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Taking money off the table

zachholman.com

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Re: Taking money off the table

#51

Post by jocaal »

GCA10 wrote: post #29

There's a crucial extra factor that isn't in the original article, but ought to be: Money's ability to buy great experiences decreases as you get older. I've seen this with beach vacations, road trips to see a favorite band, fast cars, ski trips, etc. Seize the moment, friend! What you can do NOW with that 10% slice will never exactly be on your possibilities map again.

I don't agree. How can wasting your money in your twenties and thirties be more valuable than saving for an early retirement. Imagine being able to retire at 40 and do whatever you want. If you weren't stupid, your health should be good enough. Why prolong the time you have to do stupid chores for other people when you can be strategic and opt out as early as possible.

Re: Taking money off the table

#52

Post by acemarke »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #42
GCA10 wrote: post #29

There's a crucial extra factor that isn't in the original article, but ought to be: Money's ability to buy great experiences decreases as you get older. I've seen this with beach vacations, road trips to see a favorite band, fast cars, ski trips, etc. Seize the moment, friend! What you can do NOW with that 10% slice will never exactly be on your possibilities map again.

> Money's ability to buy great experiences decreases as you get older. Excellent point. You may have just talked me into retiring. > What you can do NOW with that 10% slice will never exactly be on your possibilities map again. Maybe not... but "once in a lifetime chances" come around more often than you think. You don't have to take every one right now. (As you get older, options narrow, as you said.)

That's one of the main theses of the book "Die with Zero":

- https://www.diewithzerobook.com/welcome

Read it earlier this year and it definitely changed some of my thinking along those same lines.

My loose summary of the book:

"Any money left in the bank when you die is essentially wasted - you could have used it to have experiences when you were alive, or given it to family / charity earlier when it would have had more benefit. Figure out what major experiences and memories you want to have in life, plan to do them earlier when you have health and time, and build up memories for later in life."

I didn't find the discussions of how to plan out retirement savings very useful - there's a lot better info on withdrawal approaches in various FIRE-related groups.

But the "be willing to spend now on activities you might not be able to do later / don't hold off on 'living' until you're retired" argument made a _lot_ of sense to me for a variety of reasons, and it was a major factor in researching early retirement a few months later (and deciding to make that a new goal. along with taking more vacations before then).

Re: Taking money off the table

#53

Post by FanaHOVA »

jocaal wrote: post #51
GCA10 wrote: post #29

There's a crucial extra factor that isn't in the original article, but ought to be: Money's ability to buy great experiences decreases as you get older. I've seen this with beach vacations, road trips to see a favorite band, fast cars, ski trips, etc. Seize the moment, friend! What you can do NOW with that 10% slice will never exactly be on your possibilities map again.

I don't agree. How can wasting your money in your twenties and thirties be more valuable than saving for an early retirement. Imagine being able to retire at 40 and do whatever you want. If you weren't stupid, your health should be good enough. Why prolong the time you have to do stupid chores for other people when you can be strategic and opt out as early as possible.

> Imagine being able to retire at 40 and do whatever you want. If you weren't stupid, your health should be good enough.

Do you really believe people who have health issues at an early age are simply stupid?

Re: Taking money off the table

#54

Post by driverdan »

nachox999 wrote: post #9

I believe the complete opposite. If someone is willing to buy your business, no matter the amount, it’s because it’s worth MUCH more than what they’re paying. It’s illogical for them to pay less than its real value. It’s even illogical to think they’d pay exactly what it’s worth. Why would somebody bother buying a company if they were only going to break even?

I worked for a company that had a buyout offer for 8 or 9 figures that they turned down. After I left the company ended up collapsing with no exit. It happens frequently.

Re: Taking money off the table

#55

Post by joshgachnang »

jocaal wrote: post #51
GCA10 wrote: post #29

There's a crucial extra factor that isn't in the original article, but ought to be: Money's ability to buy great experiences decreases as you get older. I've seen this with beach vacations, road trips to see a favorite band, fast cars, ski trips, etc. Seize the moment, friend! What you can do NOW with that 10% slice will never exactly be on your possibilities map again.

I don't agree. How can wasting your money in your twenties and thirties be more valuable than saving for an early retirement. Imagine being able to retire at 40 and do whatever you want. If you weren't stupid, your health should be good enough. Why prolong the time you have to do stupid chores for other people when you can be strategic and opt out as early as possible.

I don't think it's an either or proposition. You can both retire early AND take a nice vacation. Sure it delays your retirement date by a couple of days, but I think that's a good tradeoff generally. I'm approaching 40 and even now, the vacations I took when I was 10 years younger were different than now, I could cram more in, do more things without being as sore the next day, etc. And I haven't had kids yet, that would definitely change vacations.

Re: Taking money off the table

#56

Post by fencepost »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #25
mason55 wrote: post #7

A 10% tender offer isn't really an interesting discussion. You should take definitely take 10% off the table unless you're already pretty wealthy. The interesting discussion is how much you should take off the table if the offer is uncapped.

> The interesting discussion is how much you should take off the table if the offer is uncapped. 50% for security, let the remaining 50% run. We can spend countless hours modeling the risk and return delta of various percentages and against non correlated asset classes you might diversify into once liquid, but most of life is luck; you can do everything right and still lose. This makes it easy, imho. (not investing a…

Another voice in favor of "money today good" (though not from personal experience).

I'd even go so far as to recommend putting that money specifically into things that promote your long-term economic stability, e.g. is it enough to let you buy a home that's going to have monthly expenses below what you're paying in rent? There's plenty of economic uncertainty out there right now, but I feel confident in one thing: Even if the entire economy goes into the crapper rent will not go down. In addition the real estate market is pretty soft right now because of uncertainty, so if you're in a position to purchase that may let you basically lock in your monthly housing costs for a decade or more.

Re: Taking money off the table

#57

Post by [deleted] »

FanaHOVA wrote: post #53
jocaal wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree. How can wasting your money in your twenties and thirties be more valuable than saving for an early retirement. Imagine being able to retire at 40 and do whatever you want. If you weren't stupid, your health should be good enough. Why prolong the time you have to do stupid chores for other people when you can be strategic and opt out as early as possible.

> Imagine being able to retire at 40 and do whatever you want. If you weren't stupid, your health should be good enough. Do you really believe people who have health issues at an early age are simply stupid?

[deleted]

Re: Taking money off the table

#58

Post by gbriel »

throw0101c wrote: post #46

I participate in a personal finance sub-reddit, and there is often a question of whether someone should pay off their mortgage (completely, or make some lump sum payments). The mathematical answer is that if your interest rate is lower than the expected returns of some kind of portfolio you have, than you'll make more money investing. But I like to bring up what Morgan Housel, author of the book The Psychology of Mon…

If you have a 2.6% mortgage which is less than inflation, then you are making money from the bank. Paying that off would be ridiculous.

Re: Taking money off the table

#59

Post by toomuchtodo »

fencepost wrote: post #56
toomuchtodo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The interesting discussion is how much you should take off the table if the offer is uncapped. 50% for security, let the remaining 50% run. We can spend countless hours modeling the risk and return delta of various percentages and against non correlated asset classes you might diversify into once liquid, but most of life is luck; you can do everything right and still lose. This makes it easy, imho. (not investing a…

Another voice in favor of "money today good" (though not from personal experience). I'd even go so far as to recommend putting that money specifically into things that promote your long-term economic stability, e.g. is it enough to let you buy a home that's going to have monthly expenses below what you're paying in rent? There's plenty of economic uncertainty out there right now, but I feel confident in one thing: Ev…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XamC7-Pt8N0 (NSFW language, first 45 seconds is the relevant part)

Re: Taking money off the table

#60

Post by fencepost »

throw0101c wrote: post #46

I participate in a personal finance sub-reddit, and there is often a question of whether someone should pay off their mortgage (completely, or make some lump sum payments). The mathematical answer is that if your interest rate is lower than the expected returns of some kind of portfolio you have, than you'll make more money investing. But I like to bring up what Morgan Housel, author of the book The Psychology of Mon…

Paying off if possible, but I'd not put everything into paying it down. Pay a chunk of it down for comfort, and put some into emergency reserves with some reasonable level of return that could be accessed in the future in case of need. Early payments don't really matter that much if you have a period of unemployment/underemployment before it's fully paid off.
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