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Early-Retirement Update

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Re: Early-Retirement Update

#141

Post by kelnos »

leetcrew wrote: post #58
mypalmike wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not perfect, but maximum annual out-of-pocket for an individual ACA plan is $8550, plus premiums. If that's your entire savings, you were certainly not FI.

I think the author is going to require expensive care on a yearly basis for the rest of their life. if you can't absorb $8550 one time, yeah you're definitely not FI. but if you end up maxing out your out-of-pocket every year until you die, that is really going to mess with a $30k/yr spending target.

Right; an extra $8550 per year might not be hard to absorb if your budget (supported by a larger nest egg) is already $150k per year, but when it's $30k per year, that's a good 30% increase. Not small.

Re: Early-Retirement Update

#142

Post by ricardobayes »

neogodless wrote: post #92
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #68

I had to quit reading any FIRE (financial independence, early retirement) blogs because they were full of people headed down this same path: Extreme frugality, bare minimum savings, assuming their lifestyle would never change and nothing would ever go wrong. Retiring at 30 sounds great, but no one's life goes exactly to plan for next the 30-40 years until traditional retirement age. People change, expectations evolve…

> Extreme frugality Were you reading FIRE blogs or extreme frugality blogs? Or maybe I can just ask "how do you define extreme frugality?" (I think of myself as kind of frugal, and planning to have the choice to avoid compulsory paid work before I'm 50, but I also live in one of the most expensive areas of the United States outside of big cities / California, with somewhat regular trips to Disney World and other coun…

Well someone spending 30k in Massachusetts living in a rental is got to be living extremely frugally. Then the woman had enough of the pennypinching. I see this so often in my circle - all the missed eating out and having fun is ultimately spent on marriage counseling and divorce lawyers.

Re: Early-Retirement Update

#143

Post by slumdev »

mathgladiator wrote: post #95
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #68

I had to quit reading any FIRE (financial independence, early retirement) blogs because they were full of people headed down this same path: Extreme frugality, bare minimum savings, assuming their lifestyle would never change and nothing would ever go wrong. Retiring at 30 sounds great, but no one's life goes exactly to plan for next the 30-40 years until traditional retirement age. People change, expectations evolve…

I'm going to start blogging about FIRE from the other extreme end. I'm a principal engineer making serious dollars, and I'm writing down my playbook. I intend to "Fat-FIRE", and the only reason I don't retire now is to see how much I can leverage my position to do crazy shit at massive scale. Paradoxically, this sets me up for larger windfalls because I can take risks that my peers do not take.

Nobody ever made it to the top by groveling, volunteering for scut, and accepting an annual 3% raise.

Re: Early-Retirement Update

#144

Post by UncleOxidant »

I've essentially been FIREd for almost 18 months now (except for a very brief gig last fall). I really didn't realize that I was kind'a sort'a retired at 57 until just a few months ago. I was in a startup that ran out of money towards the end of 2019 and they kept telling me through 2020 that they'd get more funding soon and call me back to work - but of course, that never happened, and at this point it's not gonna. So that's how I eased into "early" retirement - if 57 is early. But really, what I've realized in the last few months is that I don't dislike working as long as I'm working for/with nice folks doing interesting work with a good amount of autonomy (all true in the case of the previous startup gig). But what I do hate with a burning passion is looking for work and interviewing - the terrible tech interviewing situation has been well documented here on HN, so I won't say more. So at this point I consider myself retired from interviewing, but not from software development. The short gig I had in the Fall was a contract with a previous employer who needed a quick project done (no interviewing required).

Like the author of the article I have had some issues with finding "purpose". It can be hard to relax into this kind of nonemployed situation and when you do get relaxed then you start to wonder if you're losing purpose and drifting. This is the battle - you're going to face it whether you retire early in your 30s or if you retire at the traditional age of 65. I'm trying to keep reading papers and doing some coding but I often come to the "what's the point?" crisis while working on something. Many times that's led to just dropping said project and going on to find another, but now I'm trying to push through the "what's the point" point.

During the short gig last Fall, I did notice that working more than 24 hours a week is difficult at this point - fortunately it was a 24 hour/week gig, but I'd get to the middle of that 3rd day and be like "Yeah, I'm really ready to not be working anymore this week". This was after about a year of not working. I suppose that if that short gig had lasted longer I would have gotten more into the rhythm of work again.

Re: Early-Retirement Update

#145

Post by beambot »

dimmke wrote: post #102
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #68

I had to quit reading any FIRE (financial independence, early retirement) blogs because they were full of people headed down this same path: Extreme frugality, bare minimum savings, assuming their lifestyle would never change and nothing would ever go wrong. Retiring at 30 sounds great, but no one's life goes exactly to plan for next the 30-40 years until traditional retirement age. People change, expectations evolve…

I've had friends with trust funds, who just seem to dither around in life. "Making music" they never release. Picking up little "pass the time" jobs. And these are people that aren't living "leanFIRE" It seems like such a nihilistic way to live. You're just floating along the stream of life. Things worked out for you, but you have no further passion or inclination to improve the world? No problems you could set yours…

Elon Musk's life is at the opposite extremum of "floating through life." The man works 90+ hours per week, gambled his entire fortune on two risky hardware companies, serves as a prominent public figure, and destroyed many of his close personal relationships (e.g. remarried numerous times). He's having tremendous impact; I respect him like crazy & would happily back his endeavors... But I wouldn't wish for his lifestyle, let alone choose it.

I rather doubt that you would choose Elon's life either -- especially if you were in his financial position.

(Happy to stand corrected, since I don't know you.)

Re: Early-Retirement Update

#146

Post by univerio »

mcguire wrote: post #85
eric_b wrote: post #46

I really struggled with the author's tone. It dripped of condescension towards those who live a "normal" lifestyle. I enjoy working. I find purpose and meaning it. I do not let it dominate my life, but without it I would feel incomplete. I run my own business now, and that is very satisfying - but even when I was a corporate consultant I found a lot of enjoyment from spending time with my coworkers, solving problems,…

" ...she had acquired, somehow, New Life Dreams, which had to do with Conspicuous Consumption and Keeping Up and being Visibly Awesome... " I was thinking the same thing: geeze, isn't there anything between virtue signalling early retirement and conspicuous consumption?

It does read a bit absurd with the over-the-top proper nouns, but this being the author's description of their past beliefs led me to interpret this as their being self-critical about the less nuanced opinions they once held about their lifestyle, rather than seriously looking down their nose at the people who have chosen a different lifestyle.

Re: Early-Retirement Update

#147

Post by bhelkey »

hogFeast wrote: post #87
sokoloff wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tools like cFireSim get this much more correct than what you describe above and takes literally just a few minutes to do basic modeling. They're still limited by historical returns, which is both good and bad, but certainly model very prominently the risk-of-ruin. https://www.cfiresim.com/ (no connection, other than very occasional user)

From what I can see, that doesn't look too good. There are likely issues with the data, which is not easily solvable given that complete databases are expensive. And there are likely issues with the modelling, it looks like the model is just scenario analysis. This is better than a misspecified parametric model (most advisers don't do scenario analysis either, so it is definitely valuable...although requires market k…

> There are likely issues with the data, which is not easily solvable given that complete databases are expensive.

>> cFIREsim uses historical stock/bond/gold/inflation data from 1871 to present[1]

I am not an expert here buy my impress is that this data is publicly available. What data is this model missing?

[1] cfiresim.com/about/

Re: Early-Retirement Update

#148

Post by jbn »

CogitoCogito wrote: post #30
Pandabob wrote: post #24

He mentions MRIs costing 2-3k€ a pop. That seems really expensive. I’m guessing this is US? Doesn’t competition push down the price of these operations? We’ve got private clinics in Finland offering MRIs from ~230€ without any subsidies (AFAIK).

The US healthcare system isn’t really a very good model of market competition.

on the contrary (and to your implied point, if i'm not mistaken), it's more like a cartel bent on extracting the most value out of the "consumer"...

Re: Early-Retirement Update

#149

Post by psychiatrist24 »

jacquesm wrote: post #14
Trasmatta wrote: post #11

This was a really refreshing and honest take on early retirement, especially among the FI blogosphere. > 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 personal…

But: he's still giving investment advice and he still doesn't realize just how lucky he got.

You mean MMM or the author here? How do you know he "got lucky", since he doesn't mention how he got his nest egg? (Yes in a wider sense lucky to be born smart enough for a good job, in a country with good jobs and so on, but that applies to many people).

Maybe he took those FI blogs seriously and dedicated himself to reaching that goal, and he did. And then people who never tried say "he got lucky".

Re: Early-Retirement Update

#150

Post by nightski »

corry wrote: post #55

Kudos to people who go FIRE without state-provided healthcare - from a "typical brainwashed Canadian" POV you're one health mishap / one ambulance-ride's worth of unexpected medical costs to kill the entire dream. Also - no kids - huge variable for FIRE obviously, but perhaps less obviously ALSO a huge variable for life's purpose. Something I've seen in my friend and family group is that a lot of couples hit a point…

I don't know, as a freelancer high deductible health care plans are not that expensive. Like $100-200/mo. If you have kids that price would be higher, but then it's going to be a lot harder to FIRE anyways.
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