221–230 of 443 posts
I have a high school friend who retired around 40. He came from a family of money, but worked in corporate IT sales for a large, well known vendor. We had lost touch with each other until 5 years ago when he reached out to me via FB and wanted to call. We spoke for a few hours about our lives, and I realized he was a lost soul. He had a wife and children, and had been retired for over twenty years. His kids were now…
Here is some relationship advice to all the young guys here. It is not only some theory, this is painful experience of real life. If there would be no women, we would all still be hunter gatherers. Hunting for a small bit of the day, and for the rest doing nothing and sitting in the tree. If you put women into the equation, they want a roof over their head. So they pick a partner who can provide that. So now we all w…
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Selling OTM covered calls is not a trade that's going to blow up your account. The worst case is that you suffer a drawdown in your account (which is a risk of all investing). The second worst case is that you miss a massive, short-term rally.
>> Selling OTM covered calls is not a trade that's going to blow up your account. The worst case is that you suffer a drawdown in your account (which is a risk of all investing). The second worst case is that you miss a massive, short-term rally. Depends on whether youre fully cash secured or not. If you are fully cash secured, you barely make $. If you're not, now you're leveraged and a steep draw-down can wipe you…
Here is some relationship advice to all the young guys here. It is not only some theory, this is painful experience of real life. If there would be no women, we would all still be hunter gatherers. Hunting for a small bit of the day, and for the rest doing nothing and sitting in the tree. If you put women into the equation, they want a roof over their head. So they pick a partner who can provide that. So now we all w…
2.8M nut, about 50/50 in regular/retirement accounts. I'm mid 40's, married with two pre-teen kids, annual expenses of $80K, live in HCOL area (Southern California). Would you FIRE in this situation? Would you take a year long hiatus? As much as I would like to FIRE, I can't/won't, even though the "numbers" say I probably could. But seriously considering a months to year long career break/sabbatical/hiatus, because I…
Can you explain the "can't" part of early retirement? The "won't" is of course your decision and no one else's. But why do you say "can't"?
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I think it depends on who you are. I can't fathom not doing something. I want to retire, asap, though not FIRE-levels, but i know what i want to do. I want to do exactly what i do in my current off hours, which looks a lot like work. Because it is work. I want to work, when i retire. I just want to work on whatever i want to work on. Which is the rub. Passionate people will be busy, all the time. Without it.. well, i…
This isn't an isolated view, but in my view, it does miss a lot. Most people have an idea of what they would ideally do if given unlimited amounts of time. The reality is, in my experience, that most people cannot put the same level of work, focus, and dedication into their own projects that they can into the projects an employer pays them to work on. For whatever reason, most people need the structure, constraint, j…
2.8M nut, about 50/50 in regular/retirement accounts. I'm mid 40's, married with two pre-teen kids, annual expenses of $80K, live in HCOL area (Southern California). Would you FIRE in this situation? Would you take a year long hiatus? As much as I would like to FIRE, I can't/won't, even though the "numbers" say I probably could. But seriously considering a months to year long career break/sabbatical/hiatus, because I…
It's a good question for your financial advisor assuming you have one. One of their jobs is crunching the numbers to answer the exact question you're asking. We recently went through this with our financial advisor. We're the same age, only have one kid, east coast HCOL area, live well below our means, very similar savings as you. Rough answer was we could do a normal retirement in our early 50s if we could get close…
Assuming you're going to live from 50 until 80, that's $200k/year spending assuming your investments/retirement funds just keep up with inflation. Maybe I'm missing something?
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Well, first let me say that being a parent is the best thing in my life (and there is a lot of very good stuff in my life), so don't over-index on what I'm about to say next. You'll be fine and better for it! You might have heard the quote "To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken." YMMV but the lowest of the low are the times when you feel the reality that yo…
> Every headline that right now seems like a "sad story" - a parent losing a child, a child losing a parent, > kids in cages, a daughter and father who are estranged, etc -- becomes an absolutely wrenching sadness if > you even FLIRT with the idea of "what if that happened to me/my child"? You develop sensitivities that you > are surprised at. You realize you have inherited an impossible and awesome responsibility of…
Clearly people get desensitized to it, both as viewers and as writers. Christopher Nolan, for instance, is a parent but all of his movies have tough child dynamics (e.g. Inception and Leo's character trying to see his kids again).
Maybe by writing stories like that you can exorcise the demon a bit?
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> 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. I think you have two things wrong here: 1) Most people don't plan to live "balls-to-the-wall" for 30-40 years before retiring. They work hard (maybe too hard!) so they can retire early. They don't live like kings…
Just wanted to say I read this, and thanks. Great points you’ve brought up here. I guess I’d say I would need to specify my definition of “work” a bit more. I wouldn’t view work strictly as employment, but as productive tasks with some means to an end, but that could also include hobbies like cooking, or wood working, for example. I would definitely challenge from a general standpoint any life where you’re not doing…
This is why in part I think the distinction between "FI" and "RE" is pretty small. I absolutely agree with you that the important part is financial independence, getting to a point where if you quit or lost your job tomorrow, and never brought in any labor-related income again, you'd be fine. From there it's just defining what life means to you. You might stick with a 9-to-5 for a while because that makes you happy. You might drop to part-time. You might quit entirely and focus on personal projects and interests (like the hobbies you mention). Or you might take 5 years to focus on personal projects, but then take a full-time job for a couple years just because you feel like it, with the knowledge that you can quit at any time if you don't like it.
> I would definitely challenge from a general standpoint any life where you’re not doing something productive.
Eh... if someone decided to retire and spend every day of the rest of their life going to the beach and lying in the sun, that's... fine? It's not what I'd do with my retirement, but I don't think I'm qualified to tell someone else what to do with their life, especially if they're financially independent and aren't a drag on anyone else.
But yeah, for me, I do agree that I want to be productive to some extent. But I love the idea of even that being infinitely flexible. Right now if I don't feel like being productive I can dick around on HN for a little while (like I am right now), but I have to limit myself, and get back to work soon, hoping that my short break will help me gain some desire to be productive. My midafternoon time is not my own; to a very real extent it belongs to my employer. I feel guilty about not being able to focus on work right now, and I hate that feeling. If it were just me doing whatever I want to do, I might feel guilty about not finishing a fun woodworking project, but that guilt would be isolated to myself: I'm not depriving someone else (like an employer) of something they're entitled to.
And with that... back to work.
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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.
My understanding was that they had separate finances, and 30k/year was just his spending. My spouse and I spend less than $60k/year in a comparable cost-of-living area (COLA), including flights/hotels/entertainment and other nice things to have (home, some land, modern cars, monthly massage, etc.). It's really not "extreme frugality" in my point of view, but I suppose some might see it that way.
If you had an unlucky year and had to spend an extra $10K on various things (car breaks down, medical expenses, moving for a job) it's probably not a big deal for you. If a leanFIRE person had an unexpected extra $10K expense, they'd have to cut $10K out of the rest of their budget for the entire year.
If you're already squeezing by on $30K/year like this author, somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3 of that might go to basic living expenses (rent, utilities, food). If the other 1/3 of your budget gets wiped out by an unexpected $10K expense, it's going to be a very lean year.
This is the problem with most leanFIRE plans: They only work if nothing ever goes wrong, no unexpected expenses occur (for 4 or more decades straight), and a person's lifestyle never expands at all.