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I always just assume these are the highest earning years of my life. That I'll never make this much money again. Hopefully it's not true but it happens to people.
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Mar 25, 2021 17:53
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Threadkiller Dog posted:Same. Half of me is convinced ill be rendered irrelevant and discovered for a fraud by 50 at the latest. So im saving just in case, and if not ill have a nice pile of FU money so eh That's just old fashioned Imposter Syndrome. I've had it for years!
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Mar 25, 2021 18:13
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We don't really acknowledge imposter syndrome itself as a thing, at least not in the DSM, but you better believe just about everyone has intense anxiety that something will happen at work that causes them to lose their job. Even stuff like "being discovered you're a fraud" that have no basis in reality will keep you up at night whether you're flipping burgs or have your name on the building you work in. Not exactly a surprise when your healthcare, food, housing, and sense of self-worth are all tied to what you do for 40 hours a week. It is interesting though that you get people who simultaneously have "imposter syndrome", say things like "I just got lucky, right place, right time" and yet still have an absurdly inflated view of their aptitude, intelligence, and work ethic
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Mar 25, 2021 18:23
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FateFree posted:That's just old fashioned Imposter Syndrome. I've had it for years! Its ultimately a pretty lucrative condition, minus the anxiety
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Mar 25, 2021 18:42
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Motronic posted: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. Motronic posted:The attempt to define what "retired" means, at least on my part, is to point out these clear conflicts of interest and discredit someone who is all too often quoted for assembling some ideas like "investment income" and "get rich by not <eating avocado toast/driving to work/turning the heat up to normal room temperature> every day". You are making a giant statement about language that is in fact, not how language works and that you are demonstrating is not how language works when you explain you are "attempting to define it" in the other post, as a focal point of your hate of a blogger or set of bloggers and it's loving weird man. You can think MMM or FI bloggers in general are being disingenuous without going off on a multi-page tear about defending the importance of not degenerating the great English language or w/e. It makes you sound actually unhinged. I also think you're pretty liberal in attributing intent behind actions to people who presumably you are not and do not know personally. I read FI blogs and I've never felt like anybody was trying to hide that you either keep working or have a massive quantity of savings. I clicked the "previous posts" to try and grab both quotes above, and in noticed your second post in the thread was about how you are not comfortable with the concept of retiring early. That makes me wonder if you're taking a lot of your own stuff and throwing it on people trying to do their own thing. Do you know people who were mislead by MMM or other FI blogs to financial ruin or life-wrecking events? Because again, if not, this seems like a weird rant without any substance to back it up except the fact that you'll keep shouting down the direct thing people are saying in defense of being okay with "semi retired" being called "retired" in the given post they say it in. E: I've found FIRE blogs to be super helpful both in helping me feel like I have an exit path to a career I hate, and helped me start thinking about how to build out a safety net for myself and implement better savings habits, so my stance is that they are good, even if they mean something different than me about the word "Retirement".  I was real bummed to see 150+ posts on this thread and most of them are about this weird argument. The thread title doesn't even have "RE" in it can't we just actually talk about FI stuff? E2: to clarify a little more, I felt like this should be called out largely becuase You (Motronic) tend to speak with a voice of authority in a lot of areas in threads I follow, and some of those I think are extremely useful and valid and 100% have the expertise to back them up. I don't think that's the case here, haven't seen anything you've said in the convo that indicates extra knowledge beyond personal opinion and/or a grudge, and if I had read the last few pages prior to being introduced to FI, after reading the long term savings thread and house buying thread, there's a larger chance I would have dismissed it and not gotten the benefit to my quality of life, safety net, and mental wellbeing, or gotten less from it if I found out about it later. I know shitposting or w/e, but this seemed like a weird, and potentially harmful from my perspective, thing to be taking such a firm stance on without anything but personal opinion. Also, I do think there's use in discussing the presentation/marketing of the "FIRE movement" vs what Financial Independence looks like in practice, but I really felt like the fixation on the word retirement undermined any actual discussion around that. surc fucked around with this message at 02:52 on Mar 26, 2021 |
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Mar 26, 2021 01:09
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Thanks for checking in from last week.
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Mar 26, 2021 13:42
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Motronic posted:Thanks for checking in from last week. I think a lot of FIRE blogs that aren't open with their finances (or, indeed, how they started their journey) and just give some advice that sounds almost Boomer-ish in their mentality of simplicity of spending are not that informative, especially if they are trying to sell something. That's why the Living AFI blogger recently linked is one of my favorites: he's a nerd in many senses of the word and his writing is amusing. He goes over his life and he doesn't shill for anything, which is a big plus in my book.
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Mar 26, 2021 15:46
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I aaaalmost started one years ago before they were everywhere (bought the domain and hosting, wrote a few posts) before realizing nobody would give a gently caress about someone whose plan was 'join the army for college money, survive long enough to collect a pension in your 40s, don't buy dumb poo poo in between". I could barely keep myself interested.
Guest2553 fucked around with this message at 05:25 on Mar 27, 2021 |
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Mar 26, 2021 16:38
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quote:Since "'49" he had wandered over most of the Sierra, sinking innumerable prospect holes like a sailor making soundings, digging new channels for streams, sifting gold-sprinkled boulder and gravel beds with unquenchable energy, life's noon the mean-while passing unnoticed into late afternoon shadows. Then, health and gold gone, the game played and lost, like a wounded deer creeping into this forest solitude, he awaits the sundown call. How sad the undertones of many a life here, now the noise of the first big gold battles has died away! How many interesting wrecks lie drifted and stranded in hidden nooks of the gold region! Perhaps no other range contains the remains of so many rare and interesting men. The name of my hermit friend is John A. Nelder, a fine kind man, who in going into the woods has at last gone home; for he loves nature truly, and realizes that these last shadowy days with scarce a glint of gold in them are the best of all.
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Apr 1, 2021 23:43
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I've never listened to the ChooseFI podcast, but someone linked to an episode from last year with Micheal Kitces that was very interesting to me: https://www.choosefi.com/flexible-spending-rules-for-early-retirees/ (The transcript is all there and is a little janky, but readable) He covers a lot of topics, like how the FI part of FIRE is much more important (because most people don't really want to "retire"), what a safe withdrawal rate actually means, ideas for ratcheting up or down spending, earning income after you "retire", withdrawing during market downturns, and a lot more. I think it's more realistic than most FIRE bloggers, although I get the impression that most of his work is done with high net worth individuals. They do have him go through the numbers of someone trying to retire at 28 with $500k though, so I thought that was an interesting part.
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Apr 23, 2021 14:06
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Someone made another nice portfolio simulator thing to visualize withdrawal options. Looks nice but take it with a grain of salt: https://fiportfoliodoc.com/simulator
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Apr 23, 2021 14:52
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ObsidianBeast posted:I've never listened to the ChooseFI podcast, but someone linked to an episode from last year with Micheal Kitces that was very interesting to me: https://www.choosefi.com/flexible-spending-rules-for-early-retirees/ I thought this was fascinating, thank you. Turns a lot of my assumptions on their head. I’ve recently become a bit disillusioned out by FIRE, even with a fairly good savings rate it feels like years and years and years until I can do it without a massive change of lifestyle. This makes a lot more sense.
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Apr 27, 2021 20:58
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FateFree posted:Someone made another nice portfolio simulator thing to visualize withdrawal options. Looks nice but take it with a grain of salt: https://fiportfoliodoc.com/simulator This is a nice complement to firecalc because it lets you model bounded withdrawals. Combined with that Kitces discussion on flexibility vs withdrawal rates vs worst-case scenario avoidance lets you model some interesting what-ifs.
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Apr 27, 2021 21:36
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Dakha posted:I thought this was fascinating, thank you. Turns a lot of my assumptions on their head. I’ve recently become a bit disillusioned out by FIRE, even with a fairly good savings rate it feels like years and years and years until I can do it without a massive change of lifestyle. This makes a lot more sense.
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Apr 27, 2021 22:36
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FateFree posted:Someone made another nice portfolio simulator thing to visualize withdrawal options. Looks nice but take it with a grain of salt: https://fiportfoliodoc.com/simulator this looks super high level but if you want to use this for a rule of thumb you'd probably want to also include some scenarios where there are very large negative deposits on certain dates in the future. imo, you can do any kind of fancy stochastic scenario or bootstrapped data set you want, but if you approach it from the "smooth" withdrawal assumption, your conclusions will always be suspect. there's also some interaction risk where the periods of economic downturn are often related to periods of higher or unplanned spending to consider
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Apr 28, 2021 06:10
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Olive Branch posted:Are you considering spending more when you become financially independent, or less? Do you plan on having children? I have children so this is already factored in (and probably contributing to my FIRE disillusionment haha). For me the interesting part of that article was how p5 of 3.5% is more than doubling your money, ie 95% of the time after a lifetime of spending you will end up with 2.3x remaining. 50% of the time it’s 8x. That’s a huge buffer for tail risk. Past returns etc etc I know but still. Also the idea that some small amount of work also moves the dial substantially is a bit of a game changer as well. Right now, living off 3.5% of my savings is a long way off. A more carefully managed 4% is a fair bit closer. And a carefully managed 4% with some consulting work on the side is suddenly remarkably close.
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Apr 28, 2021 11:09
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Geez, that ChooseFI podcast puts out an hour long episode every day or two. How is there that much content on FIRE???
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Apr 28, 2021 13:12
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smackfu posted:Geez, that ChooseFI podcast puts out an hour long episode every day or two. How is there that much content on FIRE??? If your financial independence and/or early retirement depended on publishing 30 minutes of podcast per day, could/would you do it?
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Apr 28, 2021 16:13
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A new ____FIRE just dropped, and it's called "CoastFIRE" The idea is you hit a point where, given your desired retirement date and income, you no longer have to make any contributions to retirement and can "coast" the rest of the way there while spending 100% of your income https://walletburst.com/tools/coast-fire-calc/ It also led me to the term BaristaFIRE which is very funny, to me
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Apr 28, 2021 16:25
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GoGoGadgetChris posted:A new ____FIRE just dropped, and it's called "CoastFIRE" This isn't really new, and frankly, the 2000 different terms for "FIRE" from people who don't have the patience to actually reach FIRE is kind of annoying. It's like fat people dieting and desperately trying to calculate how many cookies they can have because they want to be thin but don't want to give things up. Much like weight ultimately comes out to calories in versus calories out, retiring early (or having the ability to) ultimately just comes down to how much you need to live in effective perpetuity (like 40-50 years or more) versus how much your investments can safely kick off. The difficult factors are really things like properly estimating what your expenses will be if your health changes, etc. All of the BaristaFIRE poo poo and similar things are is really just asking whether you can afford to downsize your job, which to me, is a pretty different question. People used to ask that all the time before FIRE (can I afford to take less money for a job I'd prefer to do, can I afford to scale back on the number of hours because I'm at a point where my house is paid for, etc.). SlyFrog fucked around with this message at 17:22 on Apr 28, 2021 |
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Apr 28, 2021 17:19
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The term BaristaFIRE itself implies some sort of twisted white collar romanticism that working as a barista or similar is somehow an enjoyable, low-stress way to spend your days despite the low pay. Why yes I would like to get up at 5am to deal with the general public, sounds much better than computer touching.
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Apr 28, 2021 18:03
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Guinness posted:The term BaristaFIRE itself implies some sort of twisted white collar romanticism that working as a barista or similar is somehow an enjoyable, low-stress way to spend your days despite the low pay. I've never heard of this term before, but I have heard of people talking about working at starbucks to secure health insurance in the event that they have to retire (or are fired) before their expected retirement date. Ie. You are fired at age 58 with a small/modest retirement nest egg. You have no chance of securing comparable employment due to age discrimination so you get a job at starbucks so that your retirement nest egg isn't drained by private market health insurance costs. I guess the idea is that you work until medicare eligible or until buying health insurance wouldn't be ruinous for your finances.
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Apr 28, 2021 18:15
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I love the assumption that one simply walks into their local Starbucks (that they've never patronized because it's out of their budget) and walks out with a job.
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Apr 28, 2021 19:11
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I think the WhateverFIRE ideas are useful as minor milestones between now and "I could hypothetically never earn another dime from a traditional job and be fine" so the boring middle isn't so boring. Breaking down long-term goals into shorter-term goals can really help with planning and celebrating points along the way. I personally do this with multiples of our expenses, but I don't think it's a problem if someone wants to translate those milestones into "if I quit today would I still be OK if I did X". That said, I'd be surprised if anyone who hates their job so much that they want to quit ASAP wouldn't also hate working at Starbucks.
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Apr 28, 2021 19:19
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Guinness posted:The term BaristaFIRE itself implies some sort of twisted white collar romanticism that working as a barista or similar is somehow an enjoyable, low-stress way to spend your days despite the low pay. Work is very stressful. Going back to slinging burritos sounds way mellower, finances aside. Ya it's a fantasy
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Apr 28, 2021 19:28
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All* work is pretty low stress when you don't need the money *unless your job involves saving or ending lives
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Apr 28, 2021 19:39
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the thought of going back to retail or food service someday is enough to make me work harder at computer touching so i keep my job, not so i can get yelled at about tomatoes sooner
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Apr 28, 2021 19:59
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Epitope posted:Work is very stressful. Going back to slinging burritos sounds way mellower, finances aside. Ya it's a fantasy Nah, that's nonsense. Having to show up at a specific place at a specific time and staying alert and productive for an entire shift sounds horrifically stressful. Give me white collar work, especially if it's remote, where you need to just assure a manager you're on track for your projects every now and then any day of the week.
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Apr 28, 2021 21:05
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I've always liked CoastFIRE from the perspective of "If I hit this point, I could keep my same job and divert $x,000 a month of savings to buying poo poo like a sports car and fancy trips to Europe without feeling guilty." I don't understand the version where folks switch to a lovely job that just covers their expenses to grind out 10 years of monotony while waiting for the market to catch up.
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Apr 28, 2021 22:16
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I’d say the trouble with spending more instead of saving is that it’s really hard to stop taking this trips to Europe.
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Apr 28, 2021 22:45
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bergeoisie posted:I've always liked CoastFIRE from the perspective of "If I hit this point, I could keep my same job and divert $x,000 a month of savings to buying poo poo like a sports car and fancy trips to Europe without feeling guilty." I don't understand the version where folks switch to a lovely job that just covers their expenses to grind out 10 years of monotony while waiting for the market to catch up. CoastFIRE actually seems like a fun form of FIRE vs "eat ramen everyday so you can "retire" at 40"
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Apr 28, 2021 22:46
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smackfu posted:I’d say the trouble with spending more instead of saving is that it’s really hard to stop taking this trips to Europe.
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Apr 28, 2021 23:14
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smackfu posted:I’d say the trouble with spending more instead of saving is that it’s really hard to stop taking this trips to Europe. Sure, but travel costs in retirement should be accounted for in my FIRE numbers. And if we get to the point where those trips are getting more expensive we still have the option to adjust our target number, postpone retirement or just generally realign on our saving/spending goals. I suppose this just really boils down to getting to the FI part as opposed to forcing the RE part.
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Apr 28, 2021 23:49
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:Nah, that's nonsense. Having to show up at a specific place at a specific time and staying alert and productive for an entire shift sounds horrifically stressful. Give me white collar work, especially if it's remote, where you need to just assure a manager you're on track for your projects every now and then any day of the week. I've heard the Barista Fire term defined as "working the minimum hours at Starbucks to get benefits" which maybe makes some level of sense. But the term was assuredly coined by someone that has never worked food services or retail.
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Apr 29, 2021 00:11
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We are planning on 'Coast Fi' and have been for awhile. We look at it as 'when will we have enough of a nest egg saved up so we can stop saving for retirement and let compound interest do its thing for the next 10-15 years' before we actually retire. And since we save aggressively, that would allow us to take jobs that pay a lot less. Due to our chosen fields, we could work one or two days a week, or in short term contract chunks for a few months a year to pay for our typical living expenses. Travel is already basically free due to credit card churning, but we included it in our anticipated expenses in case that game changes drastically. If the market crashes during those 10-15 years, we can pick up more work or transition back to full time since we'll still have been working the same jobs within the profession. I think Coast Fi is a great idea for people whose jobs are very flexible and have many different schedule possibilities, but I can't imagine how it would work for a more typical office job. Is someone really going to be happy going from a (respected, well paid) manager/exec to a more entry level/junior position? Are they going to be able to just jump back in to a high paying job with time out of their industry and potential loss of contacts? I think most people approach it as a lovely dream but don't put in enough time thinking about the potential pitfalls. No way in hell would I ever do a 'baristafi' thing though. I worked jobs like that through high school and college and anyone who thinks that is less stressful/more chill/rewarding than touching computers or whatever other white collar thing people do is living on planet delusion.
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Apr 29, 2021 00:17
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One of the hero characters in Atlas Shrugged quit his captain of industry gig to flip burgers.
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Apr 29, 2021 00:29
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lgcty5 posted:No way in hell would I ever do a 'baristafi' thing though. baristafi sounds like employee-only Starbucks wifi with a portal page that reminds you that unions are bad
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Apr 29, 2021 02:04
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lgcty5 posted:We are planning on 'Coast Fi' and have been for awhile. We look at it as 'when will we have enough of a nest egg saved up so we can stop saving for retirement and let compound interest do its thing for the next 10-15 years' before we actually retire. And since we save aggressively, that would allow us to take jobs that pay a lot less. Due to our chosen fields, we could work one or two days a week, or in short term contract chunks for a few months a year to pay for our typical living expenses. Travel is already basically free due to credit card churning, but we included it in our anticipated expenses in case that game changes drastically. If the market crashes during those 10-15 years, we can pick up more work or transition back to full time since we'll still have been working the same jobs within the profession. I have been as well. I work at a factory job I hate and I save 40% of my income. When I no longer need to save 40% of my income to fund my long term goals, then I can afford to make a lot less money, and I can afford to quit this job, hopefully before my body is torn up too bad. Only having to fund my living expenses would give me a lot of flexibility when it came to picking jobs, because I could accept options with fewer hours or lower pay that I couldn't accept now, so I don't think it would be hard to find something I would like to try. I also contribute to a 529, so I can go to school for "free" when I hit CoastFIRE if I want to go that route while I work part time. My HSA savings should be more than enough to fund healthcare for the rest of my life by the time I hit CoastFIRE so I don't think I'd be concerned about working at a place like Starbucks for the health insurance if I didn't want to.
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Apr 30, 2021 19:57
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I think CoastFIRE is the only type of FIRE that isn't insufferable to the point of making me vomit blood. I'm lucky to work in a field where I can easily live off of seeing 15 clients or so a week. I've been seeing more like 27/week for years, and it's absolutely unsustainable. So I went back to corporate world, plan to save like a beast for 4 years, and then I plan to do part-time practice. Then I plan to like...find mushrooms and sell them or some poo poo. Take photographs. Do anything other than burn myself out. CoastFIRE is great at giving me a sense of how I might be able to know that my biggest fear (not having money for retirement) is at least taken care of. Then the rest should be easy. It helps having a partner on board with this idea too. The kids thing might still be a question though...
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Apr 30, 2021 21:24
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That sounds like a solid plan, but most people don't have a skillset that lets them choose how much they want to work. The typical white collar worker where any sort of FIRE is even possible has two choices for income, (1) work full time in the profession they are in currently, or (2) find some part-time entry level retail, food service, or manual labor job. The latter option is frankly just terrible, People underestimate just how stressful and demanding those types of jobs are, to the point where the white collar job may be less stress even if you're putting in 2-3x the hours. If your profession lets you scale your hours if you don't need the income that's very useful, it's just not realistic for most people.
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Apr 30, 2021 23:07
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