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Or he could move to a country with socialised medicine and education.
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Apr 10, 2023 01:40
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We don't want him, thanks
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Apr 10, 2023 01:52
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notwithoutmyanus posted:Even the FIRE financial samurai guy is smarter than that. https://fortune.com/2023/04/09/early-retiree-fire-movement-returns-to-work-financial-samurai/ That entire article felt like an ad for this guy
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Apr 10, 2023 01:58
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icecastle posted:That entire article felt like an ad for this guy
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Apr 10, 2023 02:22
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Also fun to look for the casual mention of the huge leg-up they got from relatives. Free house, startup loan (forgiven), contracts from dad’s golf buddies’ companies, etc.
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Apr 10, 2023 02:41
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withak posted:Also fun to look for the casual mention of the huge leg-up they got from relatives. Free house, startup loan (forgiven), contracts from dad’s golf buddies’ companies, etc.
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Apr 10, 2023 02:54
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Trimson Grondag 3 posted:Or he could move to a country with socialised medicine and education. Nope, you poo poo in your bed, you sleep in it.
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Apr 10, 2023 02:59
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Cugel the Clever posted:Whenever I see FIRE in the news media, it's always indistinguishable from a paid promotion. Completely uncritical platforming of influencers who've "retired" (but are offering seminars at low low rates on how you too can retire early!). i think its selection pressure because only the peeps who lie and actually make their money from their blogging actually continuously blog, so the genuine ones could exist while not blogging
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Apr 10, 2023 05:01
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If he has 3 million in assets and it's not all property, then taking 200k out is not a bad return per se, but reinvesting and compounding it would be much better, particularly from a "I need to save 1.5 million per child (?!?!) for higher education" perspective. Of course, he'd need to get a job for day to day stuff. Though I note it didn't say what his wife was doing.... Anyway, was FIRE the one where they were eating like plain bread for lunch to spend as little as possible?
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Apr 10, 2023 09:53
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The fire movement is about consuming less and living on investment dividends right? I'm happy that they're consuming less at the very least.
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Apr 10, 2023 10:26
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Borscht posted:The fire movement is about consuming less and living on investment dividends right? I'm happy that they're consuming less at the very least. Theoretically, yes. Reality for most is living on your books and speeches and appearance fees
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Apr 10, 2023 10:53
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Borscht posted:The fire movement is about consuming less and living on investment dividends right? I'm happy that they're consuming less at the very least. But that's just going by my anecdata. I think the thread had a story a while ago about a guy who didn't get his partner on board with the idea at all and it destroyed their relationship and his health.
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Apr 10, 2023 11:56
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Barudak posted:Theoretically, yes. "I busted my rear end and lived on nothing so I could retire when I was 35 and do whatever I wanted!" the influencer tweeted between scrounging for speaking work and recording YouTube videos and TikToks for 18 hours a day.
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Apr 10, 2023 12:27
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There's also a huge overlap between FIRE people and get-rick-quick/grindset people, which can muddy the waters re: lower consumption. On the one hand, yeah, you've got the people who self-flagellate if they splurge on a $5 pizza from Little Caesars. On the other hand you've got the ones who are showing off their "FIRE" lifestyle by Instagramming their vacation to Bali or whatever after retiring at 40.
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Apr 10, 2023 13:18
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Cyrano4747 posted:There's also a huge overlap between FIRE people and get-rick-quick/grindset people, which can muddy the waters re: lower consumption. The only way you're retiring at 40 is to either get lucky on a get-rich-quick scheme, or work some super high stress high paying finance job. Even if you're out there making $100k a year, and somehow saving half of that for your early retirement, I don't think you'd save up enough to retire at 40. Maybe if you retire, but then continue to live a bare bones lifestyle, but god that sounds loving depressing.
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Apr 10, 2023 13:26
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Cugel the Clever posted:I think the thread had a story a while ago about a guy who didn't get his partner on board with the idea at all and it destroyed their relationship and his health. One of the early FIRE folks got divorced, Mr. Money Mustache. He seemed to have a saner attitude about it than most, had focused on moving into a walkable neighborhood and got insanely lucky with stocks and property just like most of the success stories. He wasn't anywhere near as extreme as the new freaks are either and the thesis was basically "buy a $300k house in one of the nicer parts of the Boulder, CO area, ride bikes, cook your own food, don't pay someone to mow your lawn." You can see how that process breaks down at step 1 now, ha. I'm sympathetic to people who notice that they're getting screwed and do something about it, his big change that enabled FIRE was moving from Canada to the US. He was working in software in Canada, where for bizarre reasons people get paid half as much for identical work. I think that leads to an assumption that everyone can do something like this, but the real answer is that software is uniquely highly compensated at the moment and even the differential is unique among Canadian vs US industries. Edit: Bird in a Blender posted:The only way you're retiring at 40 is to either get lucky on a get-rich-quick scheme, or work some super high stress high paying finance job. Even if you're out there making $100k a year, and somehow saving half of that for your early retirement, I don't think you'd save up enough to retire at 40. Maybe if you retire, but then continue to live a bare bones lifestyle, but god that sounds loving depressing. Does it change the math if you realize that what are now million dollar houses were $280k and these people got in then? I checked and Mr Money mustache has his kid at least half the time and is still posting receipts, his biggest dangerous stupid tricks now are not having any homeowners insurance or medical insurance at all. Looks like he's doing medical insurance every third year or some poo poo, which is risky and dumb and also a way to save five figures a year. $450/ mo grocery bill for 1.5 people seems same? The health thing is basically luck, he also says he hasn't been to a dentist in more than 25 years. Twerk from Home fucked around with this message at 13:41 on Apr 10, 2023 |
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Apr 10, 2023 13:27
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Bird in a Blender posted:The only way you're retiring at 40 is to either get lucky on a get-rich-quick scheme, or work some super high stress high paying finance job. Even if you're out there making $100k a year, and somehow saving half of that for your early retirement, I don't think you'd save up enough to retire at 40. Maybe if you retire, but then continue to live a bare bones lifestyle, but god that sounds loving depressing. If you assume $20,000 a year for 60 years you get to $1.2 million, which isn't utterly unobtainable if you have a high paying job (60k/yr of savings over 20 years). That assumes you own your house outright and that you can fit upkeep and taxes into your 20k/yr lifestyle alongside your ramen and never buying new clothes. The real crazy, unrealistic part of FIRE is that you loving never see any kind of recognition that they're not going to be in their mid-40s forever and old age comes for us all. Just zero loving awareness of the fact that expenses spike like a motherfucker in the last decade or so of life, and not everyone wants to just embrace oblivion at the end rather than spend some money for a few more years with the people they love. Also holy poo poo I hope that FIRE basically insists on also being childless, because lmao if you think raising a kid is going to fit into a post-retirement FIRE lifestyle.
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Apr 10, 2023 13:33
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The thing I hate most about FIRE is that it takes something that should be good - frugality - and turns it into a twisted abomination. I'm pretty huge on basic frugality for two reasons: 1) it makes my finances a loving lot easier. If you're not just mindlessly consuming crap for the sake of buying crap it's amazing how much extra money you have. I'm not some freakish miser, but I do honestly shake my head at poo poo like coworkers who are buying new work shirts every month or two or the one who gets a brand new yeti annually as part of her "new year ritual." Because stainless steel thermos cups apparently have a 1 year expiration date or something. 2) our modern consumerist lifestyle is literally killing the planet and is entirely unsustainable, and frankly all the disposable crap we buy should have those negative externalities priced in to encourage people to be a little less wasteful.
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Apr 10, 2023 13:37
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I think that people only talked about FIRE at all in the context of the biggest, longest bull market for stocks and housing in the history of the country. FIRE only exists because of outlandish returns. Everybody tries to make up numbers and adapt it to history and claim it'll work in other periods, but the last 15 years have been completely unique with a nonstop government money hose and free borrowing. Don't look at the dollars saved, look at what stocks grew those dollars into. This is a timing and luck thing.
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Apr 10, 2023 13:38
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Twerk from Home posted:One of the early FIRE folks got divorced, Mr. Money Mustache. He seemed to have a saner attitude about it than most, had focused on moving into a walkable neighborhood and got insanely lucky with stocks and property just like most of the success stories. He wasn't anywhere near as extreme as the new freaks are either and the thesis was basically "buy a $300k house in one of the nicer parts of the Boulder, CO area, ride bikes, cook your own food, don't pay someone to mow your lawn." You can see how that process breaks down at step 1 now, ha. I found Money Mustache guy useful when I was in my early 20s just trying to get my bearings while making money for the first time. He always had a weirdly severe bent toward austerity by way of self-discipline, which I guess is necessary when you're pushing back against everyone's cradle-to-grave exposure to the consumption economy. Even back then though I recognized that he only got where he as early as he could due to several years of the software-employment jackpot right during/after a housing crash I followed his precepts for a few years before realizing A) I simply wasn't making enough money to match his roadmap and B) my field of employment and personal living situation preclude the level of austerity he adheres to (for example, I cannot do significant parts of my job without a vehicle to get to worksites yet it is incredibly rare to get an employer to subsidize that) Anyway he admitted that he made more money from blogging than he ever did working so  Twerk from Home posted:I think that people only talked about FIRE at all in the context of the biggest, longest bull market for stocks and housing in the history of the country. FIRE only exists because of outlandish returns. Everybody tries to make up numbers and adapt it to history and claim it'll work in other periods, but the last 15 years have been completely unique with a nonstop government money hose and free borrowing. Don't look at the dollars saved, look at what stocks grew those dollars into. This is a timing and luck thing. Yeah the low-interest-era free money spigot hosed up a lot of expectations The $12k I plowed into VTSAX in late 2013 on a lark was my big winner over the past decade, all the cautious 401k/IRA target-date-fund saving and emergency fund/cash house-down-payment allocation gave me stability but I'd be a couple-millionaire if I'd just YOLO'd it all into that - which a lot of people did and touted!
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Apr 10, 2023 13:46
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Not a Children posted:Yeah the low-interest-era free money spigot hosed up a lot of expectations Oh man. My own BWM was that I aggressively paid down a sub-4% mortgage in the early 2010s because I was fetishizing having a paid off house. In hindsight that's the worst financial decision I've ever made, by far. That did a lot more damage than I would have done just wasting money on frivolous poo poo but throwing some in stocks.
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Apr 10, 2023 13:50
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Twerk from Home posted:Oh man. My own BWM was that I aggressively paid down a sub-4% mortgage in the early 2010s because I was fetishizing having a paid off house. In hindsight that's the worst financial decision I've ever made, by far. That did a lot more damage than I would have done just wasting money on frivolous poo poo but throwing some in stocks. Hey, at least you got equity. Some people spent 2014-2019 letting everything post-401k sit in a low interest bank account because they were too dumb to open a brokerage account. I should have so much more money.
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Apr 10, 2023 14:11
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If I recall, the FIRE movement got really popular in the years immediately after the 2008 recession. A lot of folks got crushed back then so I think that was when things like FIRE and side hustles really got popular. BFC had some huge FIRE threads, self publishing threads, the blog for bucks thread, etc. The Financial Independence part of FIRE is the important part. Retiring Early is the borderline scammy part that people usually get hung up on. Having Financial Independence is something that everyone should strive for. Retiring Early is situation dependent and probably won't happen for most people and that's fine.
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Apr 10, 2023 14:24
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What, in your mind, is the difference? Edit: let me rephrase that. What’s your definition of FI? WithoutTheFezOn fucked around with this message at 14:31 on Apr 10, 2023 |
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Apr 10, 2023 14:28
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Bird in a Blender posted:The only way you're retiring at 40 is to either get lucky on a get-rich-quick scheme, or work some super high stress high paying finance job. Even if you're out there making $100k a year, and somehow saving half of that for your early retirement, I don't think you'd save up enough to retire at 40. Maybe if you retire, but then continue to live a bare bones lifestyle, but god that sounds loving depressing. Or work in tech for ~20 years, make bank on your RSUs? Working in software dev can definitely be stressful, but I feel like FAANG is probably much less stressful for many developers than finance. My brother turned 40 this year and has been considering retirement for 5 years. His wife doesn't work and they don't have kids. He decided to work a few more years and buy some stupidly expensive house so they could move his MIL in too, though.
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Apr 10, 2023 14:28
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibP5IQxId34 This guy did FIRE right. Worked high paying finance job, lived in van with minimal expenses, quit right before 2008 crash, hosed off to live on boat
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Apr 10, 2023 14:29
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I really don't understand what you guys are so riled up about. If a 40 year old can't retire with 1 to 2 million, then 95% of Americans are hosed anyway.
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Apr 10, 2023 14:34
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WithoutTheFezOn posted:What, in your mind, is the difference? My dad could have retired a couple of years ago but chooses to keep working a fairly easy office job he enjoys because then he can keep going on his annual skiing, hiking, and kayaking trips. If he were laid off tomorrow, he and my mom would still be financially secure for a couple of decades even if they'd have to scale back on those sorts of expenditures..
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Apr 10, 2023 14:35
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Bird in a Blender posted:The only way you're retiring at 40 is to either get lucky on a get-rich-quick scheme, or work some super high stress high paying finance job. Even if you're out there making $100k a year, and somehow saving half of that for your early retirement, I don't think you'd save up enough to retire at 40. Maybe if you retire, but then continue to live a bare bones lifestyle, but god that sounds loving depressing. The tech industry is more than doubling your proposed salary and is literally chill as hell, and gets more and more chill the more you get paid. (Well, maybe not right now, but certainly for the previous ten years that's been what it's doing.) I could literally retire today and maintain my current lifestyle indefinitely, or at least until my body starts crapping out and medical expenses start climbing. (That's a pretty comforting backstop when there's talk of industry-wide layoffs!). But I'm not actually doing that, because I do still enjoy the work and am also anticipating my expenses to go up after I pull the trigger and have more time to spend on other hobbies.
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Apr 10, 2023 14:43
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Verus posted:I really don't understand what you guys are so riled up about. If a 40 year old can't retire with 1 to 2 million, then 95% of Americans are hosed anyway. a 65 year old with a million in assets will also be receiving medicare and only a handful of years from receiving social security, which makes them much less sensitive to shocks. A 40 year old has 25 years of exposure to unexpected medical bills and having to draw down capital during a bad market.
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Apr 10, 2023 14:48
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The lifestyle of sitting around without a job would cost me way more than working, I’d constantly be on the Internet buying bwm poo poo and travelling, or buying old cars to fix after I learn how to do that etc. I reckon I’d blow 3x more than my current discretionary expenses easy. Edit: I get that it’s probably bad that I can only imagine that life in terms of consumption. Trimson Grondag 3 fucked around with this message at 14:58 on Apr 10, 2023 |
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Apr 10, 2023 14:53
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FIRE in general is a whole lot of GWM principles put together. For a lot of people, the allure of retiring early is the thing that gets them to take a look at their spending and saving habits, and for the first time think a lot longer term. Getting in the right frame of mind over either big ("do I need to buy a new truck every 3 years?") or small ("do I need to buy two $6 coffees every day?") financial decisions and thinking of them in terms of how much that money will be worth in a decade is a really good thing. Most people don't have a lot of control over how much they make, so taking a harder look at their spending can get their finances a lot healthier. FI really is the most important part of it though - from being able to afford a sudden $500 expense (which ~60% of Americans allegedly currently cant) to being able to lose your job and not starve / get kicked out of your home if you cant immediately find a replacement. There a bunch of problems, though, particularly with the RE side. 1) What doesn't get talked about often enough is that people who can reasonably retire 10+ years early are all making six figures and are able to save half their income. 2) The future has tons of uncertainties in it (climate change induced weather / water issues, AI taking over jobs and screwing with the economy, etc.) and the touted "4% rule" could very easily no longer apply. 3) Many of the loudest voices that have "retired early" are making bank off of their FIRE websites. (wasn't MMM making like $600k/yr off his site?) 4) A portion of people get obsessed with reducing their spending and end up with catholicism-level pleasure denial. ... etc. For a ton of people the RE part just isn't achievable, but at the very least often just FI + R is, which is probably a huge step up for many so they're not working at Walmart and eating cat food when they're 80. Dr. Eldarion fucked around with this message at 15:10 on Apr 10, 2023 |
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Apr 10, 2023 15:05
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I think FIRE rubs me the wrong way just because it's the kind of overly focused and reductive min-maxing disguised as insight that dominates internet discourse. Clearly, watching expenses, investing money, and trying to make as much money as possible in the short term are useful. Very insightful. I'm sure it helps some people get a more utilitarian view of money and finances, but it's talking to people with a ridiculously prescriptive view of what money should be used for. This is of course outside of the good and salient points that none of these dudes (inevitably white dudes, high income computer touching dudes) have made it yet, and a bunch of them take up landlording, which we all know is generally a plague on society. Thanks for externalizing your lifestyle, boys.
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Apr 10, 2023 15:41
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brugroffil posted:My dad could have retired a couple of years ago but chooses to keep working a fairly easy office job he enjoys because then he can keep going on his annual skiing, hiking, and kayaking trips. If he were laid off tomorrow, he and my mom would still be financially secure for a couple of decades even if they'd have to scale back on those sorts of expenditures.. I realize strictly it’s the former, but was just curious if anyone considered it the latter.
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Apr 10, 2023 15:59
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Having options is generally better than being forced into some lifestyle regardless whether that's needing to work or needing to be frugal.
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Apr 10, 2023 16:00
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blackmet posted:Like, I sort of get it... So, I have fallen once in this regard, and it was....really rough. I was in my 30s, not 40s, but I moved to a different state without a job lined up. Yes, I know, classic idiot move. It took me a few years to get my life and career back on track. The fall happens fast - it just takes a few months of being without work for the desperation to sink in which scares the 'legitimate' jobs away. Depending on where you live, temp agencies may not really be a viable option - most of them nowadays are just glorified job posting boards. I landed on Doordashing pretty quickly. The only benefit of food delivery over food service is that you are your own boss, so it was super convenient for someone who was trying to do interviews all the time. But the truth is, you probably make more with food service work because at least you're getting a guaranteed amount per hour, dashing was always a crapshoot if it'd make $8/hr vs $15/hr. Plus it was the beginning of the pandemic so I got to feel both broke and like a disposable paper bag, being exposed to potentially deadly virus that at the time had no vaccine or viable treatment plan and was filling up the morgues, all for less than minimum wage, just to get someone's chicken tendees. It did get to a point where I was staring down a McDs job, and it was incredibly hard on the ego. Just before having to do that, I got a job offer that got my career restarted. But man. Don't take for granted comfortable computer-toucher jobs. Also, we should find a way to give food service jobs more dignity so people are not absolutely terrified of them. They're good honest work someone has to do, and yet actually doing them is considered a sign of abject failure.
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Apr 10, 2023 16:03
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Cyrano4747 posted:The real crazy, unrealistic part of FIRE is that you loving never see any kind of recognition that they're not going to be in their mid-40s forever and old age comes for us all. Just zero loving awareness of the fact that expenses spike like a motherfucker in the last decade or so of life, and not everyone wants to just embrace oblivion at the end rather than spend some money for a few more years with the people they love.
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Apr 10, 2023 16:12
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I don’t know if I want to retire early, but I know I want this. https://youtu.be/xdfeXqHFmPI
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Apr 10, 2023 16:13
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i dont wanna retire early but i wanna shove in a buncha yearlong sabbaticals
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Apr 10, 2023 16:14
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StrangersInTheNight posted:Also, we should find a way to give food service jobs more dignity so people are not absolutely terrified of them. They're good honest work someone has to do, and yet actually doing them is considered a sign of abject failure. How would you do that? (this isn't a gotcha or anything - I'm just thinking that, however nobly you phrase it, food service jobs are still objectively unpleasant jobs, just like janitorial or security or all the other low-wage low-security unsocial-hours jobs that nevertheless keep society together)
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Apr 10, 2023 16:15
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so I could say that I finally figured out what this god damned cube is doing. Get well Lowtax.