Climbing the Wealth Ladder

I'm still not sure I agree though. I know this sounds lame, but I think creating a stable life with people you really care about is worth a lot more than the memories of traveling all over the world in your youth. my parents lived well below their means for most of my childhood, and they now have a stable retirement with plenty of money to go on whatever trips they want. sometimes they take me with them. as far as I can tell, they are very happy to be able to do this now with their family rather than having the memories of doing it in their twenties.

something else kind of shitty to think about: the real return on a diversified portfolio over forty years is somewhere between 15x and 20x (unless something major changes in the world). $5k spent traveling at 25 could be $100k less when you're 65. depending how much you made later, this could be a meaningful amount you won't have to leave to your children or help them with their goals.

as it stands, I've got perhaps... ~5 years of living expenses saved up. Certainly enough to not worry about a few days of non-income, but it's.. certainly not FU money. 25 years of expenses lined up seems like it might give you more breathing room, but, I suspect your comfort level and goal posts move.

when I was in big debt, I thought "man, just having $1k in the bank will make all the difference, and I'll be fine". and when I got there, I was 'fine' for about 10 minutes. Then the goal was $2k. Then 5. Then 10. Then 30. And so on. For me, there's a realization that it's moderately hard to earn and keep that money, and that it can be reduced rather quickly, so.... keeping earning income is still top of mind, at least for another few years.

A straw man argument. A) I said "for example". B) I didn't mean "fuck all, I am traveling", my primary message that when you saving all your after-ramen income you are missing things you will not be able to make in your 55+.

>> rather than having the memories of doing it in their twenties

Don't take it personal but how one can compare to something they didn't have? Quite possible that after investing in themselves instead of stocks they would have an even better time right now.

>> something else kind of shitty to think about: the real return on a diversified portfolio over forty years is somewhere between 15x and 20x

something else kind of shitty to think about: stocks grow with the same rate as the total amount of US dollars so in some sense your investments don't grow at all if we talk about the total pie.

You really think you couldn't walk out of a job and find another one in a few months? Will you even notice that drop in savings aside from as a theoretical number on a spreadsheet?

It sounds to me like you have a complex about this rather than it being in any sense rational. (I don't mean that as an insult at all.)

5 years is less than the amount of time it took for me to go from a skint teenager in a dead end town, to a graduate with a full time job.

And yes, it's sort of a complex. I have to remind myself that yes, I can pay the extra 50c and get cheese on the burger if I feel like it. I'd lived 30+ years without being able to do that (meaning that adding cheese a few times would be noticeable at the end of a week), it's a hard mental state to break from. Not 'working' means ... a day where savings isn't going up, etc.

Replenishing the spent money is simultaneously both easier (larger savings tends to grow in larger chunks) and harder (takes longer to earn new money vs the compounding of earlier money, and takes more of the remaining time I have left, which is always depleting).

I'm not claiming it's entirely rational, by any means, and that's why I was saying earlier that it's hard to break out of.

EDIT: I've always taken FU money to mean... you never have to engage in any sort of 'work' ever again, not just for a short time. In some ways, I've been able to use this cushion to say "no" to some situations/jobs/projects that I would have agreed to before, but it's not the same as saying FU to people. :)