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Building a vision of life without work (2015)

livingafi.com

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Re: Building a vision of life without work (2015)

#191

Post by bserge »

bambax wrote: post #127
dcolkitt wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's interesting is the radical change over the past century, from a life of pure leisure being the mark of the aristocratic upper class to the lumpenproletariat. I love how Downton Abbey conveys this now alien concept to us early on by having the Dowager Countess ask " what is a 'weekend'? ". The perfect modern counter-balance is the classic line from Office Space: " Well, you don't need a million dollars to do no…

Work as purpose is a rather novel idea. Max Weber is really helpful here, and his seminal book, while published in 1905, seems more relevant than ever. It used to be that you worked just as much as you needed to, to sustain yourself. So much so that raising wages would immediately result in people working less, as they could earn the same amount of money with less work. Then at some point work became a "calling" and…

It seems most people here mean "work" as in trading time/skill for money.

Everything in life is work, however. Building dams, building robots, creating music, raising kids, even playing games.

If you had enough finances to do anything (including nothing at all), I'm quite sure you'd quickly find yourself working anyway. I know I would.

I don't think it's some modern concept, it's just that life has no real purpose beyond survival and reproduction and we (as in our consciousness) need one otherwise the dread of existence will set in sooner or later.

Re: Building a vision of life without work (2015)

#192

Post by awithrow »

dheera wrote: post #187
SavantIdiot wrote: post #39

I'm 52 and have 2.5MM in an IRA (200k cash) and debt of just a $200k mortgage (and this is weaksauce compared to my peers who all became VPs or C*Os). And the idea of trying to live off an IRA that is currently stocks/bonds/ETFs scares the bejeebers out of me. I think it is more about the personality than the money: do you have the risk-tolerance like this guy to say "fuck it, it will all work out," or are you like m…

How do you get 2.5M in an IRA if they only let you put in 6K a year? Can you buy dogecoin in an IRA?

If you had a 401k when leaving a job, you can roll that into your IRA. A 401k has much higher limits

Re: Building a vision of life without work (2015)

#193

Post by thrtythreeforty »

icedchai wrote: post #33
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #3

This is one of the biggest missing pieces in internet FIRE discussions. So much of the FIRE discourse is about not working that many don’t realize that they’re going to be extremely bored with 16 hours to fill every day. Worse, their friends are all busy with their lives. It’s actually a common failure point of FIRE post-mittens that didn’t work out. Especially with couples, where it’s more likely that at least one p…

Boredom is my own personal fear. I hit my FIRE number back in 2018. I was going to retire at N amount or age 45. I hit N pretty early, couldn't pull the trigger, a few more years passed by. Now I'm almost double N due to stock market / money printing inflation. This is approximately 50x my yearly expenses. Ideal situation is 2 to 3 days of work a week, with very few zoom meetings, scrums, or other bullshit.

Have you made motions toward your ideal situation? If not, is there anything that makes you hesitate toward making those changes?

I ask because I see many people saying "couldn't pull the trigger" for a variety of reasons, and while I don't think I would have that issue, those people have also said that they didn't think they'd have that issue.

Re: Building a vision of life without work (2015)

#194

Post by balfirevic »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #94
zoba wrote: post #67

I was 2nd employee at a unicorn startup and have been on a work-hiatus for almost a year. Now, I live amongst Amish people in the country. My biggest insight has been a mindset change. Previously my underlying approach to life looked like: "I will do X which will enable me to do Y so that I can finally do Z." I now approach my days with "What will make me happy?" This is an experiment I'm performing. A structured lif…

> Previously my underlying approach to life looked like: "I will do X which will enable me to do Y so that I can finally do Z." I now approach my days with "What will make me happy?" Great insight that is worth repeating. One of my biggest problems with FIRE discussions is how much they reinforce the idea that retirement is a prerequisite for achieving happiness. This leads a lot of FIRE-minded people to double down…

> they might be better off scaling back to a sustainable 40hr/week job

40hr/week is the unsustainable part.

Re: Building a vision of life without work (2015)

#195

Post by bserge »

metalex wrote: post #145
kevinwang wrote: post #5

This person also posted an amazing, unvarnished update recently (about 5-6 years later): https://livingafi.com/2021/03/17/the-2021-early-retirement-u...

This article makes me really sad. I know this is just my perspective, but this person isn't living -- they're just existing. What are they striving for? Consuming media?

That's a personal matter. Inside our brain we have two sides - the more primitive brain that just needs safety/food/reproduction/entertainment and the more advanced side that needs to plan and do stuff otherwise it questions it's existence.

People have a different balance of either, so some are happy with just living while others need to do something, anything beyond the basics.

Neither is wrong from a personal point of view - if it makes you happy/fulfilled, that's it.

From a societal perspective those whose primitive brain has more control are seen as useless, however.

Re: Building a vision of life without work (2015)

#196

Post by dougmwne »

kevinwang wrote: post #5

This person also posted an amazing, unvarnished update recently (about 5-6 years later): https://livingafi.com/2021/03/17/the-2021-early-retirement-u...

Wow.

This is amazing, and so incredibly and refreshingly honest. This helps to repair some of the damage that FIRE bloggers have done to my professional motivation. I have been feeling the isolation during COVID and his description of the isolation than comes from hitting the career off switch really hits home. I have some thinking to do.

Re: Building a vision of life without work (2015)

#197

Post by opportune »

kevinwang wrote: post #5

This person also posted an amazing, unvarnished update recently (about 5-6 years later): https://livingafi.com/2021/03/17/the-2021-early-retirement-u...

I really don’t like how he tries to diminish his partner’s feeling about “falling behind” as some mirage created by Instagram and classism. I think it’s pretty uncontroversial that most people don’t want to live on $30k/year for their entire life when they could maybe work and get more.

Though maybe this is colored by the relevation that follows shortly thereafter. To me it shows an unwillingness to think critically about this. It sounds like his partner communicated with him changes she wanted to make (go back to work and not live like college students) and he just ignored them because he thought they were stupid.

Re: Building a vision of life without work (2015)

#198

Post by milliondollar »

zoba wrote: post #67

I was 2nd employee at a unicorn startup and have been on a work-hiatus for almost a year. Now, I live amongst Amish people in the country. My biggest insight has been a mindset change. Previously my underlying approach to life looked like: "I will do X which will enable me to do Y so that I can finally do Z." I now approach my days with "What will make me happy?" This is an experiment I'm performing. A structured lif…

I'm in a similar boat. Not outrageously rich, but rich enough that I won't spend it all before I die. Work in a highly lucrative industry, which bores the hell out of me. I took a couple years off. Built a house, moved in, then.... I was definitely hit with a lack of purpose. I'm back to work now at old career trying to figure out "what to do with my life" again.

There was a Catch-22 for me, in that "working" at any organization for any normal sized paycheck just seemed ridiculous if it didn't 100% hit on all the "passion" buttons. And honestly, no organization will be free of BS that makes work work. So making that tradeoff became REALLY hard.

So I decided that if I was going to work, I should just make a ton of money. At least the bank account fills while I search for the next thing.

Re: Building a vision of life without work (2015)

#199

Post by CleverLikeAnOx »

dangus wrote: post #185
zoba wrote: post #67

I was 2nd employee at a unicorn startup and have been on a work-hiatus for almost a year. Now, I live amongst Amish people in the country. My biggest insight has been a mindset change. Previously my underlying approach to life looked like: "I will do X which will enable me to do Y so that I can finally do Z." I now approach my days with "What will make me happy?" This is an experiment I'm performing. A structured lif…

A comment like this is privilege in a nutshell. Money to a certain point essentially buys the ability to be free and happy, and that’s why most people are “in the grind” so-to-speak. Being able to even think about making the mindset shift you describe is impossible for most people in the country let alone the world. The lifestyle you describe is out of reach for the median American making $40-60k a year with a modest…

For those that this lifestyle appeals to, it is possible in America to engineer your life so that it happens. Sure the median American is no where close to financial independence, but financial independence is attainable for most Americans given a couple decades of work if they are willing to change their definition of "enough."

Personally, I reduced my target to a mere fraction of the $5 million you mentioned.

Finally, I completely agree that this is privilege, but without any negative judgement therein. Privilege is a thing we should be trying to give to more and more people.

Re: Building a vision of life without work (2015)

#200

Post by and0 »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #20
kevinwang wrote: post #5

This person also posted an amazing, unvarnished update recently (about 5-6 years later): https://livingafi.com/2021/03/17/the-2021-early-retirement-u...

This follow up is way more compelling because it deals with the reality. I'm jealous of the authors communication skills and their partner's: there are some very hard statements in there about feeling worthless and falling behind because of no job. I wonder of those words were spoken calmly, or shouted through tears. Here are their discussions: https://livingafi.com/post-fire-relationship-disconnect/ TL;DR: He has to…

Odd, I was going to comment on how poor the communication with his partner was in the updated post. I realize he'd written the 2021 update after their separation (hard to tell if these individual sections were real-time but even worse if so) but what was happening was so obvious when he first started to mention the issues, and he described her so harshly and without empathy, like she had some bug that needed to be "fixed" and he wasn't bothering to relate.
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