Internet Retirement Police - Go Curry Cracker edition

[HeadedWest2029]

For those long-timers who have followed GCC, he got a temp job.
Some of the folks who got me excited about early retirement have supplemented or went back to work (shout out Living a FI).  To be clear, definitely NOT a condemnation just an observation that even the OGs in the space have done this.   

Anyway, interesting post on his experience.  Pretty good temp job really
https://www.gocurrycracker.com/failing-at-early-retirement/

[tacticalteam4]

I enjoyed the post, and envision myself doing similar gigs in “retirement”

Seems like it was more to fight boredom and to get blog content than any real need to bring in more money. Kinda like how standup comedians get a lot of their content from all the travel they do while on tour.

[Dicey]

Notable that he took quite a bit of time off from his "full time" temporary job. Another example of the power of FU Money.

[GilesMM]

Sounds like he burned a lot of precious time for not much income in the name of getting shitty products to holiday consumers.  If he really has a financial problem he probably needs a real job.

[TreeLeaf]

I wonder if he will make more money from his blog post about his temporary job than he made from his temporary job.

[ixtap]

I wonder if he will make more money from his blog post about his temporary job than he made from his temporary job.

That's the thing: none of the OG's rode off into the sunset. They started careers as content creators. Most of them even seemed to be happy doing that and they offered an education to others. In the case of MMM, many like minded people got a community, even if the face punching has gone out of style (and I am on the thank goodness side of that).

[FIPurpose]

I wonder if he will make more money from his blog post about his temporary job than he made from his temporary job.

If bloggers the size of GCC were making over 3k per blog post, I think you'd see a lot more bloggers.

[EscapeVelocity2020]

It's strange that GCC doesn't also talk about the context of his high earning years, since that is a more unique perspective that he could add to the discussion.  Sure, working a short time, holiday disrupting job for $30/hr reinforces how valuable ER is, that's no great revelation, but how does it compare to making $100 - 200/hr in his former full benefits job?  He would've also had paid vacation during his time off...

[slappy]

I never really followed GCC but this article was really weird. He only worked 90 hours yet "I still haven’t caught up with the yard work and home projects that were put on hold during this time.

I was tired when I got home and was a less attentive father and partner. Our household became more chaotic and Winnie bore a greater burden with taking care of two kids for more hours per day.

I missed one or two days of good snowboarding, and Jr missed an after-school activity because we couldn’t fit it into the tighter schedule."

Cry me a river, dude.

It makes no sense why he even took the job. Also, going back to work in his situation seems like quite a transition. Of course he was unhappy. If he gave it more than 90 hours, I'm sure a routine would have developed.

[EscapeVelocity2020]

I wonder if he will make more money from his blog post about his temporary job than he made from his temporary job.

If bloggers the size of GCC were making over 3k per blog post, I think you'd see a lot more bloggers.

In the comments section, GCC confirms that his hourly rate blogging (vs. the temp job) is better 'for sure'.

[Fomerly known as something]

To me it sounds like he did a this could be fun, um never mind it’s not fun couple of weeks.

[FIPurpose]

I wonder if he will make more money from his blog post about his temporary job than he made from his temporary job.

If bloggers the size of GCC were making over 3k per blog post, I think you'd see a lot more bloggers.

In the comments section, GCC confirms that his hourly rate blogging (vs. the temp job) is better 'for sure'.

Ok sure, but that could mean he makes a couple hundred per blog. Even if he took 4 hours to write it. That's like $250 per post.

And I doubt he'd be making $250 per post if he were posting everyday. You can't always scale a blog the same way that you can get more hours at a job.

[LifeHappens]

I have to agree that this is a weird post. GCC took a decent paying job, worked a few hours at it, made a bit of money and... the end. Not much to say beyond that.

If he actually NEEDED money it seems like he could have done the full 8 hours+ per day, 6 days per week and made about 3 times what he earned. $10,000 makes a real dent in most FIRE'd withdrawal rates.

[tacticalteam4]

Saw him say he makes somewhere between 40-45k per year reliably through the blog  and averages around 2 posts a month with the occasional guest post thrown in the mix.

that’s healthy

[Metalcat]

I have to agree that this is a weird post. GCC took a decent paying job, worked a few hours at it, made a bit of money and... the end. Not much to say beyond that.

If he actually NEEDED money it seems like he could have done the full 8 hours+ per day, 6 days per week and made about 3 times what he earned. $10,000 makes a real dent in most FIRE'd withdrawal rates.

Eh, I can kind of speak to this as someone who doesn't really need to work and yet is constantly on the lookout for interesting jobs I could do.

I like working and I like making money, and I could just commit to a certain amount of full time work and make a bunch of money, but I don't want to.

It's more like I like to do all sorts of things and projects that pay me sometimes sound interesting.

Sometimes I start them and quickly think "FUCK THIS, I HATE THIS!" and I walk away. Other times I'm like "ooh, this is fun, I don't even care that I'm making a fifth of what I could make, I like the challenge, the conversations are great, and I'm learning a new skill, why not spend some time doing this?"

The calculus around work and income changes dramatically when. You don't really need it, but also don't mind working for money.

I completely understand where he's coming from, I could essentially write the same thing about some of my experiences.

Hell, I'm going in for major surgery tomorrow with a long and very unknown recovery timeline and I was literally doing an interview at 5am with a company from India who are interested in a consulting partnership for medical professionals.

Maybe I'll do it, maybe I'll be too fucked up to do it, maybe I'll take extra courses instead, maybe I'll start a new home reno project, maybe I'll take on a new volunteer role. Maybe I'll even get more shifts at the super random part time job I already have, and weirdly really enjoy, but rarely get called on to do.

Who knows?

When your time is wide open and you are FI, work isn't really something you do for money, work is just a thing you can fill your time with, and sometimes the things you fill your time with pay you money, because why not?

[Telecaster]

One way to look at it is that the $3000 he earned is the equivalent to an extra $75,000 in savings (4% rule).  That's not nothing.  It has sort of always been my plan to do a bit of part time work, which is fairly easy for me and reasonably well compensated (I realize not everyone is in that position).     But now I'm retired I found I liked not working a whole lot more than working, so I've pretty much been skipping work.  Maybe someday.   I don't think I'd enjoy something like a delivery driver where your whole day is spoken for.    I'm more of a few hours here and there kind of guy. 

[sui generis]

Omg, he mentions something I was just posting about in my journal recently, having taken on 2 very part-time jobs.  That after being FIREd for a while, it really has an outsized impact on the rest of life, even if it's very part-time.  As is frequently said, "I don't know how I had time for a job before!" 

I'm working only 12 hours per week tops (thankfully for a lot more money per hour and it never involves being out in the rain).  It's shocking how much less time I feel like I have, because I really do have to work around those hours, leaving me more fragmented time to fit other things in when I used to have vast tracts of open time.  That feels really different, psychologically. 

And there's some sort of emotional "overhead" to work that doesn't reduce linearly with the number of hours reduced.  I still feel like there's just a lot of associated time thinking about it, prepping, etc. and other stuff I can't actually bill, but that takes me away from my normal FIRE pursuits.

In my case it's actually worth it.  I really care about the work, enjoy the mini-firehose of cash and am job sharing with a good friend with one of my clients. 

But you know, it's a close thing.

[vand]

He hasn't "failed" at all, even if this is a tongue in cheek headline. Working because you want to, not because you have to, is a very empowering position to be in.

And sometimes people need a welcome break from retirement.. so why not top up the coffers a bit. :) 

[Metalcat]

He hasn't "failed" at all, even if this is a tongue in cheek headline. Working because you want to, not because you have to, is a very empowering position to be in.

And sometimes people need a welcome break from retirement.. so why not top up the coffers a bit. :)

I could not possibly agree with you more.

Whether I get paid or not, I'm always working. That's actually why I decided to retrain for a whole new career. After about a year of being retired, I was taking on so much unpaid work, it was starting to get silly that I wasn't making any money with the amount of work I was doing. Because I couldn't go back to my career, I had to figure out something new.

There's a lot of fun work out there.

[LD_TAndK]

In college I worked several different "crap" jobs, low-ish pay, low commitment. I look back on those far more fondly than my career.

I learned a ton about how different parts of the world worked on those jobs, and met all sorts of great (and bad) people. I never worked more than part time and I didn't really need the money.

I would totally do something like GCC here if I had the time to spend, I think it'd be enriching.

[Metalcat]

Omg, he mentions something I was just posting about in my journal recently, having taken on 2 very part-time jobs.  That after being FIREd for a while, it really has an outsized impact on the rest of life, even if it's very part-time.  As is frequently said, "I don't know how I had time for a job before!" 

I'm working only 12 hours per week tops (thankfully for a lot more money per hour and it never involves being out in the rain).  It's shocking how much less time I feel like I have, because I really do have to work around those hours, leaving me more fragmented time to fit other things in when I used to have vast tracts of open time.  That feels really different, psychologically. 

And there's some sort of emotional "overhead" to work that doesn't reduce linearly with the number of hours reduced.  I still feel like there's just a lot of associated time thinking about it, prepping, etc. and other stuff I can't actually bill, but that takes me away from my normal FIRE pursuits.

In my case it's actually worth it.  I really care about the work, enjoy the mini-firehose of cash and am job sharing with a good friend with one of my clients. 

But you know, it's a close thing.

Re: outsized overhead

I feel this with school right now. That's probably because I've spent twice as long in university than I ever did working, so for me, work was just this super fun, lucrative thing I did between grad school programs. Lol

But yeah, even though for the first two years of retirement, I was taking free online courses constantly, being enrolled in actual school weighs so much more on my mind. I'm actually doing *less* school work, but now I have deadlines and I can't just choose to bail on assignments if I don't like them.

As it often happens, it's a matter of losing autonomy. The less autonomy I have in any project I take on, the more burden it has on my life.

[mizzourah2006]

I did that job in college, but it was a bit different, lol. I made about $13/hr and the driver would drop me off in a neighborhood with basically a big wagon of packages. I'd have to walk the entire neighborhood delivering the packages by foot. Then the driver would loop around and drop me off somewhere else with more packages. It wasn't bad for seasonal work in college. This was probably in 2004 and 2005 and paid more than my grocery job that I'd have gone back to if I'd just gone home early for Christmas.

[Catbert]

If I were Jeremy and writing that article, I'd have emphasized things differently.  I'd point out how easy it is to get an unskilled but much better than minimum wage job in retirement.  Do that for a month of the year (8x6x4=192 hours @ $28 an hour is over 5K if my math is correct).  5K could help make up stock market losses or supplement a splurge vacation or make an IRA conribution.

For many people this would be a low stress job because you wouldn't worry outside of working hours as you might if you were working as a software engineer.

[bmjohnson35]

When the market is down like it has been, it's easy to let a little anxiety creep in.  I have always been somewhat risk adverse and although our financial stability is still rock solid, the mind will do what it does.  I have certainly considered getting a PT job, but when I looked into the options and weighed the pro's/con's, it just didn't make sense.

If you take a moment to look at this from the point of view of UPS, it reminds me of the frustration of managing Human Resources.  I do not miss it at all. 

[slappy]

When the market is down like it has been, it's easy to let a little anxiety creep in.  I have always been somewhat risk adverse and although our financial stability is still rock solid, the mind will do what it does.  I have certainly considered getting a PT job, but when I looked into the options and weighed the pro's/con's, it just didn't make sense.

If you take a moment to look at this from the point of view of UPS, it reminds me of the frustration of managing Human Resources.  I do not miss it at all.

Haha, I thought too. He did barely half of the job he was hired to do.

[ixtap]

If I were Jeremy and writing that article, I'd have emphasized things differently.  I'd point out how easy it is to get an unskilled but much better than minimum wage job in retirement.  Do that for a month of the year (8x6x4=192 hours @ $28 an hour is over 5K if my math is correct).  5K could help make up stock market losses or supplement a splurge vacation or make an IRA conribution.

For many people this would be a low stress job because you wouldn't worry outside of working hours as you might if you were working as a software engineer.

It is easy now, with a tight labor market. Market down with a tight labor market.is a pretty uncommon condition.

[bmjohnson35]

If I were Jeremy and writing that article, I'd have emphasized things differently.  I'd point out how easy it is to get an unskilled but much better than minimum wage job in retirement.  Do that for a month of the year (8x6x4=192 hours @ $28 an hour is over 5K if my math is correct).  5K could help make up stock market losses or supplement a splurge vacation or make an IRA conribution.

For many people this would be a low stress job because you wouldn't worry outside of working hours as you might if you were working as a software engineer.

It is easy now, with a tight labor market. Market down with a tight labor market.is a pretty uncommon condition.

Agreed. Compared to the market when I got out of school, it was just the opposite. I struggled to find an entry level tech job back then. As a large portion of the workforce ages out of the market and society's attitude toward the employer/employee relationship evolves, the tight labor market will probably be around for a while.  Even if the recession worsens over the next few years, service jobs will probably still be relatively easily found.

[RedmondStash]

He hasn't "failed" at all, even if this is a tongue in cheek headline. Working because you want to, not because you have to, is a very empowering position to be in.

And sometimes people need a welcome break from retirement.. so why not top up the coffers a bit. :)

I could not possibly agree with you more.

Whether I get paid or not, I'm always working. That's actually why I decided to retrain for a whole new career. After about a year of being retired, I was taking on so much unpaid work, it was starting to get silly that I wasn't making any money with the amount of work I was doing. Because I couldn't go back to my career, I had to figure out something new.

There's a lot of fun work out there.

After 4 years FIREd, I really hope to fail retirement sometime. I miss the stimulation and structure of working with people toward a common goal.

I won't work full-time again -- worked only part-time several years before I fired -- but I'd like to find some kind of part-time work, on my own schedule, that I find stimulating and that brings in a little cash. Not because I need it, but because I find multiple income streams reassuring.

I haven't yet found a kind of work that agrees with me. But I totally get wanting to shake things up and keep moving forward. For me, FIRE has been necessary but not always enjoyable.

@Metalcat , good luck with the surgery.

[Metalcat]

He hasn't "failed" at all, even if this is a tongue in cheek headline. Working because you want to, not because you have to, is a very empowering position to be in.

And sometimes people need a welcome break from retirement.. so why not top up the coffers a bit. :)

I could not possibly agree with you more.

Whether I get paid or not, I'm always working. That's actually why I decided to retrain for a whole new career. After about a year of being retired, I was taking on so much unpaid work, it was starting to get silly that I wasn't making any money with the amount of work I was doing. Because I couldn't go back to my career, I had to figure out something new.

There's a lot of fun work out there.

After 4 years FIREd, I really hope to fail retirement sometime. I miss the stimulation and structure of working with people toward a common goal.

I won't work full-time again -- worked only part-time several years before I fired -- but I'd like to find some kind of part-time work, on my own schedule, that I find stimulating and that brings in a little cash. Not because I need it, but because I find multiple income streams reassuring.

I haven't yet found a kind of work that agrees with me. But I totally get wanting to shake things up and keep moving forward. For me, FIRE has been necessary but not always enjoyable.

@Metalcat , good luck with the surgery.

Thank you!

[nick663]

I like the experiment but not sure it's how I would go about a temp work position personally.  Going straight to 8 hours a day 6 days per week has to be a huge shock to the system and it's not surprising to me that he feels like things stacked up over that time period.

Omg, he mentions something I was just posting about in my journal recently, having taken on 2 very part-time jobs.  That after being FIREd for a while, it really has an outsized impact on the rest of life, even if it's very part-time.  As is frequently said, "I don't know how I had time for a job before!" 

I'm working only 12 hours per week tops (thankfully for a lot more money per hour and it never involves being out in the rain).  It's shocking how much less time I feel like I have, because I really do have to work around those hours, leaving me more fragmented time to fit other things in when I used to have vast tracts of open time.  That feels really different, psychologically. 

Not quite the same (as it's part of my full time job) but this reminds me of when I have an evening call with colleagues overseas.  It's only 30 minutes but it seems like it ruins my entire night as I have to schedule things around it and make sure I'm free at that specific time.

[moneytaichi]

@Metalcat Good luck with your surgery!

I went to back work after 3.5 years of retirement. I tried so many different things and travelled, but still got bored. Work has its plus and minus for sure, but you can step in and out work, especially when you have marketable skills/connections. One of the good ways to bridge the employment gaps is to do consulting once a while, even just for minimal money. You don't need to show your income to potential employers in many states (like CA).

One person contacted me last week and aimed for my unique connections. I am contemplating to take on a consulting gig, outside of my full-time job. So far my job is getting on a good direction, and I wouldn't enjoy doing the new gig for full-time. However, it can generate additional income and pave my way to get a retirement hustle when I leave my current FT job. I'd hate to do jobs involving driving and crowds.

[Chaplin]

I just finished a very similar gig - I totally get the motivation to try it out. I got a seasonal temp job at Canada Post. Mine was indoors (warm, dry, well lit) sorting packages. For eight weeks it was a fun experience. I got to learn some interesting things, meet some interesting people, and try something new. I would probably do it again if another holiday season without travel or guest came up (so probably not in the next year or two). Additionally, since my career had been spent in plants, with the final ten years in various management positions including plant manager, I had a fun "undercover boss" feeling. I wouldn't want to do it full-time, but it was a very good experience. Now I'm taking a job in a bike shop essentially as a junior mechanic with hopes of becoming a "real" mechanic. Why? 'Cause it might be fun and I won't know if I don't try. Reducing our withdrawal rate is a nice side-bonus.

[MayDay]

I just finished a very similar gig - I totally get the motivation to try it out. I got a seasonal temp job at Canada Post. Mine was indoors (warm, dry, well lit) sorting packages. For eight weeks it was a fun experience. I got to learn some interesting things, meet some interesting people, and try something new. I would probably do it again if another holiday season without travel or guest came up (so probably not in the next year or two). Additionally, since my career had been spent in plants, with the final ten years in various management positions including plant manager, I had a fun "undercover boss" feeling. I wouldn't want to do it full-time, but it was a very good experience. Now I'm taking a job in a bike shop essentially as a junior mechanic with hopes of becoming a "real" mechanic. Why? 'Cause it might be fun and I won't know if I don't try. Reducing our withdrawal rate is a nice side-bonus.

I'm an engineer in a leadership position in manufacturing. During a career break I worked a holiday season at a Harry and Dave distribution facility.  It was so fun! Would I want to do it FT? Absolutely not.  But I had fun learning a lot and still remember it fondly.

I'm once again contemplating quitting my job and taking a break for a while, and if I do I'll probably get some kind of temp job just for fun and to learn something.

[chasesfish]

If I recall correctly, GCC bought a nearly $1mil house somewhere inland in California then proceeded to do a cash out refi and invest the money a year or so ago.   I don't think he *needs* the money, but that wasn't exactly frugalish.

As for "all the OGs working" - plenty are still nicely retired and don't make money from their blogs.  It's sample size bias when the most popular personalities can easily monetize their popularity.