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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)

#291

Post by AlbertCory »

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 think this is a great comment. It's possible to overthink things (making charts with arrows, etc.) In the end, just going with the flow works out better than having a plan. YMMV. If you really want to do something, you'll keep thinking of it.

I've been retired 4 years now. I wrote one novel ("Inventing the Future", on sale at Amazon!) and finished the first draft of another. But I didn't have any plan for this when I retired. I just started doing it and it felt right.

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

#293

Post by baby »

temp8964 wrote: post #30
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...

The conclusion came to me is that extreme working and extreme no-working are both bad in the long run. All you need is a work-family-life balance. I am also glad that the author now opens the door for getting married and even having a kid. Work, spouse, kids, the traditional way of life have been explored and chosen by human being for at least thousands of years. The psychological / economic needs for living with a f…

Sorry but I still don’t see the point in having kids or how it’s necessary for a happy life. People don’t make kids because it makes them happy. People make kids because they’re wired to do so.

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

#294

Post by leetcrew »

quietbritishjim wrote: post #36
SavantIdiot wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> [article author, to wife] ... I thought that what you wanted was to live a life of freedom, with me. We’d talked about this. > [article author's wife] Not exactly. I wanted to have kids with you and work and be like everyone else. Live a normal life. I’m tired of being weird. And I don’t want to go back to work if you aren’t. That’s weird too. You wouldn’t even be a stay-at-home-dad. You’d be nothing. > [article au…

> [article author's wife] Not exactly. I wanted to have kids with you and work and be like everyone else. Live a normal life. I’m tired of being weird. And I don’t want to go back to work if you aren’t. That’s weird too. You wouldn’t even be a stay-at-home-dad. You’d be nothing.

this part is confusing. it seems like she's saying she wanted to be working and have kids the whole time? hard to understand how you could get that far along the path without realizing it's the exact opposite of what you want. a more reasonable way to understand the quote is that she simply changed her mind after realizing the implications of their life path.

which leads to a more reasonable way of interpreting this line:

> [article author] And that was it. That the second big ticket problem, critical issue #2. She couldn’t get her head around the idea that we were different.

I think (or at least hope) the author isn't saying they are special people with some kind of special destiny to FIRE. if I read it as "she couldn't accept our being different [from our friends]", it makes a lot more sense. I think the author is painfully aware that working and starting a family is the "normal" thing to do.

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

#295

Post by dougmwne »

notenoughhorses wrote: post #223
opportune wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I appreciated reading about how both of them reacted to the realities of early retirement. I like to think I could be like the author, and be happy without much, but it did make me think if I might be more like his SO, especially when I see my friends upgrading their lives in our 40s. My take away from the post is that they fundamentally felt 2 different ways about it. The author did not feel the stuff his SO felt. B…

There was definitely some unreliable narrator there. She said she wanted kids. Apparently he did not, since presumably they were not part of the budget. He claimed to be outside the need for more spending and accused her of being fooled by social media, but admits he felt a lot of shame at falling behind his peers in accomplishment. She said she couldn't see herself being with someone who wouldn't work to improve their lives and support a larger family. He said he wouldn't go back to work, even if she did. In his next relationship, he went back to work, increased his spending and is planning on having kids, several large reversals. Seems to me that they weren't so different after all.

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

#296

Post by babyblueblanket »

sidlls wrote: post #249
sokoloff wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For the average FIRE person working a $100-200K/year job, they might be better off scaling back to a sustainable 40hr/week job and making a point of taking vacations and doing activities in their off time. In software right now, I think it’s not difficult to have a sustainable low-six-figure job where you take vacations and have activities and off time to enjoy them.

That depends on the region and industry. Outside of "tech hubs" like the Bay Area, most software jobs paying close to six-figures are still more like "business casual, butt in the seats" than they are "WFH 2x/week, wear sandals and shorts if you want". These jobs have things like accrued PTO, limited perks, and relatively inflexible time-off tolerance that is highly dependent on the manager's whim. "Not difficult" is…

I heavily disagree, especially in current times. "small startup" culture happens outside of tech hubs if you look, especially anywhere that's close to a state university with any substantial CS program. Trying to recruit new grads as a small company in an ok-but-not-hub city means bending some QOL considerations, especially in demand jobs like devs.

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

#297

Post by AlexTWithBeard »

yarcob wrote: post #221
balfirevic wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they might be better off scaling back to a sustainable 40hr/week job 40hr/week is the unsustainable part.

40h/week of work leaves very little time for household, kids, exercise, side projects, and relaxing. I think 20h/week is a more reasonable target if you want to enjoy things beside work. Of course it's okay to work 40h/week if you really want to, or even more, if you enjoy it, but you should really think hard about whether that's really what you want, or if it's just what your employer wants you to do.

> 20h/week

That's what I have an issue with.

When I'm working on a problem, I cannot simply forget about it at 3pm and head to the beach to enjoy life. The problem will be in my head 24/7 until one of us gives up.

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

#298

Post by magneticnorth »

danbruc wrote: post #184

This seems unethical to me, you essentially make other people work for you. All the returns from your investments are created by someone who probably does not have the luxury of retiring early, someone who now not only has to work for their life but also for yours.

I'm not sure the common alternative for higher-income people is more ethical - spending on vacation homes, expensive private schools, buying new cars, clothing, appliances, etc when the old ones are a little outdated but still usable.

From the point of job creation, this does make more jobs, but I think there's a strong argument to be made for living a lower-impact life that lets you live on your savings after a shorter career.

And as for return on investments, are you suggesting that investing in the stock market is immoral? I'm not sure I follow your logic about how buying shares in a company and benefitting from dividends is immoral, or maybe you had something else in mind.

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

#299

Post by metalex »

joshuaissac wrote: post #206
metalex wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

In the article, he writes about what he is striving for: to be able to do things that he wants to do rather than what his employer wants him to do. So from his perspective, he would be living his life while others just work instead of living.

Yeah - absolutely just my selfish perspective.

I feel like he needs an existential purpose or threat - everyone does. "Doing what I want" isn't a purpose, in my opinion, but rather a void that needs to be filled with something meaningful.

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

#300

Post by gonehome »

eloisius wrote: post #111
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 post is an incredible example of gut-wrenching honesty about things working out differently than expected. I'm eight months into life without work right now, and can relate to a lot of this. I didn't make a plan to retire (early or otherwise), I just wanted to move abroad and take time to learn the language and think a little about what I want out of life aside from career. I can relate to the anxiety and e…

I think people need purpose to feel fulfilled.

Work serves as a default purpose for lots of people. Family and children are a pretty good built-in biological one.

Learning things, building a company, making things can all serve that need. Working on big unsolved problems can too.

I think most people feel uneasy and unhappy if they're not part of a community doing something they think is valuable. A lot of religion serves this purpose for people (though I personally find religion to be a net negative).

Finding different things that motivate you and are worth dedicating your life (or some subset of your life) to work on is hard, but I think knowing that it's worth trying to find something is the first step.

True financial independence is a way to make the search more possible without anxiety of financial ruin, but it doesn't remove the non-money related anxieties and it doesn't fix all the other sexual selection incentives that remain.

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