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Building a vision of life without work (2015)

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

#331

Post by leftbrain »

leftbrain wrote: post #247
wing-_-nuts wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious what comforts you gave up. For me, I'd at minimum want a quiet, private room with AC if it's over 80F, and a 'non public' bathroom with a lockable door. I know that probably rules out a $20/d budget.

I also preferred private rooms, but AC was not an option usually since I avoided hotels completely and stayed in cheap guesthouses available almost everywhere. Sometimes I got a fan, sometimes there were no electricity at all in the room. Hostels usually had AC but those would be in the big cities, and I’d never stay too long because they are expensive. Hell, I could have my own bamboo hut with veranda, a hammock and…

One more thing I gotta add is that you will get used to any situation soon enough, especially if the benefits outweigh the discomforts. I did. You know how the time flies like every day seems long and before you know it a year has passed? It’s the opposite way out there. The days go by fast and after a couple of months and a couple of countries I felt like I’ve been traveling for some years already.

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

#332

Post by wing-_-nuts »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #243
wing-_-nuts wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious what comforts you gave up. For me, I'd at minimum want a quiet, private room with AC if it's over 80F, and a 'non public' bathroom with a lockable door. I know that probably rules out a $20/d budget.

Even American bodies can get used to be inside at 80F :-)

I keep my place on 78F but I constantly have a fan on. 78F with a fan is at the edge of what I'd consider comfortable. I refuse to sweat indoors.

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

#333

Post by wing-_-nuts »

leftbrain wrote: post #331
leftbrain wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also preferred private rooms, but AC was not an option usually since I avoided hotels completely and stayed in cheap guesthouses available almost everywhere. Sometimes I got a fan, sometimes there were no electricity at all in the room. Hostels usually had AC but those would be in the big cities, and I’d never stay too long because they are expensive. Hell, I could have my own bamboo hut with veranda, a hammock and…

One more thing I gotta add is that you will get used to any situation soon enough, especially if the benefits outweigh the discomforts. I did. You know how the time flies like every day seems long and before you know it a year has passed? It’s the opposite way out there. The days go by fast and after a couple of months and a couple of countries I felt like I’ve been traveling for some years already.

When I was a child, it seemed like time stretched on forever. Summers were luxuriously long. As an adult in his late 30's? Every day goes by fast; Good or bad. Everything feels like it's next shortest unit of time. Hours feel like minutes, Days like hours, Weeks like days, and so forth. I'm kind of hoping that time slows down a bit when I retire (mid 40's), but I doubt it.

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

#334

Post by chaostheory »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #105
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…

> do you have the risk-tolerance like this guy to say "fuck it, it will all work out," He posted a follow-up blog post years later. Sadly, it didn't work out for him. He had to return to work. I agree with your general sentiment: Some of these extreme early retirement stories are really pushing the limits reasonable amounts of money to retire with. I don't think it's reasonable for people in their 30s or even 20s to…

It’s worked out for this guy https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/02/22/getting-rich-from...

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

#335

Post by cletus »

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…

I see it a little differently.

As an analogy, I'm a big believer in caloric intake determining weight for most people. Consume more calories than you use and you will tend to gain weight. Consume less and you will tend to lose weight. So to get a caloric deficit you can exercise more or eat less. But... it's 90-95% diet.

Bringing this back to FIRE, the key lesson I think is that what matters in having financial freedom is controlling costs not maximizing income. Expenses can (and often do) _easily_ rise to your level of income. People fall in these traps of thinking they need a $5m house instead of a $2m house, or a bigger boat or a third vacation home.

But if you control your expenses AND can be happy then you doubly benefit: you increase your savings (and thus the time required until you have financial independence) AND you decrease how much money you need in retirement because you're accustomed to lower costs.

So the point of FIRE is (IMHO) not to seek satisfaction through material things but rather through your approach to life and your experiences.

I've seen this with coworkers who convince themselves they need $50,000pa/child for private school, $500k+ plus to pay for each child's Ivy League education and so forth and kill themselves to achieve that. Worse, they can become bitter and unhappy as they realize how long that will take them to achieve even as the top 1% of earners.

So not only are they working super-hard for longer they're seeing their families less and bringing home this negativity and entitlement. All of that is a prison of your own making.

FIRE philosophically is about really examining what you need and what's really important.

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

#336

Post by wing-_-nuts »

leftbrain wrote: post #247
wing-_-nuts wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious what comforts you gave up. For me, I'd at minimum want a quiet, private room with AC if it's over 80F, and a 'non public' bathroom with a lockable door. I know that probably rules out a $20/d budget.

I also preferred private rooms, but AC was not an option usually since I avoided hotels completely and stayed in cheap guesthouses available almost everywhere. Sometimes I got a fan, sometimes there were no electricity at all in the room. Hostels usually had AC but those would be in the big cities, and I’d never stay too long because they are expensive. Hell, I could have my own bamboo hut with veranda, a hammock and…

Yeah my main thing is I refuse to sweat indoors. I think maybe AC will become more of a requirement as wet bulb temps go up in the global south over time. When you say hotels are expensive, how expensive are we talking? I'm in my late 30s, I'm willing to pay for some comforts.

I don't mind 'common' bathrooms, but I despise public restrooms with stalls. I want a clean, lockable bathroom / shower.

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

#338

Post by xikrib »

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 situation; the company I worked at was acquired a couple of months before the pandemic. The sale gave me enough money to retire a few times over, 2 days after my 30th birthday. I initially went through a long period of guilt. I've tried angel investing, impact investing, doing hackathons, applying to fellowships and launching side-projects. I've realized that a lot of the skills I've gained in the last decade were built around generating money. Yet my happiness and fulfillment skills were under-developed.

The most absurd part of it all is how little happiness I got from all that money. Meaning and purpose are things you have to make up. If you can find happiness in a day job, in some ways you're better off than the aimless millionaire.

I'm lucky that I have a huge passion in music and have been focusing more on that lately. It's definitely weird for me to work on something without a direct financial incentive. Yet there are many people in the world, rich or poor, living for purposes outside money.

I haven't really had too many people to talk about this with. But it feels good to share a bit. DMs open to those in similar boats

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

#339

Post by [deleted] »

stouset wrote: post #250
monktastic1 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 on jobs they hate that consume too much of their time and energy, only because they think it will better enable them to be happy later. On the FIRE subreddit, anyway, they're very clear that: 1. It's the FI part that rea…

"Build the life you want, then save for it" has become the mantra of these subreddits as of late, which I think is a much better approach than the "live and eat like a college student so you can live and eat like a college student for the rest of your life but without having to work" that it used to come across as.

[deleted]

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

#340

Post by [deleted] »

borski wrote: post #254
stouset wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Build the life you want, then save for it" has become the mantra of these subreddits as of late, which I think is a much better approach than the "live and eat like a college student so you can live and eat like a college student for the rest of your life but without having to work" that it used to come across as.

This was what always turned me off from FIRE stuff, and I’m glad to hear it’s changing. I’ve seen so many friends go down the path of “convince myself it’s okay to be absolutely miserable for 10-15 years so that I can continue to do that forever but without someone paying me to be miserable” and it is extremely sad to watch, and often very hard to convince someone not to do.

[deleted]
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