The Money Mustache Community
General Discussion => Welcome and General Discussion => Topic started by: EscapeVelocity2020 on November 27, 2023, 07:36:48 AM
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Hello MMM forum! This is a hail mary, but I was wondering if anyone knows anything about why GoCurryCracker stopped posting abruptly after the last post (Getting Lucky (https://www.gocurrycracker.com/getting-lucky/)) on July 28th? They usually post at least monthly and this is also typically a hot time for blog income as well as their year end tax planning.
I can speculate, but maybe someone knows them in person or is in contact with them behind the scenes? Fingers crossed they are just busy in the same sense than Pete is and have put the blog on the back burner...
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Looks like their twitter account is still active.
https://x.com/GoCurryCracker/status/1728699376636440888?s=20
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Looks like their twitter account is still active.
https://x.com/GoCurryCracker/status/1728699376636440888?s=20
Thanks for that, haven't been on Twitter in ages! No real explanation for their blog, but at least they are still alive and kickin (but not skiing LOL)...
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I was wondering the same thing. Glad to know it's apparently not a problem.
The Frugalwoods has similarly gone silent. I think that may have been because of a number of negative (but not nasty) comments about her blog re-do which focuses on "have a personal consultation with me for $$$".
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I've been wondering about Frugalwoods, too.
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I was wondering the same thing. Glad to know it's apparently not a problem.
The Frugalwoods has similarly gone silent. I think that may have been because of a number of negative (but not nasty) comments about her blog re-do which focuses on "have a personal consultation with me for $$$".
I used to enjoy her blog - it's quite different from MMM but she writes well. It's an interesting move for her as she's really gone all in on the pay-for-advice and, I"m not American, but it seems like it's very expensive to me.
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I just looked up her financial advice services. Holy crap that looks like a load of sh#t, for a lot of money. Does she even have financial training? I know she used to work for a non profit and knows how to buy a used couch and make home made pie for cheap but retirement plan?! I'm a CPA with a series 65 license who is an investment advisor representative but even I wouldn't be comfortable holding myself out as a financial advisor especially at those prices. Hopefully people don't think that because she's good at writing about mending clothes and making casseroles that she's qualified to financial advise.
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I saw her financial advice prices as more of a situation of really not needing the money, but having an answer to people who are looking for financial planning from the author of a popular blog.
I can't remember which financial blogger it was who had a similar philosophy--they didn't have any desire to help people with financial planning, but for a fairly absurd hourly rate they would do it. Maybe JL Collins?
Liz Frugalwoods is famous; I would guess she gets massive amounts of emails for people looking for free advice, and she's demonstrated being willing to do a lot of legwork on researching people's specific situations (that's my take after reading her many reader case studies) and she doesn't want too much work. Voila: super high prices.
The one thing that refutes this theory is the tone of the blog re-design. It does make it seem like the whole thing is now about her financial services--like she's drumming up more business, but at prices that suggest she actually doesn't really want too much business.
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Liz from Frugalwoods does not have any regulated credentials as fas as I know.
I'd believe it was simply a price put to high demand for a famous blogger's advice if the service wasn't pushed so much around the time it was announced.
IMO Frugalwoods won the game a while ago (some argue that they've never been completely honest with how far ahead the were from the start)...perhaps the motivation to sustain the blog just isn't there anymore.
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I can't remember which financial blogger it was who had a similar philosophy--they didn't have any desire to help people with financial planning, but for a fairly absurd hourly rate they would do it. Maybe JL Collins?
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Not sure if Justin from RootOfGood is who you are thinking of, but he also offers non-credentialed FIRE-y advice for $200/hr. One commenter on his latest post asked (https://rootofgood.com/october-2023-early-retirement-update/#comment-206312), since he hasn't done any advising in months, if he'd be willing to be more flexible and it sounds like he might consider it...
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I'm always a little flummoxed at the vitriol found here aimed at the Frugalwoods blog. As far as I can tell after many years of reading her blog, they started young and broke, diligently increased income and decreased expenses, invested very intelligently in both equities and real estate, moved to their dream home, love it, and quit their corporate jobs before they were 40.
This is literally the dream that MMM sells. They're one of the best known true FIRE success stories. No living out of a suitcase without so much as a pet to your name, living off rice and beans, massive inheritances, or sad divorce stories. Not yet, anyway.
Can't really blame her for offering consulting services either. To quote the Joker: "If you're good at something, never do it for free".
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I'm always a little flummoxed at the vitriol found here aimed at the Frugalwoods blog. As far as I can tell after many years of reading her blog, they started young and broke, diligently increased income and decreased expenses, invested very intelligently in both equities and real estate, moved to their dream home, love it, and quit their corporate jobs before they were 40.
This is literally the dream that MMM sells. They're one of the best known true FIRE success stories. No living out of a suitcase without so much as a pet to your name, living off rice and beans, massive inheritances, or sad divorce stories. Not yet, anyway.
Can't really blame her for offering consulting services either. To quote the Joker: "If you're good at something, never do it for free".
+1
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I'm always a little flummoxed at the vitriol found here aimed at the Frugalwoods blog. As far as I can tell after many years of reading her blog, they started young and broke, diligently increased income and decreased expenses, invested very intelligently in both equities and real estate, moved to their dream home, love it, and quit their corporate jobs before they were 40.
This is literally the dream that MMM sells. They're one of the best known true FIRE success stories. No living out of a suitcase without so much as a pet to your name, living off rice and beans, massive inheritances, or sad divorce stories. Not yet, anyway.
Can't really blame her for offering consulting services either. To quote the Joker: "If you're good at something, never do it for free".
I believe Mr. Frugalwoos continued to work a very high earning job until last year or the year before - 8 or so years after Mrs. Frugalwoods retired and they moved Vermont.
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I'm always a little flummoxed at the vitriol found here aimed at the Frugalwoods blog. As far as I can tell after many years of reading her blog, they started young and broke, diligently increased income and decreased expenses, invested very intelligently in both equities and real estate, moved to their dream home, love it, and quit their corporate jobs before they were 40.
This is literally the dream that MMM sells. They're one of the best known true FIRE success stories. No living out of a suitcase without so much as a pet to your name, living off rice and beans, massive inheritances, or sad divorce stories. Not yet, anyway.
Can't really blame her for offering consulting services either. To quote the Joker: "If you're good at something, never do it for free".
I believe Mr. Frugalwoos continued to work a very high earning job until last year or the year before - 8 or so years after Mrs. Frugalwoods retired and they moved Vermont.
Right, exactly. And I believe his final annual income was about 10% higher than my current income. Which is substantially less than many of my friends and colleagues.
Since when do mustachians shame people for high incomes? That's part of the MMM philosophy. Make as much as you can until you have enough. Then do whatever you like.
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I'm always a little flummoxed at the vitriol found here aimed at the Frugalwoods blog. As far as I can tell after many years of reading her blog, they started young and broke, diligently increased income and decreased expenses, invested very intelligently in both equities and real estate, moved to their dream home, love it, and quit their corporate jobs before they were 40.
This is literally the dream that MMM sells. They're one of the best known true FIRE success stories. No living out of a suitcase without so much as a pet to your name, living off rice and beans, massive inheritances, or sad divorce stories. Not yet, anyway.
Can't really blame her for offering consulting services either. To quote the Joker: "If you're good at something, never do it for free".
I have a friend who moved a free online community to a paid version specifically because she couldn't handle the aggression and backlash of interacting with the public.
The nice thing about only providing a paid online service is that it naturally selects for the people who respect you enough to pay you.
As for why people were upset with her, it wasn't anything to do with her being too wealthy, it had to do with her being misleading. I don't remember the details because it was a long time ago, but I remember feeling rather mislead by the image she portrayed of their income before it came out how much they actually made.
Now, since this community is filled with high income folks, none of us take any issue with them making good incomes, but it's kind of sketchy to seem to purposefully paint a picture of modest income when you're actually making hundreds of thousands. Most people were shocked to find out that their "middle class" non-profit incomes were that high. Also, didn't one of them continue working remotely, continuing to make a 6 figure income well after people thought they "retired?" Or am I remembering that wrong?
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I'm always a little flummoxed at the vitriol found here aimed at the Frugalwoods blog. As far as I can tell after many years of reading her blog, they started young and broke, diligently increased income and decreased expenses, invested very intelligently in both equities and real estate, moved to their dream home, love it, and quit their corporate jobs before they were 40.
This is literally the dream that MMM sells. They're one of the best known true FIRE success stories. No living out of a suitcase without so much as a pet to your name, living off rice and beans, massive inheritances, or sad divorce stories. Not yet, anyway.
Can't really blame her for offering consulting services either. To quote the Joker: "If you're good at something, never do it for free".
I believe Mr. Frugalwoos continued to work a very high earning job until last year or the year before - 8 or so years after Mrs. Frugalwoods retired and they moved Vermont.
Right, exactly. And I believe his final annual income was about 10% higher than my current income. Which is substantially less than many of my friends and colleagues.
Since when do mustachians shame people for high incomes? That's part of the MMM philosophy. Make as much as you can until you have enough. Then do whatever you like.
Not shaming or judging just passing info along that I thought you might not be aware of.
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I'm always a little flummoxed at the vitriol found here aimed at the Frugalwoods blog. As far as I can tell after many years of reading her blog, they started young and broke, diligently increased income and decreased expenses, invested very intelligently in both equities and real estate, moved to their dream home, love it, and quit their corporate jobs before they were 40.
This is literally the dream that MMM sells. They're one of the best known true FIRE success stories. No living out of a suitcase without so much as a pet to your name, living off rice and beans, massive inheritances, or sad divorce stories. Not yet, anyway.
Can't really blame her for offering consulting services either. To quote the Joker: "If you're good at something, never do it for free".
I have a friend who moved a free online community to a paid version specifically because she couldn't handle the aggression and backlash of interacting with the public.
The nice thing about only providing a paid online service is that it naturally selects for the people who respect you enough to pay you.
As for why people were upset with her, it wasn't anything to do with her being too wealthy, it had to do with her being misleading. I don't remember the details because it was a long time ago, but I remember feeling rather mislead by the image she portrayed of their income before it came out how much they actually made.
Now, since this community is filled with high income folks, none of us take any issue with them making good incomes, but it's kind of sketchy to seem to purposefully paint a picture of modest income when you're actually making hundreds of thousands. Most people were shocked to find out that their "middle class" non-profit incomes were that high. Also, didn't one of them continue working remotely, continuing to make a 6 figure income well after people thought they "retired?" Or am I remembering that wrong?
You're remembering right on both count. It started when her book.came out and there was a couple of extremely long threads here about it - both about their non-disclosure of their high incomes to get to.FIRE and the hubby's continued working full time. I believe she started the blog around 2014 or 2015 and he quit his job in 2021 or 2022. Many people felt mislead by her claim of FIREing based on frugality without mentioning their easy path to save so much fast on high incomes. I don't fare myself but I think if you are the author of a blog and a book that info should be known.
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I have previously written about my dislike for the Frugalwoods and I always look forward to any opportunity to crab about them. Bottom line? FIRE pornography. Readers out there dreaming the dream and see the folksy Frugalwoods as a relatable role model. By presenting themselves to the world as relatable folksy types then the readers continue to read and fantasize about one day firing to their own Vermont homestead.
The fee for consultation? “The People” want permission from someone to pursue their dreams. Who better to give you permission to fire than your blog hero?
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I didn't care so much about Frugalwoods misrepresenting their income, because despite making a ton they were legitimately frugal (I think they spent ~$30-35K after taking into account their rental income?). One of the things I've liked about a lot of the personal finance blogs is the message that you don't need expert advice to manage your finances -- you can learn all the basics by studying a few books and websites. So in that sense, and coming from a blog focused on self-reliance and frugality, Liz charging up to $5,000 for financial advice seems like a strange pivot. Then again, many CPAs, CFPs and similar credentialed folks have no clue about FIRE and would probably stare back at you blankly if you wanted them to run the numbers on Roth conversions vs. 72t withdrawals for your portfolio, so maybe it does make sense for the big-name FIRE bloggers to offer such a service.
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Frugalwoods wants $1,500 for a 90 minute chat? $1000/hour for her tips on making soup at home? What Frugal person would pay that?
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I was wondering the same thing. Glad to know it's apparently not a problem.
The Frugalwoods has similarly gone silent. I think that may have been because of a number of negative (but not nasty) comments about her blog re-do which focuses on "have a personal consultation with me for $$$".
I used to enjoy her blog - it's quite different from MMM but she writes well. It's an interesting move for her as she's really gone all in on the pay-for-advice and, I"m not American, but it seems like it's very expensive to me.
It’s more than my actual financial advisor charges me.
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Supply and demand. Entrepreneurship can be lucrative. If I paid someone $2500 to give me advice on how to best DIY renovate my first rental or why to not pick junior mining stocks in college, that would have earned me well over 100% ROI in the first year and saved 250? hours of weekend work.
I've thought about how I can help out people in my old position. Am I going to take $20 calls from New investors? Not for a second. The juice has to be worth the squeeze. It also weeds out the tire kickers.
I'll pay anyone $2500 to give me advice to start a real estate consulting business or how to start an online product business. Not a joke. If effective, I should plan to 10-100X that investment within 1-2 years. Just my thought.
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I've followed FW loosely for years. I wondered when she started offering her services if it was even legal. Why require all those pesky tests and licensing fees if anyone can do it?
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I've followed FW loosely for years. I wondered when she started offering her services if it was even legal. Why require all those pesky tests and licensing fees if anyone can do it?
As someone who has taken those courses and pesky tests to be an FA, none of them cover anything about frugality, budgeting, etc. It's mostly about selling mutual funds and tax strategies.
From what I recall, she's never written about investing or taxes, her stuff has been mostly lifestyle.
But fuuuuck, $1500 for 90 minutes to talk about lifestyle adjustments that aren't exactly reinventing the wheel is batshit crazy.
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I've followed FW loosely for years. I wondered when she started offering her services if it was even legal. Why require all those pesky tests and licensing fees if anyone can do it?
As someone who has taken those courses and pesky tests to be an FA, none of them cover anything about frugality, budgeting, etc. It's mostly about selling mutual funds and tax strategies.
From what I recall, she's never written about investing or taxes, her stuff has been mostly lifestyle.
But fuuuuck, $1500 for 90 minutes to talk about lifestyle adjustments that aren't exactly reinventing the wheel is batshit crazy.
Again, it’s seeking approval to make a change they know they need to make and know they can already implement on their own. It almost feels like paying for. Gym membership after the December holidays. And, perhaps, is there an element of “paying to meet your hero” going on here?
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Maybe she is charging $1500 because she doesn't really want to do it and she knows that price will deter most people?
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I'm always a little flummoxed at the vitriol found here aimed at the Frugalwoods blog. As far as I can tell after many years of reading her blog, they started young and broke, diligently increased income and decreased expenses, invested very intelligently in both equities and real estate, moved to their dream home, love it, and quit their corporate jobs before they were 40.
This is literally the dream that MMM sells. They're one of the best known true FIRE success stories. No living out of a suitcase without so much as a pet to your name, living off rice and beans, massive inheritances, or sad divorce stories. Not yet, anyway.
Can't really blame her for offering consulting services either. To quote the Joker: "If you're good at something, never do it for free".
Did they both quit corporate jobs before 40? I have no idea how old they are, but I know Mr. FW continued his job remotely after they moved to VT. It wasn't exactly a secret, but certainly wasn't something they put any focus on. It seemed like they wanted people to think they had both retired. In reality, they were both kind of working, since she had the blog.
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Did they both quit corporate jobs before 40? I have no idea how old they are, but I know Mr. FW continued his job remotely after they moved to VT. It wasn't exactly a secret, but certainly wasn't something they put any focus on. It seemed like they wanted people to think they had both retired. In reality, they were both kind of working, since she had the blog.
https://www.frugalwoods.com/2023/04/07/reflecting-on-nine-years-of-frugalwoods/
16. We moved to Vermont full-time in May 2016 and began renting out our Cambridge house in June 2016.
17. We continued to save at a pretty high rate–typically saving all of my husband’s salary and living off of my income combined with the rental income.
19. In the spring of 2021, we made the decision for Mr. FW to retire from his job as a software engineer after being with the same company for 14 years.
Seems pretty transparent.
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Did they both quit corporate jobs before 40? I have no idea how old they are, but I know Mr. FW continued his job remotely after they moved to VT. It wasn't exactly a secret, but certainly wasn't something they put any focus on. It seemed like they wanted people to think they had both retired. In reality, they were both kind of working, since she had the blog.
https://www.frugalwoods.com/2023/04/07/reflecting-on-nine-years-of-frugalwoods/
16. We moved to Vermont full-time in May 2016 and began renting out our Cambridge house in June 2016.
17. We continued to save at a pretty high rate–typically saving all of my husband’s salary and living off of my income combined with the rental income.
19. In the spring of 2021, we made the decision for Mr. FW to retire from his job as a software engineer after being with the same company for 14 years.
Seems pretty transparent.
What was obfuscated was that he was a very high wage earner. Many people responded with, "Sure, it's easy when you make that kind of money." IMO, it's even harder to be frugal when you really don't have to be.
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What was obfuscated was that he was a very high wage earner. Many people responded with, "Sure, it's easy when you make that kind of money." IMO, it's even harder to be frugal when you really don't have to be.
I know you say that it is only your opinion, but IMO I think it's easier to be frugal for Mustachians when you can experience the fruits of stashing much faster. When I was just getting started, I budgeted hardcore in order to free up $2000/mo to put in savings and investments. Then I extrapolated that out for 20 years, including some raises and investment returns. This spreadsheet and the first million endpoint kept me motivated through all the ups and downs.
I think if I could only have saved $200/mo, I would have been less motivated and possibly even given up during the tech bubble collapse (which happened about 4 years in to my journey)...
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Did they both quit corporate jobs before 40? I have no idea how old they are, but I know Mr. FW continued his job remotely after they moved to VT. It wasn't exactly a secret, but certainly wasn't something they put any focus on. It seemed like they wanted people to think they had both retired. In reality, they were both kind of working, since she had the blog.
https://www.frugalwoods.com/2023/04/07/reflecting-on-nine-years-of-frugalwoods/
16. We moved to Vermont full-time in May 2016 and began renting out our Cambridge house in June 2016.
17. We continued to save at a pretty high rate–typically saving all of my husband’s salary and living off of my income combined with the rental income.
19. In the spring of 2021, we made the decision for Mr. FW to retire from his job as a software engineer after being with the same company for 14 years.
Seems pretty transparent.
What was obfuscated was that he was a very high wage earner. Many people responded with, "Sure, it's easy when you make that kind of money." IMO, it's even harder to be frugal when you really don't have to be.
And this is a very valid conversation that could have been had. However, it wouldn't have appealed to as many people, which is probably why she chose the approach she did, and hence why people feel misled.
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I don't get the controversy that some people see with the Frugalwoods couple. They were both very successful in their respective careers, chose an anti-consumerist lifestyle to save a boatload of money in a short amount of time, and "retired" before they were 40. I think that's a story worth telling.
A lot of the "it was easier for them because they made a lot of $'s" or they were somehow they were "not being 100% transparent with how much they were making" rhetoric is just jealousy and excuses to make someone else feel better about the choices they make in their own lives.
The Frugalwood's story is attractive because they chose the road less traveled and shows what's still possible if you make a whole lot of good decisions and have a little luck on your side.
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Did they both quit corporate jobs before 40? I have no idea how old they are, but I know Mr. FW continued his job remotely after they moved to VT. It wasn't exactly a secret, but certainly wasn't something they put any focus on. It seemed like they wanted people to think they had both retired. In reality, they were both kind of working, since she had the blog.
https://www.frugalwoods.com/2023/04/07/reflecting-on-nine-years-of-frugalwoods/
16. We moved to Vermont full-time in May 2016 and began renting out our Cambridge house in June 2016.
17. We continued to save at a pretty high rate–typically saving all of my husband’s salary and living off of my income combined with the rental income.
19. In the spring of 2021, we made the decision for Mr. FW to retire from his job as a software engineer after being with the same company for 14 years.
Seems pretty transparent.
What was obfuscated was that he was a very high wage earner. Many people responded with, "Sure, it's easy when you make that kind of money." IMO, it's even harder to be frugal when you really don't have to be.
Many years ago now, but my recollection was that the husband was making over 300k a year. It was a luxury lifestyle blog to larp as a homesteader pretending to be a FIRE/frugality blog.
Basically everyone reading the blog/book would assume that the husband was maybe making in the 100-200k range still working, but was actually making 2-3x that. It just hits different when you find out that someone who presented themselves as middle class was actually continuing to bring in upper class income, made giant money on their MA houses by buying at the right time. They should be easily sitting on 5+MM right now based on their numbers.
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Did they both quit corporate jobs before 40? I have no idea how old they are, but I know Mr. FW continued his job remotely after they moved to VT. It wasn't exactly a secret, but certainly wasn't something they put any focus on. It seemed like they wanted people to think they had both retired. In reality, they were both kind of working, since she had the blog.
https://www.frugalwoods.com/2023/04/07/reflecting-on-nine-years-of-frugalwoods/
16. We moved to Vermont full-time in May 2016 and began renting out our Cambridge house in June 2016.
17. We continued to save at a pretty high rate–typically saving all of my husband’s salary and living off of my income combined with the rental income.
19. In the spring of 2021, we made the decision for Mr. FW to retire from his job as a software engineer after being with the same company for 14 years.
Seems pretty transparent.
What was obfuscated was that he was a very high wage earner. Many people responded with, "Sure, it's easy when you make that kind of money." IMO, it's even harder to be frugal when you really don't have to be.
Many years ago now, but my recollection was that the husband was making over 300k a year. It was a luxury lifestyle blog to larp as a homesteader pretending to be a FIRE/frugality blog.
Basically everyone reading the blog/book would assume that the husband was maybe making in the 100-200k range still working, but was actually making 2-3x that. It just hits different when you find out that someone who presented themselves as middle class was actually continuing to bring in upper class income, made giant money on their MA houses by buying at the right time. They should be easily sitting on 5+MM right now based on their numbers.
In what universe is their blog a "luxury lifestyle blog"? Also in what way did they present themselves as middle class, or any other class for that matter? Most all of her content is about living a simple, frugal life in a rural setting. I don't think the fact that he made $300k a year is relevant, or somehow that disqualifies them from the "FIRE club" vs if he only made $100k.
Also the fact that they're sitting on $5M (if true) vs "only $1.5-$2M" is not relevant. What matters is they have enough and can live life on their terms. Isn't that what MMM did back in the day that inspired everyone on this blog to change their lives? I don't get it.
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I don't get the controversy that some people see with the Frugalwoods couple. They were both very successful in their respective careers, chose an anti-consumerist lifestyle to save a boatload of money in a short amount of time, and "retired" before they were 40. I think that's a story worth telling.
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Going off topic here, but I view homesteading as being consumerist, just in a different way. Living a dense urban housing lifestyle is generally lighter on the planet and wallet than a small family on a giant farm in a rural area with modern conveniences. I don't read the blog, but they never seemed to lack for good internet, reliable water and electricity through the winter, etc.
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Did they both quit corporate jobs before 40? I have no idea how old they are, but I know Mr. FW continued his job remotely after they moved to VT. It wasn't exactly a secret, but certainly wasn't something they put any focus on. It seemed like they wanted people to think they had both retired. In reality, they were both kind of working, since she had the blog.
https://www.frugalwoods.com/2023/04/07/reflecting-on-nine-years-of-frugalwoods/
16. We moved to Vermont full-time in May 2016 and began renting out our Cambridge house in June 2016.
17. We continued to save at a pretty high rate–typically saving all of my husband’s salary and living off of my income combined with the rental income.
19. In the spring of 2021, we made the decision for Mr. FW to retire from his job as a software engineer after being with the same company for 14 years.
Seems pretty transparent.
What was obfuscated was that he was a very high wage earner. Many people responded with, "Sure, it's easy when you make that kind of money." IMO, it's even harder to be frugal when you really don't have to be.
Many years ago now, but my recollection was that the husband was making over 300k a year. It was a luxury lifestyle blog to larp as a homesteader pretending to be a FIRE/frugality blog.
Basically everyone reading the blog/book would assume that the husband was maybe making in the 100-200k range still working, but was actually making 2-3x that. It just hits different when you find out that someone who presented themselves as middle class was actually continuing to bring in upper class income, made giant money on their MA houses by buying at the right time. They should be easily sitting on 5+MM right now based on their numbers.
Exactly. Dishonest. It feels offensive when professional income people dress like working class people (hipsters). My grandmother who was raised as legit poor, was offended by affluent people dressing up in a working class outfit. Felt like they were appropriating a working man’s badge of honor or something along those lines. So like all the Frugalwoods folksy farm photos and the husband’s stupid beard give me the impression they’re rich people dressing up like farmers without the hard scrabble struggle that traditional New England farmers actually felt.
Am I jealous of the FW lifestyle? Absolutely.
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I don't get the controversy that some people see with the Frugalwoods couple. They were both very successful in their respective careers, chose an anti-consumerist lifestyle to save a boatload of money in a short amount of time, and "retired" before they were 40. I think that's a story worth telling.
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Going off topic here, but I view homesteading as being consumerist, just in a different way. Living a dense urban housing lifestyle is generally lighter on the planet and wallet than a small family on a giant farm in a rural area with modern conveniences. I don't read the blog, but they never seemed to lack for good internet, reliable water and electricity through the winter, etc.
We have a different understanding of what consumerism means I guess. I use the word to describe all kinds of "keeping up the the jones' behavior"... constant upgrades to housing, vehicles, clothing, vacations etc. Not ... growing your own food, splitting your own firewood, solar panels, community, etc.
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Did they both quit corporate jobs before 40? I have no idea how old they are, but I know Mr. FW continued his job remotely after they moved to VT. It wasn't exactly a secret, but certainly wasn't something they put any focus on. It seemed like they wanted people to think they had both retired. In reality, they were both kind of working, since she had the blog.
https://www.frugalwoods.com/2023/04/07/reflecting-on-nine-years-of-frugalwoods/
16. We moved to Vermont full-time in May 2016 and began renting out our Cambridge house in June 2016.
17. We continued to save at a pretty high rate–typically saving all of my husband’s salary and living off of my income combined with the rental income.
19. In the spring of 2021, we made the decision for Mr. FW to retire from his job as a software engineer after being with the same company for 14 years.
Seems pretty transparent.
What was obfuscated was that he was a very high wage earner. Many people responded with, "Sure, it's easy when you make that kind of money." IMO, it's even harder to be frugal when you really don't have to be.
Many years ago now, but my recollection was that the husband was making over 300k a year. It was a luxury lifestyle blog to larp as a homesteader pretending to be a FIRE/frugality blog.
Basically everyone reading the blog/book would assume that the husband was maybe making in the 100-200k range still working, but was actually making 2-3x that. It just hits different when you find out that someone who presented themselves as middle class was actually continuing to bring in upper class income, made giant money on their MA houses by buying at the right time. They should be easily sitting on 5+MM right now based on their numbers.
Exactly. Dishonest. It feels offensive when professional income people dress like working class people (hipsters). My grandmother who was raised as legit poor, was offended by affluent people dressing up in a working class outfit. Felt like they were appropriating a working man’s badge of honor or something along those lines. So like all the Frugalwoods folksy farm photos and the husband’s stupid beard give me the impression they’re rich people dressing up like farmers without the hard scrabble struggle that traditional New England farmers actually felt.
Am I jealous of the FW lifestyle? Absolutely.
I grew up farming. Couldn't wait to get away from that and get a real job. I don't even have a garden these days. Farming is work. It's healthy for you, but real work with lots of risks and stress. We raised strawberries. You worked them year round. After picking season ended your started growing next year's plants. They propagate with runners. You replant the runners once grown by hand. Summers you plant legumes in the soil to enrich nitrogen. You worry about too much rain and the rot it brings. Too little rain and having to irrigate. Irrigation is expensive and there is scarcity of water. You worry about freezes and hail storms. Farming isn't always the romantic reality portrayed online and TV.
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In what universe is their blog a "luxury lifestyle blog"? Also in what way did they present themselves as middle class, or any other class for that matter? Most all of her content is about living a simple, frugal life in a rural setting. I don't think the fact that he made $300k a year is relevant, or somehow that disqualifies them from the "FIRE club" vs if he only made $100k.
Also the fact that they're sitting on $5M (if true) vs "only $1.5-$2M" is not relevant. What matters is they have enough and can live life on their terms. Isn't that what MMM did back in the day that inspired everyone on this blog to change their lives? I don't get it.
MMM was always very open about how much money both he and his wife made. And even when the blog started making tons of money, he was pretty open about that too.
It gives a perspective to readers about how easily they can recreate the experience. The point of FIRE blogs are generally "I did it. Here's how I did it so that you can do it too". Pete has been very open that he was able to achieve FIRE in 10 years because both he and his wife had well paying SE jobs in the 100-200k range. He writes some general guidelines on the strategy and speaks realistically about how different income levels may have drastically longer timelines.
FW's blog on the other hand tried not to present this information instead staying abstract enough to not talk about their own numbers. And I believe it's on purpose. She knows that presenting the real numbers upfront would be an immediate turn off to a number of readers. But also it also opposes the narrative of the blog. They reached FIRE because they made butt loads of money and were very lucky on their RE choices, not because they were frugal. They could've easily double or tripled their spending and still reached FIRE in the same amount of time. And for people looking to achieve that lifestyle that is a huge piece of information.
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I grew up farming. Couldn't wait to get away from that and get a real job. I don't even have a garden these days. Farming is work. It's healthy for you, but real work with lots of risks and stress. We raised strawberries. You worked them year round. After picking season ended your started growing next year's plants. They propagate with runners. You replant the runners once grown by hand. Summers you plant legumes in the soil to enrich nitrogen. You worry about too much rain and the rot it brings. Too little rain and having to irrigate. Irrigation is expensive and there is scarcity of water. You worry about freezes and hail storms. Farming isn't always the romantic reality portrayed online and TV.
Yeah, there's a big difference between a gentleman's farm and actual farming! Just like 'Our Flag Means Death' shows how different being a gentleman pirate is from actually living by piracy.
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In what universe is their blog a "luxury lifestyle blog"? Also in what way did they present themselves as middle class, or any other class for that matter? Most all of her content is about living a simple, frugal life in a rural setting. I don't think the fact that he made $300k a year is relevant, or somehow that disqualifies them from the "FIRE club" vs if he only made $100k.
Also the fact that they're sitting on $5M (if true) vs "only $1.5-$2M" is not relevant. What matters is they have enough and can live life on their terms. Isn't that what MMM did back in the day that inspired everyone on this blog to change their lives? I don't get it.
MMM was always very open about how much money both he and his wife made. And even when the blog started making tons of money, he was pretty open about that too.
It gives a perspective to readers about how easily they can recreate the experience. The point of FIRE blogs are generally "I did it. Here's how I did it so that you can do it too". Pete has been very open that he was able to achieve FIRE in 10 years because both he and his wife had well paying SE jobs in the 100-200k range. He writes some general guidelines on the strategy and speaks realistically about how different income levels may have drastically longer timelines.
FW's blog on the other hand tried not to present this information instead staying abstract enough to not talk about their own numbers. And I believe it's on purpose. She knows that presenting the real numbers upfront would be an immediate turn off to a number of readers. But also it also opposes the narrative of the blog. They reached FIRE because they made butt loads of money and were very lucky on their RE choices, not because they were frugal. They could've easily double or tripled their spending and still reached FIRE in the same amount of time. And for people looking to achieve that lifestyle that is a huge piece of information.
And even many here are unhappy with MMM's failure to account for all his spending but at least he was very open about HOW, and how much money he had, to achieve FIRE which enabled him to quit his big boy job. That's important info to disclose if you are presenting yourself as a FIRE blogger or author.
Frugalwoods, especially in their earlier blog and in the book, glossed over all that. The title of the book was something like "Financial Independence through Simple Living" and while that's accurate, as you pointed out they earned enough that they could have FIREd in most any situation (if not over spending) and didn't have to make any frugal choices because they earned a butt load of money! Darning socks by candle light didn't get them to FI, earning big salaries and spending/saving wisely did.
Does that info matter? To me it would. A lower income earner (say $50k) who is saving 50% of their earning to get to FIRE is going to make some big consumer and lifestyle sacrifices compared to the high earner who's earning $300k and saving 50%. Living off $150k every year verses $25k is a big lifestyle difference
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Did they both quit corporate jobs before 40? I have no idea how old they are, but I know Mr. FW continued his job remotely after they moved to VT. It wasn't exactly a secret, but certainly wasn't something they put any focus on. It seemed like they wanted people to think they had both retired. In reality, they were both kind of working, since she had the blog.
https://www.frugalwoods.com/2023/04/07/reflecting-on-nine-years-of-frugalwoods/
16. We moved to Vermont full-time in May 2016 and began renting out our Cambridge house in June 2016.
17. We continued to save at a pretty high rate–typically saving all of my husband’s salary and living off of my income combined with the rental income.
19. In the spring of 2021, we made the decision for Mr. FW to retire from his job as a software engineer after being with the same company for 14 years.
Seems pretty transparent.
What was obfuscated was that he was a very high wage earner. Many people responded with, "Sure, it's easy when you make that kind of money." IMO, it's even harder to be frugal when you really don't have to be.
Many years ago now, but my recollection was that the husband was making over 300k a year. It was a luxury lifestyle blog to larp as a homesteader pretending to be a FIRE/frugality blog.
Basically everyone reading the blog/book would assume that the husband was maybe making in the 100-200k range still working, but was actually making 2-3x that. It just hits different when you find out that someone who presented themselves as middle class was actually continuing to bring in upper class income, made giant money on their MA houses by buying at the right time. They should be easily sitting on 5+MM right now based on their numbers.
In what universe is their blog a "luxury lifestyle blog"? Also in what way did they present themselves as middle class, or any other class for that matter? Most all of her content is about living a simple, frugal life in a rural setting. I don't think the fact that he made $300k a year is relevant, or somehow that disqualifies them from the "FIRE club" vs if he only made $100k.
Also the fact that they're sitting on $5M (if true) vs "only $1.5-$2M" is not relevant. What matters is they have enough and can live life on their terms. Isn't that what MMM did back in the day that inspired everyone on this blog to change their lives? I don't get it.
I looked it up because I had forgotten the details, but she never shared numbers and very specifically referred to them as having "normal middle class incomes" working for non-profits, and that they weren't able to retire because of making "bankers salaries."
Except, they were making bankers salaries and her husband didn't retire, he just worked from home continuing to rake in a massive salary.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with any of the details of their finances, but she was pretty clearly trying to hide the facts of their financial circumstances, and that is why everyone felt manipulated.
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I guess I still found them relatable even if they were making good money towards the end of their careers. We made similar money and I told precisely nobody because it breeds resentment.
Everyone wishes you well until you're doing better than they are. Then they bring out the pitchforks. I wouldn't broadcast my net worth and income either if I was a public figure and wanted to seem relatable.
Haters gonna hate I guess...
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I guess I still found them relatable even if they were making good money towards the end of their careers. We made similar money and I told precisely nobody because it breeds resentment.
Everyone wishes you well until you're doing better than they are. Then they bring out the pitchforks. I wouldn't broadcast my net worth and income either if I was a public figure and wanted to seem relatable.
Haters gonna hate I guess...
Did you even read the other comments? They deliberately misled. It's one thing to be "a random person" who doesn't share their income. It's another thing to be a public role model who claims one thing, when another thing is true.
Indeed I did, just didn't agree with them. I don't agree that they misled, just omitted their income and net worth so people wouldn't immediately dismiss them for being "privileged". They started their blog when they were making far less money and were closer to the middle class narrative. Their income grew over time and they could have retired much sooner than they did. That's my "hot take" on it at least.
I spent some time rereading their blog. They are pretty transparent with their savings rate over time and show their monthly budget as well. If you can do basic math you'll be able to figure out that they're making good money. She actually states that her husband's job "paid extremely well".
"If we’d had lower incomes, we wouldn’t have been able to save nearly this much. We hit our financial independence number a few years later, but made the decision for Mr. FW to continue working because he enjoyed his job well enough, it paid extremely well and he was able to work remotely from our homestead in Vermont. We also wanted to pad that FI number because more is always better."
https://www.frugalwoods.com/2023/04/07/reflecting-on-nine-years-of-frugalwoods/
Savings rate article in 2014: https://www.frugalwoods.com/2014/04/10/how-we-save-65-annually/
Typical month of spending in 2014: https://www.frugalwoods.com/2014/08/04/july-2014-expenditures/
She did these types of posts for YEARS....
If you can't do the math and figure out generally what they were making back then I don't know what to tell you.
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I guess I still found them relatable even if they were making good money towards the end of their careers. We made similar money and I told precisely nobody because it breeds resentment.
Everyone wishes you well until you're doing better than they are. Then they bring out the pitchforks. I wouldn't broadcast my net worth and income either if I was a public figure and wanted to seem relatable.
Haters gonna hate I guess...
I agree with that if you frame everything in terms of the almighty $.
Long-term health, happiness, relationships, knowledge, wisdom, culture, self-actualization, etc. are simply way more important than money to some people, presuming some level of comfort/safety is established. Used to be a decent amount of literature that after 75k income, the $ had no (or even negative) correlation with happiness. And that was for wasteful average Americans! Not sure what that would be with inflation now. So, who cares if someone makes more than you if your own needs are being met and you're happy and able to pursue what interests you, ya know? At that point you don't even frame "success" as how much you make in a year or what your overall pecuniary wealth is. I take the resentment to mean that many people are struggling with the more basic foundations (and thus, view more $ as the way to climb out of whatever hole they feel stuck in) and that sucks.
Of course, I'm someone who disagrees with the premise that "more is better" and don't understand the desire to be in the limelight and have people pick apart the life that I publicly present for many reasons, so there's that!
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Did they both quit corporate jobs before 40? I have no idea how old they are, but I know Mr. FW continued his job remotely after they moved to VT. It wasn't exactly a secret, but certainly wasn't something they put any focus on. It seemed like they wanted people to think they had both retired. In reality, they were both kind of working, since she had the blog.
https://www.frugalwoods.com/2023/04/07/reflecting-on-nine-years-of-frugalwoods/
16. We moved to Vermont full-time in May 2016 and began renting out our Cambridge house in June 2016.
17. We continued to save at a pretty high rate–typically saving all of my husband’s salary and living off of my income combined with the rental income.
19. In the spring of 2021, we made the decision for Mr. FW to retire from his job as a software engineer after being with the same company for 14 years.
Seems pretty transparent.
What was obfuscated was that he was a very high wage earner. Many people responded with, "Sure, it's easy when you make that kind of money." IMO, it's even harder to be frugal when you really don't have to be.
Many years ago now, but my recollection was that the husband was making over 300k a year. It was a luxury lifestyle blog to larp as a homesteader pretending to be a FIRE/frugality blog.
Basically everyone reading the blog/book would assume that the husband was maybe making in the 100-200k range still working, but was actually making 2-3x that. It just hits different when you find out that someone who presented themselves as middle class was actually continuing to bring in upper class income, made giant money on their MA houses by buying at the right time. They should be easily sitting on 5+MM right now based on their numbers.
Exactly. Dishonest. It feels offensive when professional income people dress like working class people (hipsters). My grandmother who was raised as legit poor, was offended by affluent people dressing up in a working class outfit. Felt like they were appropriating a working man’s badge of honor or something along those lines. So like all the Frugalwoods folksy farm photos and the husband’s stupid beard give me the impression they’re rich people dressing up like farmers without the hard scrabble struggle that traditional New England farmers actually felt.
Am I jealous of the FW lifestyle? Absolutely.
I have a different take: they are just millennials. It was a millennial fashion and design thing to go all folksy and bearded back to the earth retro. And I have to agree with @Midwest_Handlebar on them in general. They made good choices, bought in Cambridge, saved a ton of money. What if he was making 150k and they both made 75k on side gigs? Would the gate keepers allow that? I am out of the loop on the controversy, so I may be reading this whole thing wrong but it sounds like people made assumptions about them, kind of like how passive aggressive people will get mad at you for not doing the thing they never told you to do. Maybe the Fruglewoods just didn't feel comfortable sharing their income, but still wanted to share their frugal lifestyle to inspire others.
I'm not going to lie, I did not like the blog (too much like a Mommy instagram blog for me) and it was clear to me that it was "internet polished" (like so many blogs are because blogs and the internet are not real life). But I see nothing wrong with how the Fruglewoods got to FIRE. They were frugal, good for them. And good for Liz if she can get 1k for consulting. It's not for us to say that it won't help someone. Some people need to spend money to change. Or regret being duped out of money to learn. Either way, it's nice work if you can get it.
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I guess I still found them relatable even if they were making good money towards the end of their careers. We made similar money and I told precisely nobody because it breeds resentment.
Everyone wishes you well until you're doing better than they are. Then they bring out the pitchforks. I wouldn't broadcast my net worth and income either if I was a public figure and wanted to seem relatable.
Haters gonna hate I guess...
Did you even read the other comments? They deliberately misled. It's one thing to be "a random person" who doesn't share their income. It's another thing to be a public role model who claims one thing, when another thing is true.
Indeed I did, just didn't agree with them. I don't agree that they misled, just omitted their income and net worth so people wouldn't immediately dismiss them for being "privileged". They started their blog when they were making far less money and were closer to the middle class narrative. Their income grew over time and they could have retired much sooner than they did. That's my "hot take" on it at least.
I spent some time rereading their blog. They are pretty transparent with their savings rate over time and show their monthly budget as well. If you can do basic math you'll be able to figure out that they're making good money. She actually states that her husband's job "paid extremely well".
"If we’d had lower incomes, we wouldn’t have been able to save nearly this much. We hit our financial independence number a few years later, but made the decision for Mr. FW to continue working because he enjoyed his job well enough, it paid extremely well and he was able to work remotely from our homestead in Vermont. We also wanted to pad that FI number because more is always better."
https://www.frugalwoods.com/2023/04/07/reflecting-on-nine-years-of-frugalwoods/
Savings rate article in 2014: https://www.frugalwoods.com/2014/04/10/how-we-save-65-annually/
Typical month of spending in 2014: https://www.frugalwoods.com/2014/08/04/july-2014-expenditures/
She did these types of posts for YEARS....
If you can't do the math and figure out generally what they were making back then I don't know what to tell you.
You still don't understand that saying you earned "normal middle class salaries" when you make $300k is flat out lying? If you don't understand that, not much point in continuing this conversation.
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Context matters. Can you point to when and where they said that? Also Boston metro "middle class" looks far different than rural Oklahoma "middle class". Hell, nobody in this country can agree what the definition of middle class is... The vast majority of the population identifies as being in the middle class which objectively doesn't make sense.
The average household income of Cambridge Mass is $154,448 per: https://www.point2homes.com/US/Neighborhood/MA/Cambridge-Demographics.html. So they made twice the average household income at the end of their careers per the $300k you referenced. What number do you think should be the cutoff for the middle class definition? Gatekeepers and manufactured outrage.... How is this serving you?
Again, references to their income are on their blog if you're not too lazy to look for it. I don't get the hate and reactions like this are exactly why I don't share our finances with anyone in real life.
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Did they both quit corporate jobs before 40? I have no idea how old they are, but I know Mr. FW continued his job remotely after they moved to VT. It wasn't exactly a secret, but certainly wasn't something they put any focus on. It seemed like they wanted people to think they had both retired. In reality, they were both kind of working, since she had the blog.
https://www.frugalwoods.com/2023/04/07/reflecting-on-nine-years-of-frugalwoods/
16. We moved to Vermont full-time in May 2016 and began renting out our Cambridge house in June 2016.
17. We continued to save at a pretty high rate–typically saving all of my husband’s salary and living off of my income combined with the rental income.
19. In the spring of 2021, we made the decision for Mr. FW to retire from his job as a software engineer after being with the same company for 14 years.
Seems pretty transparent.
What was obfuscated was that he was a very high wage earner. Many people responded with, "Sure, it's easy when you make that kind of money." IMO, it's even harder to be frugal when you really don't have to be.
I find it the exact opposite, personally. When I've got extra cash hanging around and coming in every payday, I can think about things I might like, put it off, invest or save the money and love seeing the savings/investment grow....
Then - something changes - and suddenly monthly cashflow is stiffled, making bills is tough and I need to watch income and outgo very closely, implement auterity/rice and beans......and this big well of longing for new this or new that and upgrade this is overwhelming. Took me a few decades to figure this out about myself, but I wouldn't be surprised if others experienced it too.
When I can buy 3 out of 10 things I can happily buy nothing, putting things off indefinitely in some cases. When I can afford 0 out of 10 things, I am a ball of desperate wanting and trying wildly to find some loophole to purchase one of them.
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I liked the FW blog - I liked that she published case studies from a diverse range of people and I think the blog has a different target than the MMM/ERE blogs but that's not a bad thing. I never read the book so I'm assuming that's where a lot of the controversy must stem from because the blog was pretty consistent on it being about being mindful of consumption and having a plan to meet your goals. The piece on post-natal depression was excellent and she actually skewers some of those pre-conceptions about going back to the land in some of her writing too.
I don't begrudge them trying to monetize, plenty of FIRE bloggers do that, I'm just surprised at the big shift in her site from being focussed on the blog to pushing the financial advice side, especially given the high rates/lack of credentials.
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I don't get the controversy that some people see with the Frugalwoods couple. They were both very successful in their respective careers, chose an anti-consumerist lifestyle to save a boatload of money in a short amount of time, and "retired" before they were 40. I think that's a story worth telling.
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Going off topic here, but I view homesteading as being consumerist, just in a different way. Living a dense urban housing lifestyle is generally lighter on the planet and wallet than a small family on a giant farm in a rural area with modern conveniences. I don't read the blog, but they never seemed to lack for good internet, reliable water and electricity through the winter, etc.
We have a different understanding of what consumerism means I guess. I use the word to describe all kinds of "keeping up the the jones' behavior"... constant upgrades to housing, vehicles, clothing, vacations etc. Not ... growing your own food, splitting your own firewood, solar panels, community, etc.
Oh, I think growing your own food, any kind of slow living such as hanging your clothes out on a clothesline, and installing solar panels are a demonstrative kind of luxe living; and is keeping up with a certain set of Joneses.
That doesn’t make them people who have “bad values “it just makes him have values that are probably more in line with yours.
I won’t take a position on the Frugalwoods since I haven’t read their blog, although I know who they are, but I do kind of smirk at the back -to-the land- people
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Interesting discussion for sure!
The most salient point for me in all this is the 1k/hour for a consult - way more than an accountant/cpa, a phd psychotherapist, or a neuosurgical consult. My interpretation: pretty ballsy.
I wonder if this either (both?) a symptom of the out-of-touch 300k a year middle class salary or clap back/FU on the blowback for that becoming common knowledge?
I'm not a big blog follower of - well anyone really. I'm no FIRE posterchild for sure, but it just seems kind of insulting really. To people who might want to hire her, to the whole minimalist/FIRE movement. I'll be your life coach for thrift store shopping for 1k/hr. It is kind of laughable. ok - very laughable.
For the - really don't want to do it so outprice it angle, I'd say that would be maybe 300/hr. This is like so far out of there and I think what people are saying is it changes your opinoin of someone. Who are they? Who were they?
Is it because they were always really out of touch? Are they trying to limit their circle now to others in the 300k club? Is it a just a big FU to the pearl clutchers and 300k! can you beleive! crowd?
The world may never know!
I think I'm going to file the entire thing under performance art.
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After re-reading the responses on this post I am coming around to understand some of the the outrage. Caveat: I have not read the book. If the FW sold their book as a roadmap to FI and were not honest about the numbers they were pulling in (assuming the readers hadn't read the blog carefully enough to notice their numbers), it would lead the reader to believe the FW version of FIRE could be done with lower salaries. My partner and I barely scrape six figures combined. As we all know, the salary part of it is really important to FIRE planning and it is what I like about the MMM blog. Had I paid for and followed FW book, I'd feel duped. The FW blog is free so you sort of get what you pay for there. With that in mind, the MMM blog is a ridiculously good value for free.
As far as the consulting fee, I agree it is outrageously high. And I can see why FIRE people are pissed off since it is so counter to the concept of frugal and perhaps demolishes their credibility with the FIRE movement but maybe that is not their audience (anymore or ever?) With that said, I will stand by what I said about the consultations in general. There is a good deal of research that supports the benefits of feeling friction with learning. Some people have to lose money to learn. Unless someone has paid for one of these appointments, we also don't know what the consultation entails. I don't think it is fair to judge the FW fee to a CPA or anything else because it doesn't sound like that is what it is and it is not up to us to determine the value of a service anyway (especially a boutique service). We can have opinions and we can determine if the value is worth it for ourselves (I mean, I'm not running out to sign up) but there are a ton of overpriced products out there that people find value in. People pay more than 1k to join some mastermind groups just for the chance to meet successful people.
But yeah I get it, as one half of a couple who has scrimped, saved, lived in a shitty LCOL location for too long, and managed to save over a mil on barely six figures, I'd be mad if I hitched my wagon to the FW only to discover their situation is nothing like ours and there is no chance in hell we could get there following the methods they outlined in their book.
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I don't really read FW. I think I did a couple times, but happened to come across a post where she stated they ate a couple of pieces of popcorn dipped in hummus for dinner, so I figured it wasn't for me and my family. I just looked at the blog though. I don't agree with the idea that the high price is only for discouraging people from submitting case studies. The new blog design is clearly a big ad for consulting services.
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I don't really read FW. I think I did a couple times, but happened to come across a post where she stated they ate a couple of pieces of popcorn dipped in hummus for dinner, so I figured it wasn't for me and my family. I just looked at the blog though. I don't agree with the idea that the high price is only for discouraging people from submitting case studies. The new blog design is clearly a big ad for consulting services.
Haha this is similar to what turned me off from the ChooseFI guys. They save money because the wife eats one pizza of for dinner. Or she bought one loaf of bread on clearance for 88 cents and eats that for like three days. Personally, I would eat that whole loaf at once! Especially if it was only 88 cents. Haha
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This reminds me of the frugal stomach post Pete made talking about how drinking oil and eating butter for cheap calories was a great hack…. A few people definitely reacted how this was a bridge too far in their frugality journey.
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I don't fault the Frugalwoods for making high salaries; that's just envy talking. It's good to set an example that spending doesn't have to scale with income, or that being frugal is a virtue even if you could afford to spend more.
And in principle, there's nothing wrong with starting a consulting business to give advice to those who want it and are willing to pay for it. If it's what the market will bear, I don't see any harm in that. I get the point that some people won't value good advice unless it costs them something.
But holy hell, $1000 an hour is a lot. If it were a sliding scale based on income, that'd be one thing. But how can you justify charging this much while building a brand on frugality? For anyone who's in debt and trying to get their finances back on track, shouldn't her first piece of advice be "Stop paying for services like mine"?
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Context matters. Can you point to when and where they said that? Also Boston metro "middle class" looks far different than rural Oklahoma "middle class". Hell, nobody in this country can agree what the definition of middle class is... The vast majority of the population identifies as being in the middle class which objectively doesn't make sense.
The average household income of Cambridge Mass is $154,448 per: https://www.point2homes.com/US/Neighborhood/MA/Cambridge-Demographics.html. So they made twice the average household income at the end of their careers per the $300k you referenced. What number do you think should be the cutoff for the middle class definition? Gatekeepers and manufactured outrage.... How is this serving you?
Again, references to their income are on their blog if you're not too lazy to look for it. I don't get the hate and reactions like this are exactly why I don't share our finances with anyone in real life.
It’s still not middle class even in “Cambridge”. I resemble the complaining/financial samurai just middle class, highish income earning living in a VHCOL area. I “only” make $225,000 in the Bay Area which is about 75% of average.
But I understand I’m not middle class. While I’m not upper class/rich I’m solidly in the upper middle class range. My life might not look much different from the outside, but it is. Multiple vacations every year, even if they are just visiting family, yup. Being able to easily afford a condo, even if it’s not as large as others, high savings rate, being able to quit my day job at 47, buying a new car when I need it, not needing a list at the grocery store, being able to eat every meal out should I wish it yes, yes, yes.
I need to think about all of these things, but I don’t have to make real hard decisions like my middle class teacher parents did. I’m the “rich kid” like my friend Michelle, but not quite the really rich kids at school like Kari and Tia.
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This also reminds me of the trend for very wealthy people (Sam Bankman Fried, Buffett) to show off their folksy middle class preferences to distract from their actual circumstances. With his $400k/ yr income, Pete could fall off a ladder and pay out of pocket for all his healthcare and still be rich, not exactly what most ‘middle class’ families experience. Maybe they are blind to their privilege, but it is disrespectful to their audience to call themselves middle class. I’m sure the ‘middle class police’ will be called upon for saying this though:)
Edit to add link to YouTube video on wealthy trying to look Middle Class - https://youtu.be/JukGECU6mnI?si=ND_XdtaXM6gDdZRb
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This also reminds me of the trend for very wealthy people (Sam Bankman Fried, Buffett) to show off their folksy middle class preferences to distract from their actual circumstances. With his $400k/ yr income, Pete could fall off a ladder and pay out of pocket for all his healthcare and still be rich, not exactly what most ‘middle class’ families experience. Maybe they are blind to their privilege, but it is disrespectful to their audience to call themselves middle class. I’m sure the ‘middle class police’ will be called upon for saying this though:)
I don't know what class is anymore. I thought 60K was a good middle class income, but when I was investigating healthcare in my state, I found that the state considers that low income and we are eligible for Medicaid and free college. Who knew?
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Part of the Frugalwoods reticence may have been caused by the fact that Nate was pulling down huge bucks...working for a nonprofit.
If he's making that kind of money, what insane amounts of money are the higher-ups making? He may have been contractually obligated not to reveal his salary, particularly on a public blog. If so, why kill the Golden Goose?
This came to a head when the book was published.
I still maintain that living as frugally as they did once they started making big money took extraordinary amounts of self-discipline. I find that admirable. The derision they face seems unwarranted. They avoided hedonistic adaption. Isn't that a key tenet of MMM?
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This also reminds me of the trend for very wealthy people (Sam Bankman Fried, Buffett) to show off their folksy middle class preferences to distract from their actual circumstances. With his $400k/ yr income, Pete could fall off a ladder and pay out of pocket for all his healthcare and still be rich, not exactly what most ‘middle class’ families experience. Maybe they are blind to their privilege, but it is disrespectful to their audience to call themselves middle class. I’m sure the ‘middle class police’ will be called upon for saying this though:)
I don't know what class is anymore. I thought 60K was a good middle class income, but when I was investigating healthcare in my state, I found that the state considers that low income and we are eligible for Medicaid and free college. Who knew?
There are 2 ways I think of measuring. Either using percentiles so that a certain percentage of people are always "lower", "middle", and "upper", or by what amenities are generally affordable at each level. ie Middle class should be relatively able to afford all necessities and afford a reasonable retirement by 70. Lower class may not afford all necessities and may depend on subsidies or doing without. Upper class is able to afford several luxuries (or a very early retirement). Ultra wealthy are able to buy stupid luxuries, kill the planet, and meaningfully affect politics.
Household income
Bottom 25% - < 36k
Middle 50% - < 133k
Upper 25% - > 134k
Ultra Wealthy (99%) - > 600k
If your household makes more than 223k, then you are in the top 10%. I'm not sure how to look at that in any way but upper class. You are making more money than 300MM Americans and are in a class of ~30MM other people. I think you could make a meaningful distinction between the top 25%, 10%, and 1% (and even .1%). But the idea of all Americans thinking of themselves as "middle class" no matter where on the scale they actually are I think does a disservice to our politics.
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Regarding annual spending/being frugal one trick a lot of these bloggers/personaliities have used to make it look like their annual spending is super low and gain eyeballs is to frontload their spending. Ie. if one were to replace all of their appliances, buy new cars, buy a house, remodel, buy new clothes, etc. then they can go a few years with ultra low spending and that makes for an interesting blog/website. Eventually, appliances break, cars become unsafe/unmaintainable, houses need remodeling/repair, clothes need replacement, etc and its then time for the blog/website to go dark for a while.
I do the same thing, when there is a downturn in the economy and things are cheap I try to spend more. I havent bought a pair of pants in at least 3 years, I need some $10 really good pants as mine are all getting holes in them, and also desperately need cheap labor to complete some house projects, ill hold out for cheaper labor rates/pants for my spending as Im confident there will be a downturn in the economy eventually.
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This also reminds me of the trend for very wealthy people (Sam Bankman Fried, Buffett) to show off their folksy middle class preferences to distract from their actual circumstances. With his $400k/ yr income, Pete could fall off a ladder and pay out of pocket for all his healthcare and still be rich, not exactly what most ‘middle class’ families experience. Maybe they are blind to their privilege, but it is disrespectful to their audience to call themselves middle class. I’m sure the ‘middle class police’ will be called upon for saying this though:)
Edit to add link to YouTube video on wealthy trying to look Middle Class - https://youtu.be/JukGECU6mnI?si=ND_XdtaXM6gDdZRb
The thing is that Pete disclosed his both his pre-FIRE income and his post-FIRE blog income to his readers whereas, at least in her book and former blog, FW didn't. That lack of disclosure (along with leading many to assume they didn't earn much as average middle-class people who work for non-profits") is what people were upset about not that they made a butt load of money (plus her blog income and rental property income).
I think people would have been fine if she just stated "we're a couple who earn very large salaries but live a frugal life and stash 70% so we could retire early and live our dream life". Actually I think most people would love to read a blog about high income people not being mega-consumers, saving their money and living a bad ass DIY life in the wilds of Vermont. So, at least for me, it was the lack of disclosure and not the high incomes that muddled the message. But I do like them and loved it when she posted here - and loved the frugal hound! Although not my kind of lifestyle (UGH too much work!)
Anyway isn't this suppose to be a thread about Go Curry Cracker? I miss reading their blog but good to know they are doing well and posting on X - which I don't read.
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I do appreciate Pete’s transparency over the years, but even he has become tripped up by the Ramit Sethi learn to spend more lifestyle. It would’ve been a much different experience reading the blog and knowing MMM would one day be singing the praises of buying a new Tesla and disparaging his no longer necessary frugal habits…
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This also reminds me of the trend for very wealthy people (Sam Bankman Fried, Buffett) to show off their folksy middle class preferences to distract from their actual circumstances. With his $400k/ yr income, Pete could fall off a ladder and pay out of pocket for all his healthcare and still be rich, not exactly what most ‘middle class’ families experience. Maybe they are blind to their privilege, but it is disrespectful to their audience to call themselves middle class. I’m sure the ‘middle class police’ will be called upon for saying this though:)
Edit to add link to YouTube video on wealthy trying to look Middle Class - https://youtu.be/JukGECU6mnI?si=ND_XdtaXM6gDdZRb
The thing is that Pete disclosed his both his pre-FIRE income and his post-FIRE blog income to his readers whereas, at least in her book and former blog, FW didn't. That lack of disclosure (along with leading many to assume they didn't earn much as average middle-class people who work for non-profits") is what people were upset about not that they made a butt load of money (plus her blog income and rental property income).
I think people would have been fine if she just stated "we're a couple who earn very large salaries but live a frugal life and stash 70% so we could retire early and live our dream life". Actually I think most people would love to read a blog about high income people not being mega-consumers, saving their money and living a bad ass DIY life in the wilds of Vermont. So, at least for me, it was the lack of disclosure and not the high incomes that muddled the message. But I do like them and loved it when she posted here - and loved the frugal hound! Not my kind of lifestyle (UGH too much work!)
But they did disclose how much they were making. They actually posted their savings rate and monthly expenses on their blog for years. It's very easy to calculate how much they were making....
So the remaining "controversy" is that they made twice the average income in their area for a portion of their career and described themselves as "middle class". Seems pretty flimsy to me and I don't particularly like her blog.
I guess it just bothers me because it misses the whole message of deliberate frugality to live life on your own terms. It's a message that our society desperately needs to hear more, and I think people are finding an excuse to dismiss them because they want to make excuses about their own lives. People have harder/easier paths to FI, but those who are conscience enough to make progress should be modeled, not made into some sort of unrealistic anomaly that can't be replicated to some degree.
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^^Which is why I said their message would have been better received if they had outright disclosed their incomes. All I ever saw were their approx $50k expenses after Mrs. FW retired and started her blog. They were nicely detailed and showed their frugal lives well which I think would be very inspirational to others in similar income situations.
So I don't think it's money jealousy at all. I'm a person who also saved 50% of my income (70% when I was married) but I was firmly in rice and beans territory at earning under $50k/year and the frugal things I did really mattered to my bottom line and to reaching FI. Whereas not so much for the FW. If I had a blog, or put myself out there as an FI expert who charged money, I would disclose my income, along with any other advantages I've had that lead me to FIRE. To me that's important whether high income or low.
Edited to correct spellings and clarity.
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As to how this all might be relevant to GoCurryCracker, I believe Jeremy used to work for Microsoft and has had a banner year with MSFT being up 68% this year, to all time highs. He has never claimed to be frugal, but also probably finds himself with a too much money problem these days…. Maybe he’ll also pivot his blog to $2000 per hour Zoom calls LOL
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… They avoided hedonistic adaption. Isn't that a key tenet of MMM?
That’s a good point, and I like the phrase “hedonistic adaptation.”
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As to how this all might be relevant to GoCurryCracker, I believe Jeremy used to work for Microsoft and has had a banner year with MSFT being up 68% this year, to all time highs. He has never claimed to be frugal, but also probably finds himself with a too much money problem these days…. Maybe he’ll also pivot his blog to $2000 per hour Zoom calls LOL
This reminds me that GCC is another one who was anti-home ownership (based on one house) who became a homeowner again. One day I stumbled on an old YT video of his filmed in their kitchen. IIRC, the kitchen was dark, cramped and full of old pink and yellow tile surfaces. Um, awful kitchen that you never improved and you're complaining that homeownership is a bad investment? Hmmm...
Another thought, based on EV's observation, is that GCC used to post extensively about how he avoided paying income taxes. Perhaps he's crossed a threshold and has to pay taxes now. It absolutely doesn't matter, IMO, but people on the internet have quixotic "rules".
[Dicey waves to @deborah.]
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Y'all don't want to hear this but blogs are dying out. Traffic is migrating to YouTube and TikTok, as the internet evolves into something more akin to television as opposed to writing stuff back and forth to real people.
At some point falling ad revenue and a known-dying format makes creators wonder if it's even worth it to pay another year's hosting fees. Some of the creators themselves may have fallen into the autoplay-video rabbit hole, and thus find themselves with no original thoughts or time to write them down.
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Part of the Frugalwoods reticence may have been caused by the fact that Nate was pulling down huge bucks...working for a nonprofit.
If he's making that kind of money, what insane amounts of money are the higher-ups making? He may have been contractually obligated not to reveal his salary, particularly on a public blog. If so, why kill the Golden Goose?
This came to a head when the book was published.
I still maintain that living as frugally as they did once they started making big money took extraordinary amounts of self-discipline. I find that admirable. The derision they face seems unwarranted. They avoided hedonistic adaption. Isn't that a key tenet of MMM?
Non profits would be filing 0990 on highly compensated employees, so I don't think his salary would have been a big secret from that perspective.
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People making big money working for a non-profit?
They need to take a look at themselves in the mirror.
Its not morally or ethically acceptable, in my world.
I think FW are sickening, and do not represent my version of the FIRE movement.
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Y'all don't want to hear this but blogs are dying out. Traffic is migrating to YouTube and TikTok, as the internet evolves into something more akin to television as opposed to writing stuff back and forth to real people.
At some point falling ad revenue and a known-dying format makes creators wonder if it's even worth it to pay another year's hosting fees. Some of the creators themselves may have fallen into the autoplay-video rabbit hole, and thus find themselves with no original thoughts or time to write them down.
Oh, I definitely am aware of this. The disappearing blog situation in general is such a bummer, and has been the case for the past several years. It doesn't seem like a financially viable option for most people anymore, and as a hobby it seems like it's dying out, too. I LOVE reading blogs but I never would have one for myself--the idea of being that public is terrifying to me. So I understand why people wouldn't be excited to do personal blogs anymore. Too many trolls, too little reward. Why open yourself up to that much criticism?
BTW, I have read the Frugalwoods book--I got it from the library, of course--and it was fine. It wasn't a guide to FIRE; more of a memoir type book. All the vitriol against the alleged misrepresentation of their income...I didn't really get it. To me the blog was always just light entertainment, which is how I read all blogs. I just find it fun to read about other people's lives. I liked Liz's frugality; made my own feel more normal and gave me some inspiration. I dunno...what more would someone want from a blog? It's free content.
I had a sense the whole time I was reading the blog that they were very lucky--the Cambridge house purchase was an enormous stroke of luck with timing (although also they were smart about being able to take advantage of the opportunity), and she didn't gloss over that. And I didn't realize how much money Mr FW made, but I also didn't really care when it came to light. They showed the internet a genius way to hack a soda stream and the insane amount of work it is to DIY maple syrup. What more do they really owe us?
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This also reminds me of the trend for very wealthy people (Sam Bankman Fried, Buffett) to show off their folksy middle class preferences to distract from their actual circumstances. With his $400k/ yr income, Pete could fall off a ladder and pay out of pocket for all his healthcare and still be rich, not exactly what most ‘middle class’ families experience. Maybe they are blind to their privilege, but it is disrespectful to their audience to call themselves middle class. I’m sure the ‘middle class police’ will be called upon for saying this though:)
I don't know what class is anymore. I thought 60K was a good middle class income, but when I was investigating healthcare in my state, I found that the state considers that low income and we are eligible for Medicaid and free college. Who knew?
Yeah, it's one of the most ambiguous words to use because there are so many definitions. And US definitions seem to focus solely on income/wealth and the income/wealth of your neighbors while many (Western) definitions outside the US usually cross income/wealth with education, career, how you invest/ownership of capital or lack thereof, how you dress, how you talk, hobbies, etc.
I'm glad most societies aren't as rigidly divided anymore (and thus, the "social" part of 'social class' has been dropped in parlance) but it seems like it'd be easier if we just called them 'income percentiles' or some related term with 'income' or 'wealth' in the name if the focus is purely on income/wealth.
But there is something almost beguiling in a way about the term class from a psychosocial POV. Even if the focus is mainly on income, you'll see all types of people who make loads of money have a hard time admitting they're upper class and will just call themselves upper-middle. Why join the upper class even in name only and feel responsible for social problems or add whatever proverbial target to your back that the "upper class" has that the upper middle somehow does not? And conversely on the lower end of the seemingly endless middle class spectrum, it seems to feel better to consider yourself middle class or lower middle class as opposed to lower class. Your example of qualifying for a social welfare program is a good one. Middle class people are hardworking who do not suck at the government's teat - that's a lower class type of behavior or so the story goes. A meaningless term with meaning!
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Y'all don't want to hear this but blogs are dying out. Traffic is migrating to YouTube and TikTok, as the internet evolves into something more akin to television as opposed to writing stuff back and forth to real people.
At some point falling ad revenue and a known-dying format makes creators wonder if it's even worth it to pay another year's hosting fees. Some of the creators themselves may have fallen into the autoplay-video rabbit hole, and thus find themselves with no original thoughts or time to write them down.
This is sad. I’m sure it’s true but still sad. I will miss this forum once we all get tired of it. I have grown tremendously on this forum. Yes I like to crab about FW (primarily because I’m jealous and my own wife isn’t very ambitious or adventurous and we would never do what they do), but generally speaking this forum has given me a masters in personal finance. I hope it doesn’t die out.
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I've followed the Frugalwoods since before they moved to Vermont. I never considered it a FIRE blog. More of a frugality, lifestyle blog. I read the book awhile back (won it on RoG) and it seemed a memore of their life rather than a hardcore FIRE book. As with many other bloggers their life has changed over time. For several years she bought zero clothing for herself as a detox from being a fashionista. Now she's back to buying a sensible amount of clothing for a SAHM. She remains (apparently?) open about what they spend which I find interesting. Lots of lessons to be learned for people who need to cut back spending.
I think what she charges for a personal consultation is pretty crazy.
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This also reminds me of the trend for very wealthy people (Sam Bankman Fried, Buffett) to show off their folksy middle class preferences to distract from their actual circumstances. With his $400k/ yr income, Pete could fall off a ladder and pay out of pocket for all his healthcare and still be rich, not exactly what most ‘middle class’ families experience. Maybe they are blind to their privilege, but it is disrespectful to their audience to call themselves middle class. I’m sure the ‘middle class police’ will be called upon for saying this though:)
I don't know what class is anymore. I thought 60K was a good middle class income, but when I was investigating healthcare in my state, I found that the state considers that low income and we are eligible for Medicaid and free college. Who knew?
Yeah, it's one of the most ambiguous words to use because there are so many definitions. And US definitions seem to focus solely on income/wealth and the income/wealth of your neighbors while many (Western) definitions outside the US usually cross income/wealth with education, career, how you invest/ownership of capital or lack thereof, how you dress, how you talk, hobbies, etc.
I'm glad most societies aren't as rigidly divided anymore (and thus, the "social" part of 'social class' has been dropped in parlance) but it seems like it'd be easier if we just called them 'income percentiles' or some related term with 'income' or 'wealth' in the name if the focus is purely on income/wealth.
But there is something almost beguiling in a way about the term class from a psychosocial POV. Even if the focus is mainly on income, you'll see all types of people who make loads of money have a hard time admitting they're upper class and will just call themselves upper-middle. Why join the upper class even in name only and feel responsible for social problems or add whatever proverbial target to your back that the "upper class" has that the upper middle somehow does not? And conversely on the lower end of the seemingly endless middle class spectrum, it seems to feel better to consider yourself middle class or lower middle class as opposed to lower class. Your example of qualifying for a social welfare program is a good one. Middle class people are hardworking who do not suck at the government's teat - that's a lower class type of behavior or so the story goes. A meaningless term with meaning!
I always prefer the term "income" rather then "class". It's factual based on average incomes in the US without any of the social class aspect attached. Joe-Bob the plumber with only a high school education might pull down a couple hundred K a year but attends tractor pulls and swills cheap beer where as a teacher with an MA may only earn $50k or less but drinks finebwines at art gallery openings.
Stereotyping big time of course but in the US I think we should use income. Plumber earns $200k and is high income. Teacher earns $50k and is lower middle income.
"What is the median household income in the US in 2023?
The average median household income in the United States was $67,521, but most states range between $50,000—$90,000, with few outliers. Learn more about the average income of each state by browsing the data in the charts.
https://wisevoter.com › state-rankings
Average Income by State 2023 - Wisevoter"
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Folks, these bloggers don't owe us anything including regular posts and total transparency. Post #600 will not be as frequent or insightful as #100. Get what you will from them and disregard the rest. Enjoy their back catalogues as where they were 10 years ago may be more aligned with where you are now. There are a wealth of blogs out there. Find what fits your your interests, needs, side gigs, and growth areas. Run your own numbers. Find ideas and inspiration. Take off your retirement police badges and make progress on your journey. Don't get pulled into ERN vs Millennial Revolution or arguments about what exactly is in a savings rate calculation.
My list is:
- MMM: you all know
- JLCollins: stock series et al
- Go Curry Cracker and MadFientist: number crunching for things like tax optimization, Roth vs. Trad, 529s, etc; credit card churning. They haven't posted much informational content in years and I don't care as the old stuff is still helpful.
- 1500 Days: DIY and self-deprecating humor
- Frugalwoods: old-school frugality (e.g., sodastream hack) and homesteading
- Root of Good: frugal family early retirement and travel
- Profit Greenly: underrated blog for energy ROI and urban planning
I don't read everything. For instance, I know most case studies are worthless, especially on Frugalwoods and Millennial Revolution, as I can't stand that they don't bother to ask the poster follow up questions and just make assumptions.
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Folks, these bloggers don't owe us anything including regular posts and total transparency. Post #600 will not be as frequent or insightful as #100. Get what you will from them and disregard the rest. Enjoy their back catalogues as where they were 10 years ago may be more aligned with where you are now. There are a wealth of blogs out there. Find what fits your your interests, needs, side gigs, and growth areas. Run your own numbers. Find ideas and inspiration. Take off your retirement police badges and make progress on your journey. Don't get pulled into ERN vs Millennial Revolution or arguments about what exactly is in a savings rate calculation.
My list is:
- MMM: you all know
- JLCollins: stock series et al
- Go Curry Cracker and MadFientist: number crunching for things like tax optimization, Roth vs. Trad, 529s, etc; credit card churning. They haven't posted much informational content in years and I don't care as the old stuff is still helpful.
- 1500 Days: DIY and self-deprecating humor
- Frugalwoods: old-school frugality (e.g., sodastream hack) and homesteading
- Root of Good: frugal family early retirement and travel
- Profit Greenly: underrated blog for energy ROI and urban planning
I don't read everything. For instance, I know most case studies are worthless, especially on Frugalwoods and Millennial Revolution, as I can't stand that they don't bother to ask the poster follow up questions and just make assumptions.
And we don't owe them to like what they say and how they say it.
I'm pretty sure I'm allowed to find what someone says misleading. I'm not demanding anything of the person, I just hold a relatively benign, not particularly impassioned opinion that the way certain information was conveyer definitely felt to me to be misleading.
I don't think she's a monster, I don't think her blog or book were evil, I don't think she should immediately start posting every detail of her personal life. I just think she intentionally made her family sound a certain way because she knew it would resonate with more people.
And I get why people were annoyed by that.
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Folks, these bloggers don't owe us anything including regular posts and total transparency. Post #600 will not be as frequent or insightful as #100. Get what you will from them and disregard the rest. Enjoy their back catalogues as where they were 10 years ago may be more aligned with where you are now. There are a wealth of blogs out there. Find what fits your your interests, needs, side gigs, and growth areas. Run your own numbers. Find ideas and inspiration. Take off your retirement police badges and make progress on your journey. Don't get pulled into ERN vs Millennial Revolution or arguments about what exactly is in a savings rate calculation.
My list is:
- MMM: you all know
- JLCollins: stock series et al
- Go Curry Cracker and MadFientist: number crunching for things like tax optimization, Roth vs. Trad, 529s, etc; credit card churning. They haven't posted much informational content in years and I don't care as the old stuff is still helpful.
- 1500 Days: DIY and self-deprecating humor
- Frugalwoods: old-school frugality (e.g., sodastream hack) and homesteading
- Root of Good: frugal family early retirement and travel
- Profit Greenly: underrated blog for energy ROI and urban planning
I don't read everything. For instance, I know most case studies are worthless, especially on Frugalwoods and Millennial Revolution, as I can't stand that they don't bother to ask the poster follow up questions and just make assumptions.
And we don't owe them to like what they say and how they say it.
I'm pretty sure I'm allowed to find what someone says misleading. I'm not demanding anything of the person, I just hold a relatively benign, not particularly impassioned opinion that the way certain information was conveyer definitely felt to me to be misleading.
I don't think she's a monster, I don't think her blog or book were evil, I don't think she should immediately start posting every detail of her personal life. I just think she intentionally made her family sound a certain way because she knew it would resonate with more people.
And I get why people were annoyed by that.
Testify!
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People making big money working for a non-profit?
They need to take a look at themselves in the mirror.
Its not morally or ethically acceptable, in my world.
I think FW are sickening, and do not represent my version of the FIRE movement.
Harsh.
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People making big money working for a non-profit?
They need to take a look at themselves in the mirror.
Its not morally or ethically acceptable, in my world.
I think FW are sickening, and do not represent my version of the FIRE movement.
Harsh.
In the real world you need money to attract talent. If you want untalented asshats to work for your non-profit, pay them nothing.
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Folks, these bloggers don't owe us anything including regular posts and total transparency.
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Did you think I was trying to track down Jeremy in order to demand a blog post?
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why the name go curry cracker?
sounds more food oriented....
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why the name go curry cracker?
sounds more food oriented....
Somewhere on the blog, he said they started using the phrase while they were on a trip and it just kind of stuck. I'm too lazy to look it up.
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why the name go curry cracker?
sounds more food oriented....
Somewhere on the blog, he said they started using the phrase while they were on a trip and it just kind of stuck. I'm too lazy to look it up.
It was their rallying cry during a hiking trip, I think. They would put a curry paste on a cracker and it would give them a boost to keep going.
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I've followed the Frugalwoods since before they moved to Vermont. I never considered it a FIRE blog. More of a frugality, lifestyle blog. I read the book awhile back (won it on RoG) and it seemed a memore of their life rather than a hardcore FIRE book. As with many other bloggers their life has changed over time. For several years she bought zero clothing for herself as a detox from being a fashionista. Now she's back to buying a sensible amount of clothing for a SAHM. She remains (apparently?) open about what they spend which I find interesting. Lots of lessons to be learned for people who need to cut back spending.
I think what she charges for a personal consultation is pretty crazy.
That's an interesting take. I'd argue they aren't remotely frugal. The woman used to post their monthly spending in big 30,000-word posts littered with credit card ads and referral links. She stopped doing it (possibly for reasons that may become apparent), but if you take their last 12 months, their actual spend was $71,600. For middle of nowhere Vermont. My lazy googling says median household income in VT is a tad over $67K, so they're spending thousands more than the average family brings in before taxes and calling it the simple life? Maybe it's all lifestyle, but I kinda doubt anyone would pay FW $1500 to learn how to tap a maple tree or build a fence.
At best, it's marketing the unremarkable.
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Part of the Frugalwoods reticence may have been caused by the fact that Nate was pulling down huge bucks...working for a nonprofit.
If he's making that kind of money, what insane amounts of money are the higher-ups making? He may have been contractually obligated not to reveal his salary, particularly on a public blog. If so, why kill the Golden Goose?
...
Non-profit leaders can earn millions per year, particularly non-profit hospital/healthcare systems. Some outfit called Sentara Healthcare paid their CEO $33 million last year. I suppose the rest of executive leadership there scrimps by on $5-10 million per year.
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I've followed the Frugalwoods since before they moved to Vermont. I never considered it a FIRE blog. More of a frugality, lifestyle blog. I read the book awhile back (won it on RoG) and it seemed a memore of their life rather than a hardcore FIRE book. As with many other bloggers their life has changed over time. For several years she bought zero clothing for herself as a detox from being a fashionista. Now she's back to buying a sensible amount of clothing for a SAHM. She remains (apparently?) open about what they spend which I find interesting. Lots of lessons to be learned for people who need to cut back spending.
I think what she charges for a personal consultation is pretty crazy.
That's an interesting take. I'd argue they aren't remotely frugal. The woman used to post their monthly spending in big 30,000-word posts littered with credit card ads and referral links. She stopped doing it (possibly for reasons that may become apparent), but if you take their last 12 months, their actual spend was $71,600. For middle of nowhere Vermont. My lazy googling says median household income in VT is a tad over $67K, so they're spending thousands more than the average family brings in before taxes and calling it the simple life? Maybe it's all lifestyle, but I kinda doubt anyone would pay FW $1500 to learn how to tap a maple tree or build a fence.
At best, it's marketing the unremarkable.
Jeez, the FW’s are spending $72,000 annually? That is luxe living where they are based.
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Part of the Frugalwoods reticence may have been caused by the fact that Nate was pulling down huge bucks...working for a nonprofit.
If he's making that kind of money, what insane amounts of money are the higher-ups making? He may have been contractually obligated not to reveal his salary, particularly on a public blog. If so, why kill the Golden Goose?
This came to a head when the book was published.
I still maintain that living as frugally as they did once they started making big money took extraordinary amounts of self-discipline. I find that admirable. The derision they face seems unwarranted. They avoided hedonistic adaption. Isn't that a key tenet of MMM?
Yeah, if they said "hey, we made a ton of money, saved 50/70/90% of it in a HCOL area and plan or did FIRE" would have been fine....buuuuutttttty what they said was....
"We are are normal simple folk that have worked for non-profits and never made "Banker" salaries and scrimped and saved and FIREd to a farm we bought"
Except that the non-profit was a political activist firm (not really the do gooder type that most people think of when they hear non-profit) where he made $300k. Oh, and a little FIRE detail that they left out early on is that he kept making his $300k working from home while shilling their FIRE blog.
If they would have been honest and just said we are at a point where we can FIRE, but we are able to keep a high paying job AND buy our dream farm bc of work from home and just said we plan to live our best life.....that would have been fine.
I am in the camp that they were truly and intentionally dishonest ad deceitful and once discovered I couldn't stomach their blog. I have no tolerance for such a lack of integrity.
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I do appreciate Pete’s transparency over the years, but even he has become tripped up by the Ramit Sethi learn to spend more lifestyle. It would’ve been a much different experience reading the blog and knowing MMM would one day be singing the praises of buying a new Tesla and disparaging his no longer necessary frugal habits…
Frugality for most is a means to cure a disease that is known as unsatisfying work. Once cured if one's means increase substantially even those that are truly frugal or environmentally oriented are not immune to finding ways to spend all that extra money.
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It's not talked about that much but precious few FIRE influencers (finfluencers?) live below the median of their area. Let's review.
MMM + wife were making roughly 200k in 2007, which CPI adjusts to 300k today (!!). The much-vaunted MMM household spending target of 25k in 2010 CPI adjusts to about 36k today, plus imputed rent of a house in longmont (2k/mo) is a realistic $60k of income. There's also that rental house they had for a while. That's at or higher than the median household income in Colorado.
Root of Good maxed out an income of roughly 120k in 2011 or 2012, which CPI adjusts to $170k today, in North Carolina. With a spending target of 40k (even today!) and imputed rent of a paid off house in NC (2k/mo minimum) that's a $65k of income. Median household income in NC is $62k.
Go Curry Cracker gives fewer income details but he was making a good tech salary during his working years, their blog income has been pretty higher, and he's had no qualms about adjusting his lifestyle to match his assets.
The Mad Fientist was making a software salary, had no kids, and his wife kept working. WifeFI.
RetireBy40 made tech salary and also had a wife continuing to work.
1500 Days has a recklessly volatile portfolio, got lucky in a lot of ways, and definitely spends a median+ household income.
Millennial-Revolution, despite my distaste for their blog, might be one of the few finfluencers who actually live a true below-median-household-income lifestyle. But they also pay for it - no house, no car, no pets, no possessions that don't fit in a suitcase.
It's the dirty little FIRE secret: everybody brags about their frugality but in reality the most common situation is someone making 3x the median salary of their area, living on 1.1x the median salary, and banking the rest. That's a 60+% savings rate, and provides them with a median standard of living after retiring.
The real genius of the FIRE principles is the demonstrable benefit of making modest lifestyle concessions allowing astute investing that provides a snowball effect far bigger than a layperson would ever suspect. However, to save money you need to make money, the more the better (shocking!).
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It's not talked about that much but precious few FIRE influencers (finfluencers?) live below the median of their area. Let's review.
MMM + wife were making roughly 200k in 2007, which CPI adjusts to 300k today (!!). The much-vaunted MMM household spending target of 25k in 2010 CPI adjusts to about 36k today, plus imputed rent of a house in longmont (2k/mo) is a realistic $60k of income. There's also that rental house they had for a while. That's at or higher than the median household income in Colorado.
Root of Good maxed out an income of roughly 120k in 2011 or 2012, which CPI adjusts to $170k today, in North Carolina. With a spending target of 40k (even today!) and imputed rent of a paid off house in NC (2k/mo minimum) that's a $65k of income. Median household income in NC is $62k.
Go Curry Cracker gives fewer income details but he was making a good tech salary during his working years, their blog income has been pretty higher, and he's had no qualms about adjusting his lifestyle to match his assets.
The Mad Fientist was making a software salary, had no kids, and his wife kept working. WifeFI.
RetireBy40 made tech salary and also had a wife continuing to work.
1500 Days has a recklessly volatile portfolio, got lucky in a lot of ways, and definitely spends a median+ household income.
Millennial-Revolution, despite my distaste for their blog, might be one of the few finfluencers who actually live a true below-median-household-income lifestyle. But they also pay for it - no house, no car, no pets, no possessions that don't fit in a suitcase.
It's the dirty little FIRE secret: everybody brags about their frugality but in reality the most common situation is someone making 3x the median salary of their area, living on 1.1x the median salary, and banking the rest. That's a 60+% savings rate, and provides them with a median standard of living after retiring.
The real genius of the FIRE principles is the demonstrable benefit of making modest lifestyle concessions allowing astute investing that provides a snowball effect far bigger than a layperson would ever suspect. However, to save money you need to make money, the more the better (shocking!).
This is good, I appreciate the breakdown. And it seems consistent with my anecdotal experience. Our combined household income is at the low 6 figures (at senior positions) so saving 60% or more of it is really doing "a thing", and often hard choices have to be made at our income level. With that said, I don't know if I would have started saving so aggressively ten years ago if not for these blogs (MMM being the one I followed religiously). I'm an "ish" type thinking (e.g. I'm looking to save 1.5mil-ish), I know that the perfection of math isn't always clean when messy life is involved. But if I l read your assessment about these bloggers before embarking on this journey, I may have been disheartened and never started (or I guess there is a chance my last 10 years could have be better, who knows). I'm still going to amplify the value of these blogs regardless of the salaries, budgets, and lifestyle creep of the bloggers.
But yeah, you are amazing for doing this math and laying this out for us.
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@VanillaGorilla , why the distaste for Millennial Revolution's blog, and can you elaborate on their needlessly reckless portfolio? I've been reading their blog for years and have always found it fairly inoffensive. I liked their book, too. I'm kind of oblivious to people's portfolio breakdowns, so I never really noticed anything unusual about theirs. I'm curious about your perspective.
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I agree that the examples where people earn well above the median income before FI and retire to a lifestyle at or above the median are much more prevalent, but I'd hold up Jacob of ERE as an example of a very profoundly influential voice early in the history of this community who really did (and as far as I know still does) live below* the median income of his area both before and after achieving FI.
*On the order of $14,000/year for his household of two in the 2008 bay area (~$21,000/year in today's dollars).
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@VanillaGorilla , why the distaste for Millennial Revolution's blog, and can you elaborate on their needlessly reckless portfolio? I've been reading their blog for years and have always found it fairly inoffensive. I liked their book, too. I'm kind of oblivious to people's portfolio breakdowns, so I never really noticed anything unusual about theirs. I'm curious about your perspective.
Sure! I try not to beat on people on the internet unduly, but I can try to be civil.
It's 1500 Days that has a reckless portfolio - but it worked for him, he got rich off Facebook and Tesla!
MR also has dubious investing ideas. The "Yield Shield" portfolio idea adds high yield investments trying to build a portfolio that yields enough dividends to live off. They sell this as a solution to sequence of returns risk. The problem is that it doesn't work, because high yield investments are more volatile than normal and experience greater drawdowns during market crashes. Karsten Jeske has a nice piece on it. It works worse than a normal 60/40 or similar asset allocation, historically.
I find their arguments against home ownership infantile and unrealistic - insulting homeowners as "homeboners" and calculating the costs of homeownership over unrealistically short time periods. They published one analysis comparing renting to owning over three years. It's just not a reasonable comparison. Sure, if you need a place to live for three years then renting will almost aways come out ahead due to transaction costs. That's obvious. There are a lot more nuanced voices around the FIRE ecosystem that discuss the renting vs owning question. Our own @chasesfish has shared a compelling experience, for example.
To each their own. MR wants to travel the world permanently on a tiny budget; I want to own a house and a car and a dog and more than can fit in a suitcase. There's nothing wrong with either, but there's something wrong with ad hominem attacks against those who adopt different - and sometimes superior! - strategies to your own.
I found their story very impressive many years ago, and they certainly offer a great example of a leanfire alternative lifestyle. I've just realized that I'm aiming for a much different standard of living than theirs, so their content is increasingly irrelevant to me, and their abrasive style is more off-putting. Now that they're parents I will be very interested to see if their ideal lifestyle changes!
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Part of the Frugalwoods reticence may have been caused by the fact that Nate was pulling down huge bucks...working for a nonprofit.
If he's making that kind of money, what insane amounts of money are the higher-ups making? He may have been contractually obligated not to reveal his salary, particularly on a public blog. If so, why kill the Golden Goose?
This came to a head when the book was published.
I still maintain that living as frugally as they did once they started making big money took extraordinary amounts of self-discipline. I find that admirable. The derision they face seems unwarranted. They avoided hedonistic adaption. Isn't that a key tenet of MMM?
Yeah, if they said "hey, we made a ton of money, saved 50/70/90% of it in a HCOL area and plan or did FIRE" would have been fine....buuuuutttttty what they said was....
"We are are normal simple folk that have worked for non-profits and never made "Banker" salaries and scrimped and saved and FIREd to a farm we bought"
Except that the non-profit was a political activist firm (not really the do gooder type that most people think of when they hear non-profit) where he made $300k. Oh, and a little FIRE detail that they left out early on is that he kept making his $300k working from home while shilling their FIRE blog.
If they would have been honest and just said we are at a point where we can FIRE, but we are able to keep a high paying job AND buy our dream farm bc of work from home and just said we plan to live our best life.....that would have been fine.
I am in the camp that they were truly and intentionally dishonest a[n]d deceitful and once discovered I couldn't stomach their blog. I have no tolerance for such a lack of integrity.
That's pretty harsh, IMO.
The FWs didn't start out making huge salaries. The fact that they ended up there and were somewhat circumspect about their actual income isn't worthy of that much vitriol, IMO.
It's kind of the way we think Dave Ramsey's advice is spot-on for people with hair-on-fire debt emergencies and pure crap for investment purposes. Liz's blog, especially her reader case studies, have helped a lot of people, just as DR has. Just because mustachians don't need her spendy financial advice, doesn't mean it won't prove helpful for some people.
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I agree that the examples where people earn well above the median income before FI and retire to a lifestyle at or above the median are much more prevalent, but I'd hold up Jacob of ERE as an example of a very profoundly influential voice early in the history of this community who really did (and as far as I know still does) live below* the median income of his area both before and after achieving FI.
*On the order of $14,000/year for his household of two in the 2008 bay area (~$21,000/year in today's dollars).
I believe it was $14k per person, or $28k for a household of two. It's still impressive.
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@VanillaGorilla , why the distaste for Millennial Revolution's blog, and can you elaborate on their needlessly reckless portfolio? I've been reading their blog for years and have always found it fairly inoffensive. I liked their book, too. I'm kind of oblivious to people's portfolio breakdowns, so I never really noticed anything unusual about theirs. I'm curious about your perspective.
Sure! I try not to beat on people on the internet unduly, but I can try to be civil.
It's 1500 Days that has a reckless portfolio - but it worked for him, he got rich off Facebook and Tesla!
MR also has dubious investing ideas. The "Yield Shield" portfolio idea adds high yield investments trying to build a portfolio that yields enough dividends to live off. They sell this as a solution to sequence of returns risk. The problem is that it doesn't work, because high yield investments are more volatile than normal and experience greater drawdowns during market crashes. Karsten Jeske has a nice piece on it. It works worse than a normal 60/40 or similar asset allocation, historically.
I find their arguments against home ownership infantile and unrealistic - insulting homeowners as "homeboners" and calculating the costs of homeownership over unrealistically short time periods. They published one analysis comparing renting to owning over three years. It's just not a reasonable comparison. Sure, if you need a place to live for three years then renting will almost aways come out ahead due to transaction costs. That's obvious. There are a lot more nuanced voices around the FIRE ecosystem that discuss the renting vs owning question. Our own @chasesfish has shared a compelling experience, for example.
To each their own. MR wants to travel the world permanently on a tiny budget; I want to own a house and a car and a dog and more than can fit in a suitcase. There's nothing wrong with either, but there's something wrong with ad hominem attacks against those who adopt different - and sometimes superior! - strategies to your own.
I found their story very impressive many years ago, and they certainly offer a great example of a leanfire alternative lifestyle. I've just realized that I'm aiming for a much different standard of living than theirs, so their content is increasingly irrelevant to me, and their abrasive style is more off-putting. Now that they're parents I will be very interested to see if their ideal lifestyle changes!
Ahhhh. I see. Yeah, I've read their "yield shield" theory and always been like...um I don't think that's a magic solution to sequence of return risk, but it doesn't really matter that much to me because I'm not interested in retiring early (although I love reading about other people who do, clearly).
And the railing against home-ownership always just seemed kinda quirky and funny to me--you kind of need a "hot take" voice on that subject in order to catch people's attention. It IS wise to run the numbers and don't be overly emotional in the decision to rent vs buy. I live in a real estate market that is almost as bananas as the one in Canada (Honolulu), and I'm well-aware of the pitfalls of buying a house. Guess what? I bought a house (a condo and then a townhouse, actually). I'm married and I have two kids and a stable job and it's pretty clear that owning a reasonable home relative to our income has been a wise financial move.
But it made perfect sense that a DINK/FIRE couple would have no use for homeownership. And I'm not sure it pays to be subtle about your opinions on a blog meant for popular consumption.
Definitely should be interesting how/if things change for them with the new baby.
Thanks for sharing!
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Part of the Frugalwoods reticence may have been caused by the fact that Nate was pulling down huge bucks...working for a nonprofit.
If he's making that kind of money, what insane amounts of money are the higher-ups making? He may have been contractually obligated not to reveal his salary, particularly on a public blog. If so, why kill the Golden Goose?
...
Non-profit leaders can earn millions per year, particularly non-profit hospital/healthcare systems. Some outfit called Sentara Healthcare paid their CEO $33 million last year. I suppose the rest of executive leadership there scrimps by on $5-10 million per year.
This is why I don't donate to "non-profits". Yeah they are non-profit after they pay themselves, any company can be a non-profit if it just pays its employees more. Its really the mission of the organization then that is the defining organizations as non-profit, they are essentially buisnesses with a very odd income (donations). So much better to overpay someone for some work or donate product or do volunteer work. Giving dollars to organizations with highly compensated employees is for the birds.
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I agree that the examples where people earn well above the median income before FI and retire to a lifestyle at or above the median are much more prevalent, but I'd hold up Jacob of ERE as an example of a very profoundly influential voice early in the history of this community who really did (and as far as I know still does) live below* the median income of his area both before and after achieving FI.
*On the order of $14,000/year for his household of two in the 2008 bay area (~$21,000/year in today's dollars).
I believe it was $14k per person, or $28k for a household of two. It's still impressive.
There was definitely pushback about the point that he usually talked about his per person budget rather than household budget but the per person (at least as stated in his blog at the time (https://earlyretirementextreme.com/how-i-live-on-7000-per-year.html)) was definitely $7k/person.
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I agree that the examples where people earn well above the median income before FI and retire to a lifestyle at or above the median are much more prevalent, but I'd hold up Jacob of ERE as an example of a very profoundly influential voice early in the history of this community who really did (and as far as I know still does) live below* the median income of his area both before and after achieving FI.
*On the order of $14,000/year for his household of two in the 2008 bay area (~$21,000/year in today's dollars).
I believe it was $14k per person, or $28k for a household of two. It's still impressive.
There was definitely pushback about the point that he usually talked about his per person budget rather than household budget but the per person (at least as stated in his blog at the time (https://earlyretirementextreme.com/how-i-live-on-7000-per-year.html)) was definitely $7k/person.
Ah, you're right. I always doubled his budget whenever I read a post about it.
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It's not talked about that much but precious few FIRE influencers (finfluencers?) live below the median of their area. Let's review.
MMM + wife were making roughly 200k in 2007, which CPI adjusts to 300k today (!!). The much-vaunted MMM household spending target of 25k in 2010 CPI adjusts to about 36k today, plus imputed rent of a house in longmont (2k/mo) is a realistic $60k of income. There's also that rental house they had for a while. That's at or higher than the median household income in Colorado.
Root of Good maxed out an income of roughly 120k in 2011 or 2012, which CPI adjusts to $170k today, in North Carolina. With a spending target of 40k (even today!) and imputed rent of a paid off house in NC (2k/mo minimum) that's a $65k of income. Median household income in NC is $62k.
Go Curry Cracker gives fewer income details but he was making a good tech salary during his working years, their blog income has been pretty higher, and he's had no qualms about adjusting his lifestyle to match his assets.
The Mad Fientist was making a software salary, had no kids, and his wife kept working. WifeFI.
RetireBy40 made tech salary and also had a wife continuing to work.
1500 Days has a recklessly volatile portfolio, got lucky in a lot of ways, and definitely spends a median+ household income.
Millennial-Revolution, despite my distaste for their blog, might be one of the few finfluencers who actually live a true below-median-household-income lifestyle. But they also pay for it - no house, no car, no pets, no possessions that don't fit in a suitcase.
It's the dirty little FIRE secret: everybody brags about their frugality but in reality the most common situation is someone making 3x the median salary of their area, living on 1.1x the median salary, and banking the rest. That's a 60+% savings rate, and provides them with a median standard of living after retiring.
The real genius of the FIRE principles is the demonstrable benefit of making modest lifestyle concessions allowing astute investing that provides a snowball effect far bigger than a layperson would ever suspect. However, to save money you need to make money, the more the better (shocking!).
Someone should do a reality show and put all these nuts on there together and let them battle out who is legit and who is full of nonsense.
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It's not talked about that much but precious few FIRE influencers (finfluencers?) live below the median of their area. Let's review.
MMM + wife were making roughly 200k in 2007, which CPI adjusts to 300k today (!!). The much-vaunted MMM household spending target of 25k in 2010 CPI adjusts to about 36k today, plus imputed rent of a house in longmont (2k/mo) is a realistic $60k of income. There's also that rental house they had for a while. That's at or higher than the median household income in Colorado.
Root of Good maxed out an income of roughly 120k in 2011 or 2012, which CPI adjusts to $170k today, in North Carolina. With a spending target of 40k (even today!) and imputed rent of a paid off house in NC (2k/mo minimum) that's a $65k of income. Median household income in NC is $62k.
Go Curry Cracker gives fewer income details but he was making a good tech salary during his working years, their blog income has been pretty higher, and he's had no qualms about adjusting his lifestyle to match his assets.
The Mad Fientist was making a software salary, had no kids, and his wife kept working. WifeFI.
RetireBy40 made tech salary and also had a wife continuing to work.
1500 Days has a recklessly volatile portfolio, got lucky in a lot of ways, and definitely spends a median+ household income.
Millennial-Revolution, despite my distaste for their blog, might be one of the few finfluencers who actually live a true below-median-household-income lifestyle. But they also pay for it - no house, no car, no pets, no possessions that don't fit in a suitcase.
It's the dirty little FIRE secret: everybody brags about their frugality but in reality the most common situation is someone making 3x the median salary of their area, living on 1.1x the median salary, and banking the rest. That's a 60+% savings rate, and provides them with a median standard of living after retiring.
The real genius of the FIRE principles is the demonstrable benefit of making modest lifestyle concessions allowing astute investing that provides a snowball effect far bigger than a layperson would ever suspect. However, to save money you need to make money, the more the better (shocking!).
Someone should do a reality show and put all these nuts on there together and let them battle out who is legit and who is full of nonsense.
What makes these people noteworthy is not their frugality, although most were objectively quite frugal in the beginning of their FIRE journey and only expanded their lifestyles after they were FIRE, but their delayed gratification even when they made good money.
Most consumers in the US spend the vast majority of the money they make, no matter what their income level is. You make more, you spend more. These people were able to make more and not inflate their lifestyles for 5-10 years to build up a stash. Your savings rate is the only thing that matters however you get there.
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It's not talked about that much but precious few FIRE influencers (finfluencers?) live below the median of their area. Let's review.
MMM + wife were making roughly 200k in 2007, which CPI adjusts to 300k today (!!). The much-vaunted MMM household spending target of 25k in 2010 CPI adjusts to about 36k today, plus imputed rent of a house in longmont (2k/mo) is a realistic $60k of income. There's also that rental house they had for a while. That's at or higher than the median household income in Colorado.
Root of Good maxed out an income of roughly 120k in 2011 or 2012, which CPI adjusts to $170k today, in North Carolina. With a spending target of 40k (even today!) and imputed rent of a paid off house in NC (2k/mo minimum) that's a $65k of income. Median household income in NC is $62k.
Go Curry Cracker gives fewer income details but he was making a good tech salary during his working years, their blog income has been pretty higher, and he's had no qualms about adjusting his lifestyle to match his assets.
The Mad Fientist was making a software salary, had no kids, and his wife kept working. WifeFI.
RetireBy40 made tech salary and also had a wife continuing to work.
1500 Days has a recklessly volatile portfolio, got lucky in a lot of ways, and definitely spends a median+ household income.
Millennial-Revolution, despite my distaste for their blog, might be one of the few finfluencers who actually live a true below-median-household-income lifestyle. But they also pay for it - no house, no car, no pets, no possessions that don't fit in a suitcase.
It's the dirty little FIRE secret: everybody brags about their frugality but in reality the most common situation is someone making 3x the median salary of their area, living on 1.1x the median salary, and banking the rest. That's a 60+% savings rate, and provides them with a median standard of living after retiring.
The real genius of the FIRE principles is the demonstrable benefit of making modest lifestyle concessions allowing astute investing that provides a snowball effect far bigger than a layperson would ever suspect. However, to save money you need to make money, the more the better (shocking!).
Someone should do a reality show and put all these nuts on there together and let them battle out who is legit and who is full of nonsense.
What makes these people noteworthy is not their frugality, although most were objectively quite frugal in the beginning of their FIRE journey and only expanded their lifestyles after they were FIRE, but their delayed gratification even when they made good money.
Most consumers in the US spend the vast majority of the money they make, no matter what their income level is. You make more, you spend more. These people were able to make more and not inflate their lifestyles for 5-10 years to build up a stash. Your savings rate is the only thing that matters however you get there.
A lot of them are also quite transparent about this as well.
MMM wrote multiple times that he feels his spending lifestyle is highly luxurious and absolutely not extreme. His points were that a luxurious middle class lifestyle can be purchased quite easily for a lot less than many people spend to live the same quality of life.
He also makes the point that a focus on frugality can often improve your quality of life because often free/cheap options are more active and fun than their expensive counterparts.
It's when people say out of touch or misleading things that people get put off, which like FW, MMM has absolutely been guilty of doing himself.
It's hard to be a lifestyle/financial guru and strike the right balance of transparency, honesty, social awareness, while not alienating your audience.
Some like MMM take in some of the criticism and try to adjust to some degree, some like FW seem to just pull back, some like FS just double the fuck down and basically become epic trolls.
There's a good reason why the majority of the successful frugality blogs are from high earners though, and that's because the high earners have the more exceptional stories. There are plenty of low income folks out there being frugal as hell, and a bunch of them writing about it, but those writers aren't going to become famous.
The high earners get the most attention because of MMM's whole point, that you *can* live an enviably wonderful quality of life while saving a ton of your income if you make enough money.
He points out that for lower income folks, frugality is even more important, but the outcomes are less enviable, so that's not what gets national headlines and millions of readers.
The frugality/FIRE blogs that succeed are from high income folks who spend a fair amount not because that's what matters most, but because those are the blogs that folks find most entertaining to read.
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1500 Days has a recklessly volatile portfolio, got lucky in a lot of ways, and definitely spends a median+ household income.
IIRC Mindy also started working again around the time Carl retired and they have continued to DIY rehab/flip houses in retirement. They were on Ramit's show earlier this year and it was pretty interesting.
It's not talked about that much but precious few FIRE influencers (finfluencers?) live below the median of their area. Let's review.
MMM + wife were making roughly 200k in 2007, which CPI adjusts to 300k today (!!). The much-vaunted MMM household spending target of 25k in 2010 CPI adjusts to about 36k today, plus imputed rent of a house in longmont (2k/mo) is a realistic $60k of income. There's also that rental house they had for a while. That's at or higher than the median household income in Colorado.
Root of Good maxed out an income of roughly 120k in 2011 or 2012, which CPI adjusts to $170k today, in North Carolina. With a spending target of 40k (even today!) and imputed rent of a paid off house in NC (2k/mo minimum) that's a $65k of income. Median household income in NC is $62k.
Go Curry Cracker gives fewer income details but he was making a good tech salary during his working years, their blog income has been pretty higher, and he's had no qualms about adjusting his lifestyle to match his assets.
The Mad Fientist was making a software salary, had no kids, and his wife kept working. WifeFI.
RetireBy40 made tech salary and also had a wife continuing to work.
1500 Days has a recklessly volatile portfolio, got lucky in a lot of ways, and definitely spends a median+ household income.
Millennial-Revolution, despite my distaste for their blog, might be one of the few finfluencers who actually live a true below-median-household-income lifestyle. But they also pay for it - no house, no car, no pets, no possessions that don't fit in a suitcase.
It's the dirty little FIRE secret: everybody brags about their frugality but in reality the most common situation is someone making 3x the median salary of their area, living on 1.1x the median salary, and banking the rest. That's a 60+% savings rate, and provides them with a median standard of living after retiring.
The real genius of the FIRE principles is the demonstrable benefit of making modest lifestyle concessions allowing astute investing that provides a snowball effect far bigger than a layperson would ever suspect. However, to save money you need to make money, the more the better (shocking!).
Someone should do a reality show and put all these nuts on there together and let them battle out who is legit and who is full of nonsense.
What makes these people noteworthy is not their frugality, although most were objectively quite frugal in the beginning of their FIRE journey and only expanded their lifestyles after they were FIRE, but their delayed gratification even when they made good money.
Most consumers in the US spend the vast majority of the money they make, no matter what their income level is. You make more, you spend more. These people were able to make more and not inflate their lifestyles for 5-10 years to build up a stash. Your savings rate is the only thing that matters however you get there.
The interesting part is the same delayed gratification that allowed them to reach FIRE quickly has resulted in most of them sitting on huge nest eggs that they cannot bring themselves to spend. Frugality is great but at some point you shouldn't spend days DIYing a project that you do not enjoy.
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The interesting part is the same delayed gratification that allowed them to reach FIRE quickly has resulted in most of them sitting on huge nest eggs that they cannot bring themselves to spend. Frugality is great but at some point you shouldn't spend days DIYing a project that you do not enjoy.
At least the MMM version of frugality is about spending less and enjoying your life more. If you feel hard done by in some aspect of your life by your "frugal" aspirations it's really worth taking a look at that and seeing what's wrong that can be improved. If you are not enjoying most/a lot of what you do voluntarily than it's time for a change. If there is some occasional thing that's not fun I'd just harden up and get it taken care of.
In that context if you end up with a pile of money beyond what you planed on having there isn't some pent up urge to spend it you need to fulfill.
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The interesting part is the same delayed gratification that allowed them to reach FIRE quickly has resulted in most of them sitting on huge nest eggs that they cannot bring themselves to spend. Frugality is great but at some point you shouldn't spend days DIYing a project that you do not enjoy.
At least the MMM version of frugality is about spending less and enjoying your life more. If you feel hard done by in some aspect of your life by your "frugal" aspirations it's really worth taking a look at that and seeing what's wrong that can be improved. If you are not enjoying most/a lot of what you do voluntarily than it's time for a change. If there is some occasional thing that's not fun I'd just harden up and get it taken care of.
In that context if you end up with a pile of money beyond what you planed on having there isn't some pent up urge to spend it you need to fulfill.
Yeah, it's always been a major part of the messaging that it's all.about quality of life, the emphasis is always on being frugal, not cheap.
If you hate certain DIY jobs and have a giant pile of money, then DIYing yourself into misery is being cheap, not frugal.
If your money saving lifestyle is making you rich but miserable, you're doing something very wrong.
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Also MMM's target audience when he was first blogging was absolutely people making middle class and above incomes.
While still relevant, it was not remotely targeted towards people making below average incomes.
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@VanillaGorilla - I appreciate the mention...
I've been a long time follower of a bunch of the bloggers, have befriended a few of them (or friends of friends), and it's an interesting discussion here.
- I put MR in the camp of Ramit Sethi on home ownership. It's a combination of the cities they started in (Toronto and NY) being so unreasonable, it created this cult like hatred towards ownership. Then it kind of...becomes their thing. Compare that with JL Collins who doesn't like the economics of ownership, but understands consumption and owns one house and will likely own his second soon.
- Yes, FIRE is disproportionately skewered towards high income jobs that bring limited satisfaction, like coding and finance. My spouse described my job as "punching a bunch of things into a computer then...money!" and never understood why it paid 2x-3x more than her eight years of college to learn how to save animal's lives.
- In Carl's defense, for as insane as his portfolio is, they are mostly FI on the non-Tesla investments. Those were mostly $10,000 to $25,000 investments in 2014. The insane part is he doubled down late last year and won't sell that portion. Mindy also started making stupid money, not as the part time Bigger Pockets podcast person, but as a real estate agent around there and knowing so many people relocating to Longmont. They're just in the camp of 3x FI at this point and the reckless investments are all extra.
- I was never much of a reader of Jeremy, mainly because he's jokingly known as "Go Commie Cracker" in certain circles. Just a weird semi-political personality now, he earned his money, sits in a seven figure house in Sacramento, then puts out far left stuff on twitter and lets ghostwriters handle the blog. Nothing against that if it's your thing, but there's a limit to what I'll consume if you mix politics and money. Same applies to that former blog Our Next Life, it really went off the rails and it turns out they made super high incomes as political consultants.
- As a side note, Nate from Frugalwoods didn't work for a real "not for profit", he was an executive for Act Blue, which somehow has 501c3 status as the IT backbone/fundraising arm of the DNC. Unlike others though, I never found Frugalwoods to rub their political idology into others.
There are some great original FIRE bloggers that are genuine and great follows. Justin at Root of Good, Doug @ The Military Guide, and Karsten Jeske immediately come to mind.
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Part of the Frugalwoods reticence may have been caused by the fact that Nate was pulling down huge bucks...working for a nonprofit.
If he's making that kind of money, what insane amounts of money are the higher-ups making? He may have been contractually obligated not to reveal his salary, particularly on a public blog. If so, why kill the Golden Goose?
This came to a head when the book was published.
I still maintain that living as frugally as they did once they started making big money took extraordinary amounts of self-discipline. I find that admirable. The derision they face seems unwarranted. They avoided hedonistic adaption. Isn't that a key tenet of MMM?
This and the "Work Optional" Lady had the same issues.
They made stupidly high incomes working for arms of the Democratic National Committee then try to come off as moderate income professionals. There's stupidly high incomes in lobbying, fundraising, and winning elections. Reminds me of the biography of Alan Mulally, who saved Ford in 2011. Said he made more money as a K-Street lawyer in the 80s than he did as Ford CEO.
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Hello MMM forum! This is a hail mary, but I was wondering if anyone knows anything about why GoCurryCracker stopped posting abruptly after the last post (Getting Lucky (https://www.gocurrycracker.com/getting-lucky/)) on July 28th? They usually post at least monthly and this is also typically a hot time for blog income as well as their year end tax planning.
I can speculate, but maybe someone knows them in person or is in contact with them behind the scenes? Fingers crossed they are just busy in the same sense than Pete is and have put the blog on the back burner...
Jeremy's ghostwriter quit or it no longer was profitable to employ them to run the blog. Income from that format are on the decline. I have it from a good source he hasn't really been the writer for a while.
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Hello MMM forum! This is a hail mary, but I was wondering if anyone knows anything about why GoCurryCracker stopped posting abruptly after the last post (Getting Lucky (https://www.gocurrycracker.com/getting-lucky/)) on July 28th? They usually post at least monthly and this is also typically a hot time for blog income as well as their year end tax planning.
I can speculate, but maybe someone knows them in person or is in contact with them behind the scenes? Fingers crossed they are just busy in the same sense than Pete is and have put the blog on the back burner...
Jeremy's ghostwriter quit or it no longer was profitable to employ them to run the blog. Income from that format are on the decline. I have it from a good source he hasn't really been the writer for a while.
Thanks for weighing in Chasesfish. I knew GCC had paid 'guest posts' (that are clearly disclosed, such as this latest one (https://www.gocurrycracker.com/resort-report-point-grace-resort-turks-caicos/) was). I thought the other 'by Go Curry Cracker' posts were all him...
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...I knew GCC had paid 'guest posts' (that are clearly disclosed, such as this latest one (https://www.gocurrycracker.com/resort-report-point-grace-resort-turks-caicos/) was). I thought the other 'by Go Curry Cracker' posts were all him...
Ugh! This thing looks like, "I'm getting paid to write about this 'free' trip, so I better take pictures of absolutely everything." Barf.
I stopped reading the text when I got to the part about the "1,0000" square foot room.
No wonder GCC has dropped off my reading list.
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It's not talked about that much but precious few FIRE influencers (finfluencers?) live below the median of their area. Let's review.
Root of Good maxed out an income of roughly 120k in 2011 or 2012, which CPI adjusts to $170k today, in North Carolina. With a spending target of 40k (even today!) and imputed rent of a paid off house in NC (2k/mo minimum) that's a $65k of income. Median household income in NC is $62k.
I 100% agree with your premise that it is easier and more interesting to FIRE when making a lot of income and many folks after 10 years FIRE have either too much money, a new interest in work (or their spouse...I'm a future WifeFI), or something else. However, these folks are still living very counterculturally and have a lot of innovative and helpful things to share, even if they didn't get there on substitute teacher salaries. I'd love to have more moderate income examples.
I might quibble about Root of Good's expenses here. His $40k budget includes two kids taking college classes and substantial world travel with a family of five. That is very noteworthy! And the old imputed rent...very important to consider, but the story there is that they bought a small, cheap house a long time ago and have stayed in it and not had lifestyle inflation (I'd say their kitchen could use an update!). If you want to attribute $2k in imputed rent, fine, but you could instead use a $600??? mortgage payment if they had kept their 30 year mortgage.
But your point remains that from some perspective, these folks are only spending how "the other half lives".
@VanillaGorilla
- I was never much of a reader of Jeremy, mainly because he's jokingly known as "Go Commie Cracker" in certain circles. Just a weird semi-political personality now, he earned his money, sits in a seven figure house in Sacramento, then puts out far left stuff on twitter and lets ghostwriters handle the blog. Nothing against that if it's your thing, but there's a limit to what I'll consume if you mix politics and money.
There are some great original FIRE bloggers that are genuine and great follows. Justin at Root of Good, Doug @ The Military Guide, and Karsten Jeske immediately come to mind.
Like I posted a week or two ago, I think we can extract what value we can from these blogs and ignore the rest. GCC, for example, has some great "run the numbers" articles on foundational topics (Roth, 529, tax avoidance) from like 2015. He is a bit confrontational on twitter. He is also clearly running out of ideas/interest in the blog. He and others have turned the corner a bit into running their blogs like a business (likely from revenue declining from traditional approaches).
Do we demand altruism? Should they cover their webhosting costs? I would say that this doesn't compromise their blog necessarily (there are certainly blogs it has!), especially their earlier stuff written when they were going through it...if the numbers check out and apply to you! Start a new blog at the beginning, not the end!
And I approve of your recommendations for earnest writers. ERN loses me all the time, but it is nice to have a real pro in the space.
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...I knew GCC had paid 'guest posts' (that are clearly disclosed, such as this latest one (https://www.gocurrycracker.com/resort-report-point-grace-resort-turks-caicos/) was). I thought the other 'by Go Curry Cracker' posts were all him...
Ugh! This thing looks like, "I'm getting paid to write about this 'free' trip, so I better take pictures of absolutely everything." Barf.
I stopped reading the text when I got to the part about the "1,0000" square foot room.
No wonder GCC has dropped off my reading list.
I still check his blog, but I have been disappointed for years because his old stuff has been so valuable to me. That one is particularly egregious and not relevant to the original spirit of the blog. But also he also doesn't owe me anything.
His most recent article, from 5 months ago, had a bit of the old break out the Excel in it. https://www.gocurrycracker.com/getting-lucky
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Part of the Frugalwoods reticence may have been caused by the fact that Nate was pulling down huge bucks...working for a nonprofit.
If he's making that kind of money, what insane amounts of money are the higher-ups making? He may have been contractually obligated not to reveal his salary, particularly on a public blog. If so, why kill the Golden Goose?
This came to a head when the book was published.
I still maintain that living as frugally as they did once they started making big money took extraordinary amounts of self-discipline. I find that admirable. The derision they face seems unwarranted. They avoided hedonistic adaption. Isn't that a key tenet of MMM?
This and the "Work Optional" Lady had the same issues.
They made stupidly high incomes working for arms of the Democratic National Committee then try to come off as moderate income professionals. There's stupidly high incomes in lobbying, fundraising, and winning elections. Reminds me of the biography of Alan Mulally, who saved Ford in 2011. Said he made more money as a K-Street lawyer in the 80s than he did as Ford CEO.
Yeah - that all seemed very sad. It almost felt like she started that blog to land book and speaker deals - not dissimilar to what politicians do after they are "out of office"! And then after she retired, it seemed like she without hesitation crapped all over the FIRE community which made her internet famous.
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There are some great original FIRE bloggers that are genuine and great follows. Justin at Root of Good, Doug @ The Military Guide, and Karsten Jeske immediately come to mind.
Is @Nords even still affiliated with The Military Guide? I know he had sold it and re-acquired at least once. I know he's still writing at militaryfinancialindependence.com - including a recent excellent post on 4% rule. He also continues to help military folk in different forums/Reddit/Facebook after all these years - definitely someone who seems happy to to help out countless others "for free".
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There are some great original FIRE bloggers that are genuine and great follows. Justin at Root of Good, Doug @ The Military Guide, and Karsten Jeske immediately come to mind.
Is @Nords even still affiliated with The Military Guide? I know he had sold it and re-acquired at least once. I know he's still writing at militaryfinancialindependence.com - including a recent excellent post on 4% rule. He also continues to help military folk in different forums/Reddit/Facebook after all these years - definitely someone who seems happy to to help out countless others "for free".
Dude's a mensch. I have to answer quickly, because he's sure to respond to your batsignal in a heartbeat.
ETA #1: It's early in Hawaii. He's probably out surfing.
ETA#: Assuming you're asking questions he's willing to answer. Still a major mensch whether he answers or not.
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I might quibble about Root of Good's expenses here. His $40k budget includes two kids taking college classes and substantial world travel with a family of five. That is very noteworthy! And the old imputed rent...very important to consider, but the story there is that they bought a small, cheap house a long time ago and have stayed in it and not had lifestyle inflation (I'd say their kitchen could use an update!). If you want to attribute $2k in imputed rent, fine, but you could instead use a $600??? mortgage payment if they had kept their 30 year mortgage.
Sure, it's easy to quibble about. Official GDP numbers include imputed rent for homeowners, and I think it's fair to include when comparing costs of living. The question is: how much would it cost to reproduce RoG's current lifestyle for a 'normal person'? You'd need to rent his house and spend as much as he does, and pay taxes on all that income. So say, 2k per month in rent, and 40k of spending, and 15% of taxes, so ($24,000+$40,000)/0.85 = $75k per year. A renter would have to earn 75k to live precisely the same lifestyle as RoG.
I know he's even written an article - years ago - making this point. Ah yes - found it: https://rootofgood.com/early-retirement-40000-per-year/
These calculations really emphasize how powerful homeownership is...but that's a different discussion.
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I might quibble about Root of Good's expenses here. His $40k budget includes two kids taking college classes and substantial world travel with a family of five. That is very noteworthy! And the old imputed rent...very important to consider, but the story there is that they bought a small, cheap house a long time ago and have stayed in it and not had lifestyle inflation (I'd say their kitchen could use an update!). If you want to attribute $2k in imputed rent, fine, but you could instead use a $600??? mortgage payment if they had kept their 30 year mortgage.
Sure, it's easy to quibble about. Official GDP numbers include imputed rent for homeowners, and I think it's fair to include when comparing costs of living. The question is: how much would it cost to reproduce RoG's current lifestyle for a 'normal person'? You'd need to rent his house and spend as much as he does, and pay taxes on all that income. So say, 2k per month in rent, and 40k of spending, and 15% of taxes, so ($24,000+$40,000)/0.85 = $75k per year. A renter would have to earn 75k to live precisely the same lifestyle as RoG.
I know he's even written an article - years ago - making this point. Ah yes - found it: https://rootofgood.com/early-retirement-40000-per-year/
These calculations really emphasize how powerful homeownership is...but that's a different discussion.
We are arguing different sides of the same coin here. Your post what about how much FI bloggers spend (or saved to pay off their mortgage). I think their actual costs/spending decisions is more important, emphasizing they bought small/cheap and haven't inflated their lifestyle. The $75k number is also true, but is as much a reflection on Raleigh real estate and folks running their own numbers than your point about bloggers being big spenders. RoG is more on the ERE side of the scale for housing for bloggers.
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I might quibble about Root of Good's expenses here. His $40k budget includes two kids taking college classes and substantial world travel with a family of five. That is very noteworthy! And the old imputed rent...very important to consider, but the story there is that they bought a small, cheap house a long time ago and have stayed in it and not had lifestyle inflation (I'd say their kitchen could use an update!). If you want to attribute $2k in imputed rent, fine, but you could instead use a $600??? mortgage payment if they had kept their 30 year mortgage.
Sure, it's easy to quibble about. Official GDP numbers include imputed rent for homeowners, and I think it's fair to include when comparing costs of living. The question is: how much would it cost to reproduce RoG's current lifestyle for a 'normal person'? You'd need to rent his house and spend as much as he does, and pay taxes on all that income. So say, 2k per month in rent, and 40k of spending, and 15% of taxes, so ($24,000+$40,000)/0.85 = $75k per year. A renter would have to earn 75k to live precisely the same lifestyle as RoG.
I know he's even written an article - years ago - making this point. Ah yes - found it: https://rootofgood.com/early-retirement-40000-per-year/
These calculations really emphasize how powerful homeownership is...but that's a different discussion.
The RoG's became both fully retired (https://rootofgood.com/about/) in 2016 in Raleigh, NC with a net worth of probably around $1.5M I think (last published NW I saw was 2014, correct me if I'm wrong).
At that time, per Zillow (https://www.zillow.com/home-values/54047/raleigh-nc/), a home could be purchased for about $231k and the average hourly wage per the BLS was $24.23, or about $50k per year. So housing cost about 4.58 years of typical wages.
By 2022, Raleigh houses were averaging $388,639 and the hourly wage (https://www.bls.gov/regions/southeast/news-release/occupationalemploymentandwages_raleigh.htm) had risen to $30.05, or about $62,500. So housing cost about 6.22 years of typical wages.
So these are reasons to maybe bump up the $40k number, or not consider Raleigh, NC as the bargain it used to be.
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Agreed that we're vociferously agreeing!
This is why I miss the awesome FIRE blogs of yore. I remember this RoG chart: https://rootofgood.com/zero-to-millionaire-ten-years/ and feeling like I would never get there. I'm past "RoG FIRE" now. Time flies and I owe the FI bloggers so much.
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... I was wondering if anyone knows anything about why GoCurryCracker stopped posting abruptly after the last post (Getting Lucky (https://www.gocurrycracker.com/getting-lucky/)) on July 28th?
I haven’t heard anything new from or about Jeremy or Winnie. Two young kids, newer house?
I saw her financial advice prices as more of a situation of really not needing the money, but having an answer to people who are looking for financial planning from the author of a popular blog.
I can't remember which financial blogger it was who had a similar philosophy--they didn't have any desire to help people with financial planning, but for a fairly absurd hourly rate they would do it. Maybe JL Collins?
As others have mentioned, that’s Justin McCurry at RootOfGood:
https://rootofgood.com/early-retirement-consulting/
He mentioned this tactic at a CampFI a few years ago, and he was raising is prices to lower demand. Rich Carey does the same at RichOnMoney.
I’m pretty sure JL Collins might be tempted to try the same financial-planning joke with an autoresponse e-mail, but I watched him talk one-on-one with people at FI Chautauquas for hours. He has the stamina for it-- I was doing the same routine at the one in Portugal in 2019 and it was absolutely exhausting.
I've been a long time follower of a bunch of the bloggers, have befriended a few of them (or friends of friends), and it's an interesting discussion here.
There are some great original FIRE bloggers that are genuine and great follows. Justin at Root of Good, Doug @ The Military Guide, and Karsten Jeske immediately come to mind.
Thanks, @chasesfish!
Is @Nords even still affiliated with The Military Guide?
Here’s the full story from 2022, including a copy of the press release:
https://militaryfinancialindependence.com/2022/03/24/under-new-management-again/
Other details not in that blog post:
In 2013 I “sold” the site to Curtez Riggs in exchange for his very large donation to Wounded Warrior Project. (At the time Curtez was an Army First Sergeant and now he’s retired from active duty.) Our handshake deal was that when I wrote a certain number of posts per year then he’d make another large donation to WWP. That worked out to a good freelance rate at the time.
(Along with wanting to focus on writing instead of running a site, I saw it as a challenge to give away an asset instead of profiting from more money which we did not need. I didn't even take the income-tax deduction.)
Ryan Guina had also thought about making an offer on The Military Guide, and he mentioned several times over the years how often he’d regretted not moving as fast as Curtez. Ryan patiently stayed in touch with Curtez. In 2017 after Curtez retired and started Military Influencer Conference and leveled up to a whole new world of teambuilding, he agreed to sell the site to Ryan.
Ryan ran the site until late 2019 and then got overtures from a large VA mortgage lender with a non-profit media arm. Those discussions were interrupted during the pandemic but resumed in 2021.
The buyer originally only wanted TheMilitaryWallet, but during the due diligence (“Seller will provide all other domain names owned by him or his company”) they realized that Ryan owned the top two military personal finance blogs on the Internet as well as a dozen or so other revenue-earning military sites. He sold them every URL that they wanted to buy and continues a four-year consulting contract with them (with a salary). That’s mainly in case the new owner can’t find the passwords or has questions about the code. The buyer apparently also gets some income-tax deductions by paying Ryan a salary for a few years instead of giving him an extra dumpster of cash.
I don’t know what Ryan plans to do after the four-year contract expires but he has plenty of ideas on how to be responsible for his own entertainment.
The-Military-Guide now redirects to TheMilitaryWallet. My byline lives on at TheMilitaryWallet, and I frequently link to some of my posts there. The new owner had no idea how to handle a founder who was willing to work with them (not for them) so I strolled off to other projects.
We really did part amicably-- they truly had no idea how to work with a guy who insists on writing long-form posts (but only when he has something to say), who doesn’t want an editor, and who won’t subject himself to deadlines. Maybe one of the buyers will have more questions about financial independence for me someday, but they have plenty of money to buy their own lifestyle consultants.
A year later they came back to Ryan and said “We want CashMoneyLife too.” So he sold them that as well.
Ryan has 15 or 16 good years in the Air National Guard. In early 2023 he mobilized & deployed to a combat zone for a typical ANG period of 3-6 months (I don’t know the details). He’s also switched ANG units from one in Illinois (with a six-hour one-way commute to drill weekends) for one in Tennessee that’s close to his home. He’ll probably decide to retire (awaiting pay) at 20 good years. He’ll start his Reserve pension at age 59 + 6 or 9 months-- IYKYK.
He and I have talked many times about expanding his lifestyle, but he says he’s good. He’s starting another military-oriented blog (“Just for fun”) that doesn’t impinge on his non-compete agreement. I think he’s upgraded his guitar collection in a manner similar to the way I upgrade my longboard & stand-up paddleboard collection. He and his spouse are also raising two teenagers.
He’ll probably cover most of his spending from his new blog’s revenue, and maybe he’ll spend a little of his assets. His military pension + blog income will certainly cover their lifestyle. That’s similar to how ESIMoney covers his spending from real estate syndications and his blog income. Ryan (and ESI) will continue to give generously through philanthropy and gifting.
I know he's still writing at militaryfinancialindependence.com - including a recent excellent post on 4% rule. He also continues to help military folk in different forums/Reddit/Facebook after all these years - definitely someone who seems happy to to help out countless others "for free".
Yes, and thank you! Reddit & FB groups are definitely filling more of my time.
I’ve spent most of the last three years writing way more than I ever expected to at Millionaire Money Mentors. I’ve already written my Millionaire Interview and my three-part Retirement Interview on ESIMoney, and I’ve added a couple of my old sea stories (with a financial twist) to his blog. Occasionally one of my forum threads turns into a blog post on my site. I also finished a surprisingly difficult self-inflicted therapy assignment on my site about my time as a submarine inport Ship’s Duty Officer during the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo.
Some of my sea stories will also live on with Charles Hood (and his brother Frank) at the “Sub Tales” series of books. If you have any questions about the history & culture of our glamorous submarine lifestyle, you can look them up on Amazon.
I still have a ToDo list:
- Update The Military Guide book for the U.S. military’s new programs,
- Record/publish an audiobook version of The Military Guide,
- Write my next book, probably about life after FI.
- Clean up a couple of smaller writing projects and publish them as 100-page books,
- Record more audio tracks of my blog posts.
For the last three years I’ve spent far more time on spousing, grandparenting, slow travel, home improvement, and surfing.
In January our daughter, son-in-law, and four-year-old granddaughter will return to Oahu. He has Navy active-duty orders (possibly his last before moving to the Reserves or Guard), and she’s working part-time remote as a paraplanner for a firm with (mostly) military clients. Carol and I are attending MilMoneyCon together in Denver at the end of April-- she’s on a panel and I’m in the audience.
My spouse started her Reserve pension in late 2021. (If you’ve followed my writing over the years, that was not at all in the cards when we reached FI and I retired in 2002.) We’ve accordingly boosted our gifting & philanthropy as our income grows. Over the last two decades we’ve consistently spent all of my pension plus spent our assets at the 4% SWR. Due to our inflation-fighting pensions, we will continue to spend down our assets even faster than the 4% SWR to stay well below the Hawaii estate tax deduction.
I haven’t written much about that last paragraph here, but I’ll work out that blog post in 2024 after our progeny move back to Oahu. I’ve written extensively about it on the Millionaire Money Mentors forum and our spend-down plan looks sustainable.
Now that I'm 63 years old I can tackle more fascinating lifestyle subjects like Social Security, Medicare, Tricare For Life, hearing aids (not quite yet), osteoarthritis physical therapy, disability planning, and estate planning. And more slow travel, plus surfing. With more grandkid photos.
I know he had sold it and re-acquired at least once.
You might be thinking of J.D. Roth at GetRichSlowly, who sold to Quinstreet in 2009 and bought it back in... 2018? 2019? Anyway, he just sold it again-- this time to Tom Drake.
Dude's a mensch. I have to answer quickly, because he's sure to respond to your batsignal in a heartbeat.
Thank you, @Dicey! And I do appreciate the cultural heritage behind that word.
And yes, I have this forum send me an e-mail with my poster name is mentioned. Otherwise I check it weekly or so for the “military” keyword.
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Agreed that we're vociferously agreeing!
This is why I miss the awesome FIRE blogs of yore. I remember this RoG chart: https://rootofgood.com/zero-to-millionaire-ten-years/ and feeling like I would never get there. I'm past "RoG FIRE" now. Time flies and I owe the FI bloggers so much.
I point as many people as I can to those old blog posts (and Stock Series, Mad Fientist, classic GCC, etc.) as they are indeed awesome and essential to folks starting out. Those blogs are a lot less interesting now when their authors have figured everything out for 10 years.
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Agreed that we're vociferously agreeing!
This is why I miss the awesome FIRE blogs of yore. I remember this RoG chart: https://rootofgood.com/zero-to-millionaire-ten-years/ and feeling like I would never get there. I'm past "RoG FIRE" now. Time flies and I owe the FI bloggers so much.
I point as many people as I can to those old blog posts (and Stock Series, Mad Fientist, classic GCC, etc.) as they are indeed awesome and essential to folks starting out. Those blogs are a lot less interesting now when their authors have figured everything out for 10 years.
There's only so much you can write about FI. Jason Zweig, who wrote the personal finance column at the Wall Street Journal once said in an interview something to the effect of "you basically have to keep writing about the same twenty topics in personal finance and somehow make it look fresh and get it past the editor" 😀
The other thing about diligently following FI principles is that just the effects of compounding become astounding over the long haul. Many of these bloggers may have reached that stage and just given up writing.
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Agreed that we're vociferously agreeing!
This is why I miss the awesome FIRE blogs of yore. I remember this RoG chart: https://rootofgood.com/zero-to-millionaire-ten-years/ and feeling like I would never get there. I'm past "RoG FIRE" now. Time flies and I owe the FI bloggers so much.
I point as many people as I can to those old blog posts (and Stock Series, Mad Fientist, classic GCC, etc.) as they are indeed awesome and essential to folks starting out. Those blogs are a lot less interesting now when their authors have figured everything out for 10 years.
There's only so much you can write about FI. Jason Zweig, who wrote the personal finance column at the Wall Street Journal once said in an interview something to the effect of "you basically have to keep writing about the same twenty topics in personal finance and somehow make it look fresh and get it past the editor" 😀
The other thing about diligently following FI principles is that just the effects of compounding become astounding over the long haul. Many of these bloggers may have reached that stage and just given up writing.
I thought about starting a FIRE blog because I'm always making interesting connections, considering risk and opportunity in unique ways, getting philosophical, and thinking about the connections between macroeconomics and our concerns about portfolio survival. I also think a lot about the psychology of all this - the fear and the FOMO - and the attempt to make a rational decision when it's literally a portion of your life at stake. Econ and psych were my college majors, and not much has changed.
Plus I love to write. Hence my painfully long posts here.
In the end I figured I didn't have time to do a good job of it. I'd probably never earn back the hosting fees in ad revenue, blogs in general are going extinct, and sitting all day in front of a computer was what I was trying to get away from! I simply lack the narcissism to overcome these barriers.
Still, I'm surprised some of these more successful bloggers essentially just quit rather than opening up their blogs to guest posts. Blogging either burns people out or leaves them with an impression that it's a waste of time. That's too bad because more and more of the internet is becoming these clickbait enthusiastic people on YouTube or TikTok who are slumming for clicks. There's less and less authenticity or helpfulness out there.
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Justin wrote this great article about his $40,000 lifestyle really being closer to $100,000 (https://rootofgood.com/early-retirement-40000-per-year/).
I've visited Justin at his home house, the reality is most people making his income wouldn't have bought and stayed in a gentrifying area. He purchased a starter home for +/-100k coming out of the GFC and it's now probably in the $300,000s. He makes a ton of decisions others with his (former) income level won't and people get upset about it.
One 15yr old vehicle (until recently), low cost housing, walk/bike places, no restaurants, and an incredible deal hunter on food. It's a complete game for him.
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Justin wrote this great article about his $40,000 lifestyle really being closer to $100,000 (https://rootofgood.com/early-retirement-40000-per-year/).
I've visited Justin at his home house, the reality is most people making his income wouldn't have bought and stayed in a gentrifying area. He purchased a starter home for +/-100k coming out of the GFC and it's now probably in the $300,000s. He makes a ton of decisions others with his (former) income level won't and people get upset about it.
One 15yr old vehicle (until recently), low cost housing, walk/bike places, no restaurants, and an incredible deal hunter on food. It's a complete game for him.
Yeah - that's the article that I remember! I haven't met him in person (yet), but he's always seemed pretty down to earth to me. He doesn't really participate in forums anymore, certainly not like he did when he was still working, but I think he's still on Twitter.
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Justin wrote this great article about his $40,000 lifestyle really being closer to $100,000 (https://rootofgood.com/early-retirement-40000-per-year/).
I've visited Justin at his home house, the reality is most people making his income wouldn't have bought and stayed in a gentrifying area. He purchased a starter home for +/-100k coming out of the GFC and it's now probably in the $300,000s. He makes a ton of decisions others with his (former) income level won't and people get upset about it.
One 15yr old vehicle (until recently), low cost housing, walk/bike places, no restaurants, and an incredible deal hunter on food. It's a complete game for him.
I think ROG is my favorite blog. I can appreciate that he and his wife are raising three (college bound) kids and still keep their expenses pretty low. I still reread the Tightwad Gazette for my low income large family fix.
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Justin wrote this great article about his $40,000 lifestyle really being closer to $100,000 (https://rootofgood.com/early-retirement-40000-per-year/).
I've visited Justin at his home house, the reality is most people making his income wouldn't have bought and stayed in a gentrifying area. He purchased a starter home for +/-100k coming out of the GFC and it's now probably in the $300,000s. He makes a ton of decisions others with his (former) income level won't and people get upset about it.
One 15yr old vehicle (until recently), low cost housing, walk/bike places, no restaurants, and an incredible deal hunter on food. It's a complete game for him.
Yeah - that's the article that I remember! I haven't met him in person (yet), but he's always seemed pretty down to earth to me. He doesn't really participate in forums anymore, certainly not like he did when he was still working, but I think he's still on Twitter.
Ditto for me too. As a FIREee who (voluntarily) chooses to live on a smaller income I really liked how he seemed to live a great life regardless of not spending a huge sum. Seemed like a pretty good lifestyle. And a nice guy who seemed very genuine.
And as always a great post and update from the truly awesome @Nords!
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@tj - Your best shot to meet Justin is at CampFI Mid Atlantic that happens around Memorial Day every year. The organizer comps his ticket in exchange for speaking and it's the one FIREy event that is laid back enough, the right time of year, and close enough to his home. I spoke a few years ago before moving, I'll eventually get back to one.
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@tj - Your best shot to meet Justin is at CampFI Mid Atlantic that happens around Memorial Day every year. The organizer comps his ticket in exchange for speaking and it's the one FIREy event that is laid back enough, the right time of year, and close enough to his home. I spoke a few years ago before moving, I'll eventually get back to one.
Justin is actually my Facebook friend for quite a few years now - I'm sure if I ever made my way to Raleigh, he'd be down to hang. :)
When I decided to give blogging a go back in 2017, he commented on nearly every post, which was pretty neat.
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Still, I'm surprised some of these more successful bloggers essentially just quit rather than opening up their blogs to guest posts. Blogging either burns people out or leaves them with an impression that it's a waste of time.
The general arc of FIRE blogs is that the journey is much more interesting than the destination. When people are working towards FIRE they have a lot to say and share many insights, but once they FIRE the output drops off precipitously. Same general trend with many posters on the forum. Once you FIRE, people tend to focus on other aspects of life, which probably don't have much interest to a general audience. Mad Fientist for example seems interested in working out and writing music. Great hobbies, but those topics already have their own communities.
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Still, I'm surprised some of these more successful bloggers essentially just quit rather than opening up their blogs to guest posts. Blogging either burns people out or leaves them with an impression that it's a waste of time.
The general arc of FIRE blogs is that the journey is much more interesting than the destination. When people are working towards FIRE they have a lot to say and share many insights, but once they FIRE the output drops off precipitously. Same general trend with many posters on the forum. Once you FIRE, people tend to focus on other aspects of life, which probably don't have much interest to a general audience. Mad Fientist for example seems interested in working out and writing music. Great hobbies, but those topics already have their own communities.
I think it's also the universal nature of blogs that people kind of run out of things to say.
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On the topic of FIRE blogs, I like A Purple Life:
https://apurplelife.com/
She retired young on a lean-FIRE budget. Now she's a nomad traveling the world and relying on geographic arbitrage. It's a riskier plan than I'd be comfortable with, but to each his or her own. Plus, she's having a hell of a good time.
She's also kept updating after quitting her job, unlike many FIRE bloggers who fell off the face of the earth. So if you want to read new stuff, there's that.
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Still, I'm surprised some of these more successful bloggers essentially just quit rather than opening up their blogs to guest posts. Blogging either burns people out or leaves them with an impression that it's a waste of time.
The general arc of FIRE blogs is that the journey is much more interesting than the destination. When people are working towards FIRE they have a lot to say and share many insights, but once they FIRE the output drops off precipitously. Same general trend with many posters on the forum. Once you FIRE, people tend to focus on other aspects of life, which probably don't have much interest to a general audience. Mad Fientist for example seems interested in working out and writing music. Great hobbies, but those topics already have their own communities.
This is what happened to mine. It's still an active blog, but I struggle with "what do I write about" sometime around a year after quitting the job. It was far more exciting leading up to and shortly after the "moment" that most people can't / won't do.
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Still, I'm surprised some of these more successful bloggers essentially just quit rather than opening up their blogs to guest posts. Blogging either burns people out or leaves them with an impression that it's a waste of time.
The general arc of FIRE blogs is that the journey is much more interesting than the destination. When people are working towards FIRE they have a lot to say and share many insights, but once they FIRE the output drops off precipitously. Same general trend with many posters on the forum. Once you FIRE, people tend to focus on other aspects of life, which probably don't have much interest to a general audience. Mad Fientist for example seems interested in working out and writing music. Great hobbies, but those topics already have their own communities.
This is what happened to mine. It's still an active blog, but I struggle with "what do I write about" sometime around a year after quitting the job. It was far more exciting leading up to and shortly after the "moment" that most people can't / won't do.
There could be another explanation, which is when a high earning megacorp person is spending 10 hours at work on a computer there just happens to be some time to also type away at a blog dreaming about FIRE and looking busy.
Then when freedom is achieved sitting at a computer foe several hours may become less appealing.
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On the topic of FIRE blogs, I like A Purple Life:
https://apurplelife.com/
She retired young on a lean-FIRE budget. Now she's a nomad traveling the world and relying on geographic arbitrage. It's a riskier plan than I'd be comfortable with, but to each his or her own. Plus, she's having a hell of a good time.
She's also kept updating after quitting her job, unlike many FIRE bloggers who fell off the face of the earth. So if you want to read new stuff, there's that.
It probably helps that she was able to manufacture some income out of her blog and also that her partner has a remote job. It is cool that she seems to still have things to say after retiring though.
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And as always a great post and update from the truly awesome @Nords!
Thank you!
@tj - Your best shot to meet Justin is at CampFI Mid Atlantic that happens around Memorial Day every year.
I can't remember which CampFI Mid-Atlantic I was at-- probably 2018-- when Justin spoke.
As part of his talk, he'd spent the previous days memorizing the name and location of every other attendee there... maybe 50 people? It was the most impressive mnemonic feat I've seen in years.
She's also kept updating after quitting her job, unlike many FIRE bloggers who fell off the face of the earth. So if you want to read new stuff, there's that.
It probably helps that she was able to manufacture some income out of her blog and also that her partner has a remote job. It is cool that she seems to still have things to say after retiring though.
She tracks her activities regularly. When someone asks me what I do all day in FI, I refer them to one of her time-tracking summaries.
She's also someone who, if she ever decided to start a freelancing career, would have no trouble netting six figures annually by the end of the second year. I see no downside risk to her lifestyle.
Right now I'm staring at four draft blog posts on my monitor, three of them crafted on a forum and just waiting for blogging formatting + snarky images.
However the North Shore surf is forecast at 22-26 feet from a northwest swell tomorrow morning, which practically guarantees me catching some 10-15 footers at Pua 'Ena Point. Blog posts will have to wait until after surfing... and ibuprofen... and a nap.
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She tracks her activities regularly. When someone asks me what I do all day in FI, I refer them to one of her time-tracking summaries.
She's also someone who, if she ever decided to start a freelancing career, would have no trouble netting six figures annually by the end of the second year. I see no downside risk to her lifestyle.
I don't remember if it was you or somebody else - but I recall somebody has written that the vast majority of people who can accomplish "4% rule" on their assets and choose to retire presumably have the skills to restart a meaningful earned income if they really need to. It does seem a bit silly that so many people get so afraid of pulling the trigger after reaching that point. The ChooseFI Feds group kills me sometimes - I get that you're giving up "a lot" to not ride it out until the pension starts and the associated retiree health insurance, but the time trade associated with that seems huge.
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There could be another explanation, which is when a high earning megacorp person is spending 10 hours at work on a computer there just happens to be some time to also type away at a blog dreaming about FIRE and looking busy.
Then when freedom is achieved sitting at a computer foe several hours may become less appealing.
This is true! I thought I would be updating my journal frequently after I retired but it seems more like once in three months. On many days, I do still sit at my computer for several hours but that is because I enjoy programming 😀
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@tooqk4u22 - My writing was accelerated for two reasons, I was waiting on a vesting to leave, and my job was more similar to an airline pilot. Many easy hours with a few critical moments that required focus and decisions. There was plenty of "smooth sailing" hours.
@Nords - Enjoy and don't let the current push you into the middle rocks. Saturday might have been my last paddle out without a wetsuit, now I'm browsing Hawaii dates / flights.
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@Nords - Enjoy and don't let the current push you into the middle rocks. Saturday might have been my last paddle out without a wetsuit, now I'm browsing Hawaii dates / flights.
That's going to be a concern this morning! And I’m pretty sure wetsuit weather is here now, although it’s just a 2mm jacket for us.
If the wind isn’t too bad then I’ll be at the outer break. If it turns into paddling practice then I’ll stay at the inner break. I'm not duck-diving any 20 footers.
See you on Oahu next month? (You guys might prefer to go to a neighbor island instead.) Our lives will turn into happy grandparenting chaos on 13 January.
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Since people in this thread were discussing Mrs. Frugalwoods and her uber-pricey consulting business, I thought this was an interesting and relevant tidbit from Purple Life's newest blog post:
https://apurplelife.com/2023/12/05/november-2023-recap/
This month another reader asked me if I offer financial coaching for a fee, which I don’t, but I was honored to be asked...
Then another company wanted me to join a platform where I answer questions for a fee. Is this a new trend? I’ve been getting contacted every month by several companies with this model lately. All different companies with seemingly identical business models.
I commented on how funny it is that she wasn't seeking out opportunities like this, but they keep coming to her. It's like an "Office Space" effect: the less you need to work, the more people want to throw money at you to work for them.
I can imagine a scenario where a FIRE blogger, who had no interest in starting a side hustle initially, keeps getting approached by people who want to pay for financial advice. (Study the successful people and learn their secrets!)
If this happened often enough, I can see how someone might decide to take them up on it. FIRE gives you the luxury of choice, but it's hard to turn down money when people want to give it to you!
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Since people in this thread were discussing Mrs. Frugalwoods and her uber-pricey consulting business, I thought this was an interesting and relevant tidbit from Purple Life's newest blog post:
https://apurplelife.com/2023/12/05/november-2023-recap/
This month another reader asked me if I offer financial coaching for a fee, which I don’t, but I was honored to be asked...
Then another company wanted me to join a platform where I answer questions for a fee. Is this a new trend? I’ve been getting contacted every month by several companies with this model lately. All different companies with seemingly identical business models.
I commented on how funny it is that she wasn't seeking out opportunities like this, but they keep coming to her. It's like an "Office Space" effect: the less you need to work, the more people want to throw money at you to work for them.
I can imagine a scenario where a FIRE blogger, who had no interest in starting a side hustle initially, keeps getting approached by people who want to pay for financial advice. (Study the successful people and learn their secrets!)
If this happened often enough, I can see how someone might decide to take them up on it. FIRE gives you the luxury of choice, but it's hard to turn down money when people want to give it to you!
I think Justin actually mentions in this recorded video of his Camp FI talk - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ale11_HU3RI - that he started financial consulting for a fee only after a reader of his blog asked him if he does that.
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I have been following this thread with interest; though I am not a devoted follower of any specific blog other than MMM and ERE I have been aware of all (well, most) of these others since their inception and have drawn interesting insights from most of them at some point- most had a niche item-- their "usp" that helped get them going. I also remember when ROG or Mrs. FW and others were posters and contributors here.
I am not sure that I have anything to add other than to say I feel a certain sympathy for those who gain a certain notoriety or success. Certainly people can be held accountable for their actions, but I think that when you start on a long journey the details of the destination can be very fuzzy.
I have made a life of monetizing and making a living off my hobbies and artistic pursuits- and fortunately have not had to leave the totality of my performances available for the world to see forever: because that's the thing about blogs, digital content etc. It follows you around forever- who among us really understood this and it's implications the first time we posted in forum or in a chat?
I consider in my own life my digital contributions to the world, and when I look back at them they are at best random and scattershot snapshots of the moment, and I certainly could not imagine trying tie them all together into some grand unifying/unchanging theory of how I see the world over the last 15 years. All the folks started in a certain place and landed where they currently are (and are also on their way to somewhere else). I think it's tough to slam them too much because their worldview doesn't agree with yours- the scales aren't balanced- until all your dirty laundry is out there hanging out for scrutiny.
We can say "well they put it out their for the world to see, so we get to hold them accountable..." That's true- that's the nature of creating anything- and that's why you have to learn to have a tough skin as a creator. But I think that the general tone of "yeah but it only works for them because x" is a real mistake. You run the risk of missing the forest for the trees.
The math on ER and FIRE works on any scale. And I think that is a really important takeaway. The industry that has grown up around it: who could have foreseen it? Really- I don't think anyone. And it's not that I don't think criticism is fair when people's narrative doesn't reflect the real changes that happen in their life or circumstances as they tout a certain brand of freedom (frugal or whatever); it's that I think very often we have a really difficult time seeing our own circumstances from a lot of other people's perspective (especially in real time as things change in ways we never imagined). I know for myself- even though I recognize that I had a ton of privilege baked into my life and upbringing; I came from a poor community and working class/farming family; i.e. teachers, farmers, builders: so even as my situation has changed over the years, my fundamental world view of myself hasn't changed; and this is why so many people people see themselves a certain way even though that way doesn't really align with how the rest of the world might view it.
I don't know why all the rambling- I guess I feel a certain sympathy for those folks for whom success is both great and terrible. Most of the time the destination is a far stranger land than we ever expected. It's become a stock phrase, and thus lost a lot of its meaning: "What got you here, won't get yout there." So many of us found kindred spirits when we first found our way to these blogs and forums, after years of meandering alone in a world where it was hard to find like minds. Even though as time has gone by a lot of the voices that found megaphones have drifted in different directions... because that's happens, the message still has a lot of value; regardless of "imputed rent" or "they made way more money than I expected", etc. I find R. Kyosaki to be sort of distasteful, but I have gotten a ton of value out of ideas he found a way to articulate- and I remember something he said about people who say "You can't do that!!" and that was a clue you were on the right track. So be careful if you catch yourself saying "that won't work" or " you can't do that... " because x, y, or z.
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Sure, it's easy to quibble about. Official GDP numbers include imputed rent for homeowners, and I think it's fair to include when comparing costs of living. The question is: how much would it cost to reproduce RoG's current lifestyle for a 'normal person'?
I understand your point, but I think what is missed in this type of analysis is that ROG made choices that are *different* from what this hypothetical "normal" person would. I.e. if they were in same place they were when they bought their house, they would probably do something different (i.e. buy a different location, rent, leverage some other way to make it work.)
I agree with you that most of these lifestyle bloggers use their financial leverage to keep their spend "average" while living "upscale" lives. But isn't that how it all got popular in the first place? YMOYL and Jacob's ERE carries all the philosophical and math underpinnings you need to make it "work", it's just that it doesn't get sexy to the masses until it looks fancy. "It's too Extreme" (Is it really?) Enter MMM and the "I only spend 25k a year and we still feel rich..." Then everyone jumps in and massages the #'s to still claim middle class status while living the life that you want. And then we all quibble about what their "actual" spend is. It's a map, with a somewhat changing landscape- following a list hints and tips won't get you there. It's like all those click-bait articles "invest like Warren Buffet"- hopefully everyone knows that just buying the same stocks he has isn't what makes it work; it's the same with many of these folks who have figured out how to manage their lifestyle. It can work for all of us, we just have to get under the hood and tinker with it a bit.
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I have been following this thread with interest; though I am not a devoted follower of any specific blog other than MMM and ERE I have been aware of all (well, most) of these others since their inception and have drawn interesting insights from most of them at some point- most had a niche item-- their "usp" that helped get them going. I also remember when ROG or Mrs. FW and others were posters and contributors here.
I am not sure that I have anything to add other than to say I feel a certain sympathy for those who gain a certain notoriety or success. Certainly people can be held accountable for their actions, but I think that when you start on a long journey the details of the destination can be very fuzzy.
I have made a life of monetizing and making a living off my hobbies and artistic pursuits- and fortunately have not had to leave the totality of my performances available for the world to see forever: because that's the thing about blogs, digital content etc. It follows you around forever- who among us really understood this and it's implications the first time we posted in forum or in a chat?
I consider in my own life my digital contributions to the world, and when I look back at them they are at best random and scattershot snapshots of the moment, and I certainly could not imagine trying tie them all together into some grand unifying/unchanging theory of how I see the world over the last 15 years. All the folks started in a certain place and landed where they currently are (and are also on their way to somewhere else). I think it's tough to slam them too much because their worldview doesn't agree with yours- the scales aren't balanced- until all your dirty laundry is out there hanging out for scrutiny.
We can say "well they put it out their for the world to see, so we get to hold them accountable..." That's true- that's the nature of creating anything- and that's why you have to learn to have a tough skin as a creator. But I think that the general tone of "yeah but it only works for them because x" is a real mistake. You run the risk of missing the forest for the trees.
The math on ER and FIRE works on any scale. And I think that is a really important takeaway. The industry that has grown up around it: who could have foreseen it? Really- I don't think anyone. And it's not that I don't think criticism is fair when people's narrative doesn't reflect the real changes that happen in their life or circumstances as they tout a certain brand of freedom (frugal or whatever); it's that I think very often we have a really difficult time seeing our own circumstances from a lot of other people's perspective (especially in real time as things change in ways we never imagined). I know for myself- even though I recognize that I had a ton of privilege baked into my life and upbringing; I came from a poor community and working class/farming family; i.e. teachers, farmers, builders: so even as my situation has changed over the years, my fundamental world view of myself hasn't changed; and this is why so many people people see themselves a certain way even though that way doesn't really align with how the rest of the world might view it.
I don't know why all the rambling- I guess I feel a certain sympathy for those folks for whom success is both great and terrible. Most of the time the destination is a far stranger land than we ever expected. It's become a stock phrase, and thus lost a lot of its meaning: "What got you here, won't get yout there." So many of us found kindred spirits when we first found our way to these blogs and forums, after years of meandering alone in a world where it was hard to find like minds. Even though as time has gone by a lot of the voices that found megaphones have drifted in different directions... because that's happens, the message still has a lot of value; regardless of "imputed rent" or "they made way more money than I expected", etc. I find R. Kyosaki to be sort of distasteful, but I have gotten a ton of value out of ideas he found a way to articulate- and I remember something he said about people who say "You can't do that!!" and that was a clue you were on the right track. So be careful if you catch yourself saying "that won't work" or " you can't do that... " because x, y, or z.
For sure, which is why I have patently refused to have a blog or write a book or publish anything really other than my posts here.
Especially being a woman on the internet, it's not always a nice or safe place.
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I have been following this thread with interest; though I am not a devoted follower of any specific blog other than MMM and ERE I have been aware of all (well, most) of these others since their inception and have drawn interesting insights from most of them at some point- most had a niche item-- their "usp" that helped get them going. I also remember when ROG or Mrs. FW and others were posters and contributors here.
I am not sure that I have anything to add other than to say I feel a certain sympathy for those who gain a certain notoriety or success. Certainly people can be held accountable for their actions, but I think that when you start on a long journey the details of the destination can be very fuzzy.
I have made a life of monetizing and making a living off my hobbies and artistic pursuits- and fortunately have not had to leave the totality of my performances available for the world to see forever: because that's the thing about blogs, digital content etc. It follows you around forever- who among us really understood this and it's implications the first time we posted in forum or in a chat?
I consider in my own life my digital contributions to the world, and when I look back at them they are at best random and scattershot snapshots of the moment, and I certainly could not imagine trying tie them all together into some grand unifying/unchanging theory of how I see the world over the last 15 years. All the folks started in a certain place and landed where they currently are (and are also on their way to somewhere else). I think it's tough to slam them too much because their worldview doesn't agree with yours- the scales aren't balanced- until all your dirty laundry is out there hanging out for scrutiny.
We can say "well they put it out their for the world to see, so we get to hold them accountable..." That's true- that's the nature of creating anything- and that's why you have to learn to have a tough skin as a creator. But I think that the general tone of "yeah but it only works for them because x" is a real mistake. You run the risk of missing the forest for the trees.
The math on ER and FIRE works on any scale. And I think that is a really important takeaway. The industry that has grown up around it: who could have foreseen it? Really- I don't think anyone. And it's not that I don't think criticism is fair when people's narrative doesn't reflect the real changes that happen in their life or circumstances as they tout a certain brand of freedom (frugal or whatever); it's that I think very often we have a really difficult time seeing our own circumstances from a lot of other people's perspective (especially in real time as things change in ways we never imagined). I know for myself- even though I recognize that I had a ton of privilege baked into my life and upbringing; I came from a poor community and working class/farming family; i.e. teachers, farmers, builders: so even as my situation has changed over the years, my fundamental world view of myself hasn't changed; and this is why so many people people see themselves a certain way even though that way doesn't really align with how the rest of the world might view it.
I don't know why all the rambling- I guess I feel a certain sympathy for those folks for whom success is both great and terrible. Most of the time the destination is a far stranger land than we ever expected. It's become a stock phrase, and thus lost a lot of its meaning: "What got you here, won't get yout there." So many of us found kindred spirits when we first found our way to these blogs and forums, after years of meandering alone in a world where it was hard to find like minds. Even though as time has gone by a lot of the voices that found megaphones have drifted in different directions... because that's happens, the message still has a lot of value; regardless of "imputed rent" or "they made way more money than I expected", etc. I find R. Kyosaki to be sort of distasteful, but I have gotten a ton of value out of ideas he found a way to articulate- and I remember something he said about people who say "You can't do that!!" and that was a clue you were on the right track. So be careful if you catch yourself saying "that won't work" or " you can't do that... " because x, y, or z.
Agree, well said!
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I've been putting stuff online since the early days of the internet and I love the accountability aspect of it. Other than this particular site where I don't use my real name [due to $$ details] all my other content is under my name and you can link it all together if you have the time and interest. I have had people figure out where I lived or call me out on stuff before. The former was slightly creepy, but the later I am 100% okay with. Knowing that's possible is a great reminder to keep myself in check and be willing to really own what I post. I also don't mind discussing why my opinion may have changed over a span of years.
Particularly if you want to earn money from online content you have to be okay with people looking at what you post and seeing if it tracks. If you can't take that level of scrutiny than it's not the right path for you.
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Knowing that's possible is a great reminder to keep myself in check and be willing to really own what I post. I also don't mind discussing why my opinion may have changed over a span of years.
Particularly if you want to earn money from online content you have to be okay with people looking at what you post and seeing if it tracks. If you can't take that level of scrutiny than it's not the right path for you.
I appreciate your willingness to grow and acknowledge change- the world could use a bit more of that. Do you think you were as keenly aware of what that accountability might look like when you first started posting? I sure didn't. I will say, that in general I have opted for anonymity because there are a lot of crazies out there in the world.
I wonder how many of the folks who in the end did make money from their blog really thought that they would? It's a moon shot from the start, and I expect (just one anonymous person on the internet) that most just had something they wanted to say without any idea that they would turn into a hit. The cost and investment of getting going in any small business or creative enterprises whether in time or money almost never gets returned. I think a lot of folks probably got more scrutiny than money in a many cases from the online content.
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Knowing that's possible is a great reminder to keep myself in check and be willing to really own what I post. I also don't mind discussing why my opinion may have changed over a span of years.
Particularly if you want to earn money from online content you have to be okay with people looking at what you post and seeing if it tracks. If you can't take that level of scrutiny than it's not the right path for you.
I appreciate your willingness to grow and acknowledge change- the world could use a bit more of that. Do you think you were as keenly aware of what that accountability might look like when you first started posting? I sure didn't. I will say, that in general I have opted for anonymity because there are a lot of crazies out there in the world.
I wonder how many of the folks who in the end did make money from their blog really thought that they would? It's a moon shot from the start, and I expect (just one anonymous person on the internet) that most just had something they wanted to say without any idea that they would turn into a hit. The cost and investment of getting going in any small business or creative enterprises whether in time or money almost never gets returned. I think a lot of folks probably got more scrutiny than money in a many cases from the online content.
I definitely did not have the foresight. Randomly I googled myself the other day and found a CD review I wrote over 15 years ago, and also found another review from a few years later where someone referenced mine. :D
I nuked my blog which was under my name because I didn't want any potential employers to find it.
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I appreciate your willingness to grow and acknowledge change- the world could use a bit more of that. Do you think you were as keenly aware of what that accountability might look like when you first started posting? I sure didn't. I will say, that in general I have opted for anonymity because there are a lot of crazies out there in the world.
I was raised as a fully functional human so accountability for my actions was part of that package of skills. Sure it's easier now to look back at what people have said/done, but it's always been important for people to be able to stand up and take responsibility for what they have said/done. Before the internet people had "reputations" that followed them around via word of mouth.
I also feel like the only people really getting in trouble are folks who said or did things that were really off the rails. If you did something cringy or a bit embarrassing that's not going to be a big deal. If you were a member of your local Hitler/SS Fan Club or you beat up a homeless person or you stole from your employer...those are problems and there should be follow on consequences.
I wonder how many of the folks who in the end did make money from their blog really thought that they would? It's a moon shot from the start, and I expect (just one anonymous person on the internet) that most just had something they wanted to say without any idea that they would turn into a hit. The cost and investment of getting going in any small business or creative enterprises whether in time or money almost never gets returned. I think a lot of folks probably got more scrutiny than money in a many cases from the online content.
I was open to making money from some of my content. It never really happened partially because it wasn't the right stuff at the right time and partially because I hate selling people stuff so I wasn't willing to do some things that could have earned me $$. So I settled for contributing to the relevant communities for free. People recognize me out and about and come talk to me about stuff they've read that I have posted. It can be a bit weird, but I'm happy to talk about those topics and the people who read my content tend to have similar interests.
For those that do make a bunch of serious money from their online content if you want the pay cheque you have to accept the accountability. You can always stop making that content and delete the income streams. If you choose to accept the money then accept the whole package.
FWIW - I don't have a problem with people posting anonymously if they want to. I don't need to know MMM = Pete or FW = whoever they are. But if people are unhappy about how FW presented their incomes/story than that FW brand can be accountable for it without people knowing their actual identities.
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some random, disconnect thoughts on this...
I think on blogs there might be a trade off with 'revealing it all' or being anonymous. So with FW seems that they were really exposed and attempts to sheild their income may have seemed to them just prudent/good social practice. So - that this sheilding was due to not wanting family, coworkers, neighbors, etc. to know their income. I know I am very shady about this. I am not close to family, but I think their would be 'expectation' if they knew how my salary that I'd prefer to avoid.
The other side, is I've heard mention that there is less of an interest in fire than there used to be, especially with the younger crowd. Is it just forum traffic, per se? or are people not seeing it as possible? It could be that all these blogs that got everyone excited and giving up their lattes to throw money into the 401k and then with the multiple reveals of higher than expected salaries that many thought - sure - you can do that on 6 figures (multiple 6 figures) but it isn't workable for me at this salary....which would have maybe not been the case if say the FW had been open about salary all along, and then you saw that they did start on the higher side of "normal, middle class" and then income grew and maybe younger potential Firees could envision their income growing too....but then it is just back channel gossip that - oh well he's earning 300k and people are looking at their 45k salary with high rent and student loan payments and thinking that that small latte today isn't going to make a big difference and after 30 years of giving up lattes they can retire at 63 instead of 65 and that isn't a great appeal to a 20-early 30 something person. Add the apparent 'deception' and maybe they just nope right out of it.
While wee here really see the time aspect of money, it is tougher in the begining when you don't have that benefit going on, so I can see being discouraged (and upset) if what you were modeling your trajectory on turned out to be something so far out of your means that it seems not to apply to you at all.
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@mistymoney - My observation about lower interest in FIRE has been the following...
- Tech dominated careers went work remote. This removed a number of friction points that drove people to FIRE (office, commute, high cost of living area lock in, and lack of control over their time). Even stodgy fields like finance are getting some flexibility. I think you see the same or more popularity in medical fields not exposed to work remote.
- Soloprenuership gaining popularity. Lots of my FIREy friends have backed into making money post FIRE and I see that rubbing off on others. Instead of grinding out a corporate career for 16 years at 50% savings, getting a big nest egg in a decade then changing how money is made is popular.
- Blogs just aren't getting the same traffic with the popularity of short form content. That short form content is dominated by views and algorithims that lead to finfluencers with a wider range of advice quality.
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^ My own interest in FIRE absolutely lessened when we were required to work from home every day during the pandemic. Now that there's this BS requirement to go in to the office a certain number of days per week, only to have meetings on Microsoft Teams with people in other locations, has greatly increased my desire to FIRE again. Also hearing whatever people are talking about in their nearby cubicles with their lack of a headset is incredibly distracting. I was way more productive at home, and my employer should have the metrics to see that, but everyone is punished because of commercial real estate lobbyists.
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^ My own interest in FIRE absolutely lessened when we were required to work from home every day during the pandemic. Now that there's this BS requirement to go in to the office a certain number of days per week, only to have meetings on Microsoft Teams with people in other locations, has greatly increased my desire to FIRE again. Also hearing whatever people are talking about in their nearby cubicles with their lack of a headset is incredibly distracting. I was way more productive at home, and my employer should have the metrics to see that, but everyone is punished because of commercial real estate lobbyists.
Interesting insight!
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@mistymoney - My observation about lower interest in FIRE has been the following...
- Tech dominated careers went work remote. This removed a number of friction points that drove people to FIRE (office, commute, high cost of living area lock in, and lack of control over their time). Even stodgy fields like finance are getting some flexibility. I think you see the same or more popularity in medical fields not exposed to work remote.
- Soloprenuership gaining popularity. Lots of my FIREy friends have backed into making money post FIRE and I see that rubbing off on others. Instead of grinding out a corporate career for 16 years at 50% savings, getting a big nest egg in a decade then changing how money is made is popular.
- Blogs just aren't getting the same traffic with the popularity of short form content. That short form content is dominated by views and algorithims that lead to finfluencers with a wider range of advice quality.
Good points. Will be interesting to see how things progress with personal finances as these things change and people are making money in all sorts of ways - and if they are more/less painful than working for the person!
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^ My own interest in FIRE absolutely lessened when we were required to work from home every day during the pandemic. Now that there's this BS requirement to go in to the office a certain number of days per week, only to have meetings on Microsoft Teams with people in other locations, has greatly increased my desire to FIRE again. Also hearing whatever people are talking about in their nearby cubicles with their lack of a headset is incredibly distracting. I was way more productive at home, and my employer should have the metrics to see that, but everyone is punished because of commercial real estate lobbyists.
I thought the pandemic would greatly accelerate the desire to FIRE too - especially for those people who were in positions where they couldn't WFH or work in more isolated jobs. I'd imagine many healthcare workers etc would be looking at ways to FIRE asap if they could. Same when those who could WFH had to go back to work at a job site.
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It could be that all these blogs that got everyone excited and giving up their lattes to throw money into the 401k and then with the multiple reveals of higher than expected salaries that many thought - sure - you can do that on 6 figures (multiple 6 figures) but it isn't workable for me at this salary....which would have maybe not been the case if say the FW had been open about salary all along, and then you saw that they did start on the higher side of "normal, middle class" and then income grew and maybe younger potential Firees could envision their income growing too....but then it is just back channel gossip that - oh well he's earning 300k and people are looking at their 45k salary with high rent and student loan payments and thinking that that small latte today isn't going to make a big difference and after 30 years of giving up lattes they can retire at 63 instead of 65 and that isn't a great appeal to a 20-early 30 something person. Add the apparent 'deception' and maybe they just nope right out of it.
A common criticism of FIRE from outside the FIRE community is that hey, if only my spouse and I were highly paid software engineers we could retire early too. I find that criticism misplaced. Lots of people FIRE with regular incomes. But the Fruglewoods got the brunt of that line of criticism.
But the other component is that a key theme of the FIRE community going back to Joe Dominguez is to live frugally now, so you can spend your life's energy on things that are truely important to you. It was important to the Fruglewood's to live frugally so they could buy a massive hobby farm and keep their high paying jobs. More power to 'em, but not much FIRE content there.
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I think people are rightly pointing out that the expansion of remote work has lessened how absolutely terrible office jobs were pre-2020. For a lot of people that overnight saved 10-20 hours a week in commuting. That was enough for a lot of people to not be so overworked as to have to just quit the whole system as quickly as possible.
I think also the younger generations are coming at work with a much better attitude. They don't mind taking time for themselves, and generally are making a much better culture of work-life balance than the older generations did. Remote work is part of that, but also not putting in more hours for nothing in return.
I think a large part of it is forgetting how truly miserable a lot of work was between the tech bubble and covid when these blogs were everywhere.
Personally, I also don't feel need to retire in 10-15 years like I did at the beginning of my career. Part of that is having a stash (even if not enough to FIRE) that provides a certain level of comfort, but also the last few times I switched jobs, I asked how the job would make my life more comfortable and provide more time for the things I want to do and less about the highest possible dollar figure I could be making. For my current job, I nearly doubled my vacation time, and the job has been providing me with way more downtime than more contractor job did. It is paying me for things I wanted to do with my FIRE time (language learning). It's still a job at the end of the day, but it is no where near the slog my jobs have been in the past several years.
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Just to tack on to ways 2020 changed outlooks regarding work: One of our primary motivations for FIRE was that 4 weeks of vacation just were not enough for what we wanted to do. At some point we wanted to have the option to escape winter for 1+ month or spend a summer on the coast and normal corporate vacation time didn't provide for that. With remote work, I can now work anywhere in the US as long as I have an internet connection so it is not as urgent to pull the trigger on FIRE.
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I think a large part of it is forgetting how truly miserable a lot of work was between the tech bubble and covid when these blogs were everywhere.
This is also accurate. We hit peak employee participation rate in 2000 subsequently saw the economy go into the toilet twice. That swung the balance of power to the employer an extreme mindset of "you should just be happy to have a job" was widespread for two decades. This is also why there's a generation of corporate managers that have struggled to adapt to competitive pay and remote work, instead resorting to complaining "nobody wants to work anymore" instead of improving the job quality.
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I think people are rightly pointing out that the expansion of remote work has lessened how absolutely terrible office jobs were pre-2020. For a lot of people that overnight saved 10-20 hours a week in commuting. That was enough for a lot of people to not be so overworked as to have to just quit the whole system as quickly as possible.
I agree. I quit my office job in early 2010s to stay home. I did the FT work, commuting, office work thing for a few years and it was extremely hard. My commute with daycare drop off was 40-60 minutes one way, depending on weather. I didn't hate my job and I didn't hate the money or working 40 hours a week. It was the inflexibility that killed me. However, looking back, I don't regret leaving either and things worked out better than I ever expected, so I guess there's that too.
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I think people are rightly pointing out that the expansion of remote work has lessened how absolutely terrible office jobs were pre-2020. For a lot of people that overnight saved 10-20 hours a week in commuting. That was enough for a lot of people to not be so overworked as to have to just quit the whole system as quickly as possible.
I agree. I quit my office job in early 2010s to stay home. I did the FT work, commuting, office work thing for a few years and it was extremely hard. My commute with daycare drop off was 40-60 minutes one way, depending on weather. I didn't hate my job and I didn't hate the money or working 40 hours a week. It was the inflexibility that killed me. However, looking back, I don't regret leaving either and things worked out better than I ever expected, so I guess there's that too.
I remember back in my first psych degree reading a study that showed that the number one predictor of job dissatisfaction was daily time spent in traffic. More than pay, management, or anything to do with the actual job. Tons of similar research has come out since saying similar things, so I don't bother searching for the original study from 20 years ago, but it really impacted my thinking about my career moving forward.
I absolutely agree that inflexibility is a major factor and moreso the more time someone spends at work. It's not a big deal to have an inflexible schedule a few days a week, but if 5/7 days are long and inflexible, and are constantly bookended by a misery-inducing stop-and-go commute, that's not going to help your mental health, even if you really enjoy the key elements of your work.
In 3 weeks I go back to work for the first time in 4 years. I've been in school for the past 2 years and before that took on major projects working on houses and volunteering on executive committees. I've been very, very busy with "work" for the past 4 years, but always on my own time. My school program is totally asynchronous, so I can do it whenever I feel like it. Very hard work feels more like a challenging hobby when I can do it whenever I feel like it.
But going back to a 3 day/wk inflexible schedule is daunting.
Right now I bulk cook when I feel like bulk cooking, I do my PT when I feel like doing it. I have all of these life-tasks that need to be done that I do when they sound more fun to do. By committing to a schedule, I'll now need to do all of those other things on more of a schedule as well.
This all sounds stupidly obvious to someone who is still working, but it's a radical mental shift to any of us who are retired and used to near total autonomy over our time and energy.
I think about my professional friends in major cities who live in suburbs and work demanding full time jobs. They're working 60ish hours a week plus 45-90 minute heavy traffic commutes each way. Plus they have kids with schedules.
It's just so little autonomous time.
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I was a little ahead of the curve - I was allowed to mostly work from home starting in 2004. I had broadband Internet at home via DSL and we had an efficient VPN system at my company. Coordination overhead was relatively low as I worked in software research so we only had a single weekly group meeting. My office was a 25 mile drive so I would go there only when I needed to attend in-person meetings. Furthermore, I had an individual office, not a share space. In hindsight, thats probably why I didn't really feel any burnout until my mid 50s. It was really only the last 3 years of my working life that became difficult for me.
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@Metalcat
I think about my professional friends in major cities who live in suburbs and work demanding full time jobs. They're working 60ish hours a week plus 45-90 minute heavy traffic commutes each way. Plus they have kids with schedules.
That was us for a long time. It led to burnout. That is what drove the pursuit of FIRE and did in 2019. Fortunately or unfortunately I went back to work last November as mentioned elsewhere on this site and I can confirm the commute is awful - an hour+ each way and just drains me leaving me with no motivation or energy to do anything else, not to mention the 9 hours in the office in-between said commute. Working from home on Fridays helps though I am pretty unproductive those days from being drained. It was supposed to be more flexible than it has turned out to be.
Committing 11+ hours a day (not including getting ready for work) is too much time of my life on top of all the other demands (kids stuff mostly). All of this makes me realize that "Not needing the job" doesn't make the job more tolerable/enjoyable. Maybe it would be different if there was some sort of purpose feom the job other than helping rich people get richer.....but then if that were the case I probably wouldn't have made the money in the last year to satisfy what I needed it to.
It served its purpose and once bonus hits I will be out again.
Good luck with return to work and bc it is something you pursued, invested a lot of time in, and find purpose in it I hope it brings you a lot of satisfaction (and pay).
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@Metalcat
I think about my professional friends in major cities who live in suburbs and work demanding full time jobs. They're working 60ish hours a week plus 45-90 minute heavy traffic commutes each way. Plus they have kids with schedules.
That was us for a long time. It led to burnout. That is what drove the pursuit of FIRE and did in 2019. Fortunately or unfortunately I went back to work last November as mentioned elsewhere on this site and I can confirm the commute is awful - an hour+ each way and just drains me leaving me with no motivation or energy to do anything else, not to mention the 9 hours in the office in-between said commute. Working from home on Fridays helps though I am pretty unproductive those days from being drained. It was supposed to be more flexible than it has turned out to be.
Committing 11+ hours a day (not including getting ready for work) is too much time of my life on top of all the other demands (kids stuff mostly). All of this makes me realize that "Not needing the job" doesn't make the job more tolerable/enjoyable. Maybe it would be different if there was some sort of purpose feom the job other than helping rich people get richer.....but then if that were the case I probably wouldn't have made the money in the last year to satisfy what I needed it to.
It served its purpose and once bonus hits I will be out again.
Good luck with return to work and bc it is something you pursued, invested a lot of time in, and find purpose in it I hope it brings you a lot of satisfaction (and pay).
What was your motivation for going back and subjecting yourself to something it sounds like you dislike?
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@Metalcat
I think about my professional friends in major cities who live in suburbs and work demanding full time jobs. They're working 60ish hours a week plus 45-90 minute heavy traffic commutes each way. Plus they have kids with schedules.
That was us for a long time. It led to burnout. That is what drove the pursuit of FIRE and did in 2019. Fortunately or unfortunately I went back to work last November as mentioned elsewhere on this site and I can confirm the commute is awful - an hour+ each way and just drains me leaving me with no motivation or energy to do anything else, not to mention the 9 hours in the office in-between said commute. Working from home on Fridays helps though I am pretty unproductive those days from being drained. It was supposed to be more flexible than it has turned out to be.
Committing 11+ hours a day (not including getting ready for work) is too much time of my life on top of all the other demands (kids stuff mostly). All of this makes me realize that "Not needing the job" doesn't make the job more tolerable/enjoyable. Maybe it would be different if there was some sort of purpose feom the job other than helping rich people get richer.....but then if that were the case I probably wouldn't have made the money in the last year to satisfy what I needed it to.
It served its purpose and once bonus hits I will be out again.
Good luck with return to work and bc it is something you pursued, invested a lot of time in, and find purpose in it I hope it brings you a lot of satisfaction (and pay).
What was your motivation for going back and subjecting yourself to something it sounds like you dislike?
Short answer is money, specifically falling portfolio and rising expenses in 2022, needing/wanting additional dollars for kids college costs, among others.
I also hoped the intellectual stimulation and engagement would be beneficial. But there was a sort of retrade on expectations foe flexibility and WFH more days than I am, which I was initially worried about as boss is a work more to work in the office person and views work feom home as weekend time. Going in I completely underestimated the impact of commute and working in office.
Was going to leave back in September but a large deal came together and should result in decent comp so decided to play nice for a few more months.
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@Metalcat
I think about my professional friends in major cities who live in suburbs and work demanding full time jobs. They're working 60ish hours a week plus 45-90 minute heavy traffic commutes each way. Plus they have kids with schedules.
That was us for a long time. It led to burnout. That is what drove the pursuit of FIRE and did in 2019. Fortunately or unfortunately I went back to work last November as mentioned elsewhere on this site and I can confirm the commute is awful - an hour+ each way and just drains me leaving me with no motivation or energy to do anything else, not to mention the 9 hours in the office in-between said commute. Working from home on Fridays helps though I am pretty unproductive those days from being drained. It was supposed to be more flexible than it has turned out to be.
Committing 11+ hours a day (not including getting ready for work) is too much time of my life on top of all the other demands (kids stuff mostly). All of this makes me realize that "Not needing the job" doesn't make the job more tolerable/enjoyable. Maybe it would be different if there was some sort of purpose feom the job other than helping rich people get richer.....but then if that were the case I probably wouldn't have made the money in the last year to satisfy what I needed it to.
It served its purpose and once bonus hits I will be out again.
Good luck with return to work and bc it is something you pursued, invested a lot of time in, and find purpose in it I hope it brings you a lot of satisfaction (and pay).
Thank you!
Yeah, it's all work from home, extremely meaningful and satisfying work, and pays over $100/hr and I can work as much or as little as I want with full autonomy and control over my schedule.
When I decided to retrain and go back to work, I spent 2 years figuring out exactly what I wanted.
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I’m 20 months out from retirement. I am a US Government special category employee so will retire at 25 years of service at any age. (So 10 years before what would be a regular Feds minimum Retirement age.). Overall I like what I do, but I’m 100% subject to someone else’s schedule that I dont personally know. I’ve done enough for my job, I am looking forward to being done, but again I don’t hate it.
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@Metalcat
I think about my professional friends in major cities who live in suburbs and work demanding full time jobs. They're working 60ish hours a week plus 45-90 minute heavy traffic commutes each way. Plus they have kids with schedules.
That was us for a long time. It led to burnout. That is what drove the pursuit of FIRE and did in 2019. Fortunately or unfortunately I went back to work last November as mentioned elsewhere on this site and I can confirm the commute is awful - an hour+ each way and just drains me leaving me with no motivation or energy to do anything else, not to mention the 9 hours in the office in-between said commute. Working from home on Fridays helps though I am pretty unproductive those days from being drained. It was supposed to be more flexible than it has turned out to be.
Committing 11+ hours a day (not including getting ready for work) is too much time of my life on top of all the other demands (kids stuff mostly). All of this makes me realize that "Not needing the job" doesn't make the job more tolerable/enjoyable. Maybe it would be different if there was some sort of purpose feom the job other than helping rich people get richer.....but then if that were the case I probably wouldn't have made the money in the last year to satisfy what I needed it to.
It served its purpose and once bonus hits I will be out again.
Good luck with return to work and bc it is something you pursued, invested a lot of time in, and find purpose in it I hope it brings you a lot of satisfaction (and pay).
Thank you!
Yeah, it's all work from home, extremely meaningful and satisfying work, and pays over $100/hr and I can work as much or as little as I want with full autonomy and control over my schedule.
When I decided to retrain and go back to work, I spent 2 years figuring out exactly what I wanted.
That's terrific.
Serious question....how does that work exactly? I don't want to do, nor am I interested in, anything.....really, it's more of I am a jack of all trades /float like a butterfly where the wind take me kind of person. I fell into my career not out of interest but it fit my natural or innate personality and skill set and was the easiest path to $$$$ but at my core dabbling in a bunch of things is my jam.
How does one find what they want?
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@Metalcat
I think about my professional friends in major cities who live in suburbs and work demanding full time jobs. They're working 60ish hours a week plus 45-90 minute heavy traffic commutes each way. Plus they have kids with schedules.
That was us for a long time. It led to burnout. That is what drove the pursuit of FIRE and did in 2019. Fortunately or unfortunately I went back to work last November as mentioned elsewhere on this site and I can confirm the commute is awful - an hour+ each way and just drains me leaving me with no motivation or energy to do anything else, not to mention the 9 hours in the office in-between said commute. Working from home on Fridays helps though I am pretty unproductive those days from being drained. It was supposed to be more flexible than it has turned out to be.
Committing 11+ hours a day (not including getting ready for work) is too much time of my life on top of all the other demands (kids stuff mostly). All of this makes me realize that "Not needing the job" doesn't make the job more tolerable/enjoyable. Maybe it would be different if there was some sort of purpose feom the job other than helping rich people get richer.....but then if that were the case I probably wouldn't have made the money in the last year to satisfy what I needed it to.
It served its purpose and once bonus hits I will be out again.
Good luck with return to work and bc it is something you pursued, invested a lot of time in, and find purpose in it I hope it brings you a lot of satisfaction (and pay).
Thank you!
Yeah, it's all work from home, extremely meaningful and satisfying work, and pays over $100/hr and I can work as much or as little as I want with full autonomy and control over my schedule.
When I decided to retrain and go back to work, I spent 2 years figuring out exactly what I wanted.
That's terrific.
Serious question....how does that work exactly? I don't want to do, nor am I interested in, anything.....really, it's more of I am a jack of all trades /float like a butterfly where the wind take me kind of person. I fell into my career not out of interest but it fit my natural or innate personality and skill set and was the easiest path to $$$$ but at my core dabbling in a bunch of things is my jam.
How does one find what they want?
Also curious about this as I fell into all my jobs. Applying to jobs has always felt like throwing darts to me, hoping that I'll hit the bullseye ,but never knowing until I dive in to it.
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@Metalcat
I think about my professional friends in major cities who live in suburbs and work demanding full time jobs. They're working 60ish hours a week plus 45-90 minute heavy traffic commutes each way. Plus they have kids with schedules.
That was us for a long time. It led to burnout. That is what drove the pursuit of FIRE and did in 2019. Fortunately or unfortunately I went back to work last November as mentioned elsewhere on this site and I can confirm the commute is awful - an hour+ each way and just drains me leaving me with no motivation or energy to do anything else, not to mention the 9 hours in the office in-between said commute. Working from home on Fridays helps though I am pretty unproductive those days from being drained. It was supposed to be more flexible than it has turned out to be.
Committing 11+ hours a day (not including getting ready for work) is too much time of my life on top of all the other demands (kids stuff mostly). All of this makes me realize that "Not needing the job" doesn't make the job more tolerable/enjoyable. Maybe it would be different if there was some sort of purpose feom the job other than helping rich people get richer.....but then if that were the case I probably wouldn't have made the money in the last year to satisfy what I needed it to.
It served its purpose and once bonus hits I will be out again.
Good luck with return to work and bc it is something you pursued, invested a lot of time in, and find purpose in it I hope it brings you a lot of satisfaction (and pay).
Thank you!
Yeah, it's all work from home, extremely meaningful and satisfying work, and pays over $100/hr and I can work as much or as little as I want with full autonomy and control over my schedule.
When I decided to retrain and go back to work, I spent 2 years figuring out exactly what I wanted.
That's terrific.
Serious question....how does that work exactly? I don't want to do, nor am I interested in, anything.....really, it's more of I am a jack of all trades /float like a butterfly where the wind take me kind of person. I fell into my career not out of interest but it fit my natural or innate personality and skill set and was the easiest path to $$$$ but at my core dabbling in a bunch of things is my jam.
How does one find what they want?
Also curious about this as I fell into all my jobs. Applying to jobs has always felt like throwing darts to me, hoping that I'll hit the bullseye ,but never knowing until I dive in to it.
I'm...not quite sure how to answer this question...
It's like figuring out any complex question, unfortunately most people do what their parents tell them is a good idea, but most people's parents have no idea.
My parents were incredibly knowledgeable about careers, skills, and job markets. My mother ran a large national staffing agency and I worked for her for awhile, so I learned A LOT about the basics of job markets, supply and demand of skills, and what different jobs and industries were like and how talent moves through them.
I then used that foundational knowledge while I was in school to research and understand various careers and jobs. In undergrad I was trying to figure out what grad programs to apply to and probably invested hundreds of hours into researching various careers.
I researched *everything*. I wanted to know career trajectories, skills that were most in demand, skills that were more rare, niche markets within the field, what the day to day of the job is like, what the path to promotion is like and what the pain points are along the way, what the management culture tends to be like, whether it's a high or low barrier to entry career, what does the success distribution look like, etc, etc. All just basic career info that can be found with enough research and networking.
I would connect with people in every field I had even remote interest in and ask them a bunch of questions including a classic interview question: what does a great day at work look like and what does a horrible day at work look like. People generally like to be helpful and talk about their own careers, so it's not hard to get a ton of information out of them. Plus networking is the best way into jobs.
By the time I figured out what I wanted to do the first time around, I had a pretty robust network and a pile of job offers.
So when I retired I basically did the exact same thing. I just explored literally every possible job option that was compatible with my physical limitations. Even then, there were still a TON of options. I settled on a career path that had actually been my original Plan B and just happened to be very disability-friendly.
Then the whole process started again. There's the research needed to decide what career to pursue, but then there's all the research to figure out *how* to pursue that career. Once I got in to the program I wanted, then I started on connecting with professionals in the field and figuring out career trajectory. I connected with dozens of successful professionals and asked them a ton of questions about their experience, what their good and bad days look like and what advice they would give themselves at my stage of the game. This helped me figure out what areas are probably best for me to focus on and what early career decisions will most impact my trajectory, etc, etc. Within a few months of starting school, I had a very solid sense of the market, the role of independent businesses vs corporate, the market saturation, the rare skills that were becoming more valuable, the different business models and their pros and cons.
I've almost never mass applied for jobs and never gone into a job without having a solid understanding of the industry and how people move through it, so I've always had a strategy as to how to position myself within the field from day 1,.which I just build upon as I continue networking and researching along the way.
My career is always something I engineer.
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@Metalcat
I think about my professional friends in major cities who live in suburbs and work demanding full time jobs. They're working 60ish hours a week plus 45-90 minute heavy traffic commutes each way. Plus they have kids with schedules.
That was us for a long time. It led to burnout. That is what drove the pursuit of FIRE and did in 2019. Fortunately or unfortunately I went back to work last November as mentioned elsewhere on this site and I can confirm the commute is awful - an hour+ each way and just drains me leaving me with no motivation or energy to do anything else, not to mention the 9 hours in the office in-between said commute. Working from home on Fridays helps though I am pretty unproductive those days from being drained. It was supposed to be more flexible than it has turned out to be.
Committing 11+ hours a day (not including getting ready for work) is too much time of my life on top of all the other demands (kids stuff mostly). All of this makes me realize that "Not needing the job" doesn't make the job more tolerable/enjoyable. Maybe it would be different if there was some sort of purpose feom the job other than helping rich people get richer.....but then if that were the case I probably wouldn't have made the money in the last year to satisfy what I needed it to.
It served its purpose and once bonus hits I will be out again.
Good luck with return to work and bc it is something you pursued, invested a lot of time in, and find purpose in it I hope it brings you a lot of satisfaction (and pay).
Thank you!
Yeah, it's all work from home, extremely meaningful and satisfying work, and pays over $100/hr and I can work as much or as little as I want with full autonomy and control over my schedule.
When I decided to retrain and go back to work, I spent 2 years figuring out exactly what I wanted.
That's terrific.
Serious question....how does that work exactly? I don't want to do, nor am I interested in, anything.....really, it's more of I am a jack of all trades /float like a butterfly where the wind take me kind of person. I fell into my career not out of interest but it fit my natural or innate personality and skill set and was the easiest path to $$$$ but at my core dabbling in a bunch of things is my jam.
How does one find what they want?
Also curious about this as I fell into all my jobs. Applying to jobs has always felt like throwing darts to me, hoping that I'll hit the bullseye ,but never knowing until I dive in to it.
When I got a job at a paper factory, people asked me what made me want to work there. I joked that "the phonograph record machine shop wasn't looking for anyone, so this was the next best thing." The real answer is that that's where the job offer came from.
Had it been from Google, I'd be at Google.
There are some jobs I wouldn't take, like those that take me away from home for long periods of time, but in the end, when I need a job or want a promotion, the one I take is the one that's offered.
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@Metalcat
I think about my professional friends in major cities who live in suburbs and work demanding full time jobs. They're working 60ish hours a week plus 45-90 minute heavy traffic commutes each way. Plus they have kids with schedules.
That was us for a long time. It led to burnout. That is what drove the pursuit of FIRE and did in 2019. Fortunately or unfortunately I went back to work last November as mentioned elsewhere on this site and I can confirm the commute is awful - an hour+ each way and just drains me leaving me with no motivation or energy to do anything else, not to mention the 9 hours in the office in-between said commute. Working from home on Fridays helps though I am pretty unproductive those days from being drained. It was supposed to be more flexible than it has turned out to be.
Committing 11+ hours a day (not including getting ready for work) is too much time of my life on top of all the other demands (kids stuff mostly). All of this makes me realize that "Not needing the job" doesn't make the job more tolerable/enjoyable. Maybe it would be different if there was some sort of purpose feom the job other than helping rich people get richer.....but then if that were the case I probably wouldn't have made the money in the last year to satisfy what I needed it to.
It served its purpose and once bonus hits I will be out again.
Good luck with return to work and bc it is something you pursued, invested a lot of time in, and find purpose in it I hope it brings you a lot of satisfaction (and pay).
Thank you!
Yeah, it's all work from home, extremely meaningful and satisfying work, and pays over $100/hr and I can work as much or as little as I want with full autonomy and control over my schedule.
When I decided to retrain and go back to work, I spent 2 years figuring out exactly what I wanted.
That's terrific.
Serious question....how does that work exactly? I don't want to do, nor am I interested in, anything.....really, it's more of I am a jack of all trades /float like a butterfly where the wind take me kind of person. I fell into my career not out of interest but it fit my natural or innate personality and skill set and was the easiest path to $$$$ but at my core dabbling in a bunch of things is my jam.
How does one find what they want?
Also curious about this as I fell into all my jobs. Applying to jobs has always felt like throwing darts to me, hoping that I'll hit the bullseye ,but never knowing until I dive in to it.
When I got a job at a paper factory, people asked me what made me want to work there. I joked that "the phonograph record machine shop wasn't looking for anyone, so this was the next best thing." The real answer is that that's where the job offer came from.
Had it been from Google, I'd be at Google.
There are some jobs I wouldn't take, like those that take me away from home for long periods of time, but in the end, when I need a job or want a promotion, the one I take is the one that's offered.
Yeah. That's basically how i roll - if it's a lateral, maybe it's in a more interesting or desirable location, but I never know if my immediate management is going to be better or worse.
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Take the jobs that are offered, position yourself for success and all that.
My issue is I still haven't figured out what I want to be when I grow up (haha). You know the old question about "If you had a million dollars what would you do?" I can't answer that and never have been able to. Only I can answer that but don't know how too.
Anyway, off topic........where is GCC? And FW was misleading! Lol
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Take the jobs that are offered, position yourself for success and all that.
My issue is I still haven't figured out what I want to be when I grow up (haha). You know the old question about "If you had a million dollars what would you do?" I can't answer that and never have been able to. Only I can answer that but don't know how too.
Anyway, off topic........where is GCC? And FW was misleading! Lol
Oh, I also have no idea. And I imagine that I still won't know when I have a million dollars. :D
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Friendly reminder that anyone is allowed to work for free or for a price they find agreeable before or after retirement. This includes blogging or any other career. If you would take a job for less money or wouldn't take a job, that's your freedom to choose. If you get a raise, promotion, or blog/ work and are compensated more than others, good for you. If you want to be the change in the world for XYZ cause, go get it.
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Friendly reminder that anyone is allowed to work for free or for a price they find agreeable before or after retirement. This includes blogging or any other career. If you would take a job for less money or wouldn't take a job, that's your freedom to choose. If you get a raise, promotion, or blog/ work and are compensated more than others, good for you. If you want to be the change in the world for XYZ cause, go get it.
This violates Statute 34.5 of the Retirement Police Mandates, which states, and I quote without abbreviation: "@406MtnFire is wrong."
The only things you're allowed to do once you FIRE is ride bikes and become an Internet person.
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Hey! FW is back! She posted that she's tired of writing about herself and has run out of things to say, so from now on it's just gonna be case studies and that's it.
Absolutely cannot blame her. I love writing but I can't imagine letting strangers into my life via the internet.
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Hey! FW is back! She posted that she's tired of writing about herself and has run out of things to say, so from now on it's just gonna be case studies and that's it.
Absolutely cannot blame her. I love writing but I can't imagine letting strangers into my life via the internet.
It's also just normal for bloggers to run out of steam. Very few writers have an boundless source of inspiration for things to say.
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Hey! FW is back! She posted that she's tired of writing about herself and has run out of things to say, so from now on it's just gonna be case studies and that's it.
Absolutely cannot blame her. I love writing but I can't imagine letting strangers into my life via the internet.
It's also just normal for bloggers to run out of steam. Very few writers have an boundless source of inspiration for things to say.
I ran out of things to say years ago.
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Hey! FW is back! She posted that she's tired of writing about herself and has run out of things to say, so from now on it's just gonna be case studies and that's it.
Absolutely cannot blame her. I love writing but I can't imagine letting strangers into my life via the internet.
It's also just normal for bloggers to run out of steam. Very few writers have an boundless source of inspiration for things to say.
Our culture is so biased about the latest being the greatest. Better to know when to change or scale back. However, there is still a lot of value in old posts of near-defunct blogs. I've read many in chronological order and the older ones are often most useful as they are working through the challenges I am.
I appreciate FW desire to help others through case studies, even if it might be to drive traffic to her consulting. What I can't fathom is why she (and other bloggers like MR) don't have a quick conversation with their subjects to clarify a few details instead of posting with assumptions or questions of their own. The subjects almost seem surprised in the comments they were posted about. MMM always did this and it roots the exercise in reality. Otherwise, it is having someone write most of your post and they don't even get to benefit from advice that isn't applicable.
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Hey! FW is back! She posted that she's tired of writing about herself and has run out of things to say, so from now on it's just gonna be case studies and that's it.
Absolutely cannot blame her. I love writing but I can't imagine letting strangers into my life via the internet.
Interesting line at the bottom of the page:
Helping women, non-binary Folks (and a few men) fix their money since 2014
Their site and interviews always seemed more general in nature to me.
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And we don't owe them to like what they say and how they say it.
I'm pretty sure I'm allowed to find what someone says misleading. I'm not demanding anything of the person, I just hold a relatively benign, not particularly impassioned opinion that the way certain information was conveyer definitely felt to me to be misleading.
I don't think she's a monster, I don't think her blog or book were evil, I don't think she should immediately start posting every detail of her personal life. I just think she intentionally made her family sound a certain way because she knew it would resonate with more people.
And I get why people were annoyed by that.
I stopped reading FW awhile ago. First I just cut back because every post was full of affiliate links. Then she started explaining how and why they were spending so much more money eating out, on salon haircuts, etc. and it just seemed the opposite of how it was when I was first reading (prior to the move to VT, but when they were looking). Not that there’s anything wrong with deciding to spend money, I just wasn’t interested in following a blog by an average mom of young children living a FI homestead life, spending lots of money on beer and wine. I did pop in when she did the blog refresh, and wondered if she just wasn’t generating the same blog and affiliate link income and needed to push in another direction to generate income.
I just took a peek at her blog, and she posted a couple of days ago that she’s tired of writing about herself and her finances.
I knew her husband was making good money until he retired; I didn’t know it was $300K, but figured it was close to $200K. I don’t think it matters. Early on, she offered really great frugal ideas that people of any income could learn from. Yes, they FIRE’d earlier than someone would be able to making a lower income. But plenty of people/families make $300K and can’t afford to retire at 67. I think maybe she imagined herself a modern day Amy D., sharing the kind of frugal things that a lot of people don’t want to do, and a such her family came off differently than expected based on income.
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That's an interesting take. I'd argue they aren't remotely frugal. The woman used to post their monthly spending in big 30,000-word posts littered with credit card ads and referral links. She stopped doing it (possibly for reasons that may become apparent), but if you take their last 12 months, their actual spend was $71,600. For middle of nowhere Vermont. My lazy googling says median household income in VT is a tad over $67K, so they're spending thousands more than the average family brings in before taxes and calling it the simple life? Maybe it's all lifestyle, but I kinda doubt anyone would pay FW $1500 to learn how to tap a maple tree or build a fence.
At best, it's marketing the unremarkable.
She spends more to feed two adults and two children than I spend to feed five adults (including feeding us fish twice a week), and I cook from scratch, prioritize unprocessed and minimally processed foods, and don’t buy processed junk. I don’t have a homestead and don’t grow my own food. I don’t live where groceries are cheap, either (if they are cheap anywhere anymore).
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GCC has posted an update.
https://www.gocurrycracker.com/investing-our-mortgage-2-year-update/
In the comment section he noted "It’s not bad. I thought I would use the trails more, but being a homeowner, having a very short school day, and a busy kid sports schedule means I just use the home gym in the garage.
The main downside is most restaurants are just kinda meh, which is a condition of suburbia everywhere. Alas, the way the US funds schools means city schools are not so good so suburbia it is."
Sounds like he has moved to boring suburbia for the benefit of his kids. A wild change from his prior globetrotting.