What can you do now to make your post-FIRE life cheaper?

[Metalcat]

I have a lot of “buy for life” items I am purchasing while my income is still significantly higher. They are things I know I will want in FIRE, but may have a much harder time justifying purchasing. These include things like: Home Gym, Tools/Welding Equipment, Guitar(s), etc.

Much easier to buy a $2000 guitar when it justifies less than 10% of my take home monthly income, vs when I’m FIRE’d and it’s 30-50% of my targeted monthly spending (with no income).

Many things I buy now (even clothes) I intend for it to last deep into FIRE.

But this really is mental gymnastics.

Whether the guitar is 10% or 80% of any given year's annual spend makes no difference overall except in your perception of it.

So what you're really saying is that you are taking advantage of a mental trick that allows you to *feel* more comfortable spending more, even though spending it later would actually cost you less because of opportunity costs.

That's fine, spend whatever you want to be happy, but let's acknowledge mental gymnastics.

With the caliber of folks on this site, I didn’t feel like I needed to dumb it down. Thanks for pointing that out in the event anyone couldn’t connect those dots.

Dude, we literally have people in this very thread arguing this exact thing. I put no level of spending justification past the people here.

[Morning Glory]

I hear you, but I think this is what [mention]Zikoris [/mention] means about the value of Stoicism.

No disagreement here! Although, the main problem with water heater failure isn't that it stops heating water. Granted, not every failure leads to a flood, but those that do... I don't want to put my stoicism under that test.

The house next door was recently flipped. It was built in the mid 1960s, and still had the original water heater in working condition. They replaced it just to say that it was brand new to appeal to new buyers. Think of the money saved during those decades by not premptively replacing the water heater every few years. And think of the resources that weren't needed to manufacture and transport and install 5 or 6 unnecessary water heaters over the decades.
I'm not saying that's a normal lifespan for a water heater, but you might as well use things until they are obviously on their last legs or actually need replacement. Something like a flood is obviously not ideal, but that's what insurance is for. Spending money now to hopefully avoid expense in the future is really just increasing your insurance spend more than necessary. Why pay for insurance if you're going to pay additional money to reduce the chances of needing the insurance?

To be fair, most homeowners insurance doesn't cover water damage. All of my houses have had the water heater in an unfinished basement though, so it wouldn't be an issue. They usually just start piddling a little when it's time to replace them. I don't recall it ever being that expensive.

I've had my furnace fail multiple times mid winter and I was very lucky to have a good friend who knew how to fix furnaces, so +1 to whoever said grow your social network.

This thread is reminding me of my sister in law who is always broke. She gets a giant tax refund every year and feels like she has to spend it right away. She will purchase things that she doesn't need, say for example a new coffee maker when her old one is still good, and just stick them in the closet for later (not replace the old one, just keep the new one as a spare). I asked her why one time and she said "because I have the money now and I might not later". I really just can't wrap my head around this logic, it's like the money will just disappear magically if she doesn't spend it.

[bryan995]

I hear you, but I think this is what [mention]Zikoris [/mention] means about the value of Stoicism.

No disagreement here! Although, the main problem with water heater failure isn't that it stops heating water. Granted, not every failure leads to a flood, but those that do... I don't want to put my stoicism under that test.

The house next door was recently flipped. It was built in the mid 1960s, and still had the original water heater in working condition. They replaced it just to say that it was brand new to appeal to new buyers. Think of the money saved during those decades by not premptively replacing the water heater every few years. And think of the resources that weren't needed to manufacture and transport and install 5 or 6 unnecessary water heaters over the decades.
I'm not saying that's a normal lifespan for a water heater, but you might as well use things until they are obviously on their last legs or actually need replacement. Something like a flood is obviously not ideal, but that's what insurance is for. Spending money now to hopefully avoid expense in the future is really just increasing your insurance spend more than necessary. Why pay for insurance if you're going to pay additional money to reduce the chances of needing the insurance?

Not the best example, but I’ll run with it.
Obviously this depends on where your water heater is located, but if on average a water heater fails every 10 years, your damn sure I will be preemptively spending the mere $800 every ~8 years.  Assuming of course it would cause an issue. If it’s in a garage then sure, maybe no rush to change. On a 4th floor condo in a shared building … absolutely.  A house flood would be incredibly damaging. It is a hedge, plain and simple.

What about a timing belt in a car? It is “due” every 100k miles but you’d likely be ok to go to 200k. You won’t notice it’s failure until your motor basically explodes. Do you all have that replaced or save the expense and wait? 

I have a lot of “buy for life” items I am purchasing while my income is still significantly higher. They are things I know I will want in FIRE, but may have a much harder time justifying purchasing. These include things like: Home Gym, Tools/Welding Equipment, Guitar(s), etc.

Much easier to buy a $2000 guitar when it justifies less than 10% of my take home monthly income, vs when I’m FIRE’d and it’s 30-50% of my targeted monthly spending (with no income).

Many things I buy now (even clothes) I intend for it to last deep into FIRE.

But this really is mental gymnastics.

Whether the guitar is 10% or 80% of any given year's annual spend makes no difference overall except in your perception of it.

So what you're really saying is that you are taking advantage of a mental trick that allows you to *feel* more comfortable spending more, even though spending it later would actually cost you less because of opportunity costs.

That's fine, spend whatever you want to be happy, but let's acknowledge mental gymnastics.

Yes.  People do things all the time (literally multiple times a day, for nearly everyone) that are based on things other than optimizing the finances.  There's nothing wrong with that.  But there is something wrong with pretending it is a financially beneficial decision, when in fact it is actually a more expensive choice. 

I just bought an immersion blender.  I own a regular blender, but I hate cleaning it.  I'm trying to some more healthy eating habits going, and a morning shake seemed like a great fit.  But I knew I wouldn't do it because I'm too lazy to deal with my blender.  For >$30, I have am immersion blender and have used it every morning since I got it, and it's really helping me be healthier and lose weight.  This decision was absolutely caving to my laziness (dealing with and cleaning the old blender).  It was $2X that I didn't need to spend.  It was in no way financially (or environmentally, for that matter) optimal.  And I'm still thrilled with and I would do it again.  But I don't try to trick myself into thinking that somehow I saved money with this decision.  I just own that I spent some optional money because some other factor was more important.

Not all decisions are about spending less.  But we need to at lease be honest with ourselves.  Buying new windows now instead of 2 -3 years from now, because you have a psychological hang up that makes it easier to spend money when you have a paycheck, even if that costs you more money in the long run, is fun.  But own that you are indulging in some mental gymnastics; don't lie to yourself that it is saving money.

It could be saving money. If you do it preemptively, while you are still working, perhaps you can comfortably afford the more efficient, higher quality windows. Which will save money on heating / cooling in the long run; add value to your home etc. If you wait until failure (meaning a leak? Rotten wood? Break?) and say a market correction comes. Well now your not going to feels super comfortable spending what’s needed on those high quality repairs. You’ll likely cheap out and go with the budget option since >50% of your stash was just erased. Now over the long run you spend more on heating and cooling.

No one is saying to go out and replace 5 year old windows just because you are about to FIRE and want to benefit from the 5 extra years of hassle free use.
—
Most of these arguments fixate on a predefined, set in stone FIRE date.  Hit the “number” and your done. You hate your job; leave it as soon as humanly possible.

Why can’t a FIRE date be flexible around optimizing one’s life/spend/efficiency? I will be preemptively working to optimize my post-FIRE life for many years leading up to the actuality, and I am sure the bulk of you did exactly the same.  Will also likely try to time my exit either around a successful bonus/promotion or even a failed bonus/promotion at work.  Or if we have a market correction just prior to FIRE, well then I will just add another few years of gainful employment onto my LinkedIn. Is such thinking really so abnormal here?

[GodlessCommie]

The house next door was recently flipped. It was built in the mid 1960s, and still had the original water heater in working condition. They replaced it just to say that it was brand new to appeal to new buyers. Think of the money saved during those decades by not premptively replacing the water heater every few years. And think of the resources that weren't needed to manufacture and transport and install 5 or 6 unnecessary water heaters over the decades.
I'm not saying that's a normal lifespan for a water heater, but you might as well use things until they are obviously on their last legs or actually need replacement. Something like a flood is obviously not ideal, but that's what insurance is for. Spending money now to hopefully avoid expense in the future is really just increasing your insurance spend more than necessary. Why pay for insurance if you're going to pay additional money to reduce the chances of needing the insurance?

It's not the money that's the problem with the flooded basement, it's the hassle. I, for one, am absolutely not willing to deal with it if it can be avoided.

Now, I'm not advocating for preemptive replacement at 10 years or some arbitrary number. Our last one served us for 17, and was already used when we bought we house. I replaced the heating elements in it, and was planning to replace the sacrificial rod - but that ended up not being practical, given space and my own constraints.

But really, I now regret I even mentioned it. It's not the type of expense that makes or breaks your FIRE plans.

[Cranky]

If your water heater is someplace where a leak will cause damage, don’t you put a tray under it when it’s installed? Water heaters don’t suddenly explode, IME, they start to leak. It’s one of those things that you just pay attention to.

Years ago we had a car that needed a lot of new timing belts for some reason, and when the timing belt failed the car wouldn’t run but the engine didn’t explode, either.

[Seahorse]

Work on your health - both mental and physical …

If u know u are going to live in your current house post retirement, plant a variety of fruit trees .. it takes a while to produce and you’d have reduced your food costs .. look at perennial vegetables as well

Pick up a cheaper hobby ..

Put money in a HSA account ..

[pdxvandal]

This is an interesting thread. Kinda funny that some folks think buying shit now while employed will somehow make future FIRE easier. I don't see it. As far as car timing belts go, I just buy vehicles with timing chains. Zero worry, and I can't imagine the cars of the near future will have timing-belt issues, as it's becoming old technology. I own 2008 and 2009 cars and both have timing chains.

[deborah]

When I moved into my house I planted fruit trees. They take a few years to get a decent crop, but by the time I FIREd, I was self sufficient in fruit, and my postFIRE life was cheaper. If you plan to do woodwork when you FIRE, maybe you should plant a wood lot.

Saving as much as you can will also benefit your postFIRE life.

[Much Fishing to Do]

FIREing next year and some of my planning is based around keeping income recognition down to take advantage of ACA subsidies.  I've always had private health insurance (never any inexpensive plans offered by employers, and I was often self-employed) and the premium is up to $1500/mth for the family now, and so its gonna be pretty easy for me to decrease my monthly expenses by over $1k just on that alone.

[mistymoney]

Basically divert money into 100% spending for a few months after you hit The Number.

This is my plan too, primarily focused on updating our outdoor gear to support really enjoying our sporty retirement. 

I have a hard time spending money, socking each available dollar into the stash so our gear continues to get older and rattier.  Replacing it once we've hit The Number provides me almost as much joyful anticipation as RE.  I will happily work a few more months to get a sweet new mountain bike, skate skis, telly skis, etc. 

Once I FIRE I know I will struggle to spend the money.  The short window between FI and RE will probably be the only time in my life where I allow myself to splurge.  It's going to be fun!  And set us up for the retirement of our dreams.

That sounds fun!

to those plannning to go this route - I have questions!

After you hit your FI number and hit the splurging interval - how much money are you planning to splurge with, and where is it coming from?

Are you just suspending taxable account contributions? halting 401k? only doing 401k to gt the match?

For larger things - such as roofs, spendy vacations, will you save for a few months, or finance something short term if rates are reasonable? dig into the stache a bit and then top it off over the next few month?

Curious how you all are handling this.

[mistymoney]

Work on your health - both mental and physical …

If u know u are going to live in your current house post retirement, plant a variety of fruit trees .. it takes a while to produce and you’d have reduced your food costs .. look at perennial vegetables as well

Pick up a cheaper hobby ..

Put money in a HSA account ..

You seems knowledgable, do you have a list?

I have mint, lemonbalm, sorrel, horseradish, asparagus. I count garlic here as I alway have some left in ground, self seed too if I don't get the scapes.

What do you have going?

[mistymoney]

When I moved into my house I planted fruit trees. They take a few years to get a decent crop, but by the time I FIREd, I was self sufficient in fruit, and my postFIRE life was cheaper. If you plan to do woodwork when you FIRE, maybe you should plant a wood lot.

Saving as much as you can will also benefit your postFIRE life.

Can you and other note what fruit trees you have? How much maintence to they need?

I planted strawberries, we had a mulberry tree (no gone) we never got anything off them. Lots of squirrels, racoons, who knows what else.

[mistymoney]

I hear you, but I think this is what [mention]Zikoris [/mention] means about the value of Stoicism.

No disagreement here! Although, the main problem with water heater failure isn't that it stops heating water. Granted, not every failure leads to a flood, but those that do... I don't want to put my stoicism under that test.

The house next door was recently flipped. It was built in the mid 1960s, and still had the original water heater in working condition. They replaced it just to say that it was brand new to appeal to new buyers. Think of the money saved during those decades by not premptively replacing the water heater every few years. And think of the resources that weren't needed to manufacture and transport and install 5 or 6 unnecessary water heaters over the decades.
I'm not saying that's a normal lifespan for a water heater, but you might as well use things until they are obviously on their last legs or actually need replacement. Something like a flood is obviously not ideal, but that's what insurance is for. Spending money now to hopefully avoid expense in the future is really just increasing your insurance spend more than necessary. Why pay for insurance if you're going to pay additional money to reduce the chances of needing the insurance?

Not the best example, but I’ll run with it.
Obviously this depends on where your water heater is located, but if on average a water heater fails every 10 years, your damn sure I will be preemptively spending the mere $800 every ~8 years.  Assuming of course it would cause an issue. If it’s in a garage then sure, maybe no rush to change. On a 4th floor condo in a shared building … absolutely.  A house flood would be incredibly damaging. It is a hedge, plain and simple.

What about a timing belt in a car? It is “due” every 100k miles but you’d likely be ok to go to 200k. You won’t notice it’s failure until your motor basically explodes. Do you all have that replaced or save the expense and wait? 

I have a lot of “buy for life” items I am purchasing while my income is still significantly higher. They are things I know I will want in FIRE, but may have a much harder time justifying purchasing. These include things like: Home Gym, Tools/Welding Equipment, Guitar(s), etc.

Much easier to buy a $2000 guitar when it justifies less than 10% of my take home monthly income, vs when I’m FIRE’d and it’s 30-50% of my targeted monthly spending (with no income).

Many things I buy now (even clothes) I intend for it to last deep into FIRE.

But this really is mental gymnastics.

Whether the guitar is 10% or 80% of any given year's annual spend makes no difference overall except in your perception of it.

So what you're really saying is that you are taking advantage of a mental trick that allows you to *feel* more comfortable spending more, even though spending it later would actually cost you less because of opportunity costs.

That's fine, spend whatever you want to be happy, but let's acknowledge mental gymnastics.

Yes.  People do things all the time (literally multiple times a day, for nearly everyone) that are based on things other than optimizing the finances.  There's nothing wrong with that.  But there is something wrong with pretending it is a financially beneficial decision, when in fact it is actually a more expensive choice. 

I just bought an immersion blender.  I own a regular blender, but I hate cleaning it.  I'm trying to some more healthy eating habits going, and a morning shake seemed like a great fit.  But I knew I wouldn't do it because I'm too lazy to deal with my blender.  For >$30, I have am immersion blender and have used it every morning since I got it, and it's really helping me be healthier and lose weight.  This decision was absolutely caving to my laziness (dealing with and cleaning the old blender).  It was $2X that I didn't need to spend.  It was in no way financially (or environmentally, for that matter) optimal.  And I'm still thrilled with and I would do it again.  But I don't try to trick myself into thinking that somehow I saved money with this decision.  I just own that I spent some optional money because some other factor was more important.

Not all decisions are about spending less.  But we need to at lease be honest with ourselves.  Buying new windows now instead of 2 -3 years from now, because you have a psychological hang up that makes it easier to spend money when you have a paycheck, even if that costs you more money in the long run, is fun.  But own that you are indulging in some mental gymnastics; don't lie to yourself that it is saving money.

It could be saving money. If you do it preemptively, while you are still working, perhaps you can comfortably afford the more efficient, higher quality windows. Which will save money on heating / cooling in the long run; add value to your home etc. If you wait until failure (meaning a leak? Rotten wood? Break?) and say a market correction comes. Well now your not going to feels super comfortable spending what’s needed on those high quality repairs. You’ll likely cheap out and go with the budget option since >50% of your stash was just erased. Now over the long run you spend more on heating and cooling.

No one is saying to go out and replace 5 year old windows just because you are about to FIRE and want to benefit from the 5 extra years of hassle free use.
—
Most of these arguments fixate on a predefined, set in stone FIRE date.  Hit the “number” and your done. You hate your job; leave it as soon as humanly possible.

Why can’t a FIRE date be flexible around optimizing one’s life/spend/efficiency? I will be preemptively working to optimize my post-FIRE life for many years leading up to the actuality, and I am sure the bulk of you did exactly the same.  Will also likely try to time my exit either around a successful bonus/promotion or even a failed bonus/promotion at work.  Or if we have a market correction just prior to FIRE, well then I will just add another few years of gainful employment onto my LinkedIn. Is such thinking really so abnormal here?

I think that the flexibility that you mention is important to consider.

One of the things I was thinking as I read through the posts saying - just bank the extra money and go on with it - is that sometimes, you really don't know what that final cost is going to be. Maybe the older your house the more unpredictable that could be as they dig into a 100 year old plaster wall - who know what they may find! - and it could cost more than you budgeted for.

If you take 3 - 4 - 5 planned upgrades or refubishments and each comes out more expense, maybe much more expensive - than anticipate. Mold remediation, asbestos uncovered, etc.

New fence, pretty straightforward, but now we have a global lumber shortage? prices spiralling upwards too. you just never know.

I think that is an important component to doing it before firing. You know. And if it means working an extra 6 months-year to pay for everything you didn't think was going to beuncovered behind those old walls, or the foundation crack found during a basement remodel, it's all done and you have peace of mind about it.

Might prevent some unnecessary OMY too! It's all done, and nothing to worry about.

[Bradlinc4]

Years ago we had a car that needed a lot of new timing belts for some reason, and when the timing belt failed the car wouldn’t run but the engine didn’t explode, either.

Although the car won't explode in either case, you may need a new engine if you have an "interference" engine. Some cars have "interference" engines and some cars have a "non interference" engine.

https://shop.advanceautoparts.com/r/advice/car-maintenance/non-interference-engine-vs-interference-engine-replacing-your-timing-belt

There does seem to be a movement back to timing chains from timing belts but that could change at anytime. Apparently timing chains were more common in the 70s and 80s and they moved to timing belts (presumably because they are cheaper and lighter).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timing_belt_(camshaft)

[Paper Chaser]

The house next door was recently flipped. It was built in the mid 1960s, and still had the original water heater in working condition. They replaced it just to say that it was brand new to appeal to new buyers. Think of the money saved during those decades by not premptively replacing the water heater every few years. And think of the resources that weren't needed to manufacture and transport and install 5 or 6 unnecessary water heaters over the decades.
I'm not saying that's a normal lifespan for a water heater, but you might as well use things until they are obviously on their last legs or actually need replacement. Something like a flood is obviously not ideal, but that's what insurance is for. Spending money now to hopefully avoid expense in the future is really just increasing your insurance spend more than necessary. Why pay for insurance if you're going to pay additional money to reduce the chances of needing the insurance?

Not the best example, but I’ll run with it.
Obviously this depends on where your water heater is located, but if on average a water heater fails every 10 years, your damn sure I will be preemptively spending the mere $800 every ~8 years.  Assuming of course it would cause an issue. If it’s in a garage then sure, maybe no rush to change. On a 4th floor condo in a shared building … absolutely.  A house flood would be incredibly damaging. It is a hedge, plain and simple.

What about a timing belt in a car? It is “due” every 100k miles but you’d likely be ok to go to 200k. You won’t notice it’s failure until your motor basically explodes. Do you all have that replaced or save the expense and wait?

I get what you're saying, but does a properly maintained water heater fail catastrophically every 10 years? I doubt it. Most water heaters are never really maintained, and even then they tend to fail in ways that just lead to no hot water, rather than a catastrophic example like exploding through a roof or flooding their location.

The timing belt comparison is interesting.
1) First of all, there are other options that are lower maintenance. In order: vehicles with timing chains>non-interference negines>EVs>bicycles, etc. Regardless of the product category we're talking about, choosing options now that will have lower maintenance needs in the future is probably a good way to reduce income needs, so it seems pertinent to this topic.
2) Second, the timing belt replacement is routine maintenance, given by the manufacturer, based on lots of testing. You should absolutely follow manufacturer recommendations for routine maintenance on anything (Including water heaters) precisely so that the usable life of that item may be extended. Scrapping a  perfectly good water heater every few years isn't that different from scrapping a perfectly good car every few years because it's coming up on some necessary maintenance. The cost of maintaining possessions should be accounted for in FIRE planning in addition to an E fund to cover unexpected issues. Just deal with those costs as they arise.
3) You probably don't have warranty coverage that would pay for work related to a catastrophic timing chain failure after 100k miles. You're essentially self insured at that point. But you probably do have insurance coverage that would pay for work related to a catastrophic water heater failure. Now if you're self insuring your home, and would be fully responsible for any costs related to a failure of some sort, then perhaps pushing the limits of the usable life of something aren't worth the risk. But if you're paying for a service to cover repair costs (Either insurance or some sort of warranty), and properly maintaining things per the manufacturer's recommendations, I see no reason to preemptively replace perfectly fine things with new things. It's just more and more unnecessary consumption.

In general I think a lot of this discussion always go back to "the 3 Rs".
1) Reduce - consume as little as possible
2) Repair/reuse - buy things that can be repaired and get as much life out of the object as you can
3) Recycle - dispose of the object as responsibly as possible once it's no longer useful

This general approach is good for finances and the planet at the same time, both core MMM ideals.

[Weisass]

In general I think a lot of this discussion always go back to "the 3 Rs".
1) Reduce - consume as little as possible
2) Repair/reuse - buy things that can be repaired and get as much life out of the object as you can
3) Recycle - dispose of the object as responsibly as possible once it's no longer useful

This general approach is good for finances and the planet at the same time, both core MMM ideals.

This is EXACTLY what, for me, distinguishes the MMM community from other financial independence groups. The emphasis is on living mindfully--in a way that remembers our obligations to the wider community that inhabits the earth we live in. It is absolutely possible to maximize the hell out of all sorts of things using your finances.... you could reap all sorts of rewards by buying into our disposable culture.  But why not choose a life that treads more lightly on the earth? That life needs less, because it recognizes that accumulating cannot satisfy you, at least not ultimately.

[Blissful Biker]

Basically divert money into 100% spending for a few months after you hit The Number.

This is my plan too, primarily focused on updating our outdoor gear to support really enjoying our sporty retirement. 

I have a hard time spending money, socking each available dollar into the stash so our gear continues to get older and rattier.  Replacing it once we've hit The Number provides me almost as much joyful anticipation as RE.  I will happily work a few more months to get a sweet new mountain bike, skate skis, telly skis, etc. 

Once I FIRE I know I will struggle to spend the money.  The short window between FI and RE will probably be the only time in my life where I allow myself to splurge.  It's going to be fun!  And set us up for the retirement of our dreams.

That sounds fun!

to those plannning to go this route - I have questions!

After you hit your FI number and hit the splurging interval - how much money are you planning to splurge with, and where is it coming from?

Are you just suspending taxable account contributions? halting 401k? only doing 401k to gt the match?

For larger things - such as roofs, spendy vacations, will you save for a few months, or finance something short term if rates are reasonable? dig into the stache a bit and then top it off over the next few month?

Curious how you all are handling this.

Once I hit The Number I will continue to cash flow our regular living expenses from employment income but stop making contributions to the retirement savings accounts, both taxable and registered.  The only exception being that I will continue to contribute a small amount to my RRSP (similar to your 401k) to get the maximum employer match.  I'll then turn the firehouse of cash towards my carefully planned splurges.

I'm estimating $25k CDN for new outdoor gear, the biggest portion of that being for two good quality electric mountain bikes, and another $10k for a big vacation to kick off FIRE.  The $35k total will take about three months of diverted savings to accrue. 

If the market grows in those three months between FI and RE I am not going to use it to fund the splurges but just let it pad the stash.

My FIRE budget has an allowance for lumpy expenses such as replacing the roof or the car.  Those are needs as opposed to wants so I am comfortable that my future self will spend the money as required.  When those needs arise I will pull from the stash in a way that maintains my overall asset allocation as opposed to setting up a separate bucket for them.  Michael Kitces did a study that showed you're better off leaving your whole stash together and maintaining your asset allocation than separating out buckets invested more conservatively for near term spending. 

[Metalcat]

I hear you, but I think this is what [mention]Zikoris [/mention] means about the value of Stoicism.

No disagreement here! Although, the main problem with water heater failure isn't that it stops heating water. Granted, not every failure leads to a flood, but those that do... I don't want to put my stoicism under that test.

The house next door was recently flipped. It was built in the mid 1960s, and still had the original water heater in working condition. They replaced it just to say that it was brand new to appeal to new buyers. Think of the money saved during those decades by not premptively replacing the water heater every few years. And think of the resources that weren't needed to manufacture and transport and install 5 or 6 unnecessary water heaters over the decades.
I'm not saying that's a normal lifespan for a water heater, but you might as well use things until they are obviously on their last legs or actually need replacement. Something like a flood is obviously not ideal, but that's what insurance is for. Spending money now to hopefully avoid expense in the future is really just increasing your insurance spend more than necessary. Why pay for insurance if you're going to pay additional money to reduce the chances of needing the insurance?

Not the best example, but I’ll run with it.
Obviously this depends on where your water heater is located, but if on average a water heater fails every 10 years, your damn sure I will be preemptively spending the mere $800 every ~8 years.  Assuming of course it would cause an issue. If it’s in a garage then sure, maybe no rush to change. On a 4th floor condo in a shared building … absolutely.  A house flood would be incredibly damaging. It is a hedge, plain and simple.

What about a timing belt in a car? It is “due” every 100k miles but you’d likely be ok to go to 200k. You won’t notice it’s failure until your motor basically explodes. Do you all have that replaced or save the expense and wait? 

I have a lot of “buy for life” items I am purchasing while my income is still significantly higher. They are things I know I will want in FIRE, but may have a much harder time justifying purchasing. These include things like: Home Gym, Tools/Welding Equipment, Guitar(s), etc.

Much easier to buy a $2000 guitar when it justifies less than 10% of my take home monthly income, vs when I’m FIRE’d and it’s 30-50% of my targeted monthly spending (with no income).

Many things I buy now (even clothes) I intend for it to last deep into FIRE.

But this really is mental gymnastics.

Whether the guitar is 10% or 80% of any given year's annual spend makes no difference overall except in your perception of it.

So what you're really saying is that you are taking advantage of a mental trick that allows you to *feel* more comfortable spending more, even though spending it later would actually cost you less because of opportunity costs.

That's fine, spend whatever you want to be happy, but let's acknowledge mental gymnastics.

Yes.  People do things all the time (literally multiple times a day, for nearly everyone) that are based on things other than optimizing the finances.  There's nothing wrong with that.  But there is something wrong with pretending it is a financially beneficial decision, when in fact it is actually a more expensive choice. 

I just bought an immersion blender.  I own a regular blender, but I hate cleaning it.  I'm trying to some more healthy eating habits going, and a morning shake seemed like a great fit.  But I knew I wouldn't do it because I'm too lazy to deal with my blender.  For >$30, I have am immersion blender and have used it every morning since I got it, and it's really helping me be healthier and lose weight.  This decision was absolutely caving to my laziness (dealing with and cleaning the old blender).  It was $2X that I didn't need to spend.  It was in no way financially (or environmentally, for that matter) optimal.  And I'm still thrilled with and I would do it again.  But I don't try to trick myself into thinking that somehow I saved money with this decision.  I just own that I spent some optional money because some other factor was more important.

Not all decisions are about spending less.  But we need to at lease be honest with ourselves.  Buying new windows now instead of 2 -3 years from now, because you have a psychological hang up that makes it easier to spend money when you have a paycheck, even if that costs you more money in the long run, is fun.  But own that you are indulging in some mental gymnastics; don't lie to yourself that it is saving money.

It could be saving money. If you do it preemptively, while you are still working, perhaps you can comfortably afford the more efficient, higher quality windows. Which will save money on heating / cooling in the long run; add value to your home etc. If you wait until failure (meaning a leak? Rotten wood? Break?) and say a market correction comes. Well now your not going to feels super comfortable spending what’s needed on those high quality repairs. You’ll likely cheap out and go with the budget option since >50% of your stash was just erased. Now over the long run you spend more on heating and cooling.

No one is saying to go out and replace 5 year old windows just because you are about to FIRE and want to benefit from the 5 extra years of hassle free use.
—
Most of these arguments fixate on a predefined, set in stone FIRE date.  Hit the “number” and your done. You hate your job; leave it as soon as humanly possible.

Why can’t a FIRE date be flexible around optimizing one’s life/spend/efficiency? I will be preemptively working to optimize my post-FIRE life for many years leading up to the actuality, and I am sure the bulk of you did exactly the same.  Will also likely try to time my exit either around a successful bonus/promotion or even a failed bonus/promotion at work.  Or if we have a market correction just prior to FIRE, well then I will just add another few years of gainful employment onto my LinkedIn. Is such thinking really so abnormal here?

I think that the flexibility that you mention is important to consider.

One of the things I was thinking as I read through the posts saying - just bank the extra money and go on with it - is that sometimes, you really don't know what that final cost is going to be. Maybe the older your house the more unpredictable that could be as they dig into a 100 year old plaster wall - who know what they may find! - and it could cost more than you budgeted for.

If you take 3 - 4 - 5 planned upgrades or refubishments and each comes out more expense, maybe much more expensive - than anticipate. Mold remediation, asbestos uncovered, etc.

New fence, pretty straightforward, but now we have a global lumber shortage? prices spiralling upwards too. you just never know.

I think that is an important component to doing it before firing. You know. And if it means working an extra 6 months-year to pay for everything you didn't think was going to beuncovered behind those old walls, or the foundation crack found during a basement remodel, it's all done and you have peace of mind about it.

Might prevent some unnecessary OMY too! It's all done, and nothing to worry about.

All of this boils down to a bunch of people saying "just work an extra few months to spend on a bunch of maintenance work so that it doesn't come out of your FIRE budget"

Okay...sure.

Except, in my many years here, I have literally never seen anyone hit their FIRE number and just quit. Almost everyone OMYs, or downshifts, or whatever. The reality is that most people stay working well past the point that they need to because they're petrified of turning off the cash-hose. The last thing people here need is yet another reason to keep working when they don't want to.

PP mentioned people who actually like their jobs. Well yeah, those people don't tend to quit anyway. We have boat loads of FI folks who stay in their jobs.

No matter what the scenario, whether someone hates their job and wants out as quickly as possible, or whether they love their job, their retirement plan should account for ongoing maintenance and emergencies.

It's baffling to me that someone would choose to work an extra several months past the point that they've already planned just to do some maintenance work up front, because in reality, either this person hates their job, probably should have left years ago, has probably already OMY'd for at least a year or two, and really shouldn't hang in for another few months.

OR

They enjoy their job and have already OMY'd by several years because they enjoy it, and aren't in a rush to quit, so by the time they are  ready to go, they really should just go.

Literally no one is holding a gun to anyone's head making them quit the moment they reach 25X their annual spend. The folks here who do actually pull the plug and never work again tend to be so ridiculously conservative with their finances as it is that they could so easily afford any and all maintenance issues that would come up.

The extremely rare, and ever diminishing population of people who have actually retired on modest sums are so resourceful and so determined to quit that I just don't worry about them at all.

So when someone says "just work an extra few months", I can't help but ask "a few months past what point???" Because if someone is truly ready to be done with work, they really should just quit.

We have a MUCH bigger problem of people here staying in toxic jobs that are causing them very real, and very severe psychological and physiological problems than we do of people quitting with too little and having to replace exploded water tanks and not being able to afford it.

Back to the actual topic of the thread, I have additional suggestions beyond investing in your health:

-Develop cheap/free hobbies and volunteer activities
-Better yet, develop hobbies and volunteer activities that can get you access to otherwise expensive things, like concert or theater tickets
-Learn DIY skills, not just for your own benefit, like home renos, but that could benefit others and be utilized in your hobbies or volunteer activities

Basically, the more skills and talents you have to offer, the richer a network you can be part of and get access to all sorts of activities and events that would otherwise be very expensive to be part of. For example, becoming a volunteer youth golf instructor can get you free access to golf courses at some locations. Becoming a volunteer set painter can get you access to theater shows. There are countless ways to be useful, which then result in free or cheap access to luxuries. Almost every major organization has some kind of volunteer or community outreach component.

[Blissful Biker]

In general I think a lot of this discussion always go back to "the 3 Rs".
1) Reduce - consume as little as possible
2) Repair/reuse - buy things that can be repaired and get as much life out of the object as you can
3) Recycle - dispose of the object as responsibly as possible once it's no longer useful

This general approach is good for finances and the planet at the same time, both core MMM ideals.

This is EXACTLY what, for me, distinguishes the MMM community from other financial independence groups. The emphasis is on living mindfully--in a way that remembers our obligations to the wider community that inhabits the earth we live in. It is absolutely possible to maximize the hell out of all sorts of things using your finances.... you could reap all sorts of rewards by buying into our disposable culture.  But why not choose a life that treads more lightly on the earth? That needs less, because it recognizes that accumulating cannot satisfy you, at least not ultimately.

Agreed!  Well said.

[Weisass]

Back to the actual topic of the thread, I have additional suggestions beyond investing in your health:

-Develop cheap/free hobbies and volunteer activities
-Better yet, develop hobbies and volunteer activities that can get you access to otherwise expensive things, like concert or theater tickets
-Learn DIY skills, not just for your own benefit, like home renos, but that could benefit others and be utilized in your hobbies or volunteer activities

Basically, the more skills and talents you have to offer, the richer a network you can be part of and get access to all sorts of activities and events that would otherwise be very expensive to be part of. For example, becoming a volunteer youth golf instructor can get you free access to golf courses at some locations. Becoming a volunteer set painter can get you access to theater shows. There are countless ways to be useful, which then result in free or cheap access to luxuries. Almost every major organization has some kind of volunteer or community outreach component.

^this. You know what is really priceless? Relationships.  Worth more than any expensive exercise equipment or fancy ass camping gear.

Spend your time investing in people, and your retirement will be long and rich and worthwhile.

[vand]

In general I think a lot of this discussion always go back to "the 3 Rs".
1) Reduce - consume as little as possible
2) Repair/reuse - buy things that can be repaired and get as much life out of the object as you can
3) Recycle - dispose of the object as responsibly as possible once it's no longer useful

This general approach is good for finances and the planet at the same time, both core MMM ideals.

This is EXACTLY what, for me, distinguishes the MMM community from other financial independence groups. The emphasis is on living mindfully--in a way that remembers our obligations to the wider community that inhabits the earth we live in. It is absolutely possible to maximize the hell out of all sorts of things using your finances.... you could reap all sorts of rewards by buying into our disposable culture.  But why not choose a life that treads more lightly on the earth? That life needs less, because it recognizes that accumulating cannot satisfy you, at least not ultimately.

+1.

A cornerstone of the MMM is improving your resilience and developing a wide skill set that you can put to use to solve problems and make your living without always resorting to money.

Build, fix, recycle not just because it can save you money, but primarily because there is satisfaction to be garnered in doing something for yourself.  If your hobbies are DIY, gardening and cooking then you are ticking a lot of the right boxes.

[nereo]

Agree with Paper Chaser

The absolute #1 way of making your post-FIRE life cheaper is to build a life now that is efficient. That’s the core ethos of the MMM blog.

Forget about when to replace the boiler or timing belt - those are just accounting tricks and will have minuscule impact on your post-FIRE expenses.  But designing your entire life so that it doesn’t take enormous amounts of cash to sustain while still being awesome and rewarding, and doing that for years before you FIRE will have an enormous impact.

Somewhere back in the blog MMM suggested that most middle-class families could cut 70% of their spending and essentially life the exact same life (of even a better life) if they were just smarter about their purchasing.  The same is true with post-FIRE. But don’t expect you can just do this once you FIRE “because you’ll have time” or “on a fixed budget you;ll be more motivated” or whatever.  If you wait until you are retired to start making your life cheaper you will likely fail, or be miserable, or both. But if you start now, and do it for years, you’ll start to wonder how everyone else you know can be so wasteful, and you’ll laugh anytime someone suggests “you can’t live off $xx,xxx in retrirement!” Because you will have been living off even less for years.

[RunningintoFI]

I've sort of seen this mentioned with the common "take care of your health" comments but I think one thing most people miss out on during their working years that is usually sponsored by their employer is an EAP (employee assistance program).  Not every company provides this but I think it is really under-utilized at the companies that do.  8 free sessions a year of all sorts of useful help! 

Want to get your will together?  They can help. 
Working on mental health? Employer covers part or all of it.
Nutritional counseling? Covered.
Hell, mine will even help counsel you on the financials of becoming an ex-pat when you retire. 

You may have access to a TON of useful FREE tools in your EAP that you can leverage for the now and later. 

[secondcor521]

There are all sorts of things that one can do to make one's life cheaper.  Pretty much all of them were discussed in The Tightwad Gazette.  Many of these are really just variations on "reduce/reuse/recycle" and/or "spend less money".  They're discussed here as well.  These generally work regardless of where you are in relation to your FI point or your RE point.  I think one could identify a list of such projects and then evaluate them on the various business metrics - capital required, breakeven, ROI, IRR, etc.  Then do them in some sort of rational priority order - I'd probably sort by IRR descending.

I FIREd five years ago, and in my personal experience, I have found that I have the time and energy and creativity necessary to research, understand, identify, and implement these sorts of things.  This creates somewhat of a virtuous cycle, because as my life becomes less expensive and more efficient and less cluttered, I can see even more things to do and have more resources to do them.

When I worked, I didn't have the time, energy, or creativity.  I did end up working to 25X my then-lifestyle-spending, and I was generally happy with life (but not work) anyway, and I did 2MY as @Malcat mentioned...although I think for reasons other than fear of losing the fire hose of income.

So to the OP, I would say hit 25X of your current FIRE budget, then when you actually do retire, after decompressing for a while you'll see opportunities you weren't even able to see when working.

Oh, that's another thing - stress-related spending naturally drops when FIREd.  So one thing to do to make your post-FIRE life cheaper is to RE! ;-)

I'm at 100X my current spending, more or less, due to all of the above items plus fortunate returns on my investments.

[deborah]

When I moved into my house I planted fruit trees. They take a few years to get a decent crop, but by the time I FIREd, I was self sufficient in fruit, and my postFIRE life was cheaper. If you plan to do woodwork when you FIRE, maybe you should plant a wood lot.

Saving as much as you can will also benefit your postFIRE life.

Can you and other note what fruit trees you have? How much maintence to they need?

I planted strawberries, we had a mulberry tree (no gone) we never got anything off them. Lots of squirrels, racoons, who knows what else.

what fruit or perennial vegetable to plant depends on where you live, what grows there and what pests you have. We live in a region that goes down to -10C. Citrus is marginal, but I have some beside a brick wall (so they don't get frost) - lemons, grapefruit, seville oranges, kumquats. Cherries (both sweet and sour) - the sweet cherries are a magnet to birds, and I wouldn't have a crop if I didn't net the tree. Several varieties of plums, and an apricot tree. A number of different types of apple trees that ripen at different times - some storage types , some not, so we have fresh apples for most of the year. Hazlenuts that need netting. A feijoa. I have a normal sized yard. The trees get pruned once a year. The sweet cherry and hazelnuts get netted (takes a couple of hours each end of the season). The cherries get cherry slug, so they get a pyrethrum spray once a year. It probably takes longer to pick the fruit and process it than anything else. We have had other fruit. The peach tree had fungus problems, so I got rid of it. Strawberries need too much attention for me. We've just got rid of the grapefruit because we don't really eat it, even though it was bountiful.

I also have artichokes, rhubarb, raspberries, and a number of other vegetables that can be treated as perennials (for instance each year some of my lettuces seed so each year I get them all over the garden.

[Cranky]

It takes time and some investment of both $ and effort to set up a garden, so I agree that if that is part of your overall strategy, get started sooner rather than later. It takes time to establish beds and trees, but also to source pots and tools and plants in expensively.

We moved out of state as part of our retirement and even though it’s a big established yard, making it do what I want in terms of food production is frustratingly slow.

[getmoneyeatpizza]

Has anyone created a chart comparing the two scenarios?

1) A low income FIRE with no mortgage, solar on the roof, everything is good condition and expecting no major withdrawals for purchases that would raise income. How much lower are your taxes and ACA savings?

2) a higher income FIRE with a mortgage, and a fatter budget for things breaking. How much more taxes, health insurance costs are you spending?

I lean towards #1. Once you hit FIRE you've "Won" so I don't care if I'm losing money in the market by not having a super low interest 30 yr mortgage. If I was FIRE now with only 2 person household, no doubt I'd try to stay under the 68k ACA subsidy and would strategically replace big cost items accordingly to stay under that threshold.

[nereo]

Has anyone created a chart comparing the two scenarios?

1) A low income FIRE with no mortgage, solar on the roof, everything is good condition and expecting no major withdrawals for purchases that would raise income. How much lower are your taxes and ACA savings?

2) a higher income FIRE with a mortgage, and a fatter budget for things breaking. How much more taxes, health insurance costs are you spending?

I lean towards #1. Once you hit FIRE you've "Won" so I don't care if I'm losing money in the market by not having a super low interest 30 yr mortgage. If I was FIRE now with only 2 person household, no doubt I'd try to stay under the 68k ACA subsidy and would strategically replace big cost items accordingly to stay under that threshold.

I’ve done many scenarios like this, but what I think most people neglect is how you get from scenario 2 to scenario 1. Frankly, it takes a combination of more money and more time during your accumulation period.  Given that money is fungible that means less money towards investments and by extension less money available during FIRE.

It’s also a question that’s impossible to give a broad response to, because so much depends on the individual and their financials. Just looking at solar alone - one has to factor in regional energy prices, energy usage, whether they pay out of pocket or get a loan (and if so the loan terms), their take-home pay, tax-advantaged space and expected ‘spend’ in retirement, just to name a few important factors.

You mentioned you don’t care much once you have “won” - but these decisions are the difference between whether you can ‘win’ in (for example) 6 vs 10 years. They aren’t equivalent.

Holding a low-rate fixed mortgage is almost always the better financial decision, but for very high earners or those with substantial savings the difference doesn’t matter nearly as much.

Generally speaking preventive maintenance is always more economical than more expensive repair/replace down the line, but one can easily go too far in either dimension.

[Metalcat]

Has anyone created a chart comparing the two scenarios?

1) A low income FIRE with no mortgage, solar on the roof, everything is good condition and expecting no major withdrawals for purchases that would raise income. How much lower are your taxes and ACA savings?

2) a higher income FIRE with a mortgage, and a fatter budget for things breaking. How much more taxes, health insurance costs are you spending?

I lean towards #1. Once you hit FIRE you've "Won" so I don't care if I'm losing money in the market by not having a super low interest 30 yr mortgage. If I was FIRE now with only 2 person household, no doubt I'd try to stay under the 68k ACA subsidy and would strategically replace big cost items accordingly to stay under that threshold.

For option 2, how much more time did you spend working? How much more taxes did you pay for that additional working time.

You are breaking things down in a way that compares apples to oranges.

Obviously there are benefits to keeping post-retirement taxes and healthcare costs lower, and people should absolutely account for that in their FIRE plans, and most do. It's disingenuous to imply that they don't. The Don't Pay Off Your Mortgage crowd speak about this math in extensive, nauseating detail.

[GodlessCommie]

How much lower are your taxes and ACA savings?

It was quite eye-opening for me to realize that if you live off investments, and stay within $80,000 for a married couple, you pay no taxes. If one is willing to confine themselves to spending no more than median household income in California (or 1.5 median incomes in Alabama), US is a tax haven. So it's only ACA subsidies that matter.

https://www.gocurrycracker.com/never-pay-taxes-again/

[ixtap]

How much lower are your taxes and ACA savings?

It was quite eye-opening for me to realize that if you live off investments, and stay within $80,000 for a married couple, you pay no taxes. If one is willing to confine themselves to spending no more than median household income in California (or 1.5 median incomes in Alabama), US is a tax haven. So it's only ACA subsidies that matter.

https://www.gocurrycracker.com/never-pay-taxes-again/

A lot of these posts are also assuming that spending = income. Our taxable accounts are not 100% gains and we have several years of expenses in Roth (thanks MBR!). We expect to have to do Roth conversions as much for generating income to qualify for ACA as for access to those accounts.

[Seahorse]

Work on your health - both mental and physical …

If u know u are going to live in your current house post retirement, plant a variety of fruit trees .. it takes a while to produce and you’d have reduced your food costs .. look at perennial vegetables as well

Pick up a cheaper hobby ..

Put money in a HSA account ..

You seems knowledgable, do you have a list?

I have mint, lemonbalm, sorrel, horseradish, asparagus. I count garlic here as I alway have some left in ground, self seed too if I don't get the scapes.

What do you have going?

Sorry I am just a permaculture enthusiast with not much space right now but can suggest a few books - Eric Toensmeier, Martin Crawford, Christopher Selby etc

I also recommend Jerusalem artichoke, chives, good king Henry, Rhubarb, crab apples (I cook  them before they are ripe), etc .. fruit trees are the best (plant comfrey (bocking variety) with it) .. Jerusalem artichoke apparently tastes great roasted (from a friend who grows it in her yard, only problem is this will spread widely)

On the perennial front, I only have mint, comfrey right now.. comfrey makes good tea and salves as well .. I want to plant Rhubarb, Asian pear, plums and maybe a crabapple tree next ..

[GodlessCommie]

A lot of these posts are also assuming that spending = income. Our taxable accounts are not 100% gains and we have several years of expenses in Roth (thanks MBR!). We expect to have to do Roth conversions as much for generating income to qualify for ACA as for access to those accounts.

Right. It is only income because of the Roth conversions. Otherwise, it's realized capital gains and dividends that have to be within $80K, which is, frankly, insane.

[getmoneyeatpizza]

I would love to fully understand this better!

Part of my perspective comes from a real one on this forum, @Ben Kurtz  who no longer posts but once said:

"I generally believe that a family is well served by living in a fully paid-off house when it reaches FIRE.  Minimizing one's fixed monthly obligations when living entirely off of investments brings peace of mind to a lot of people and can have good tax and ACA subsidy benefits.  But I equally believe that one should not get there by applying large amounts of one's surplus and savings, year after year, to extra mortgage payments while one is still building up a nest egg.  It ties up equity and the "earnings" (i.e. the avoided interest cost) aren't worth it.  Build the nest-egg first, build-up a sinking fund, and when close to retirement work out an off-ramp for liquidating investments and paying off the house. "

So let's forget solar and the other things and only focus on the mortgage.

Here's a FIRE timeline if we retired in 7 years and bought a $500k house we were considering. I assume ACA is AGI which doesn't take into account standard deduction here, but let's just pretend scenario 1 is over the subsidy line or was on a sliding scale.

1,750,000 stache at 4% earning 70,000. with a $2600 monthly mortgage that costs $31200 a year and ~39k expenses for everything else. 70k expenses.

If 300k was left of on the mortgage would it make sense for me to pay that off and live on

1,450,000 earning $58k a year and have home insurance and property taxes that cost $7000 a year. Now expenses are still 39k everything else plus 7k house stuff for a total of 46k in expenses and a 12k cushion and lower taxes and ACA subsidy. And possibly better SORR flexiblity. (And personally better sleep at night)

What am I missing here? I'll read that gocurrycracker again. Any other good resources on the spending doesn't equal income topic?

[elaine amj]

I have never really equated spending with my income so it never occurred to me to spend more just before FIRE. I FIREd when we hit our number (that included plenty of buffer for home repairs, etc).

We were lucky to FIRE 3 years ago and the market has just gone up since. So we have much more than what we started with.

I've actually gone the other direction and spend a bit more now on things that make us more comfortable.  So if a fancy kitchen gadget helps make cooking easier, we buy it.

I am also doing an unMustachian house redecorating, replacing worn out but functional 10-15 year old furniture and things like ceiling fans, front door and storm doors.

I am using my inflated stash for this. Without that extra money, I'd likely just live with what we have or plan a much cheaper update. Instead, I am considering ridiculous indulgences like a $1500 dining table (eek - who knew ppl spent this much on furniture?!!). That said, I would absolutely not have worked an extra few months to fund this.

Sent from my VCE-AL00 using Tapatalk

[Metalcat]

I would love to fully understand this better!

Part of my perspective comes from a real one on this forum, @Ben Kurtz  who no longer posts but once said:

"I generally believe that a family is well served by living in a fully paid-off house when it reaches FIRE.  Minimizing one's fixed monthly obligations when living entirely off of investments brings peace of mind to a lot of people and can have good tax and ACA subsidy benefits.  But I equally believe that one should not get there by applying large amounts of one's surplus and savings, year after year, to extra mortgage payments while one is still building up a nest egg.  It ties up equity and the "earnings" (i.e. the avoided interest cost) aren't worth it.  Build the nest-egg first, build-up a sinking fund, and when close to retirement work out an off-ramp for liquidating investments and paying off the house. "

So let's forget solar and the other things and only focus on the mortgage.

Here's a FIRE timeline if we retired in 7 years and bought a $500k house we were considering. I assume ACA is AGI which doesn't take into account standard deduction here, but let's just pretend scenario 1 is over the subsidy line or was on a sliding scale.

1,750,000 stache at 4% earning 70,000. with a $2600 monthly mortgage that costs $31200 a year and ~39k expenses for everything else. 70k expenses.

If 300k was left of on the mortgage would it make sense for me to pay that off and live on

1,450,000 earning $58k a year and have home insurance and property taxes that cost $7000 a year. Now expenses are still 39k everything else plus 7k house stuff for a total of 46k in expenses and a 12k cushion and lower taxes and ACA subsidy. And possibly better SORR flexiblity. (And personally better sleep at night)

What am I missing here? I'll read that gocurrycracker again. Any other good resources on the spending doesn't equal income topic?

No one is arguing against paying off your mortgage after hitting FI. We're just saying that you should do the math for yourself to figure out what is most optimal for your *particular* circumstance, and to not assume that just because something makes a post-FIRE spend lower that that necessarily equates with having to earn less money overall.

Sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn't.

[American GenX]

Somewhere back in the blog MMM suggested that most middle-class families could cut 70% of their spending and essentially life the exact same life (of even a better life) if they were just smarter about their purchasing.  The same is true with post-FIRE. But don’t expect you can just do this once you FIRE “because you’ll have time” or “on a fixed budget you;ll be more motivated” or whatever.  If you wait until you are retired to start making your life cheaper you will likely fail, or be miserable, or both. But if you start now, and do it for years, you’ll start to wonder how everyone else you know can be so wasteful, and you’ll laugh anytime someone suggests “you can’t live off $xx,xxx in retrirement!” Because you will have been living off even less for years.

I think that's true.  And I'm planning to go in the opposite direction when I FIRE.  I'm single with no kids, and I've lived very frugally throughout my career,  spending about $2000/yr on discretionary spending in recent years on average with my entire spending being $14,655 in 2020 for all expenses and discretionary combined.  If I was to FIRE now, my stache would allow about $90,000/yr spending (including taxes) on average.  So instead of cutting back spending when I FIRE, I need to figure out where I'm going to spend the extra dough so that I don't leave anything on the table.  I suspect I'll spend considerably less than the $90K/yr my stache will allow due to my long term frugal nature that I won't easily be able to switch off.

[mistymoney]

I have never really equated spending with my income so it never occurred to me to spend more just before FIRE. I FIREd when we hit our number (that included plenty of buffer for home repairs, etc).

We were lucky to FIRE 3 years ago and the market has just gone up since. So we have much more than what we started with.

I've actually gone the other direction and spend a bit more now on things that make us more comfortable.  So if a fancy kitchen gadget helps make cooking easier, we buy it.

I am also doing an unMustachian house redecorating, replacing worn out but functional 10-15 year old furniture and things like ceiling fans, front door and storm doors.

I am using my inflated stash for this. Without that extra money, I'd likely just live with what we have or plan a much cheaper update. Instead, I am considering ridiculous indulgences like a $1500 dining table (eek - who knew ppl spent this much on furniture?!!). That said, I would absolutely not have worked an extra few months to fund this.

Sent from my VCE-AL00 using Tapatalk

that's the big question isn't it? what is it, and how much extra are you willing to work for it.

contemplating a lot of those kinds of questions myself right now!

[Eowyn_MI]

Back to the actual topic of the thread, I have additional suggestions beyond investing in your health:

-Develop cheap/free hobbies and volunteer activities
-Better yet, develop hobbies and volunteer activities that can get you access to otherwise expensive things, like concert or theater tickets
-Learn DIY skills, not just for your own benefit, like home renos, but that could benefit others and be utilized in your hobbies or volunteer activities

Basically, the more skills and talents you have to offer, the richer a network you can be part of and get access to all sorts of activities and events that would otherwise be very expensive to be part of. For example, becoming a volunteer youth golf instructor can get you free access to golf courses at some locations. Becoming a volunteer set painter can get you access to theater shows. There are countless ways to be useful, which then result in free or cheap access to luxuries. Almost every major organization has some kind of volunteer or community outreach component.

^this. You know what is really priceless? Relationships.  Worth more than any expensive exercise equipment or fancy ass camping gear.

Spend your time investing in people, and your retirement will be long and rich and worthwhile.

I agree with you that good relationships are priceless.  However, I'm struggling to find the ones that are worth investing in.  People are busy and it seems like they don't follow through a lot of times.  For example, when talking to someone they will sound interested in doing an activity together but it never ends up happening even if I reach out to them first.  I have plenty of free time that I would like to invest in a good community or individual people but I haven't found an ideal solution for this.  I do some volunteering, some social activities and even tried dating apps but it just seems really hard to make connections with people as a 30yo single adult.  Can you give any practical examples of how you invest in people?

[yachi]

Some of this stuff just sounds like straight-up consumption, especially the idea of replacing perfectly good things for the sake of starting retirement with newer ones. "Spend it while you got it" sounds a lot like the disappearing money theory that keeps people poor. Buying a bunch of depreciating shit won't make your withdrawal strategy any safer, it will just keep you working longer. 

Note, it's fine to buy things that make you happier: it's just that if you feel like you need to use sequence risk to justify it, you probably don't need it.

Right?  The last owner of my house died (at a good old age of 100) before her 29-year-old dishwasher.  With some of our DIY skills it survived another 6 years.

[Metalcat]

Back to the actual topic of the thread, I have additional suggestions beyond investing in your health:

-Develop cheap/free hobbies and volunteer activities
-Better yet, develop hobbies and volunteer activities that can get you access to otherwise expensive things, like concert or theater tickets
-Learn DIY skills, not just for your own benefit, like home renos, but that could benefit others and be utilized in your hobbies or volunteer activities

Basically, the more skills and talents you have to offer, the richer a network you can be part of and get access to all sorts of activities and events that would otherwise be very expensive to be part of. For example, becoming a volunteer youth golf instructor can get you free access to golf courses at some locations. Becoming a volunteer set painter can get you access to theater shows. There are countless ways to be useful, which then result in free or cheap access to luxuries. Almost every major organization has some kind of volunteer or community outreach component.

^this. You know what is really priceless? Relationships.  Worth more than any expensive exercise equipment or fancy ass camping gear.

Spend your time investing in people, and your retirement will be long and rich and worthwhile.

I agree with you that good relationships are priceless.  However, I'm struggling to find the ones that are worth investing in.  People are busy and it seems like they don't follow through a lot of times.  For example, when talking to someone they will sound interested in doing an activity together but it never ends up happening even if I reach out to them first.  I have plenty of free time that I would like to invest in a good community or individual people but I haven't found an ideal solution for this.  I do some volunteering, some social activities and even tried dating apps but it just seems really hard to make connections with people as a 30yo single adult.  Can you give any practical examples of how you invest in people?

Forging bonds is a learnable skill, it's no different than when you were younger, you just aren't constantly in situations that are conducive to forming bonds.

People in their 30s are just as eager to connect as they were in their teens and 20s, they just also lack knowledge of the *learnable* skill, so you have to learn it yourself and then kind of compensate for them.

I'm a downright off-putting person on first impression a lot of the time, and I have zero problem making friends because I've figured out how to do it.

The basic equation is this:
-Do something difficult with someone else, take a genuine interest in them, and be willing to express vulnerability along the way

You will be far more effective at making deep bonds with someone by helping them move than by going out to a bunch of dinners together.

[wageslave23]

Back to the actual topic of the thread, I have additional suggestions beyond investing in your health:

-Develop cheap/free hobbies and volunteer activities
-Better yet, develop hobbies and volunteer activities that can get you access to otherwise expensive things, like concert or theater tickets
-Learn DIY skills, not just for your own benefit, like home renos, but that could benefit others and be utilized in your hobbies or volunteer activities

Basically, the more skills and talents you have to offer, the richer a network you can be part of and get access to all sorts of activities and events that would otherwise be very expensive to be part of. For example, becoming a volunteer youth golf instructor can get you free access to golf courses at some locations. Becoming a volunteer set painter can get you access to theater shows. There are countless ways to be useful, which then result in free or cheap access to luxuries. Almost every major organization has some kind of volunteer or community outreach component.

^this. You know what is really priceless? Relationships.  Worth more than any expensive exercise equipment or fancy ass camping gear.

Spend your time investing in people, and your retirement will be long and rich and worthwhile.

I agree with you that good relationships are priceless.  However, I'm struggling to find the ones that are worth investing in.  People are busy and it seems like they don't follow through a lot of times.  For example, when talking to someone they will sound interested in doing an activity together but it never ends up happening even if I reach out to them first.  I have plenty of free time that I would like to invest in a good community or individual people but I haven't found an ideal solution for this.  I do some volunteering, some social activities and even tried dating apps but it just seems really hard to make connections with people as a 30yo single adult.  Can you give any practical examples of how you invest in people?

Forging bonds is a learnable skill, it's no different than when you were younger, you just aren't constantly in situations that are conducive to forming bonds.

People in their 30s are just as eager to connect as they were in their teens and 20s, they just also lack knowledge of the *learnable* skill, so you have to learn it yourself and then kind of compensate for them.

I'm a downright off-putting person on first impression a lot of the time, and I have zero problem making friends because I've figured out how to do it.

The basic equation is this:
-Do something difficult with someone else, take a genuine interest in them, and be willing to express vulnerability along the way

You will be far more effective at making deep bonds with someone by helping them move than by going out to a bunch of dinners together.

Ha!  Why do you consider yourself an off putting person on first impression?

[FIRE Artist]

Back to the actual topic of the thread, I have additional suggestions beyond investing in your health:

-Develop cheap/free hobbies and volunteer activities
-Better yet, develop hobbies and volunteer activities that can get you access to otherwise expensive things, like concert or theater tickets
-Learn DIY skills, not just for your own benefit, like home renos, but that could benefit others and be utilized in your hobbies or volunteer activities

Basically, the more skills and talents you have to offer, the richer a network you can be part of and get access to all sorts of activities and events that would otherwise be very expensive to be part of. For example, becoming a volunteer youth golf instructor can get you free access to golf courses at some locations. Becoming a volunteer set painter can get you access to theater shows. There are countless ways to be useful, which then result in free or cheap access to luxuries. Almost every major organization has some kind of volunteer or community outreach component.

^this. You know what is really priceless? Relationships.  Worth more than any expensive exercise equipment or fancy ass camping gear.

Spend your time investing in people, and your retirement will be long and rich and worthwhile.

I agree with you that good relationships are priceless.  However, I'm struggling to find the ones that are worth investing in.  People are busy and it seems like they don't follow through a lot of times.  For example, when talking to someone they will sound interested in doing an activity together but it never ends up happening even if I reach out to them first.  I have plenty of free time that I would like to invest in a good community or individual people but I haven't found an ideal solution for this.  I do some volunteering, some social activities and even tried dating apps but it just seems really hard to make connections with people as a 30yo single adult.  Can you give any practical examples of how you invest in people?

Forging bonds is a learnable skill, it's no different than when you were younger, you just aren't constantly in situations that are conducive to forming bonds.

People in their 30s are just as eager to connect as they were in their teens and 20s, they just also lack knowledge of the *learnable* skill, so you have to learn it yourself and then kind of compensate for them.

I'm a downright off-putting person on first impression a lot of the time, and I have zero problem making friends because I've figured out how to do it.

The basic equation is this:
-Do something difficult with someone else, take a genuine interest in them, and be willing to express vulnerability along the way

You will be far more effective at making deep bonds with someone by helping them move than by going out to a bunch of dinners together.

This equation is a perfect description.  You can use social things to get introductions to people (for me it was book club, art classes etc.), but you have to be willing and looking for opportunities to help those people in ways that are not related to the light social interaction.  Really listen for opportunities that you can help them on or spend time outside the normal social setting, and also accept their offers when made to you.  You shouldn't just be looking to make friends with your immediate peer group/dating pool, you should be looking for a community that span decades older and younger if you can.  The older folks are the ones who will have time during the week when you are no longer working so don't dismiss them - I have art friends that I meet up with who are in their early 70's, I am 47, I enjoy those conversations and information sharing as much as I enjoy meeting up with my age group friends.    It really does take a village.

[Metalcat]

Ha!  Why do you consider yourself an off putting person on first impression?

You have to actually get to know me to understand why I am the way I am, which takes time. All of my closest friends couldn't stand me at first, and I was none too fond of them either, lol.

I don't consider someone hating me to be a barrier to friendship with them, it actually makes it much easier to connect if I choose to put the effort in.

[Weisass]

Back to the actual topic of the thread, I have additional suggestions beyond investing in your health:

-Develop cheap/free hobbies and volunteer activities
-Better yet, develop hobbies and volunteer activities that can get you access to otherwise expensive things, like concert or theater tickets
-Learn DIY skills, not just for your own benefit, like home renos, but that could benefit others and be utilized in your hobbies or volunteer activities

Basically, the more skills and talents you have to offer, the richer a network you can be part of and get access to all sorts of activities and events that would otherwise be very expensive to be part of. For example, becoming a volunteer youth golf instructor can get you free access to golf courses at some locations. Becoming a volunteer set painter can get you access to theater shows. There are countless ways to be useful, which then result in free or cheap access to luxuries. Almost every major organization has some kind of volunteer or community outreach component.

^this. You know what is really priceless? Relationships.  Worth more than any expensive exercise equipment or fancy ass camping gear.

Spend your time investing in people, and your retirement will be long and rich and worthwhile.

I agree with you that good relationships are priceless.  However, I'm struggling to find the ones that are worth investing in.  People are busy and it seems like they don't follow through a lot of times.  For example, when talking to someone they will sound interested in doing an activity together but it never ends up happening even if I reach out to them first.  I have plenty of free time that I would like to invest in a good community or individual people but I haven't found an ideal solution for this.  I do some volunteering, some social activities and even tried dating apps but it just seems really hard to make connections with people as a 30yo single adult.  Can you give any practical examples of how you invest in people?

Sure thing. I get to know my neighbors, well. I have found that there is always someone on your street that you can connect with, wherever you are. My best friends are folks that I got to know because we shared a block, and I took the time to say hello and chat with them. Am I friends with all of my neighbors? No. But that little bit of extra effort went a long way--turns out a lot of folks don't have the time to drive to an activity, but they *do* have time to hang in the backyard and grill burgers. And honestly, I am happy to do that pretty much any weekend.

[TreeLeaf]

Buy an electric vehicle?

[Metalcat]

This equation is a perfect description.  You can use social things to get introductions to people (for me it was book club, art classes etc.), but you have to be willing and looking for opportunities to help those people in ways that are not related to the light social interaction.  Really listen for opportunities that you can help them on or spend time outside the normal social setting, and also accept their offers when made to you.  You shouldn't just be looking to make friends with your immediate peer group/dating pool, you should be looking for a community that span decades older and younger if you can.  The older folks are the ones who will have time during the week when you are no longer working so don't dismiss them - I have art friends that I meet up with who are in their early 70's, I am 47, I enjoy those conversations and information sharing as much as I enjoy meeting up with my age group friends.    It really does take a village.

All good points, but it's not necessarily about helping people, it's about tackling challenges along with them. Sometimes this will be through directly helping them, or it can be through playing sports or taking a class together, or volunteer together, or whatever.

Focusing on being helpful can get you used, or come off as condescending, or even creepy. I can't stand people who try to ingratiate themselves by trying to help me, it's a surefire way to annoy me actually. But if someone invites me to tackle a difficult community project with them, yeah, we'll probably end up best friends.

The reason I bonded with people after helping them move is not because I've helped them, but because we've hauled boxes side by side while exhausted and cranky and then enjoyed pizza while covered in sweat and filth, sharing a collective sense of accomplishment.

Collective challenges and collective accomplishments are the foundational elements of human bonds. That's why highschool and.university friendships are so intense, everyone is going through the same major challenges in parallel.

After that, everyone starts pretending to be as happy and successful as possible, and this blocks out the vulnerability needed to connect.

That's why so much adult socializing is useless for bonding. You get a bunch of adults at a dinner all wearing their "happy masks", basically being full of shit together.

[Metalcat]

Buy an electric vehicle?

How about buy an electric bike and get rid of your car.

[TreeLeaf]

Buy an electric vehicle?

How about buy an electric bike and get rid of your car.

How about get rid of your house and move into your electric car? Find free charging stations, park by free wifi, etc

[Zamboni]

My efforts to make my post-FIRE life cheaper is going to be a more serious effort towards minimalism. The less stuff you have, the less it costs to maintain/store/clean your stuff.

Here's why I made this decision:

The late Dad of one of my friends did the "buy what you need while still working" trick on steroids before he retired. He was always well off and basically he bought everything he thought he would need for the rest of his life before he retired. Everything.

And then he died shortly after retirement.

And so my friend was stuck figuring out what to do with boxes and boxes full of golf gear, golf gloves, golf clothes, etc. just as an example. Literally hundreds of unopened brand new men's size medium golf gloves. He had done some sort of calculation on how many he "needed", according to her. I mean did the guy use a new pair of gloves every time he played a round? Every week? She gave what she could away to friends who golfed, then donated the rest.

But the real kicker was his booze. Dude had "invested" in and hoarded cases and cases of hard liquor so that he would never run dry. Vodka, rum, whiskey . . . you can't legally resell that stuff here. In fact, pretty sure transportation laws would prevent her from even loading her car up with very much of it at once. Although it did all get to her home somehow when they were listing his home for sale. Her entire living room was filled with boxes stacked upon boxes of booze for awhile. She was not happy with him about that choice.

So, yeah, I'm going the other way: minimalism.