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Thoreau was pretty productive...
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Mar 19, 2021 02:36
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thoreau was also kind of a deadbeat who survived off his mom I agree that the discussion is better framed around financial independence, but I also think it's a bit counterproductive to define financial independence, if that makes sense. You're not truly independent unless you get to absolutely stupid amounts of money and independence is also relative to your lifestyle choices, as blogger man found out. There are degrees of independence where more is generally better, but at some point each incremental degree of independence probably isn't worth the (increasing) incremental cost, but that's also a choice that everyone has to make for themselves. I think the FIRE community concept of really accurately evaluating the tradeoffs of your current lifestyle is super useful in this regard. The problem comes when you try to project out what you want in the future.
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Mar 19, 2021 02:55
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No Wave posted:Thoreau was pretty productive... I don't know, all that sitting there at Walden, listening to birds, just wandering around aimlessly writing pointless poo poo.
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Mar 19, 2021 03:01
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:I agree that the discussion is better framed around financial independence, but I also think it's a bit counterproductive to define financial independence, if that makes sense. You're not truly independent unless you get to absolutely stupid amounts of money and independence is also relative to your lifestyle choices, as blogger man found out. There are degrees of independence where more is generally better, but at some point each incremental degree of independence probably isn't worth the (increasing) incremental cost, but that's also a choice that everyone has to make for themselves. I think the FIRE community concept of really accurately evaluating the tradeoffs of your current lifestyle is super useful in this regard. The problem comes when you try to project out what you want in the future. I also think one of the problems is that, like many things, a lot of people don't want to recognize that FIRE is going to almost exclusively be the province of very high earners. Most people making median income are simply not realistically going to be able to put away the types of money necessary to retire significantly early (and let's be blunt, the FIRE stories everyone drools over aren't the ones where some guy retires at 57). I think what you said is accurate, and it's also kind of a loop. If you have a shitton of money, you don't really have to project out what you want in the future, because you'll likely be able to afford it even if your tastes change. It's just that most people won't make that kind of money to put them in that position. But like a lot of things people really can't afford, they want it anyway. So they "LeanFIRE" and discover later, they really can't afford the asset (unlimited free time) they bought. Then the bill comes due. It's an academic paper waiting to happen: LeanFIRE: The Huge House You Can't Afford So You Bought it Using a Liar Loan of the 2020s - An Analysis SlyFrog fucked around with this message at 03:55 on Mar 19, 2021 |
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Mar 19, 2021 03:06
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The one genuinely impressive thing about the FIRE crowd is that they managed to avoid lifestyle creep. I've held jobs paying minimum wage through "hire an entire office of CPAs to do my taxes" and I swear 95% of my coworkers at every job have been living paycheck to paycheck
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Mar 19, 2021 03:58
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GoGoGadgetChris posted:So to wrap it back on topic, you can see why people remain only semi-retired after they have All The Money There's also the interesting not-quite-corollary where being allowed to semi-retire and work in anything but childcare for family members is kind of a privileged thing to do as people get deeper into old age. SlyFrog posted:I sometimes wonder if Thoreau would have been labeled some kind of deadbeat without purpose or mission today for going to Walden and isolating and listening to the birds. "Industry" was considered an essential virtue in the 1850s just like "hustle" is revered now. The famous "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately" passage is basically a shot fired at all the people he expected would call him an aimless deadbeat. And, although I'm not a fan of Walden by any means (as always, it's the loving fan club), I don't think Thoreau's time in the woods qualifies as "doing nothing" in the sense we're talking about here. He went in with a goal, kept himself busy with specific tasks, and came out of it with a narrative. That's hugely important for how most people conceive of time and their own life. It's very different from "the last year was a blur and all I've got to show for it is a list of mid-tier xbox achievements."
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Mar 19, 2021 04:00
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SlyFrog posted:I still don't understand the "retire and you will die in a year if you don't have something purposeful and meaningful to replace work" thing. There's statistics that show that people who retire earlier tend to die sooner, but I think the data is skewed by people who have strokes or serious medical conditions that force them to stop working and lead to early deaths. Personally, I think if you're sitting around playing WoW 18 hours a day your health is probably going to suffer whether you're getting paid for streaming or if you're retired and doing it for fun. If you're busy and doing mentally stimulating things and being active, you'll be relatively healthier whether it's for work or just for hobbies.
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Mar 19, 2021 05:12
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There's a bunch of stuff on this topic but its really hard to pin down exactly whats causing what. Being in a community with friends and assosciates is strongly correlated with living longer. Is that because we are social animals and if we don't have that, particularly after a partner or spouse dies, something in us just gives up? Or is it because a community will notice when we need help and provide it, be that direct action or urging us to get medical help, or even just having people around means someone will notice when we fall down the stairs and can't get up before we die of starvation? If its the first one, does the internet count? Does this apply to 40 year olds like it does 60 year olds? There are similar things for work related stuff; Some people stop work and decline fast. Some people don't. Clearly the financial act of earning a wage isn't the factor (I would hope the various studies screen for 'became so poor couldn't eat'). We all appreciate that a daily routine of waking up, eating poo poo, watching TV for 16 hours and going to bed is really bad for us and highly likely to lead to early death because humans are not meant to be furniture. But is that the reason? Or is it because some people stop work and can't find another purpose for themselves and some part of us again, just gives up without a purpose or reason. That isn't to say all jobs are meaningful or even should exist, but its easy to tell yourself what you do is some level of important or why would someone pay you to do it. Similarly it gives structure to your life and things to look forward to, even if it is just the weekend so you don't have to work. Also does this affect 30,40 or 50 year olds like 60 year olds? Is getting to level 100 in Wow enough of a purpose and motivator? Truth is we don't really know. Psycosematic poo poo is real and has a very real effect on the physical body, but so does actual physical stuff. Its an area of active study, but no one (as far as I know) is studying very early retirees.
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Mar 19, 2021 09:12
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It would of necessity be a substantial longitudinal study that would not see results for years and years. It's entirely possible that there are such studies going on today. GoGoGadgetChris posted:95% of my coworkers at every job have been living paycheck to paycheck this is absolutely true and it's good to avoid it
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Mar 19, 2021 13:00
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Space Gopher posted:It's very different from "the last year was a blur and all I've got to show for it is a list of mid-tier xbox achievements." That's funny, because this is honestly how I would describe most of my working life. Substituting increased income for mid-tier xbox achievements. It's part of why I genuinely question whether sitting on the couch obtaining xbox achievements (and few people are really going to do that for 16 hours straight - they'll likely be up to make some food, occasionally see friends, go out to get groceries, maybe go for a walk, and otherwise engage in the basic activities of life) is really so much worse than the work day for a lot of people. SlyFrog fucked around with this message at 14:21 on Mar 19, 2021 |
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Mar 19, 2021 14:14
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Your perspective on the whole thing is probably highly dependent on the nature of your profession and career.
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Mar 19, 2021 14:19
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GoGoGadgetChris posted:I swear 95% of my coworkers at every job have been living paycheck to paycheck My first job paid out salaries at the end of each month, so usually 30 days between paychecks. However, they paid out the December paycheck before Christmas, so Nov-Dec was about 23 days and Dec-Jan was about 37 days. I was just a couple years out of college, no family, no kids, and making a decent engineering wage. I had more than one coworker in a similar position mention how hard it was for them to make it that 37 days to the January paycheck. That was pretty eye-opening for me that people can ramp up their lifestyle that fast.
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Mar 19, 2021 14:48
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Your perspective on the whole thing is probably highly dependent on the nature of your profession and career. Oh, no doubt. I've discussed this countless times with friends. The general consensus is that there are very few "meaningful jobs" in the grand scheme of things. Most people don't get to be academics studying whatever they want, or delivering babies (which itself would get boring I would think), or curing cancer. The great bulk of people are throwing poo poo on trucks, and then taking it off the truck, or similar things. Some jobs may at least keep them physically active (though a lot won't), and even those jobs have their downsides (ask my friends doing manual labor who are now approaching 50, and they just hurt from all the years of wear and tear). But I was in an "intellectual" profession, and I still found, at the end of the day, that it was glorified paper grinding. Yes, I had to "think," but all I was thinking about was protecting against risk and how to make people more money, in the grand scheme of things. Others may have different professions from which they get more. Or, they may be able to find meaning and purpose in something others would find boring or pointless. I honestly think the latter category are particularly blessed. I've spent a lot of time looking into various philosophies/religions/etc. dealing with perception and acceptance (e.g. stoicism). If you can get there, I think it is perhaps the best antidote to some of these issues, but I have not been able to so far.
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Mar 19, 2021 14:58
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GoGoGadgetChris posted:MMM refers to this terrible derail as the "Internet Retirement Police" and it's one of his few good posts. Literally no human likes to sit around doing nothing all day (despite what republican fearmongers would have you believe) so we need to acknowledge that people continue to seek fulfillment, purpose and challenge even after they've accumulated large amounts of wealth. We're not qualified to deem another person as retired or not retired because it's quite literally a state of mind and not just a level of wealth. The guy who's accidentally highest earning job is to tell you he's retired and how you can do it too isn't exactly a reliable source to quote, Chris. GoGoGadgetChris posted:My dad had a 35 year real estate career and then quit his job. He takes care of his grand daughter for 24 hours each week. Most would say he is 'retired' since he withdrew from his real estate career. What he's doing now is just childcare and not real estate, and he earns no money for it. So he's retired. And he's retired because he used to have gainful employment and is in a financial position to choose and has chosen to stop having gainful employment. See how simple that is? Being retired is about not working for money. Plenty of people do this. And while the personal finance crowd likes to tout "retirement is a financial position, not an age" many people retire not by choice but because they become too sick or disabled to work. Some others even end up "working harder" than they ever have in their professional lives, but not with pecuniary interest. I know a retired couple that had office jobs (surprise) who now build houses pretty much full time for Habitat as volunteers for example. Motronic fucked around with this message at 15:12 on Mar 19, 2021 |
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Mar 19, 2021 14:59
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SlyFrog posted:r, they may be able to find meaning and purpose in something others would find boring or pointless. I honestly think the latter category are particularly blessed. I've spent a lot of time looking into various philosophies/religions/etc. dealing with perception and acceptance (e.g. stoicism). If you can get there, I think it is perhaps the best antidote to some of these issues, but I have not been able to so far. i think i'm fortunate in this regard in that i get some sense of enjoyment from pretty much anything
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Mar 19, 2021 15:09
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Motronic posted:So he's retired. And he's retired because he used to have gainful employment and is in a financial position to choose and has chosen to stop having gainful employment. See how simple that is? Being retired is about not working for money. But at the same time he's putting in a lot more work than someone who attends board meetings every few months to eat some catered meals at a nice hotel. I think retirement is more about obligation. Even if you're making money, if you're running a business or working a part time job you could walk away from tomorrow if it stopped being enjoyable that's effectively retired.
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Mar 19, 2021 15:31
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:Even if you're making money, if you're running a business or working a part time job you could walk away from tomorrow if it stopped being enjoyable that's effectively retired. So you too are confusing financial independence with retirement. The thing that FIRE-identifying people can't seem to get through their heads is that it's OKAY TO NOT WANT TO RETIRE AND TO IN FACT NOT RETIRE. Just stop saying you have when you haven't.
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Mar 19, 2021 15:36
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Motronic posted:So you too are confusing financial independence with retirement. The "making money" part of it seems like such an arbitrary distinction. Let's say you quit your job because you want to paint. Ok, we can all agree you're retired now. You paint for a while, someone notices your work, and offers to buy it. It's a hit, you pay someone to sell more of your paintings. You still paint only as much as you feel like, the only difference is that now there's income coming in from the hobby. Are you now not retired? It's more relevant that you are not reliant on your day to day activities to support your lifestyle, and you have complete control over how you spend each day, If you want to not paint for 3 months to go on vacation, have fun, there's no one you need to ask.
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Mar 19, 2021 15:46
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:The "making money" part of it seems like such an arbitrary distinction. Yes, words do in fact have meanings. If you want to apply a different meaning to retirement you should probably choose a word that describes what you want it to mean rather than calling it retirement.
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Mar 19, 2021 15:49
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:But at the same time he's putting in a lot more work than someone who attends board meetings every few months to eat some catered meals at a nice hotel. If that's the case, someone working 80 hours a week in a coal mine because they don't have anything else they'd rather do is retired. I mean, by your logic, nearly every Fortune 500 C-Suite person is retired. By the time you reach that level, you already typically have the financial capability to leave whenever you want to. Hell, anyone with a couple million dollars has that. I don't think most of the world would consider them retired.
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Mar 19, 2021 15:50
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SlyFrog posted:If that's the case, someone working 80 hours a week in a coal mine because they don't have anything else they'd rather do is retired. That's the obligation distinction. If those people stop showing up on a regular basis, that job goes away. Also you might be surprised about how many executives couldn't sustain their lifestyles indefinitely if they didn't keep working.
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Mar 19, 2021 15:59
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:That's the obligation distinction. If those people stop showing up on a regular basis, that job goes away. Huh? They don't have an obligation. Again, you seriously think, for example, that the CEO of Coca-Cola could walk away at any time if he chose to? Do you also seriously think that anyone would say he's retired right now? Sustaining your lifestyle indefinitely without working is very different from having the ability to walk away at any time. Anyone can walk away at any time pretty much at any point in their life with $2-3 million. Obviously if they want yachts and caviar, that won't work. But if they want to live the same middle class existence as a large chunk of society, it will work just fine, and per historical standards over the last roughly 150 years, it will be pretty much risk free (I would argue at least as risk free as the risk of losing your job anyway and not being able to find employment again). SlyFrog fucked around with this message at 16:25 on Mar 19, 2021 |
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Mar 19, 2021 16:22
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Like I said, all the  goes bye-bye if we just use the term Semi-Retirement. Some people are retired and still earn money as a result of things that they do; it's totally fine and perfectly legal But goons simp hard for Merrian-Webster so if we must tack on the semi- prefix, let's just do it
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Mar 19, 2021 16:22
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GoGoGadgetChris posted:Like I said, all the I sincerely have no idea what you're trying to say here.
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Mar 19, 2021 16:24
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SlyFrog posted:I sincerely have no idea what you're trying to say here. THere are posters ITT this very moment having meltdowns about the correct usage of "retired" as a term and I'm saying they can, and should, chill. Poster A thinks you have to have $0 income to be retired Poster B thinks you have to remain in the TV Room to be retired Poster C thinks you can be CEO of a non-profit and still be retired Doesn't matter who's wrong or right, so just use the term semi-retirement and/or shut up about What Is TRULY Retirement. It's not even a word that appears in the title of this thread!
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Mar 19, 2021 16:26
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As a reminder, Chris, because you seem to have lost the thread: the discussion that is causing the conversation around what retirement means is because we're discussing FIRE. Hope that helps you out in understanding how we've gotten here.
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Mar 19, 2021 16:32
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Motronic posted:As a reminder, Chris, because you seem to have lost the thread: the discussion that is causing the conversation around what retirement means is because we're discussing FIRE. Hope that helps you out in understanding how we've gotten here. Sincerely I believe that this debate of "what is real retirement" is pointless and fruitless, but far be it from me to stand in your way. Do go on!
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Mar 19, 2021 16:35
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yeah i don't understand how the early retirement poo poo got included with (relative) financial independence other than the fact that white collar dweebs (who are the only people doing FIRE) fantasize about retirement specifically i suppose this thread is just called FI so that's good
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Mar 19, 2021 17:47
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Early retirement is just one thing you can do with financial independence. Financial independence is just an overly egghead way of saying what we used to call "rich" or "wealthy".
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Mar 19, 2021 18:05
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Idk how "FIRE" retiring in your early 50's is, but that's my plan and I'm just a blue collar dweeb.
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Mar 19, 2021 18:11
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Motronic posted:As a reminder, Chris, because you seem to have lost the thread: the discussion that is causing the conversation around what retirement means is because we're discussing FIRE. Hope that helps you out in understanding how we've gotten here.
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Mar 19, 2021 18:35
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Olive Branch posted:You've been going on and on about how other posters' view of retirement is wrong and goes against the definition of the term. What is your idea of retirement? What activities are acceptable as "retirement?" How should a person live their day-to-day to be considered retired? How many more times can I post that very information in this very thread before you read it?
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Mar 19, 2021 18:36
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Olive Branch posted:You've been going on and on about how other posters' view of retirement is wrong and goes against the definition of the term. What is your idea of retirement? What activities are acceptable as "retirement?" How should a person live their day-to-day to be considered retired? I mean, not to speak for him, but he seems pretty clear in saying that it is working a substantial amount of time for money. It doesn't seem that hard. No one on the planet who isn't trying to make some weird point would say someone isn't retired because they babysit their grandkids. In fact, most people would consider that something you could only do for a large number of hours a week if you were retired.
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Mar 19, 2021 18:39
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I think rich or wealthy is even harder to define than financial independence. Well not according to this forum, here its just a blanket 100k salary. But its nice having a phrase that you can quantify pretty much as a simple math formula: SWR > Annual Expenses.
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Mar 19, 2021 18:41
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Motronic posted:How many more times can I post that very information in this very thread before you read it? Edit: I agree someone saying "I am retired!" and needing to run a business or work hours a day earning money to keep their lifestyle isn't retired. That is indeed disingenuous. But if someone is earning money passively (outside of their investments) because they started a business or something, get money without needing to be present, and could literally do without that extra income stream to sustain their lifestyle, does that make them not retired? Edit 2: I don't want to turn what I wrote into an argument or anything. I'm just curious about where the line between "retired" and "semi-retired" is for you. Olive Branch fucked around with this message at 18:56 on Mar 19, 2021 |
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Mar 19, 2021 18:44
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Moronic I hope this seems less like unsolicited psychological advice and more of an on topic post to the matter at hand, but there is a truly endemic pattern affecting the wealthy/FI in which they simply cannot differentiate between Opinion and Fact. I see it in my clients all the time and it's not a surprise in any way given how we associate financial success with intellect and aptitude. I think you're a tremendous asset to the forums with a wealth of knowledge that you generously share, but an objective view of your posts makes it clear that you take a blatantly different tone when giving advice to (or clashing over opinions with) people that you perceive as lower wealth, compared to the more affable, chummy way you tolerate differences among people that present themselves as wealthy. I'm not saying you have a problem or need to work on something, but you seem frustrated by how "dense" people are being when they don't take your opinion as fact. It could be liberating to just let it go, sometimes.
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Mar 19, 2021 19:29
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:you have complete control over how you spend each day I wanna go back to something else: this is a complete, absolute fantasy that seems to be at the core of why a lot of people are super in to FIRE. Nobody has complete control over how they spend their day. You could maybe get more control over how you spend more of your day, but in the end you are going to have to do a lot of poo poo because you have to do it, even if you're retired in the absolute pure Motronic sense of the world.
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Mar 19, 2021 19:34
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Understanding retirement means a particular thing and applying that understanding to a discussion of FI bloggers such as MMM is important. MMM's classical theme says that if you curtail your living expenses and make some very committed and fundamentalist decisions about promoting your own independence then you can gain Financial Independence and Retire Early. While that may be true (it probably isn't, you probably need to get a fuckton of capital at some point regardless of how much you cut the bottom line), he claims to be an expert on this subject because he has done it himself. HOWEVER, he at the same time is doing significant amounts of activity motivated substantially by the anticipated revenue of that activity. His behavior is not guided solely by non-economic considerations, and in particular how MMM is operated is motivated by anticipated economic rewards. Understanding that the MMM author is behaving in manners guided by economic consequences DIRECTLY RELATED TO THE CONTENT OF THE MMM BLOG is important when you are digesting the content. It is important to understand when evaluating the claim that MMM is FI. It is important to understand when evaluating the claim that MMM is retired. It is important to understand when evaluating how much the advice MMM dispenses is applicable to one's own life. It's also important to understand when trying to comport one's behaviors to their long term goals: Are you individually pursuing financial independence so that you have greater agency and options, but still feel interested in working in your present occupation? Are you individually pursuing financial independence so that you can do some activity which has no, or negative, anticipated economic value? It is useful to talk about these differences, and provided that the word "retirement" isn't muddied down, it serves as a VERY easy and convenient tool to bisect these two kinds of goals.
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Mar 19, 2021 19:44
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Dwight Eisenhower posted:Understanding retirement means a particular thing and applying that understanding to a discussion of FI bloggers such as MMM is important. I agree with all of this, and as a corollary, it is also possible to be financially independent (or, as they called it in my day, rich) and still be interested in making a fuckton of money every year by having people read what you babble about on your blog. It's also possible to not be rich, babble on a blog how you've unplugged and are no longer working, and become rich from people reading your babble. Like many things, he was a first mover, so people trying to replicate it are much less likely to do so successfully, because the novelty is kind of gone, and the space is filled. I mean, can anyone deny that at least part of the money that rolled into these very forums wasn't related to the gripping story of a man making GBS threads in a bucket and growing basil? SlyFrog fucked around with this message at 20:03 on Mar 19, 2021 |
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Mar 19, 2021 20:00
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Yes, this is a great post and really establishes the need for "retirement" to be something that is placed in the context of an individual FI discussion and not something to be universally defined. In the same way that "Asset Allocation" means 90/10 stocks and bonds to me but I'm not going to rattle my saber if someone's claiming it means 60/40
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Mar 19, 2021 20:09
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