Early-Retirement Update

> I looked at other FI bloggers who quit work and retired. They all appeared to be blissful. Stoic. Confident and without reservations. Since I ran into problems myself, I started to feel like I was defective. Like something was wrong with me and that’s why it didn’t work so well. Maybe it has to do with my personality (a nerdy introvert). Or it could be because I’m not trying to sell product and make money off of my choices, like almost everyone else who blogs about FI seems to.

There always seemed like a potentially strange conflict of interest with many of the FI bloggers who are ostensibly "retired early", but still earn a significant amount of money from their FI blogs. Which isn't to say they shouldn't be earning that money, but it does bring up questions about some of the conclusions that they make. (There's also a bit of a groupthink or even cult-like mentality among some of them, particularly in the MMM sphere.)

For many people in many countries, there is no concept of "retirement". It seems so silly to me that people would go and say "I'll work really hard and do all this stuff for 40 years so I can sit around and do nothing for another 30 years".

What's the point? It's unsustainable. It's like doing a crash diet - it may work for a minute, but to have long-term results you need to have a lifestyle change.

Focusing on financial independence means you can achieve better long-term results. Living within your means over the course of 80 years instead of balls-to-the-wall for 30-40 and then a quick and silent death for 30 seems to be a better course of action and would lead to longer lifespan.

Once you reach financial independence - whatever that means to you - you can take on other interests. It could be working at a startup, or a non-profit, or volunteering, or gardening. You name it. But financial independence enables such things. FI > RE.

But most people significantly overstate future returns (particularly now), they significantly understate the effect that volatility can have on strategies with withdrawal rates (any strategy involving withdrawals has to optimise for returns AND volatility...this is counter to the "time in the market" logic that most people read so can end up going very wrong), and they model for average final period wealth rather than 5th percentile (generally speaking, this happens everywhere in finance...modelling percentile outcomes is tricky...so most people just don't do it). I am not in the US but health costs seem to be an issue, inflation is another "black swan" that tends to go unconsidered.

In my experience, the FIRE group are the most difficult to convince because the whole concept is a lifestyle or way of thinking not an actual strategy. I also don't understand what is so appealing about doing nothing...but that is maybe just me (I have had times in my life when I was doing nothing, those weren't choices and they weren't fun).