other people how to do it? Yes, let's encourage more people to be unhappy. Sign me up (/s)

I qualify as Financially Independent and Retired Early to the same degree as most here. I have experienced a post-FIRE life since 2002. I could afford to sit at home and do nothing long ago if I choose.

Have you ever actually tried to lead a life of leisure and/or volunteering and/or pursuing other meaningful passions? It sounds like you haven't actually done the RE part of FIRE. You've spent your time doing construction and property management, stuff you seem to not find a meaningful use of your time. You keep saying FIRE is such a bad, harmful thing, pointing to your experience not doing FIRE as supporting evidence.

[FIRE 20/20]

My whole young life I resisted the allure of easy living through FIRE, but when my professional end came I was forced to take a different path in order to provide for my family. It was like falling into what I was meant to do all along. I did not save my way to get here. Professional entry-level jobs don't provide enough to save anything. I built my real estate empire with my two hands from scratch. My early days of FIRE were hard and full of grotesque manual labor but I was able to quickly create a situation for myself where I did not have to work for someone else anymore.

Skyhigh, can you please explain something to me?  Pretend I have serious reading comprehension issues and you have to dumb down the answer for me because in 4+ pages of this thread and your many, many posts I still don't understand. 

You've said repeatedly things like you posted above, specifically, "when my professional end came I was forced to take a different path in order to provide for my family."  Are you considering this FIRE?  Because according to the definition most here have, if you are forced to do something to provide for your family then you're not FIREd. 

So my question is, can you tell us approximately when and how long you had sufficient assets that you knew you never needed to work again, *and* after that time how long you had absolutely no income from any kind of work?  Put another way, how long were you earning *zero* income because you had more than enough saved? 

I'm really looking for specific details, like, "In 1994 when I was 45 I was laid off and I had enough to never work again.  I continued to earn zero income for 2 years, at which point I started my repair business."  Or, "from 2003 I sold the business I had built and didn't work for 3 years from ages 52-55, at which point I felt I needed to do something so I started a new business." 

Thanks!

FIRE 20/20

I was laid off in the fall of 2002 as an airline pilot. I had zero ability to find another flying job let alone one that could support a family. I tried to get another job outside of aviation but people looked at me as though I had two heads. I could not even get a job at the grocery store. Employes just thought I was a primadonna airline pilot who was incapable of a real job. As a result, we left the big city and returned to our rural home.

Without employment options, I had to reinvent myself as a general contractor. (construction was my only other work credential) I built a few homes for others before determining that I could build homes for myself as rental investments. Fortunately, we were able to sell our home in the city for a high price and used the equity as seed money to get my investment portfolio underway.  It cost me 65% of the appraised value of a home to build it myself. I was then able to cash-out refinance the property at an 80% loan-to-value, thusly repaying my initial investment plus 15% that I used to live on.

I continued like that building perhaps three homes a year until I was able to speed up the process by also buying existing homes. My target house to buy was one that had been mismanaged by novice investors and refinanced after I had repaired them back to a high standard.  Eventually, the market imploded after 2008, and I had to start over again. While mowing lawns the idea struck that all the vacant and foreclosed homes needed management. I launched a property management company and was able to build it up to a degree to employ several people.

About 6 years ago I was able to resume building new homes again. I guess you can say that I became financially independent the day after my unemployment insurance ran out in 2003. In 2014 I was able to return to part-time work as a pilot. A few years later I secured a full-time compensated position as a corporate pilot that is more like a part-time obligation.

My portfolio of rental homes grew to a point long ago where I could have hired it all out and sat at home. My dream however is to remain gainfully employed until I can't physically do it anymore. Hopefully, I can remain employed in my career objective, but if not, then by mowing lawns.  I have a work ethic, ambition, and drive that I can not shut off.

*sigh* 

You still didn't answer the question, which was:  "So my question is, can you tell us approximately when and how long you had sufficient assets that you knew you never needed to work again, *and* after that time how long you had absolutely no income from any kind of work?  Put another way, how long were you earning *zero* income because you had more than enough saved?"

From your work summary, it appears you have never been FIREd!  Until 2002 you were a pilot.  After that you were a general contractor.  You were a home builder and possibly a landlord (not clear).  You then mowed lawns, and then you started a property management company.  After that you returned to being a home builder.  You are also a part-time corporate airline pilot. 

Again, the question is - when and how long have you BOTH had enough money to never need to work again, *and* you DID NOT WORK. 

You have never been FIREd, from what I can tell.  It certainly seems like you either have not had enough money to not need to work again, or you have had that much money but you chose to work.  If this isn't the case, please clearly state when you met both criteria - enough money to not work AND actually not working for any income. 

[Villanelle]

For all those here who wish to see me punished for my contrarian views, you will get your wish.

I have to attend a work holiday party with my spouse and will be confronted with the dreaded "so what do you do" question. I never know what to say in these situations and am always embarrassed. Below are some of the answers I have used in the past.

"I figured out how I can afford to do nothing"

"I am a laid off -----"

"I own things that make it so that I can do what I want all day"

"I ski"

"I am a kept husband"

Rest assured I will be uncomfortable for several hours. All here can take delight at my humiliations.

Jesus.  The martyrdom is SO thick.

No one wants to see you "punished". 

At a minimum, it would be nice if you could at least acknowledge that what is right (or in this case, wrong) for you isn't necessarily right (or wrong) for everyone.  Instead, you basically said anyone who is FIRE is a bad parent because they are setting a bad example.  That's jsut a lousy, judgmental, small-minded, myopic thing to say, and to be believe. 

If FIRE (which I still maintain you've never actually experienced since you went from your corporate job to your "manual labor" property management job***), isn't a good fit for you, fine.  Don't do it.  Get a job.  But don't yuck someone else's yum.  It's incredibly condescending to suppose that you know better then other people what is best for them, especially when so many here are FIRE and incredibly happy, something you maintain is essentially not possible.  So you can see the truth of their lives better than them, and know better than they do what makes them happy? 

You seem to think that most FIREd people "shut off" their "work ethic, ambition, and drive".  Again, what a small-minded and ignorant view that is.  My dad is in his late 70s.  He serves on the board of his very large HOA, which probably eats up 20 hours a week.  He uses his expertise (data systems management, basically) to help the organization, as well as his leadership skills.  He also does nearly all of the house and yard work, even in his 70s.  He's always out trimming bushes or tearing up the summer plants to prep for winter or pruning a tree or picking lemons.  Or tinkering with the pool equipment or swapping out a dead light fixture.  He works incredibly hard--exercising the work ethic.  Ambition and drive?  Again, there's the HOA thing, and he works hard to continue to be elected the board president.  (This is not your typical HOA.  It is a huge organization with many employees a massive budget, and thousands of homes.) And this is just a small bit of how he spends his time.  He hasn't shut off his "work ethic, ambition, or drive" at all.  And there are so many other like him.  You seem to have this view that retirement means sitting on your backside, watching TV, and playing dominoes, and nothing more. 

**Being able to afford to do nothing makes you FI, but not RE.  If you are regularly working, you aren't Retired.  Just because it is no longer a job with a paycheck from The Man, and instead you work for yourself doesn't make it any less a job. You even referred to the possibility of mowing lawns as "gainfully employed", yet that's what you were doing and you say you were FIREd.  I think you conflate "not working a traditional job for a traditional employer" and "not working at all". Leaving the traditional workforce to be self-employed or an entrepreneur or a property manager is still being part of the workforce.

[Metalcat]

For all those here who wish to see me punished for my contrarian views, you will get your wish.

I have to attend a work holiday party with my spouse and will be confronted with the dreaded "so what do you do" question. I never know what to say in these situations and am always embarrassed. Below are some of the answers I have used in the past.

"I figured out how I can afford to do nothing"

"I am a laid off -----"

"I own things that make it so that I can do what I want all day"

"I ski"

"I am a kept husband"

Rest assured I will be uncomfortable for several hours. All here can take delight at my humiliations.

Dude.

People will judge you if they want to judge you.

If you are an unhappy person who is clearly dissatisfied with your own life, they are going to judge you. That's how it works.

Meanwhile, if you lived an AWESOME life and were a really dynamic and interesting person to talk to, no one would judge you for being financially independent.

People are always asking me what I do, and I generally don't bother telling them about my executive volunteer roles because I prefer not to talk about them too much. So instead I talk really enthusiastically about enjoying my leisure time and how great retirement is.

And guess what? I don't get any judgement, I get A LOT of envy. I actually have to remind people that I'm retired due to tragic circumstances because sometimes they get envious to the point that they get a little bitter, so I need to pull it back a bit for them.

So if you are getting negative responses for your life choices it's because YOU aren't happy with those life choices and because you are inviting judgement.

[boarder42]

Pete had a friend rePete what was Pete's friends name?

[lhamo]

Wait -- your life was ruined because you were laid off from your first job as a pilot but eventually you got another FT job doing PT work as a pilot and you are still miserable?  Your brain has some serious miswiring going on IMO.

This probably won't help you but gonna post it anyway as maybe it (and the book it comes from) will help somebody else.  Life is too short to wallow in this pit of self-produced crap you seem to be mired in:

https://tim.blog/2021/12/15/the-liberation-of-cosmic-insignificance-therapy/

[Skyhigh]

My whole young life I resisted the allure of easy living through FIRE, but when my professional end came I was forced to take a different path in order to provide for my family. It was like falling into what I was meant to do all along. I did not save my way to get here. Professional entry-level jobs don't provide enough to save anything. I built my real estate empire with my two hands from scratch. My early days of FIRE were hard and full of grotesque manual labor but I was able to quickly create a situation for myself where I did not have to work for someone else anymore.

Skyhigh, can you please explain something to me?  Pretend I have serious reading comprehension issues and you have to dumb down the answer for me because in 4+ pages of this thread and your many, many posts I still don't understand. 

You've said repeatedly things like you posted above, specifically, "when my professional end came I was forced to take a different path in order to provide for my family."  Are you considering this FIRE?  Because according to the definition most here have, if you are forced to do something to provide for your family then you're not FIREd. 

So my question is, can you tell us approximately when and how long you had sufficient assets that you knew you never needed to work again, *and* after that time how long you had absolutely no income from any kind of work?  Put another way, how long were you earning *zero* income because you had more than enough saved? 

I'm really looking for specific details, like, "In 1994 when I was 45 I was laid off and I had enough to never work again.  I continued to earn zero income for 2 years, at which point I started my repair business."  Or, "from 2003 I sold the business I had built and didn't work for 3 years from ages 52-55, at which point I felt I needed to do something so I started a new business." 

Thanks!

FIRE 20/20

I was laid off in the fall of 2002 as an airline pilot. I had zero ability to find another flying job let alone one that could support a family. I tried to get another job outside of aviation but people looked at me as though I had two heads. I could not even get a job at the grocery store. Employes just thought I was a primadonna airline pilot who was incapable of a real job. As a result, we left the big city and returned to our rural home.

Without employment options, I had to reinvent myself as a general contractor. (construction was my only other work credential) I built a few homes for others before determining that I could build homes for myself as rental investments. Fortunately, we were able to sell our home in the city for a high price and used the equity as seed money to get my investment portfolio underway.  It cost me 65% of the appraised value of a home to build it myself. I was then able to cash-out refinance the property at an 80% loan-to-value, thusly repaying my initial investment plus 15% that I used to live on.

I continued like that building perhaps three homes a year until I was able to speed up the process by also buying existing homes. My target house to buy was one that had been mismanaged by novice investors and refinanced after I had repaired them back to a high standard.  Eventually, the market imploded after 2008, and I had to start over again. While mowing lawns the idea struck that all the vacant and foreclosed homes needed management. I launched a property management company and was able to build it up to a degree to employ several people.

About 6 years ago I was able to resume building new homes again. I guess you can say that I became financially independent the day after my unemployment insurance ran out in 2003. In 2014 I was able to return to part-time work as a pilot. A few years later I secured a full-time compensated position as a corporate pilot that is more like a part-time obligation.

My portfolio of rental homes grew to a point long ago where I could have hired it all out and sat at home. My dream however is to remain gainfully employed until I can't physically do it anymore. Hopefully, I can remain employed in my career objective, but if not, then by mowing lawns.  I have a work ethic, ambition, and drive that I can not shut off.

Become a flight trainer, crazy demand now.  Stop whining and feeling sorry for yourself.  Almost everyone has been fired from one or more jobs for reasons that nobody can control (economy/industry shift), for job related performance or office politics (all boxes checked in my case).  You could also probably get a teaching certificate and teach Physics if you like the physics of flight and simple high school level physics. 

I prefer not to drag my dirty laundry into the public but could swap firing stories with almost anyone that I have witnessed and been subject to (a friend in a right to work state was once fired from a high-level corporate job on Friday hours before the office Christmas party that night for example).  When fired, I looked for juicy severance packages and realized my talents were not being properly used at the current employer and moved on.  Having a stash to afford to do anything else (FIRE) was only a positive that allowed flexibility to pursue other opportunities.   Same is true now where my current industry has drastically changed in the last few years and job prospects in this industry have plunged due to the virus, will FIRE for the 6th time in 2022.  Currently trying to max severance from current employer (but bleak as firm and industry are faltering, no deep pockets).

Good luck, hope you find another passion that FIRE allows you to pursue.             

Thank you for your comment. I have spent three decades in aviation training roles. I have had my fill. It is not the same. My goal was always something else.  To me, it is akin to coaching a hometown T-Ball team or playing for the Yankees. Not the same thing at all. I am well educated, trained, and expreinced.

[Skyhigh]

Pete had a friend rePete what was Pete's friends name?

People keep asking me the same questions over and over again. What am I supposed to do? Tell them to search the thread?

[Metalcat]

Pete had a friend rePete what was Pete's friends name?

People keep asking me the same questions over and over again. What am I supposed to do? Tell them to search the thread?

You could actually answer the questions that people are asking instead of avoiding every hard question that you obviously don't want to answer.

[Skyhigh]

Wait -- your life was ruined because you were laid off from your first job as a pilot but eventually you got another FT job doing PT work as a pilot and you are still miserable?  Your brain has some serious miswiring going on IMO.

This probably won't help you but gonna post it anyway as maybe it (and the book it comes from) will help somebody else.  Life is too short to wallow in this pit of self-produced crap you seem to be mired in:

https://tim.blog/2021/12/15/the-liberation-of-cosmic-insignificance-therapy/

It is not the same thing at all. A mainline career as a pilot pays a livable wage. The other is a working hobby. Not the same. I am very thankful to have the work but it is not the same dream.

[Skyhigh]

Pete had a friend rePete what was Pete's friends name?

People keep asking me the same questions over and over again. What am I supposed to do? Tell them to search the thread?

You could actually answer the questions that people are asking instead of avoiding every hard question that you obviously don't want to answer.

Perhaps I am missing something? From my side of the screen, I am answering the questions.

[Metalcat]

Pete had a friend rePete what was Pete's friends name?

People keep asking me the same questions over and over again. What am I supposed to do? Tell them to search the thread?

You could actually answer the questions that people are asking instead of avoiding every hard question that you obviously don't want to answer.

Perhaps I am missing something? From my side of the screen, I am answering the questions.

You 100% have not.

In fact I'm kind of gobsmacked that you think you have answered questions when all you have done is repeat the same party-line over and over and over again without seeming to even notice the many things that people have written.

[Skyhigh]

Oh this thread! I'm getting all nostalgic for skyhighs other threads now. Seems he/she shows up once a year around Nov or Dec, drops a few Anti-FIRE and my life sucks because of FIRE threads and then moves on. The "expert" at FIRE messiah thing is new but otherwise same old one trick pony.

 While I like cautionary tales and feel they can be very useful to new or wannabe FIREees (and tell them myself) and even very helpful for us long term FIREees, but pontificating that skyhighs experiences are "the One True Experiences" and all other humans will react like he has to FIRE is beyond ridiculous. We are individuals who have different wants, needs and desires and won't succumb to the pitfalls like he say. But the OP seems to be the only one that doesn't get it. Hmmm....maybe there should be a thread for that ;-).

Fall is a time of reflection and planning for the future. The rental house workload eases up permitting time to think about these things again.

At present others in my personal life suggest that I conduct some profit-taking and relax a bit. They believe that I should ease up on my dreams and give in to the seductions of FIRE. I need your frank and hard-cutting comments to help me to find my resolve again.

[Metalcat]

Oh this thread! I'm getting all nostalgic for skyhighs other threads now. Seems he/she shows up once a year around Nov or Dec, drops a few Anti-FIRE and my life sucks because of FIRE threads and then moves on. The "expert" at FIRE messiah thing is new but otherwise same old one trick pony.

 While I like cautionary tales and feel they can be very useful to new or wannabe FIREees (and tell them myself) and even very helpful for us long term FIREees, but pontificating that skyhighs experiences are "the One True Experiences" and all other humans will react like he has to FIRE is beyond ridiculous. We are individuals who have different wants, needs and desires and won't succumb to the pitfalls like he say. But the OP seems to be the only one that doesn't get it. Hmmm....maybe there should be a thread for that ;-).

Fall is a time of reflection and planning for the future. The rental house workload eases up permitting time to think about these things again.

At present others in my personal life suggest that I conduct some profit-taking and relax a bit. They believe that I should ease up on my dreams and give in to the seductions of FIRE. I need your frank and hard-cutting comments to help me to find my resolve again.

Or maybe you should actually put some effort into doing what you want to do.

You KEEP IGNORING ME when I say this, but if you want opportunities to do important, prestigious work, YOU COULD GO OUT AND DO THAT.

So why don't you? Is it just pure laziness?

[Skyhigh]

Pete had a friend rePete what was Pete's friends name?

People keep asking me the same questions over and over again. What am I supposed to do? Tell them to search the thread?

You could actually answer the questions that people are asking instead of avoiding every hard question that you obviously don't want to answer.

Perhaps I am missing something? From my side of the screen, I am answering the questions.

You 100% have not.

In fact I'm kind of gobsmacked that you think you have answered questions when all you have done is repeat the same party-line over and over and over again without seeming to even notice the many things that people have written.

Malcat,

Because I cherish and respect you so much I will carefully go back through all the comments and see what I have missed. However, I ask for you to consider that I am crafting these replies between meetings and other work duties. Often the responses I receive exceed my ability to properly comprehend and reply to them all. Often it seems that one answer would suffice for three questions.

[Metalcat]

Pete had a friend rePete what was Pete's friends name?

People keep asking me the same questions over and over again. What am I supposed to do? Tell them to search the thread?

You could actually answer the questions that people are asking instead of avoiding every hard question that you obviously don't want to answer.

Perhaps I am missing something? From my side of the screen, I am answering the questions.

You 100% have not.

In fact I'm kind of gobsmacked that you think you have answered questions when all you have done is repeat the same party-line over and over and over again without seeming to even notice the many things that people have written.

Malcat,

Because I cherish and respect you so much I will carefully go back through all the comments and see what I have missed. However, I ask for you to consider that I am crafting these replies between meetings and other work duties. Often the responses I receive exceed my ability to properly comprehend and reply to them all. Often it seems that one answer would suffice for three questions.

I'm not buying it.

To me it seems clear that you are totally resistant to any possible interpretation other than your own. You seem totally determined to believe that you are a victim of your life and that there's nothing that could possibly be done to improve it, and that it's all the fault of you being laid off and then making a lot of money.

Then you like to blame the fact that NO ONE here agrees with you on us being...what? Ignorant? Outliers? Not "experts" like you?

You have repeatedly implied that the rest of us somehow lack perspective that you alone seem to have.

To me, a wise person would face a virtual room full of people who you claim to "respect" and in the face of an absolute onslaught of challenges to your thinking, which has been consistent over YEARS, would take the time and put in the effort to lean WHY everyone says that your perspective sounds so irrational.

It's honestly baffling. Like truly, truly baffling.

I've been here a long time and I've never seen anything as bizarre as this thread.

[Financial.Velociraptor]

...My goal is to strive to become my best self....

And you are failing at that miserably.  Will you consider that I might have something to teach you here?  If I am reading you right, you are not actually close minded.  People who study intelligence, success, and other related concepts now recognize *at least* 7 different areas of achievement, intellect, etc.  You are very fixated on a single element.  And it is causing you to fail BIG TIME at <emotional> satisfaction/success/maturity.  (I maintain this is a spiritual maturity issue.)  I know you see yourself as hard working or at least intending to be hard working with a good work ethic.  But on the very necessary emotional work we all need to do you are being enormously fucking lazy.  (Sorry, if that was too harsh, but I think you need to be confronted with that.)  Don't think your children pick up that at least subconsciously?  You are training them to become existentially miserable adults.  If you can't do 'inner work' for yourself; do it for them. 

There are other success/intelligence areas that are important to master as well, kinesthetic, musical, numerical, spatial, interpersonal, intrapersonal,  etc.  No wonder you feel unfulfilled if you lack mastery in 6 of the 7 (or more) areas of human achievement!  Adopting a faith and practice should get you ticking off more of the boxes.  But if you want to remain completely secular, the ancient faith based tools that humans developed over 40,000 years have been recreated in modern format through the science of psychology.  In my opinion, Jung does the best job of identifying tools for intrapersonal development.  You might prefer a different psych school of thought though. 

... A version that provides service to others through the contribution of my best abilities...

Yes, I see that.  You have a spirit for service and probably for teaching.  But the best of your abilities has a very narrow scope.  I (and others here) are trying to offer you the opportunity to develop a broader scope of skills, abilities, intelligences, perspectives, mindsets, approaches, etc. so that if service is what matters, you can provide more comprehensive service and education.  You've been gifted an enormous opportunity to develop yourself into a superstar provider of service to mankind.  But instead of taking action, you are wallowing in misery and just sort of kvetching.  And that doesn't speak well as to your character. Do you understand that is what spiritual immaturity looks like?  Do you understand that leads to being ineffective at service?

[Skyhigh]

So what would make you happy and why aren't you doing it???

pulling together a band of merry pitty partiers its quite clear until someone agrees with what he's saying he'll just continue to post the same thing over and over and fucking over again.

Ah, you are too cynical.

I keep poking to see if there's a purchase point within this thick armour of victim identity. I might find one, I might not, but it's interesting regardless.

I get the feeling that many here are not parents. I have nothing to base it on other than expressed opinions and attitudes. The example that I provide my children is much of what drives me.

I concede that my ego is very much invested in my professional accomplishments, goals, and dreams. My career high watermark fell short of my aspirations. Most of it was due to a poor job market but a lot due to the allure of easy living through FIRE. I do blame FIRE for robbing me of my motivation, and why wouldn't it? Working at the convenience of others is a drag. It is hard to have to get up early and drive to a menial position in hopes that it will bare fruit in a decade or two. Employment sucks,, right?

My whole young life I resisted the allure of easy living through FIRE, but when my professional end came I was forced to take a different path in order to provide for my family. It was like falling into what I was meant to do all along. I did not save my way to get here. Professional entry-level jobs don't provide enough to save anything. I built my real estate empire with my two hands from scratch. My early days of FIRE were hard and full of grotesque manual labor but I was able to quickly create a situation for myself where I did not have to work for someone else anymore.

Besides the bruised ego my issue is with my children. My grandfather was a decorated officer in the Navy during WWII. My father was one of the first aerospace engineers in the nation and is credited with many advances in the space program. As a child growing up in the shadows of these accomplished people my expectations and goals were formed through their example. I believe that our children pattern much of their self-esteem and life expectations from what we do. As a result, I am not comfortable with my accomplishments.

I still provide a manual labor function to my business because it gives me something to do and my kids get to see me work. My hope was to have been able to return to my chosen field and provide a different example, but it is not so easy to voluntarily stick one's head back into the noose of employment. My wife completed her college degree and started her career once the kids were all in school. She could sit at home too.

As I have mentioned before I don't believe that FIRE is healthy for humans. It is unnatural in human history.  It is especially harmful to young people. I don't believe that it provides a good example for children who will pattern their expectations on what they see their parents doing with their time and gifts. I base these findings upon the study of generations of my family and from the results of my clients. I am an expert at FIRE and it comes with a downside. Everything does.

AGAIN you ignored what I posted.

Are you doing this on purpose, because it's really fucking rude.

Did you just not read the part about how people in retirement can take on all sorts of important roles and responsibilities if they want to?

Also, my father was unemployed for most of my childhood. He had made a lot of money and then didn't work for years. He was an EXCELLENT model for me because he was very present, very involved, challenged me constantly, held me to a very high intellectual standard. We spent a TON of time together, and almost all of our quality time together consisted of being heavily involved in community service.

And guess what, I retained a strong sense of community responsibility, which is why I have a lifetime of high end volunteer work, which is why in retirement, it's so easy for me to get very elite level volunteer roles where I make an important impact on the world.

You COULD do the same thing, but you choose not to, so what example does that set for your kid?
You are setting the example that their only value will be their job title, and that's some toxic shit.

For the record, I have mentored many, many young people and had to deprogram this corporate success bullshit from them to free them up to be able to make better professional decisions for themselves.

Modeling for a kid that the only way to have value and be happy is to be employed by a company that doesn't care about them is...concerning.

Malcat,

I do not accept volunteerism as an adequate form of employment. As I mentioned before I spent a lot of wasted years volunteering for a lot of things. I was on various boards, I was a volunteer firefighter, I worked for advocates for the homeless, I have been a volunteer for the Forest Service.

I also have worked a couple of hobby jobs, ski chair lift operator, flight instructor, adjunct professor. 

I spent way too much time taking unnecessary college classes to fill the time. I am bored of it all. It shouldn't happen to someone until they are much older. In my experience filling the time with useless hobbies and volunteerism is not the same at all as a well-paying meaningful career where you can make a difference.

[Skyhigh]

“What do you do?”

Here are ways I could answer that question from the first 1.5 years of FIRE under admittedly unusual circumstances (Covid).

“I am really enjoying learning to bake my own bread. I’m mastering one recipe and now I’ve started grinding my own wheat to make fresh flour. Pretty cool to learn about all the variables that go into it. I hadn’t even known there was such a thing as dough enhancer until recently!”

“My husband is exploring gardening with local edibles plants. Come February he will be pms ting a veritable forest of fruiting trees and berry bushes. I figure I’ll have to learn canning in another year or two once the harvests start coming in.”

“We are remodeling an old house we recently bought. It feels empowering all the new skills I am picking up from YouTube videos and just giving it a try. The second time we replaced the kitchen faucet was a lot easier than the first time!”

“A friend got me indoor bouldering. It is like rock climbing but without the ropes. I’m new muscles as a result and I find it is a lot of fun, like a giant jungle gym at the park but for adults.”

“My husband has decided to get back into learning Brazilian ju jitsu now that he is vaccinated and booster. I suspect he will be complaining soon about aches and pains he didn’t have when he was 18, but I know it makes him happy.”

“I managed to teach my kid to read in French over the Covid shutdown. I was impressed with her effort and how well she is doing now. It is cool to see her take to books as quickly as I did as a kid. “

“I never learned cursive as a kid so on a whim I picked up a French kid workbook for learning and taught myself. It was surprisingly meditative in that I only focused on the paper and pencil in front of me, making the same slow, deliberate motions again and again. The result is pretty cool and I’m proud of myself for having finally done something that was always a bit of a mystery to me.”

Life is so interesting. There are cool things to learn and great ways to get outside and move your body. I feel blessed that we get this time to pursue these activities.

I appreciate your comments and shall take them to heart. In my case it feels diminished to share my appliance repair accomplishments to a professional. I can literally see their eyes glaze over.

Maybe it is a similar eyes glazing over that I probably get as I enthusiastically mention how cool I think personal finance and investing is. ;)

You don't have to impress other people and while it is nice to have other people like us, as adults we don't need to have our self esteem built around that. That is one of the liberating things about getting older, I find, is that I feel more free to be true to who I am inside and care a lot less about what others think.

Related to that point, I find that people respond instinctively to confidence, or the lack thereof. I think the whole reason you are uncomfortable in those social settings answering "what do you do?" is because of your own discomfort with what you are doing in life, not because of what others actually think of you. Can you try an experiment of "fake it until you make it"? Meaning, talk about whatever it is you have been doing with confidence and enthusiasm, even if you don't feel it inside, and see how people respond.

I'm thinking of @nippycrisp 's journal where he writes about things like when his fat landlord met his hairless cat, or when he was stuck driving in a small car with an irate primate in the backseat that started throwing feces. He has a ton of somewhat embarrassing or uncomfortable stories that are freaking hilarious because he fully leans in and owns it. (And because he is a good story teller). I could completely see myself being humiliated reflecting back on when an animal threw shit at me, or I could also remember it fondly knowing I had the BEST story to tell at the next happy hour. It is all in how you package the same thing.

Sure, in the big picture none of it matters, right?  It is the little things that we remember. We are in charge of our story. We get to decide how to tell it. I appreciate your comments. It's just that I am not satisfied with my story. It is not what I was hoping for. To me, it feels like I gave up on my dreams because I did. It was the right choice. My family is much happier, but I am super bummed that my epitaph will be uninteresting to me. I failed to reach my goals and it shouldn't of been that hard.

“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”

― Ernest Hemingway, The Garden of Eden

[boarder42]

I've done every job in the universe. If I can't be Thor I may be dead!

[boarder42]

Oh now I get it you want to be smart so you have to be unhappy per a quote from Hemingway.

Got it. I agree with you and will throw myself into this FIRE so that I may too be unhappy like you.  Thus proving my superior intelligence to all thee common folk.

[Skyhigh]

...My goal is to strive to become my best self....

And you are failing at that miserably.  Will you consider that I might have something to teach you here?  If I am reading you right, you are not actually close minded.  People who study intelligence, success, and other related concepts now recognize *at least* 7 different areas of achievement, intellect, etc.  You are very fixated on a single element.  And it is causing you to fail BIG TIME at <emotional> satisfaction/success/maturity.  (I maintain this is a spiritual maturity issue.)  I know you see yourself as hard working or at least intending to be hard working with a good work ethic.  But on the very necessary emotional work we all need to do you are being enormously fucking lazy.  (Sorry, if that was too harsh, but I think you need to be confronted with that.)  Don't think your children pick up that at least subconsciously?  You are training them to become existentially miserable adults.  If you can't do 'inner work' for yourself; do it for them. 

There are other success/intelligence areas that are important to master as well, kinesthetic, musical, numerical, spatial, interpersonal, intrapersonal,  etc.  No wonder you feel unfulfilled if you lack mastery in 6 of the 7 (or more) areas of human achievement!  Adopting a faith and practice should get you ticking off more of the boxes.  But if you want to remain completely secular, the ancient faith based tools that humans developed over 40,000 years have been recreated in modern format through the science of psychology.  In my opinion, Jung does the best job of identifying tools for intrapersonal development.  You might prefer a different psych school of thought though. 

... A version that provides service to others through the contribution of my best abilities...

Yes, I see that.  You have a spirit for service and probably for teaching.  But the best of your abilities has a very narrow scope.  I (and others here) are trying to offer you the opportunity to develop a broader scope of skills, abilities, intelligences, perspectives, mindsets, approaches, etc. so that if service is what matters, you can provide more comprehensive service and education.  You've been gifted an enormous opportunity to develop yourself into a superstar provider of service to mankind.  But instead of taking action, you are wallowing in misery and just sort of kvetching.  And that doesn't speak well as to your character. Do you understand that is what spiritual immaturity looks like?  Do you understand that leads to being ineffective at service?

Thanks FV,

I will take a look at Jung. I am not as intellectual as many of you here though.

[FIRE 20/20]

Pete had a friend rePete what was Pete's friends name?

People keep asking me the same questions over and over again. What am I supposed to do? Tell them to search the thread?

You could actually answer the questions that people are asking instead of avoiding every hard question that you obviously don't want to answer.

Perhaps I am missing something? From my side of the screen, I am answering the questions.

Wow.  Just wow.  It's actually amazing how thoroughly you've avoided answering any questions directly, yet you're claiming to answer them.  I'm ... stunned, I guess... by the ability to be totally unreceptive to any input and yet able to keep coming back.  I'd think at some point you'd slip up and consider what someone had written, but so far it seems you're batting 1.000 at ignoring input.  Kudos for that I guess. 

[matchewed]

“What do you do?”

Here are ways I could answer that question from the first 1.5 years of FIRE under admittedly unusual circumstances (Covid).

“I am really enjoying learning to bake my own bread. I’m mastering one recipe and now I’ve started grinding my own wheat to make fresh flour. Pretty cool to learn about all the variables that go into it. I hadn’t even known there was such a thing as dough enhancer until recently!”

“My husband is exploring gardening with local edibles plants. Come February he will be pms ting a veritable forest of fruiting trees and berry bushes. I figure I’ll have to learn canning in another year or two once the harvests start coming in.”

“We are remodeling an old house we recently bought. It feels empowering all the new skills I am picking up from YouTube videos and just giving it a try. The second time we replaced the kitchen faucet was a lot easier than the first time!”

“A friend got me indoor bouldering. It is like rock climbing but without the ropes. I’m new muscles as a result and I find it is a lot of fun, like a giant jungle gym at the park but for adults.”

“My husband has decided to get back into learning Brazilian ju jitsu now that he is vaccinated and booster. I suspect he will be complaining soon about aches and pains he didn’t have when he was 18, but I know it makes him happy.”

“I managed to teach my kid to read in French over the Covid shutdown. I was impressed with her effort and how well she is doing now. It is cool to see her take to books as quickly as I did as a kid. “

“I never learned cursive as a kid so on a whim I picked up a French kid workbook for learning and taught myself. It was surprisingly meditative in that I only focused on the paper and pencil in front of me, making the same slow, deliberate motions again and again. The result is pretty cool and I’m proud of myself for having finally done something that was always a bit of a mystery to me.”

Life is so interesting. There are cool things to learn and great ways to get outside and move your body. I feel blessed that we get this time to pursue these activities.

I appreciate your comments and shall take them to heart. In my case it feels diminished to share my appliance repair accomplishments to a professional. I can literally see their eyes glaze over.

Maybe it is a similar eyes glazing over that I probably get as I enthusiastically mention how cool I think personal finance and investing is. ;)

You don't have to impress other people and while it is nice to have other people like us, as adults we don't need to have our self esteem built around that. That is one of the liberating things about getting older, I find, is that I feel more free to be true to who I am inside and care a lot less about what others think.

Related to that point, I find that people respond instinctively to confidence, or the lack thereof. I think the whole reason you are uncomfortable in those social settings answering "what do you do?" is because of your own discomfort with what you are doing in life, not because of what others actually think of you. Can you try an experiment of "fake it until you make it"? Meaning, talk about whatever it is you have been doing with confidence and enthusiasm, even if you don't feel it inside, and see how people respond.

I'm thinking of @nippycrisp 's journal where he writes about things like when his fat landlord met his hairless cat, or when he was stuck driving in a small car with an irate primate in the backseat that started throwing feces. He has a ton of somewhat embarrassing or uncomfortable stories that are freaking hilarious because he fully leans in and owns it. (And because he is a good story teller). I could completely see myself being humiliated reflecting back on when an animal threw shit at me, or I could also remember it fondly knowing I had the BEST story to tell at the next happy hour. It is all in how you package the same thing.

Sure, in the big picture none of it matters, right?  It is the little things that we remember. We are in charge of our story. We get to decide how to tell it. I appreciate your comments. It's just that I am not satisfied with my story. It is not what I was hoping for. To me, it feels like I gave up on my dreams because I did. It was the right choice. My family is much happier, but I am super bummed that my epitaph will be uninteresting to me. I failed to reach my goals and it shouldn't of been that hard.

“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”

― Ernest Hemingway, The Garden of Eden

So it's your failure that bugs you not FIRE then right? The failure was in fact independent of FIRE and had nothing to do with it.

[Metalcat]

Malcat,

I do not accept volunteerism as an adequate form of employment. As I mentioned before I spent a lot of wasted years volunteering for a lot of things. I was on various boards, I was a volunteer firefighter, I worked for advocates for the homeless, I have been a volunteer for the Forest Service.

I also have worked a couple of hobby jobs, ski chair lift operator, flight instructor, adjunct professor. 

I spent way too much time taking unnecessary college classes to fill the time. I am bored of it all. It shouldn't happen to someone until they are much older. In my experience filling the time with useless hobbies and volunteerism is not the same at all as a well-paying meaningful career where you can make a difference.

And as I said before, if you haven't had a chance to volunteer at the elite corporate level, then that's just because you've never figured out how.

I hold two volunteer roles that are *exactly* like executive corporate professional roles. These are roles that other professionals compete to get into because they are so valuable and respected in the professional world. My unpaid work handles larger budgets and puts me in a position of more power and influence than my previous paid work.

I negotiate multi million dollar contracts, I get constantly wined and dined by presidents and VPs of other major corporations because they want access to me, and I've been involved in brokering serious moves within my industry. A lot of my work is VERY meaningful, and I have really thrived since retiring because I'm the only executive on my boards who has the time to dedicate to the work, which means that charters have been changed for me to be able to be president longer than I was supposed to, because I get important shit done.

Your beliefs are quite simply inaccurate and factually wrong.

There's a reason the very wealthy of this world compete ferociously for the best volunteer roles. There's a whole WORLD of executive volunteering that goes hand in hand with the corporate world. You just aren't aware of it.

ETA: my work within the executive volunteer world is also how I can easily turn around and get a different professional job at any point if I want to. I'm constantly being recruited by companies in totally different industries. I got recruited by a high end finance firm and was paid to give very wealthy people financial advice without even being qualified as a financial advisor or planner. That was fun for awhile, but I got bored with it, so I moved on to other projects, because it really is THAT EASY to engineer a new opportunity for yourself if you know how to.

[boarder42]

Dammmmmnnnnnn

[Financial.Velociraptor]

Thanks FV,

I will take a look at Jung. I am not as intellectual as many of you here though.

May the diety of your choice bless you mightily.  Best of luck on your inward journey!

[charis]

It's time to quit this troll, folks.  He may not consider himself to be one, but he's definitely trolling.

[MoseyingAlong]

Fall is a time of reflection and planning for the future. The rental house workload eases up permitting time to think about these things again.
...

Or maybe you should actually put some effort into doing what you want to do.

You KEEP IGNORING ME when I say this, but if you want opportunities to do important, prestigious work, YOU COULD GO OUT AND DO THAT.

So why don't you? Is it just pure laziness?

@Skyhigh Malcat's post here triggered a thought.

For years, I've dreamed of doing X (something very specific). This was my dream. For years, I've been prevented from doing it by things both in and out of my control. And now it's out of reach due to age (a legal limit, not a state of mind). I keep holding onto it and hoping something will change that will make it possible. I've kept busy with other things and most would say I've used my time and energy well. But that unfulfilled dream nags at me. And I'm realizing it's also hindering me from moving forward.

Maybe the major airline pilot job is your dream that's hindering your growth and forward movement. Does that sound like a possibility?

Maybe someone can suggest a way to mourn and let go of dreams that are out of reach now.

Anyway, I wish you well with your struggles and appreciate this thread for sparking that realization for me.

EDITed to add.
Your writing "It's just that I am not satisfied with my story. It is not what I was hoping for. To me, it feels like I gave up on my dreams because I did. It was the right choice. My family is much happier, but I am super bummed that my epitaph will be uninteresting to me. I failed to reach my goals and it shouldn't of been that hard." also really struck home. I feel you on that.

[sui generis]

You keep repeating the same thing over and over here, skyhigh.  You say your goal here is to help us all learn this, as though you are going to lift some veil from our benighted eyes. And yet, that is not happening.

Your posts are extremely redundant and if anything everyone here is getting less receptive to your arguments which seem less and less credible the more you repeatedly make them in the exact same way. So I ask you, what are you really trying to accomplish here?

If it is as you say, as I reference above, would you perhaps reconsider your approach? Because at this point, not only are you not succeeding at your goal, but if anything I think you are turning people further away by your approach. Every redundant post you make is just another nail in the coffin of the goal you had hoped to accomplish by posting here.  Please do reconsider and while you are doing so go look up that old cliche definition of insanity.

All I can say is that my situation here is akin to running for office. Candidates repeat their message over and over again to an ever-changing audience. I am glad that you are paying attention though.

Man, you have a skewed view of politics.  Your situation is akin to running for office only inasmuch as you intend to be a very bad politican that always loses.  Because politicians (even pretty bad ones or ones that run pretty bad campaigns, like Terry McAuliffe's gubernatorial campaign this year in VA) don't just keep repeating the same message and expect to win.  They have communications firms that field test their messages and massage them and test them again and they certainly don't persist when there is good evidence in front of them that the target voters they need to vote for them to win are wholly rejecting them.  That's what's akin to what you are doing now.  And like the bad politician you are imitating, you are losing this election, man.   If you'd like to be akin to a good politician, or even a moderately bad one, do go ahead and consult with a communications firm about your messaging and I'm confiident you'll get an earful on your approach here.

[Metalcat]

Fall is a time of reflection and planning for the future. The rental house workload eases up permitting time to think about these things again.
...

Or maybe you should actually put some effort into doing what you want to do.

You KEEP IGNORING ME when I say this, but if you want opportunities to do important, prestigious work, YOU COULD GO OUT AND DO THAT.

So why don't you? Is it just pure laziness?

@Skyhigh Malcat's post here triggered a thought.

For years, I've dreamed of doing X (something very specific). This was my dream. For years, I've been prevented from doing it by things both in and out of my control. And now it's out of reach due to age (a legal limit, not a state of mind). I keep holding onto it and hoping something will change that will make it possible. I've kept busy with other things and most would say I've used my time and energy well. But that unfulfilled dream nags at me. And I'm realizing it's also hindering me from moving forward.

Maybe the major airline pilot job is your dream that's hindering your growth and forward movement. Does that sound like a possibility?

Maybe someone can suggest a way to mourn and let go of dreams that are out of reach now.

Anyway, I wish you well with your struggles and appreciate this thread for sparking that realization for me.

EDITed to add.
Your writing "It's just that I am not satisfied with my story. It is not what I was hoping for. To me, it feels like I gave up on my dreams because I did. It was the right choice. My family is much happier, but I am super bummed that my epitaph will be uninteresting to me. I failed to reach my goals and it shouldn't of been that hard." also really struck home. I feel you on that.

I have.

Doing work on internal vs external locus of control, getting good therapy. Also consider mindfulness meditation and CBT activities.

OP at any point could have asked me about this after I shared how I managed to mourn losing my career that I loved and the loss of a lot of the function of my body, but he doesn't seem very interested.

[Villanelle]

Fall is a time of reflection and planning for the future. The rental house workload eases up permitting time to think about these things again.
...

Or maybe you should actually put some effort into doing what you want to do.

You KEEP IGNORING ME when I say this, but if you want opportunities to do important, prestigious work, YOU COULD GO OUT AND DO THAT.

So why don't you? Is it just pure laziness?

@Skyhigh Malcat's post here triggered a thought.

For years, I've dreamed of doing X (something very specific). This was my dream. For years, I've been prevented from doing it by things both in and out of my control. And now it's out of reach due to age (a legal limit, not a state of mind). I keep holding onto it and hoping something will change that will make it possible. I've kept busy with other things and most would say I've used my time and energy well. But that unfulfilled dream nags at me. And I'm realizing it's also hindering me from moving forward.

Maybe the major airline pilot job is your dream that's hindering your growth and forward movement. Does that sound like a possibility?

Maybe someone can suggest a way to mourn and let go of dreams that are out of reach now.

Anyway, I wish you well with your struggles and appreciate this thread for sparking that realization for me.

EDITed to add.
Your writing "It's just that I am not satisfied with my story. It is not what I was hoping for. To me, it feels like I gave up on my dreams because I did. It was the right choice. My family is much happier, but I am super bummed that my epitaph will be uninteresting to me. I failed to reach my goals and it shouldn't of been that hard." also really struck home. I feel you on that.

I have.

Doing work on internal vs external locus of control, getting good therapy. Also consider mindfulness meditation and CBT activities.

OP at any point could have asked me about this after I shared how I managed to mourn losing my career that I loved and the loss of a lot of the function of my body, but he doesn't seem very interested.

I'll go.  I lost my career when I became a trailing spouse and moved overseas.  I had a choice, but that choice would have been "live apart from my spouse for 2.5 years" (which turned out to be about 10 years) and that just wasn't viable.

It's been hard.  We don't have children.  I was always a career person.  And then... I wasn't.

I spent a lot of time reframing.  What was important to me?  What did I think made someone a good human?  What did I truly value?  I asked these questions, and with each answer I asked "why" or "how" or some other question that dug to a deeper, more philosophical place.  And that really helped me see what I valued, and who I wanted to be as a person--what mark I wanted to make on the world.  It turns out that none of the answers had anything to do with employment, and a lot of my struggles were more about ego than actual fulfillment from work.  I'd made a lot out of being a "career woman".  That was my plan for my life.  So when it went away, I floundered a bit, and my ego was left a bit unanchored, until I found new, more meaningful things to anchor it to.  It's tough to articulate exactly how that happened, but it was just  lot of self-questioning, and refusing to accepts my mind's lazy, automatic responses. 

~~~

OP, if you were laid off from the airlines (not fired or let go for cause), why don't you go back?  They are hiring like crazy.  There was a bit of a pause during the height of Covid, but they are once again scooping up every semi-qualified body.  So why not go back to the airlines?

[MoseyingAlong]

...
Maybe someone can suggest a way to mourn and let go of dreams that are out of reach now.
...

I'll go.  I lost my career when I became a trailing spouse and moved overseas.  I had a choice, but that choice would have been "live apart from my spouse for 2.5 years" (which turned out to be about 10 years) and that just wasn't viable.

It's been hard.  We don't have children.  I was always a career person.  And then... I wasn't.

I spent a lot of time reframing.  What was important to me?  What did I think made someone a good human?  What did I truly value?  I asked these questions, and with each answer I asked "why" or "how" or some other question that dug to a deeper, more philosophical place.  And that really helped me see what I valued, and who I wanted to be as a person--what mark I wanted to make on the world.  It turns out that none of the answers had anything to do with employment, and a lot of my struggles were more about ego than actual fulfillment from work.  I'd made a lot out of being a "career woman".  That was my plan for my life.  So when it went away, I floundered a bit, and my ego was left a bit unanchored, until I found new, more meaningful things to anchor it to.  It's tough to articulate exactly how that happened, but it was just  lot of self-questioning, and refusing to accepts my mind's lazy, automatic responses. 
....

Thanks @Villanelle
That's very helpful. I have some work to do.

[Villanelle]

...
Maybe someone can suggest a way to mourn and let go of dreams that are out of reach now.
...

I'll go.  I lost my career when I became a trailing spouse and moved overseas.  I had a choice, but that choice would have been "live apart from my spouse for 2.5 years" (which turned out to be about 10 years) and that just wasn't viable.

It's been hard.  We don't have children.  I was always a career person.  And then... I wasn't.

I spent a lot of time reframing.  What was important to me?  What did I think made someone a good human?  What did I truly value?  I asked these questions, and with each answer I asked "why" or "how" or some other question that dug to a deeper, more philosophical place.  And that really helped me see what I valued, and who I wanted to be as a person--what mark I wanted to make on the world.  It turns out that none of the answers had anything to do with employment, and a lot of my struggles were more about ego than actual fulfillment from work.  I'd made a lot out of being a "career woman".  That was my plan for my life.  So when it went away, I floundered a bit, and my ego was left a bit unanchored, until I found new, more meaningful things to anchor it to.  It's tough to articulate exactly how that happened, but it was just  lot of self-questioning, and refusing to accepts my mind's lazy, automatic responses. 
....

Thanks @Villanelle
That's very helpful. I have some work to do.

I'm glad it resonated with you!  Good luck.

[lutorm]

I'm sorry, I don't get it. You say you never have to work for money again, that people shouldn't retire because this deprives the world of highly intelligent people it needs, and that you are unhappy and not feeling like you are doing valuable work. Yet you are mowing lawns? Why are you depriving the world of your skills by mowing lawns when a) you don't need the money, b) you think people have a responsibility of applying themselves to better the world, and c) it's making you unhappy?

It would seem that, not having the requirement of making money to live, you are free to figure out how to best serve the world and then go ahead and do it. I mean, what's stopping you?

Don't give me some line about the only valuable work is what you get paid for because, frankly, most of what people are paid to do is definitely not what the world needs.

[Skyhigh]

I started this thread long ago with the intent of producing an information exchange. People here seemed interested in achieving something that I already had a lot of experience with while desiring to abandon something that is my oldest and longest-held dream.

Revelations held here are common knowledge to the working class. We grew up recognizing that if one wanted to reach the middle or upper-middle class you had to own a fleet of trucks, become a self-employed electrician, and otherwise build something that you owned. Frugality doesn't go out of style with the working class. It doesn't need to be rediscovered as a virtue. It is an ever-present requirement of existence.

It is my belief that many here are from the urban professional elite. They seem to have a massive surplus of disposable income that can be redirected with little self-control. It was my biggest goal to also become an urban earn, save, spend, professional just like many here. Starting from a young age I followed the recipe laid out to me by professional elites. I went to college and became trained, educated, and experienced in my field. I hit the job market with great enthusiasm, however, my working-class background unknowingly betrayed me. My hands are calloused, sinuous, and string. In contrast, elite employers all had soft puffy hands that were like grabbing onto a pillow. Prospective employers would look at my resume and ask, “Who do you know at this company”? “No one”, was my reply. At the time my peer group was busy getting jobs as police officers and mailmen and I did not have an example to follow. I grew up in a neighborhood of HVAC technicians and trash collectors. My uncles worked for the union and as mechanics.

Children from elite families pursue internships and tour Europe after college. The children of the elite ski and play golf. I had to work two jobs and had no time for extracurriculars. Despite an impressive academic record and professional accomplishments, it was the absence of these subtle things were all tells that exposed me as being from the working class. A big reason that I couldn't progress into my career objective because I didn't have the social background to make the connections necessary to achieve a meaningful position. (Another big reason was that there was a lack of opportunity.)

As a result, I could not secure employment to provide for my family and was forced to fall back upon my working-class roots to build myself a financially independent system. Therefore, to me, FIRE is evidence of failure. I am thankful to be able to provide for my family to a spectacular degree, however, I am sad as to not have been able to create a path to a better life for my children and myself. As one of my older sons has said, “I am a poor man with money”.

Last summer I reached a milestone where I have determined that it was time to officially give up on my dream. I am too old now and the opportunity cost is especially cutting right now.  My early hope was that others here could help me to understand the social skills required to become a class migrant. What I got was insults and put-downs instead. I did not realize that FIRE was a religion of the elite and I was seen as an apostate traitor.

A concession: My wife and children really prospered once we left the big city. They all express great enjoyment in our mostly peaceful rural life. My wife does not care about my elite dreams and also thinks that I am an idiot for pursuing them. In my defense, I offer that dreams don’t always make sense. The heart wants what it wants.

I eagerly await your arrows.