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If I hung around for a 2% SWR, I can almost guarantee that my death-bed self would want to kick the living piss out of my current self for wasting those years, because I die a little inside every day I have to go back to my office.
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To be quite honest, I was exactly where you describe in my first 'adult' career also, and it sucked pretty horribly for 14 years. I was around the MMM 4% SWR when I quit, but I had also been close to laid off so I was very gun shy about looking a gift horse in the mouth (this will be the 'idiom overdose post', just beware foreign language speakers). I do believe it is Mustachian to milk a crap job while being frugal in order to take control of one's own destiny. In MMM's own case, he started a housing company and a blog, and the blog seems to have turned out pretty well for him. In my case, I leveraged the freedom to work for a company that opened with moving my family overseas. And on into the future, it allowed me to live interesting places in the world on the company dime doing things that I'd do for much less pay (but they are an international company and, guess what, there are parts of the world that still treat their employees like respectable professionals!). So maybe I quit now that I don't want that so much, but I also waffle because it is a pretty amazing lifestyle.
Sadly, I also see MMM's blog has lost it's zest (maybe my earlier post quoting MMM's comments on marijuana seemed inflammatory or irrelevant, but I was thinking about this at the time...) which is to say - you get to a comfortable point in life and the decisions are down to - I have it all, and I really just want to do my own thing.
I can continue an easy thing in my own way, so I'll let it drag on a little longer, maybe OMY, or maybe I let it go and claim victory over this OMY syndrome. Once you are convinced you are FI, OMY is simply an academic choice, but then is ER necessarily a victory?
I think that Pete works because it is simply better than not working. Billionaires work, not because they 'need the income'. So maybe a clearer message is to get close to 4%, or at 4% SWR, and then take that freedom to start replacing income in a more preferable way. I got lucky, MMM got pretty lucky (I doubt he expected things would turn out just so), and it is certainly possible to increase your chances and opportunity by leveraging Mustachianism to open up new avenues for success.
But addressing the initial quote - flopping almost dead over the finish line when you hit 4% SWR shouldn't be your only plan at all, IMHO. It is just as 'crazy' as never making a dime again and spending 4% come what may because it seems pretty darn safe historically. Even if you do well for a decade or two, there should always be that thinking that work is something to be celebrated and you will do more of it. Historically (maybe influenced by Puritans or those that lived in the Great Depression), it was driven by being exposed to a failure after 20 or 30 years of ER. I'm not in that camp (although 2008 was pretty impressive to see the reality that the modern banking and market system was just a bigger and more modern version of
'It's a Wonderful Life').
Edit to add: But I don't think it will be getting easier in the future to squeeze a crap job with frugality and end up with FI-level freedom. My tact has been to leverage my current FI to make more future freedom (for my extended family, future 'causes') while it is still easy. Make hay while the sun is shining, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, etc. (other idioms I had intended to squeeze in). But again, all just my opinion.