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spf3million posted:First off, SWRs assume that a significant portion of your assets are invested so that withdrawing 3-4% every year won't deplete them to zero before you die. If you're mostly in cash that assumption would not be valid. You mentioned upcoming pension and SS payments so depending on how old you are, you need your remaining assets to sustain you until then. From the worksheet it appears if I had no source of income, social security, pension or 401K funds whatsoever I could deplete my savings up to 76 years old, when they would run out. If I only had Social Security income added that started at 70 years then I would run out of savings at 82, if I made it that long. But obviously I'll be taking the 401K funds, pension and other benefits as soon as feasible to before then. Noah posted:Sorry, I don't think I was asking my question well. Is your pension system healthcare accessible after such a long gap? Mine is not, but I just wanted to check if yours was. I only get access to the pensions health coverage if I start accessing it within 6 months of leaving. But you are correct that I need to double-check to make sure the same benefits apply to me and I won't accidentally disqualify myself. nnnotime fucked around with this message at 23:15 on Nov 24, 2021 |
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Nov 24, 2021 22:38
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Has anyone ITT pulled the trigger and retired early? Interested in hearing about people's experience post-retirement rather than the prep for it. I'm hitting 40 next year, DINK, fully paid-off mortgage, and portfolio in the mid 7-figures. The pandemic's already made it slightly easier to think about it since I've become a fully remote computer toucher. I might transition to a part-time/contract role as an intermediate step. Outside of health insurance, I'm more curious about the soft stuff - are people able to find fulfilment given our social conditioning around seeing work as an intrinsic part of our life? It's a bit daunting to think about spending potentially the next few decades with no firm day-to-day "tasks" if that makes any sense.
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Nov 24, 2021 23:26
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If I was mid 7 figures (like meaning 5M in the bank) I'd have quit or at least gone part time long ago. If you check the /r/financialindependence subreddit most "regret" type stories revolve around people retiring too early with not enough money to really enjoy life. If you retire on a shoestring budget of video games and TV as your Source of meaning and entertainment, yeah it's gonna suck. Most of the other posts where the person was well beyond their needs in terms of savings just lamented they wished they retired earlier. Is it just "what will I do with my time" being the biggest fear? What if you could work a job you liked more where the pay didn't matter? Or the current job but without the parts you don't like? Doors open when you don't actually need the money.
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Nov 25, 2021 02:00
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I have a small child so there's always something to do. Apart from that, I read a lot, do tons of gardening, hiking, hanging with friends and neighbors. I have a couple of volunteer jobs at the library and park that I can walk to, and I've done some volunteer tutoring for low income students. Pandemic makes it hard, but I used to spend quite a bit of time at the gym. It's easier to help out other people since I have the time, and I love the relaxed pace of life, not having to wake up to an alarm clock, having whole days where I just tinker with garden projects. I definitely sometimes have the urge for a more rigid schedule, but usually just putting house projects on my calendar scratches that itch. Definitely would recommend dropping to part time and easing your way out of it. I don't do TV or video games, but I did have to limit my phone time at the beginning since I would drop into random scrolling when I had nothing to do. Make sure you don't just expand bad habits when you have more time for them.
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Nov 25, 2021 07:05
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shrike82 posted:Has anyone ITT pulled the trigger and retired early? Interested in hearing about people's experience post-retirement rather than the prep for it. I've always thought it was strange that people would prefer doing some day-to-day task assigned by other people over doing almost anything else they want to do, if they have the financial means to retire. There is nothing special about most jobs. A lot of people with the fears you have are basically using the day-to-day tasks assigned by a job as a way to avoid thinking about what they actually want to do with their life. They're not doing something "meaningful," they are actually avoiding finding purpose by just showing up, doing the things someone else puts in front of them, and then going home to spend a few hours of downtime before repeating the cycle. How is it meaningful fulfillment to spend the bulk of your hours running tasks assigned by other people so they can make money? How is that any more meaningful than watching TV (assuming you're not like curing cancer or something for a living), other than "because it's supposed to be because TV is bad and work is good?" "Oh hey, I optimized a subroutine for some banking software that will allow a bank that makes billions a year to make a few hundred thousand more. That's so much more meaningful than watching TV, or gardening, or reading a book, or whatever else I want to do today." I find that this intellectual space is routinely filled with a lot of poorly thought out repeated bromides (e.g. "human beings aren't meant to not work" or "people have to have a purpose") that really don't hold up to critical thought. SlyFrog fucked around with this message at 19:32 on Nov 27, 2021 |
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Nov 27, 2021 19:19
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Doing tasks, even if menial, could still provides some feelings of progress and productivity as opposed to TV and video games. Also, having an external source of pressure helps you actually do things if your internal motivation is not high. If I were to retire early, I'd definitely try to pick up some part time job just to give me some routine. I also like the fact that many menial tasks around the house like laundry, dishes, and cleaning floors have a reliable point of completion as opposed to my job (academic research).
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Nov 27, 2021 19:32
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drainpipe posted:Doing tasks, even if menial, could still provides some feelings of progress and productivity as opposed to TV and video games. Also, having an external source of pressure helps you actually do things if your internal motivation is not high. If I were to retire early, I'd definitely try to pick up some part time job just to give me some routine. And it's not like my work is easy or pointless. I think it's purely down to the former goals being self-directed, and the latter tasks/accomplishments being things I've done out of necessity and on behalf of other people. I have no doubt that if I am able to pull the trigger on early "retirement", I'll be able to fill up my days with activities that I find meaningful. That's half my motivation for wanting to retire early in the first place.
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Nov 27, 2021 19:42
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By the way, I realize that I have no experience at all with what menial task jobs are like having spent my entire life in academia. What I wrote is just the perception of those jobs I have right now, and they are probably wrong. But if I were to RE (which isn't for at least another 10-15 years if at all), then trying them out is risk-free.
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Nov 27, 2021 19:59
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There's a difference between the calvinist notion of work being intrinsically good and understanding that society is structured around most people working during the same hours of the day. A basic question for example would be who do you hang out with during the "work day" when most people are working? Another would be on relationships - how does one partner or both not working affect things? I posed the question specifically to people who have actually experienced early retirement. The few friends I have who retired early, ended up going back to some form of structured work after getting bored. shrike82 fucked around with this message at 01:32 on Nov 28, 2021 |
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Nov 28, 2021 01:28
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During the day I hang out mostly with my husband, but also with my friends who are stay at home parents/freelancers/other retirees. I wouldn't want to retire without my spouse but ymmv, especially if your spouse enjoys their job. I think you're overworried about hanging with other people, unless you're a crazy extrovert. Like, go to the gym and there will be people there. Go hang out at a park and there will be people. Go make new friends who are on your new schedule. Or don't, and just do all of your errands during the day and hang out with friends in the evening. It's not super difficult to find other people unless you live in the sticks.
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Nov 28, 2021 02:16
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Plus it's not like it's a permanent commitment. My partner and I tried to do the FIRE thing but we both found we preferred 40 Hours of Work and Wealthy over Infinite Free Time and "Secure" You can see if it suits you and just go back to work if it doesn't!
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Nov 28, 2021 02:37
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shrike82 posted:There's a difference between the calvinist notion of work being intrinsically good and understanding that society is structured around most people working during the same hours of the day. A basic question for example would be who do you hang out with during the "work day" when most people are working? Another would be on relationships - how does one partner or both not working affect things? I am retired early, and have been for five years now. When I worked, I worked, and didn't hang around with people. I interacted with people at work, but that was pretty much just as a means to get work done. Retiring has not really changed not hanging around with people, because I didn't hang around with people when I worked. Because I was working. My partner works. She would be working regardless of whether I work. She seems to understand that my having the financial capability to not work does not somehow imply that she also will not work. I recognize that a lot of people couldn't handle that, but she seems to be able to. In part because she would also be working if I did not have the financial ability to take care of myself and not work. I made it very clear up front that would be how it worked (no pun intended), but I admittedly met her after I had retired. SlyFrog fucked around with this message at 14:25 on Nov 28, 2021 |
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Nov 28, 2021 03:08
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doingitwrong posted:Came across this on the Boglehead forum. This seems relevant again
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Nov 28, 2021 15:19
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I cannot ever imagine doing "LeanFIRE", which is just a stupid way of saying retiring before you are able to securely do so. Some people don't spend a lot of money, and they need less money to retire early. But that's not really anything special, that's just having a lower cost lifestyle than other people. The LeanFIRE people always seem to be the 29 year olds so desperate to not work that they come up with some cockamamie scheme of making GBS threads in buckets to save water so they can retire with $100,000. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) SlyFrog fucked around with this message at 15:48 on Nov 28, 2021 |
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Nov 28, 2021 15:44
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I guess, though the less gotta-dunk-on-em way to say it is that even a modest income (e.g. from a hobby you monetize, or a less stressful part-time job) brings a surprisingly large reduction of risk that you run out of retirement savings.
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Nov 28, 2021 17:36
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pokeyman posted:I guess, though the less gotta-dunk-on-em way to say it is that even a modest income (e.g. from a hobby you monetize, or a less stressful part-time job) brings a surprisingly large reduction of risk that you run out of retirement savings. I don't think this has anything to do with LeanFIRE.
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Nov 28, 2021 17:40
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OGDanDogg posted:This seems relevant again "Very long story short, I spent an average of 40k a year, I rebalanced yearly to retain my 70/30 allocation, and I wound up with about 1.3 million."
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Nov 28, 2021 18:04
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drainpipe posted:Doing tasks, even if menial, could still provides some feelings of progress and productivity as opposed to TV and video games. Also, having an external source of pressure helps you actually do things if your internal motivation is not high. If I were to retire early, I'd definitely try to pick up some part time job just to give me some routine. If only Lego sets were cheaper....
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Nov 28, 2021 18:11
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I like the ethos of leanfire (frugality and anti-consumerism), but yeah I'd find it hard to actually fully retire on it given how little flexibility you have in your budget. I instead view it as the ultimate emergency fund. Job getting unbearable? Take a flyer and try something else. Worse comes to worse, you can survive on your stash for almost indefinitely long until you find something else to do. I'm considering a career pivot and being close to (not even at) leanfire makes such a move feel a lot less riskier for me.
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Nov 28, 2021 18:18
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drainpipe posted:I like the ethos of leanfire (frugality and anti-consumerism), but yeah I'd find it hard to actually fully retire on it given how little flexibility you have in your budget. I instead view it as the ultimate emergency fund. Job getting unbearable? Take a flyer and try something else. Worse comes to worse, you can survive on your stash for almost indefinitely long until you find something else to do. Yes. It's just nomenclature, but I agree with the principles, just not the naming conventions and how they are intertwined. I don't believe in anti-consumerism, in the technical sense. I have no problem with consuming things, even things I don't "need". But I think a lot of people buy poo poo just to buy it, and at the end of the day, should question more whether they really want it, or they're just buying it out of boredom, compulsion to buy things, etc. (I suffer from this occasionally too - I'm not being sarcastic or patronizing, just identifying something I see in a lot of people, including myself occasionally). The question I try to ask myself is, will I really get value from trading my money for this new thing? Like is the thing really worth the labor/effort/financial security I surrender in order to get it? Is the $60,000 truck worth a year of my life doing whatever I want? For some things, that's the case, but for a lot of things (like my utterly massive Steam backlog), I probably traded my labor for something I'll never really get much use out of. And like you implied, reducing your spend/footprint is almost a separate thing from retiring early, with the overlap that is there being that obviously you do not need as much saved to retire if you don't spend that much. But you can live "lean" even while working the rest of your life - they're not necessarily linked. Further, when I hear a lot of people talk about LeanFIRE, it always seems to me that they have the reasoning reversed - they are so desperate to retire early that they take risks to do it that sort of cast into doubt the actual "Financial Independence" aspect of FIRE. They're living lean not necessarily because they enjoy living that way, but because doing that is literally the only way they can not work. And they often seem to cut really close to the bone. Like if you're retiring with a hope that there are no real adverse events that will ever occur in the future (whether it be lean stock market years on the revenue side or health issues on the expenditure side), then you're kind of like the engineer who builds a bridge with no safety margins in my mind. It may feel good in the moment to say, "Hey, I built this, I'm good to go," but I'd always be nervous as gently caress that one day that big windstorm is going to come through. Your point about being able to pivot more easily through having capital saved is also a good one. I've always viewed money like energy. It is a useful tool (and like energy, something that by most people has to be "created" by labor, equivalent to digging that coal out of the ground). While you have it, it is potential energy, and it can be converted or directed into kinetic energy toward a number of useful things. Once you spend it, however (unless you are investing it into tools to generate more energy, i.e. investing), it's gone, so it pays to think a little bit about whether it's worth tapping into that reserve. My English instructors would be appalled at how badly I mixed metaphors there, but I don't care - it's my metaphor(s), and I like it, drat it. SlyFrog fucked around with this message at 18:38 on Nov 28, 2021 |
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Nov 28, 2021 18:34
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Kirov posted:Did you read the whole thing? He started with 950K and despite not working for 5 years, having major health issues and a divorce, he ended up pretty great: Seems like a success story to emulate to me.
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Nov 28, 2021 19:24
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What do you call- I have a career that I've been perusing since highschool and I enjoy parts of it but not all of it and working is a drag sometimes but I want to be able to continue a career path, so I save money and live frugally so if I want a break I can take it and if I want to make a risky move I can, but retiring sounds like ending that particular path in my life which I don't want to do. Reddit acronyms are stupid
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Nov 28, 2021 20:04
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SlyFrog posted:I don't think this has anything to do with LeanFIRE. Oh, my bad, I get the dumb names confused.
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Nov 28, 2021 20:06
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Epitope posted:What do you call- I have a career that I've been perusing since highschool and I enjoy parts of it but not all of it and working is a drag sometimes but I want to be able to continue a career path, so I save money and live frugally so if I want a break I can take it and if I want to make a risky move I can, but retiring sounds like ending that particular path in my life which I don't want to do. Reddit acronyms are stupid I call this "having gently caress you money" I'm only working because im choosing to bless you stupid fucks with my presence but the moment you make my life miserable or suck at work, im outie.
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Nov 28, 2021 20:07
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pokeyman posted:Oh, my bad, I get the dumb names confused. Epitope posted:Reddit acronyms are stupid Yes, the internet (and world) loves to boil down relatively complex things into overly simplified phrases, which doesn't help in this situation, I agree.
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Nov 28, 2021 20:12
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Committing to terminology leads you into dumb stuff like, "oh well can you even say RETIRED if you still work freelance or occasionally sell your dreamcatchers for $69??"
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Nov 28, 2021 20:29
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Running out of money on leanFIRE isn't anywhere near the dire emergency that it is when you've been retired and are living off 100k a year. It's much easier to get a small random job that will meet your low expenses than it is to try and return to your high paying field after 20 years away. Especially if your expenses are less than or equal to what your social security payment will be, because then you just have to coast along until you're old enough to start collecting social security. If you start to trend towards running out before then, you can just go work for a few months to get back up. If work makes you unhappy I don't think it's a stretch to start looking at alternative lifestyles that can give you your freedom much sooner and allow you to enjoy things that people tied down to a job can't. There's plenty of stories of people who retired the right way just to turn around and have a heart attack while their sailboat is still sitting in the driveway, so it's not like there's a right or wrong way to do this. Tomorrow isn't guaranteed. Also I would point out that a lot of the leanFIRE ~influencer~ types are tech bros who have ridiculously inflated expenses because they are working in the bay area, and they don't really have the option to live "lean" now. I mean they can live like how lean people in other places live, but their expenses are still going to match that of some small countries. Until they retire and leave, their expenses are going to remain artificially high. For more normal people, you still have to live where the jobs are, you still have to get to and from work, and these expenses are built into your employment. Retiring early and reducing expenses are chained together in a lot of ways, and for some people in those situations it makes sense to try and treat your career as a sprint rather than a marathon. acidx fucked around with this message at 22:52 on Nov 28, 2021 |
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Nov 28, 2021 22:48
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If you don't like working a tech job with flexibility, extremely high pay, and low micro management, I find it hard to believe that you're going to like working any small random job. Doing so for years to coast to social security is a hilarious self own.
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Nov 28, 2021 23:10
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SlyFrog posted:... Once I figured out how to frame things kinda like this "Buying this $2,000 toy means that I'll have to work for x more time before retiring. Or y more time if I'll want a similar toy every other year." decisions got easier. I really, really stopped caring about nonsense small things, and started putting a lot more thought into lifestyle-creep-ish structural expenses.
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Nov 28, 2021 23:24
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asur posted:If you don't like working a tech job with flexibility, extremely high pay, and low micro management, I find it hard to believe that you're going to like working any small random job. Doing so for years to coast to social security is a hilarious self own. You generally don't have to work, that's why it's called retirement. It tends to take me a year or two to really learn all the reasons to hate a particular workplace, so the idea of needing to work for six months here or there to top off the bucket doesn't bother me. But if you can enjoy spending 40 years dedicating your existence to optimizing algorithms to try and sell people one brand of toilet cleaner over another as long as you don't feel micromanaged, more power to you.
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Nov 28, 2021 23:34
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acidx posted:You generally don't have to work, that's why it's called retirement. It tends to take me a year or two to really learn all the reasons to hate a particular workplace, so the idea of needing to work for six months here or there to top off the bucket doesn't bother me. But if you can enjoy spending 40 years dedicating your existence to optimizing algorithms to try and sell people one brand of toilet cleaner over another as long as you don't feel micromanaged, more power to you. Yes, the two options are work six months occasionally in 'retirement' or work 40 years. Not the obvious choice of front load those six month stints and never need to work again.
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Nov 28, 2021 23:40
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asur posted:Yes, the two options are work six months occasionally in 'retirement' or work 40 years. Not the obvious choice of front load those six month stints and never need to work again. The goal of leanFIRE is to never work again. We're talking about emergency situations where you would have to return to work if something went wrong with the economy or your plan.
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Nov 28, 2021 23:52
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Kirov posted:Did you read the whole thing? He started with 950K and despite not working for 5 years, having major health issues and a divorce, he ended up pretty great: Yeah. I was specifically referring to the concept of making sure that you and your partner are on the same page. Of course, maybe he would have gotten a divorce anyway.
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Nov 29, 2021 00:07
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I will say again, I think there is a world of difference between lifestyle inflation and retiring "lean" such that you don't have a buffer against bad poo poo happening in life. One advantage of retiring while supporting a high cost lifestyle is, you can cut back. It may be painful, but you likely can. Meanwhile, you can't cut back from living at a bare minimum, with retirement assets originally designed to barely support that. I know the standard response is just "I'd go back to work," which I don't always think is realistic after being out of the workforce for 10 years (and I have some acquaintances with first hand experience of trying to do that, and the difficulties associated with it). Especially when the things making you go back to work are likely your money running out in a lovely economy, or expenses unexpectedly increasing due to health care problems, etc. I think people generally don't think through the ease of "I'd just go back to work." To me, that's a young person thing to think would be easy. SlyFrog fucked around with this message at 00:52 on Nov 29, 2021 |
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Nov 29, 2021 00:39
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I think it's at least as easy to get a part time job when you're 50 or 60 as it is to try and cut back on the mortgage payment on the house in the suburbs that you needed. A lot of people get these sorts of jobs at that age when they don't even need the money. Just for something to do. I currently work with a lot of people in that age range who work full time doing demanding physical labor to pay for a normal, not lean lifestyle. Someone trying to supplement a leanFIRE bucket of money wouldn't even have to do that.
acidx fucked around with this message at 01:35 on Nov 29, 2021 |
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Nov 29, 2021 01:28
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acidx posted:I think it's at least as easy to get a part time job when you're 50 or 60 as it is to try and cut back on the mortgage payment on the house in the suburbs that you needed. A lot of people get these sorts of jobs at that age when they don't even need the money. Just for something to do. I currently work with a lot of people in that age range who work full time doing demanding physical labor to pay for a normal, not lean lifestyle. Someone trying to supplement a leanFIRE bucket of money wouldn't even have to do that. See, I would never consider retiring with a mortgage (unless I were doing it purely because of good financial terms with a massive amount of money available to pay it off at any time, at which point it is less a mortgage and more just financial leverage). I'm not sure how the two are equated, however. It's certainly easier to sell a home and downsize than it is to start working at 60 after being retired for 20 years.
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Nov 29, 2021 01:54
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You think it's easier to sell your primary residence than it is to get a basic job like cashier? Or that 20 years of retirement means you can no longer work your brain around how to do a job like that? Personally I think it's the opposite. After a long break I feel good working even if it is something menial and dumb. It's when I'm burnt out and working too long without enough vacation when my quality of work suffers the most.
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Nov 29, 2021 02:07
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SlyFrog posted:I cannot ever imagine doing "LeanFIRE", which is just a stupid way of saying retiring before you are able to securely do so. LeanFIRE is gonna require retiring with a smaller amount (or even not a smaller amount, and just spending below like 25k individual or 40k household annually regardless of how much you have saved if you wanna go off the reddit "you must spend this little to post" guidelines as your definition) which requires having a lower budget and/or higher risk tolerance sure, but why is that inherently dumb and bad? It's fine for people to try to retire with more modest savings and/or low spending before standard retirement age if they find the risk tolerable, even if you wouldn't. And of course you're going to get more pipe-dreamers in the "budget approach" community, because they're trying to do it with lower budget. Also, just because people want to try and do it wrong (with not enough savings) doesn't mean doing it right (with enough savings to actually sustain a "lean" annual budget) is also wrong. You even acknowledge that leanfire's fine and a thing in your second line, but then dismiss it as somehow not counting as leanfire because it's "just having a lower cost lifestyle". Which, yeah I guess, but you could say the same thing about FIRE in general "that isn't really anything special, that's just being independently wealthy". This really seems like you're mad at people for not thinking realistically about risk, which isn't tied to leanfire especially, and also it's not necessarily the case that they're not thinking about it or are dumb/unreasonable just because they're willing to take on more risk than you. Also it's a weird thing to need to put people down about, you used a lot of real aggressive, dismissive language.
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Nov 29, 2021 02:42
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Also people get so weirdly dogmatic about the terminology and buckets for all this crap. FIRE is a framework to help you achieve financial freedom and goals it's okay if somebody else's version looks different and they retire with less or work longer to save more before retiring or keep working part time after retirement or find a new passion that makes money or whatever and people can and do manage to gently caress up on all approaches.
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Nov 29, 2021 03:02
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surc posted:LeanFIRE is gonna require retiring with a smaller amount (or even not a smaller amount, and just spending below like 25k individual or 40k household annually regardless of how much you have saved if you wanna go off the reddit "you must spend this little to post" guidelines as your definition) which requires having a lower budget and/or higher risk tolerance sure, but why is that inherently dumb and bad? I have no idea what you're trying to say, so I can't really respond to it, sorry.
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Nov 29, 2021 03:31
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