New Book Inspired By MMM on How I "Retired" At 25

[tmoneyearlyretiree]

Hello fellow mustachians, I wrote a book called "25 IS THE NEW 65: How to Retire Outrageously Early and Do Whatever the Heck You Want"

It's available for free on the Kindle store which you can read on any device w the kindle app at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B010QW3HCO?*Version*=1&*entries*=0

I'd really appreciate it if you downloaded the book. Reviews from fellow like minded people are always super awesome as well.
If you have feedback or thoughts about the book in general or if trying to do ERE at my age is irresponsible, cool, or foolish I'd love to hear that as well. I started a blog at millennialmoola.com if you wanted to check out the short version of how I decided to walk away from corporate America when I did. 

[arebelspy]

Just read it.

A bit too colloquial ("lol at that one"), and can't say I agree with the investing advice, but a decent overview with specific examples of how to cut expenses in certain categories.

Good first effort.

Good luck with the sales/borrows once the free period ends!  :)

[tmoneyearlyretiree]

Thanks so much @arebelspy ! I really appreciate the feedback , I thought ppl might be more willing to read it w a more informal / casual tone , maybe I should take out some of that to not have people miss the main points what do you think ? That's what my three star reviews feedback was

[tmoneyearlyretiree]

Also @arebelspy what were your specific thoughts on the investing strategies I recommended?

[arebelspy]

Thanks so much @arebelspy ! I really appreciate the feedback , I thought ppl might be more willing to read it w a more informal / casual tone , maybe I should take out some of that to not have people miss the main points what do you think ? That's what my three star reviews feedback was

I didn't leave a review (or even read the ones that were there), but I think if you keep getting that feedback that the writing is distracting to people, it may be worth changing.

A blog's tone and book's tone do tend to differ.

Also @arebelspy what were your specific thoughts on the investing strategies I recommended?

Too many to type, but here's two quick examples:

1) Your recommendation for specific P/Es to invest at.

See our recent discussion on P/E and why higher may be the new normal (thus my hesitation on recommending specific numbers): http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/investor-alley/robert-shiller-doesn't-know-what-to-make-of-the-cape/

2) I'm also not a fan of recommending investing based on dividends.  Read this thread:
http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/investor-alley/investing-in-the-sp-500-dividend-aristocrat-stocks/

And in there, about 5-6 replies down, is multiple links from forummm and Eric.  Read all those threads, and I think you'll find why many of us here consider investing strategies based around dividends sub-par.

The index fund advice was good, but again, maybe too specific (lines like "Right now bonds are super terrible.") like the P/E advice. 

I didn't like the market timing advice (hold more in cash now).

So yeah, a mix of stuff.  I think you tried to cover too much in that chapter without educating your readers on it, and unless you chose something super simple (i.e. one piece of advice, rather than dozens), a chapter like that does potentially more harm than good.

[fb132]

Can't wait to read it :)

[tmoneyearlyretiree]

Certainly respect the view of @arebelspy, thats certainly what the Vanguards of the world tell investors not to market time and to use total return approaches when choosing the composition of your equity.

The reason I suggest using the approach I do is in large part behavioral rather than purely performance driven. If one chose an S and P 500 index versus one that (modestly, I dont like extreme div stocks) focuses on income, you're able to remain solvent as an early retiree when the value of your equity plummets in inevitable mkt crashes as dividend payouts tend to remain remarkably consistent in their payout. In the extreme example, small cap stocks with good div histories paid out more than 15% dividends during the Great Depression because their absolute dividends weren't cut by a ton but the stock price cratered. I think there is a ton of benefit to be had, given the tax treatment of dividends for early retirees, from not having to actively sell, incur the cost of a financial advisor, and have income hit your account at different times during the year. Also tech stock valuations as the far right tail of the risk curve I think will be most susceptible to crashing once the Fed removes easy money policy.

In terms of bonds, my job prior to retiring was being a trader for the fixed income funds at Vanguard, and I'll say that the level of risk now in the bond markets it extreme. A 10 year treasury yields little more than 2% and has a duration of about 7, meaning a return to normal interest rates over a couple years time gives you a loss of 15% or more, seems like you'd be better off with some of your Total bond fund exposure in short term tips and some in cash, both of which provide some deflation protection but also help a little in inflationary environments where bonds and stocks get crushed. I wrote a detailed piece on these two on my blog at millennialmoola.com if people cared to reference more.

Would love to hear thoughts on this from arebelspy and any others, helps me flesh out my points much better.

quick side thought, big companies like twitter, amazon, netflix , groupon, facebook  and more are either earning nothing or have extraordinarily high multiples. This feels like it could be the second tech correction and im cool giving up a few percent performance vs s and p 500 right now in case I'm right. If I'm wrong that's cool too. a 15 P/E stock has far less room to fall than a 80 P/E stock portfolio long term I think if you look at research from Fama and French 

[arebelspy]

In terms of bonds, my job prior to retiring was being a trader for the fixed income funds at Vanguard, and I'll say that the level of risk now in the bond markets it extreme.

I agree.

But how long do you want your book to be relevant for?

[tmoneyearlyretiree]

@arebelspy that's what second and third editions are for! kidding (mostly). I was motivated to add the warning about bonds as well from the latest edition of Stocks for the Long Run by Jeremy Siegel, the Wharton Professor. He speaks to the value that long and intermediate term treasuries held in this last crisis was in large part due to their large runway for interest rates, hence they provided a major flight to quality diversifying feature. Now that inflation is more of a risk, and TIPs markets are getting more liquid, I agreed with his point that govt bonds especially risk being hit by a double whammy of loss of flight to quality status as well as hit from higher rates for these next several years.

Another thought I got from Security Analysis, Graham breaks down the values of long term railroad bonds, I believe longer than 30 year maturities that were considering perfectly safe from a credit standpoint that were annihilated after the last low interest rate regime back in the 40s and early 50s. By the 60s and 70s some of these bonds traded at 20 or 30% of par value. I'm ok writing another book about how balanced portfolios of stocks and bonds should be the norm once it seems appropriate to me again.

Your point on how I try to cover a lot of investment ideas in a short amount of time is well taken though. I probably should have emphasized the mkt cap index fund approach as the only sensible one for the average person who doesnt seek to do this with a professional's level of interest. 

[tmoneyearlyretiree]

Another point is the massive conflict of interest Vanguard has in this "keep your bonds" advice. They have over $700 billion in fixed income assets. Bonds outside of treasuries have very poor liquidity and poor market depth, meaning their prices would fall much faster than if someone tried and sell a large block of IBM stock.

One of my friends ran a simulation in their investment group (this was when 10 year treasuries were down around 1.7%) that found a 60 stock/ 20 bond  /20 cash portfolio more appropriate than 60/40 , but they didnt publish it because of the implications for what investors should be doing with their personal portfolios. Now that I'm "retired" I'm not bound by that obligation to keep my mouth shut and want to tell people what I think the best course of action for their money is to preserve it the best way they can.

btw ONLY 12 HOURS LEFT ON THE FREE BOOK PROMOTION if you'd like to own it without paying anything, the MMM community has been really supportive and I'm very thankful for this like minded group of individuals and am always happy to hear constructive criticism of my writing and ideas.   

[tmoneyearlyretiree]

@less4success this help has been incredible, thank you so much for the specific examples I'll try to bring up the html version and get it edited. I admittedly used spell checker and found that after reading your own writing dozens of times you gloss over errors that I hope I would've been able to find had I had fresh eyes on the subject. First stab at a book hopefully some of you all find it fun and useful.

[tmoneyearlyretiree]

If any of you have more constructive feedback itd be really cool to get it here , apparently low reviews can sink sales, if you enjoyed it and feel like helping out a fellow mustachian good reviews rock too

[Milizard]

Okay, to start off, I'd like to say that this is 1,000,000 times better than any book I've ever written. :-P   Now, for some constructive criticism:
 I'm only about 1/3 of the way through, and I'm finding it really hard to read.  It's not due to technical language (yet?), as it hasn't gotten into much of that yet.  It lacks flow.  I often have a hard time figuring out where you're trying to go idea-wise.  There are some run on sentences that I noticed. (Meaning, there are probably more that I didn't notice.). Chapter 2 seems to go all over the place, contributing to the difficulty of finding your point.  I'll try to finish reading this, as it appears that you have some interesting ideas, from reading the comments here.

There's a writer that will evaluate your work for you, and he seems to really know his stuff.  He's got a great writing style, IMO.  If you're interested in his help, his blog is thecomplainist.com.


ETA:  lots of missing commas

[expectopatronum]

I tried to download it during the promo period, but I got fed up with trying to do it on my iPhone (sometimes Amazon/Kindle purchases are weird). I've only read the sample.

I definitely want to say that none of this is intended to be personal, just constructive feedback!

Technical/other:
- The title is catchy, but maybe it could be re-thought. Like someone else said, who is the target audience? Those under 25? Are you interested in those over 25? They may write it off as irrelevant to them. What if you broadened it to "early retirement" or similar? It kinda sounded like too-good-to-be-true clickbait to me (Try this one secret trick to cut down on belly fat: doctors hate it!). A good title to me would be catchy, memorable/original, and believable/credible. So far, it's 1 for 3 IMO.
- When you search Amazon for your book, "65 is the new 25" by Donna Bennett (2014) pops up...FYI.
- You have some basic grammatical errors, such as not using a comma between two independent clauses. "It is fraught with risk and adventure and I can't predict with any degree of accuracy what will happen if you follow down the road to extreme early retirement." This is a recurring error.
- I think it's technically a matter of preference, but I would have capitalized "Millennials" and "Baby Boomers".
- Generally, spell out numbers less than 10. Another matter of preference, but "2 week paid vacations" looks awfully informal (in a kind of unpolished way) versus "two week vacations". BTW - do you literally mean vacations that are two weeks long ("two-week vacations") or "two weeks of paid vacation"/"two weeks of vacation"?
- You switch back and forth rapidly between pronouns. Sometimes you use the second person (you), and other times you use third ("they").
- ....Honestly, comma usage. Check out the Purdue OWL's guidelines. There are places where you need a comma to set off an introductory phrase. These sentences are very wordy/run-on like.


Content:
- The intro P with "The typical life for the baby boomers was......if people are dissatisfied with their lives because their job stinks why do they stick around and put up with it?" is a bit off-putting and not relatable. It presumes a lot and makes broad generalizations. You have to walk the line between inspiring people to look at their lives critically and just downright offending them. ("If your job sucks, why don't you just quit?" is not a reality for a lot of people, for a variety of reasons.)

...[Millennials] will follow the same treadmill lifestyle of working for 30+ years in a suboptimal environment. Many folks sacrifice countless hours looking at an outdated operating system running some old version of Internet Explorer working on a project that only makes sense because "that's the way we've always done it".

Maybe I'm not your target audience, but I'm a Millennial and would have stopped reading right there (oh, I will?). First of all, they actually may NOT be working in a suboptimal environment. Not every company is Apple or Google, but a good share of the people who have ER within grasp may actually work for a company that provides perks, runs Windows 7 or 10, and isn't 100% incompetent. Every company has its fair share of B.S., but I think it's a bit immature to assume that this is the life of everyone out there, and obviously they all hate it, so why wouldn't they do it your way and quit? You try to broaden it by saying "many" instead of "all", but I don't think it works. I do see the point/parody you're trying to make, but I think it goes a bit far to presume that everyone works in an Office Space-like company. The extreme view here doesn't work in your favor. Remember, you're still intro-ing. You can't disconnect so far from the reader that they just stop reading entirely.

Two of the primary arguments for not quitting / not ERE are "because I love my job" and "because I hate my job but need the money". I'm not sure that you address the first at all, and I think you try to address the second in the subsequent paragraphs by implying that we don't truly need as much money as we think we do. However, it's not well connected, and it falls flat for me. It's scathing, not understanding. It doesn't come off as a true attempt to relate to the audience. You may be writing this book as a how-to, but a large portion of the ER mindset is actually persuasion.

Not addressing people who love (or think they love) their jobs means that they may be less receptive to lifestyle changes and expense reductions. Plus, if your target audience is the young crowd (the ones who haven't put up with 10 years of meetings yet), a good number of them may not actually hate their jobs yet/may not see the value in expense reduction over "finding a job you love and getting good at it". You may be dealing with the optimism of "I love my job and always will!". The intro doesn't seem to relate to them. It also kind of cuts out teachers, doctors, servicemen/women, anyone who doesn't work in a cubicle on a computer...

To me, the inability of the author to understand the arguments against his position undermines his credibility, and you'll lose readers before even getting to the how-to.

- I think you're trying to be inspiring and maybe a bit amusingly extreme, but I didn't like "you have to ... live like the next Depression is around the corner". You were trying to say that one should be frugal, right? But the comparison is...weird. The reader may think, "So the only way that I can become a yoga master is if I eat rice and beans and cram my 5-member family into a 3 BR house? No thanks." (I see people misinterpret MMM's or ERE's ideas on this all the time.) Also, the connotation of the Depression in a comparison makes me think of being deprived, not being frugal and planning for the future, necessarily. As someone who's worked pretty hard to convert my DH to MMM's ways, this logic got me nowhere. (If we want to do these awesome things, we have to live like the Depression is tomorrow) I also think that it's a reach to have a hard line on there being only ONE way to yogahood. If you hang out on the forums some, you'll see that people have vastly different priorities. Some won't give up their McMansions, some have to have the nice car, some like gourmet food....etc. Not a lot of people have a full-on ERE/Depression lifestyle.

To add to that, some people's approach is going to be increasing income - like, "why not have a BMW? I'm going to make partner someday. I'd rather work hard to live the lifestyle I "deserve"." You don't really capture those people in the intro.

- I don't think you really address WHY someone would want to ER aside from 1) hating their job, 2) sticking it to the Man, or maybe even 3) their lifestyle of consumption is stupid. Sure, you talk about world travel, yoga, and starting one's own business...but...for what..? It comes off more like "if you don't throw out the hamster wheel, you will never be able to ___________" (negative) than "here are the opportunities you could unlock by making these changes" (positive). I'm all for pushing people to consider dreams they thought were only dreams, but I found it interesting (and maybe a telling sign that you're in your twenties) that you don't touch on one of the most compelling reasons: time with kids/family. And...hiking + world travel is a bit redundant.

- I like how you personalize it in the intro, but it doesn't go very far- only like a sentence! Before I read a whole book, I'd be more interested in knowing, "OK, who is this author and how is he credible? Can I relate to him, or at least to the principles?"

- The last paragraph lacks cohesion. It's sort of a big lump of thoughts. There are a few points....1) FI is attainable for almost anyone, 2) your story, 3) you don't...have to actually be FI, just mostly FI, and 4) most people are idiots. It took me 2 reads to even understand what you were suggesting (get mostly to FI, then supplement). I think it would work better by breaking it up and then really summing up the purpose of the book in a concluding paragraph.

- The intro was really long compared to the chapters. Not wrong, just a bit unconventional, and makes me question your organization/presentation strategy.



In summary:
I think it's awesome you had the initiative to write a book and start a blog, but I couldn't even get past the intro. The tone, grammar, organization, and content all need work before I would read (or pay) for the full version. I'd go back and take a careful look at your outline, intended audience, etc and then flesh it out more.

The blog struck me as a MMM knockoff. :/ "The Shocking Math of “Retiring” in Your 20s" - really?! The other post titles share a lot in tone with MMM, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but if you want blog readership, creating your OWN identity is more attractive to me as a reader.

Have a great time in Europe. I hope this wasn't too harsh...I definitely don't mean it as a tear-down.

[tmoneyearlyretiree]

to expectopatronum and Millzard, thanks so much for your detailed feedback. I'm in the process of trying to rewrite some of it and fix the grammatical errors and flow problems I've had with the first edition. I had always intended to strike a conversational tone, but I would like that tone to not interfere with my core message.

I suppose my core audience is millennials in corporate America. Perhaps a comment to that effect in the intro would be helpful. I could mention other occupations and how some of the broader advice applies to those folks as well just not as directly. I'm getting an English major/professional editor to take a look for me now. I'll try and get the edited version up on Kindle soon.

A side note, trying to publish a book on Amazon is not a great way to get that supplementary income I was talking about in the book. Just in case people are curious, since I've published about a week ago I've had about 400 downloads during the free period, but only $14.42 in royalty income. I'm estimating my hourly wage at something close to $0.03. Never despair! That's $14.42 more than I had before :)
And hopefully I can make some fixes in this book to get it up the charts gradually. Having a book with the opposite title of 65 is the new 25 is kind of amusing; hopefully someone else finds that funny too. It'd be cool to be a Mustachian counterpoint to that book, however flawed my writing is.

As far as the blog goes, I believe I'll find my own voice over time, only been at it a few weeks. Just wrote a post on what I'm bringing to Europe and how I'm getting there for $300. If anyone wants to check it out you can click on the link in my signature. I hope to add more personal content like this rather than recreate the wheel on the rent vs buy, retirement math, car spending, and other core FIRE articles that are already out there.

[tmoneyearlyretiree]

I want to thank everyone that gave me feedback. I got a lot of it and I really tried to go through each error catch and suggestion and do my best to tweak the book. I just resubmitted it so the changes should be life shortly. If you found the book valuable at all please share it with folks that it could help. If I don't get enough support from paid sales I'll wait an extended period and just give it away for free. After spending hundreds of hours on something, however flawed, I think at the end of it all you want is for people to read it and think about the points you made. I got contacted by a Chicago radio station to speak about the book so thanks for the help everyone. If I get some hits from that show, the book should be far more grammatically correct and readable and you all will be the driving force behind helping me get there.

[tmoneyearlyretiree]

just so folks know, im giving the book away for free again july 20th until 11:59pm Pacific time (thats the way I understand Amazon promotion deals to work at least, forgive me if I'm wrong). Hopefully a couple folks "buy" it that are too frugal like myself to pay for very many ebooks. I dont blame you in fact I sympathize. Writing this from Helsinki, Finland right now on a round the world trip, just checked my daily budget came in at $48 a day. Was thinking about writing a book about that til I saw it's already been done $50/day in Europe haha.