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Early-Retirement Update

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71–80 of 443 posts

Re: Early-Retirement Update

#71

Post by jdashg »

corry wrote: post #55

Kudos to people who go FIRE without state-provided healthcare - from a "typical brainwashed Canadian" POV you're one health mishap / one ambulance-ride's worth of unexpected medical costs to kill the entire dream. Also - no kids - huge variable for FIRE obviously, but perhaps less obviously ALSO a huge variable for life's purpose. Something I've seen in my friend and family group is that a lot of couples hit a point…

At FIRE levels, exposure to healthcare-related bankruptcy is basically none, as long as your rising-with-age insurance premiums don't price you out. It's still not great, but insurance does do its job. (especially when you have the free time to chase down billing mistakes)

Re: Early-Retirement Update

#72

Post by neogodless »

sidlls wrote: post #64
neogodless wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even with the minor and major shocks in his life, he ended up with 20% more money than he started with. The main reason he wants more money now is that he wants to share it with his new partner, and enjoy some lifestyle inflation. So I don't think it makes sense to extrapolate "leanFIRE cannot sustain minor shocks" from his circumstances." It certainly cannot sustain a certain level of lifestyle inflation, or (more g…

He barely kept up with historical inflation rates (3%/year). Given the free availability of money in the last 2-3 years, it's hard to say a 20% appreciation on his capital is a success. In terms of real dollar value, he likely is losing year-over-year.

Are you accounting for his spend or only looking at beginning and ending balances? When you retire early, you don't assume you'll beat inflation while also spending some of your principal.

Re: Early-Retirement Update

#73

Post by stocknoob »

cashewchoo wrote: post #45
xwdv wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

950k isn’t a bad stash but he’s a fool limiting himself to 4% withdrawals and a paltry $30k a year. He should build an aggressive stock portfolio of growth companies with about 60% IV each while he’s still young and going back to work is a good emergency fallback, but for primary income he could just sell OTM options against his stocks and be making about $2k to $3k a week fairly conservatively with little risk of as…

OTM options is one of those things where it works great until it doesn't and then when it doesn't it REALLY doesn't. This is almost literally how we ended up with the inverse volatility trade collapse in 2018. Look up "XIV blow up". Betting against volatility will * never* not be "picking up pennies in front of a steamroller". Retail investors should not touch options under any circumstances, anyway. They're hedging…

Selling cash-secured puts and covered calls is one of the safest things you can do. You take on less risk (and less reward).

Re: Early-Retirement Update

#74

Post by DoreenMichele »

vkou wrote: post #56
DoreenMichele wrote: post #17

In the US at least, this would work very differently if we had better healthcare for our citizens. Sudden health expenses is one of the things that went wrong in his life that derailed his plans.

It really wouldn't. The biggest impact to his finances was not his health costs, it was the separation from his partner. It's a lot cheaper for two people to live together, than it is for two people to live apart. Either way, FIRE on a million dollars, even in a lower-COL state is... A bit optimistic, because of short-term market fluctuations having the potential to coincide with surprise expenses.

It's genetic and incurable and the author himself cites it as a factor (in his FIRE plan hitting a bump).

Here is an article that readily turned up about the "overwhelming" expenses involved in the diagnosis listed in the article:

I had a bit of an ugly meltdown last week, because I realized the medicine used to treat my tachycardia had quadrupled in price. Quadrupled. You know, because I had an extra $180 a month that I had been hoping to spend on medication.

https://globalgenes.org/2017/02/08/my-life-with-ehlers-danlo...

Re: Early-Retirement Update

#76

Post by jpdaigle »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #68

I had to quit reading any FIRE (financial independence, early retirement) blogs because they were full of people headed down this same path: Extreme frugality, bare minimum savings, assuming their lifestyle would never change and nothing would ever go wrong. Retiring at 30 sounds great, but no one's life goes exactly to plan for next the 30-40 years until traditional retirement age. People change, expectations evolve…

> Even worse when your romantic partner has different goals in life, as happened here.

What stings (as I can't help but empathize with the author's feelings) in reading this blog is that it sounds like they were very aligned five years ago, but she discovered a gradual growing miscontent only once they tried the early-retiree life.

Not sure if there's a possible fix there, other than trying to compromise (only one of them working, which would probably just lead to more growing apart)

Re: Early-Retirement Update

#77

Post by vsareto »

ericmay wrote: post #13

To me the emphasis on the FIRE community should be on the FI part of the equation. For many people in many countries, there is no concept of "retirement". It seems so silly to me that people would go and say "I'll work really hard and do all this stuff for 40 years so I can sit around and do nothing for another 30 years". What's the point? It's unsustainable. It's like doing a crash diet - it may work for a minute, b…

A few people ITT seem to think FI people just do nothing all day. I'm kinda wondering if you folks know of anything but work.

Re: Early-Retirement Update

#78

Post by nly »

sidlls wrote: post #9

I always get a kick out of people who think they’re financially independent with such a small stash. Outside some regions with relatively extreme living conditions (e.g. undeveloped and underdeveloped countries), the amount he retired with was never going to be enough to sustain even minor shocks and last the rest of his life. He had a minor shock (breakup) and a major shock (health condition) and realized this error…

30K/year on a 950K stash is only a 3% draw-down, which is considered pretty reasonable.

Re: Early-Retirement Update

#79

Post by ericd »

eric_b wrote: post #46

I really struggled with the author's tone. It dripped of condescension towards those who live a "normal" lifestyle. I enjoy working. I find purpose and meaning it. I do not let it dominate my life, but without it I would feel incomplete. I run my own business now, and that is very satisfying - but even when I was a corporate consultant I found a lot of enjoyment from spending time with my coworkers, solving problems,…

Eh the author was writing, not doing nothing. They just didn't have to worry about whether what they were doing could generate an income.

Re: Early-Retirement Update

#80

Post by arvinsim »

utborin wrote: post #70

> I feel sure that some of them also felt that they were, you know, continuing to move and shake and improve their lives whereas, from their perspective, I’d sort of given up — my life appeared to be a static thing, unchanging, and therefore pretty fucking boring This is such a gross element of our culture—what's wrong with just living? —and I feel like it's not even really a matter of working vs. retired. I know fol…

Toxic hustle culture.
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