My biggest insight has been a mindset change. Previously my underlying approach to life looked like: "I will do X which will enable me to do Y so that I can finally do Z." I now approach my days with "What will make me happy?" This is an experiment I'm performing. A structured life feels safe and orderly - but what if living life and letting things unfold more 'organically' is better?
It is a weird/uncomfortable shift because I can't predict what is coming. As an example, turns out I really enjoy building dams. A couple months ago I would not have been able to tell you that I'd be building a dam.
I have no idea what it is that drives my own interests or affinities, but now instead of attempting to manipulate them for whatever X, Y, or Z goal... I just roll with wherever they take me. And they always seem ready to take me somewhere.
My point is: In a life without work (in my experience) stuff will come up. Follow what arises, see where it goes. It certainly feels better.
Great insight that is worth repeating.
One of my biggest problems with FIRE discussions is how much they reinforce the idea that retirement is a prerequisite for achieving happiness. This leads a lot of FIRE-minded people to double down on jobs they hate that consume too much of their time and energy, only because they think it will better enable them to be happy later.
For the lucky few who can be early employees at unicorn startups, that might be true. For the average FIRE person working a $100-200K/year job, they might be better off scaling back to a sustainable 40hr/week job and making a point of taking vacations and doing activities in their off time. Even if that means taking a paycut and delaying their target retirement date.
You don't have to wait until FIRE to start taking vacations, doing hobbies, or working on projects. If a job is consuming so much of your life that you feel you don't have time to do anything else, it's time to reevaluate the job.
On the FIRE subreddit, anyway, they're very clear that:
1. It's the FI part that really matters. RE is just one possible choice of what to do with it.
2. It's silly to make yourself miserable until you're FI.
3. FI is not magic. It will not meet your expectations unless you've carefully thought through what it is you want to do with that freedom.
As an analogy, I'm a big believer in caloric intake determining weight for most people. Consume more calories than you use and you will tend to gain weight. Consume less and you will tend to lose weight. So to get a caloric deficit you can exercise more or eat less. But... it's 90-95% diet.
Bringing this back to FIRE, the key lesson I think is that what matters in having financial freedom is controlling costs not maximizing income. Expenses can (and often do) _easily_ rise to your level of income. People fall in these traps of thinking they need a $5m house instead of a $2m house, or a bigger boat or a third vacation home.
But if you control your expenses AND can be happy then you doubly benefit: you increase your savings (and thus the time required until you have financial independence) AND you decrease how much money you need in retirement because you're accustomed to lower costs.
So the point of FIRE is (IMHO) not to seek satisfaction through material things but rather through your approach to life and your experiences.
I've seen this with coworkers who convince themselves they need $50,000pa/child for private school, $500k+ plus to pay for each child's Ivy League education and so forth and kill themselves to achieve that. Worse, they can become bitter and unhappy as they realize how long that will take them to achieve even as the top 1% of earners.
So not only are they working super-hard for longer they're seeing their families less and bringing home this negativity and entitlement. All of that is a prison of your own making.
FIRE philosophically is about really examining what you need and what's really important.
In software right now, I think it’s not difficult to have a sustainable low-six-figure job where you take vacations and have activities and off time to enjoy them.
40hr/week is the unsustainable part.
Any suggestions?
This is not at all "average" in countries outside of the US. Here in India, for example, a $100K job is kinda like winning the lottery.
For reference, going by the exchange rate it equals somewhat close to 7.5M in local currency. Handymen and people in other labour-heavy jobs don't earn this much in their entire life, considering a 30 years of active work life. Only the top 0.01% (yes, we are an extremely populous country) people have that kind of jobs.
Going by the PPP ratio[0] of 21.99, you still need to be earning upwards of 2.2M annual, which is hardly 1% of the population, and majority of them have taken upwards of 8-10 years of work to reach there (which means 1/3rd of work life is gone).
The argument could also be made that buying stuff is cheaper in countries like ours, but that doesn't stand for _good_ quality items. As an example, the laptop you can buy for $1k in the US is far superior to what you can buy for 22k and slightly comparable but still better than what you can buy for 75k. If you are lucky enough with means to import, good luck with ~78% import taxes and duties. You don't make these purchases often, but when you do it breaks you. Things like dishwasher, vacuum cleaners, etc are so much more common in the US and almost considered a basic necessity whereas owing to cheap labour (and traditional lifestyle) we subscribe to househelp, which isn't really "cheap" or scalable and the cost of these items is high too.
All of this, to say that
> they might be better off scaling back to a sustainable 40hr/week job
is neither practical nor helps in a poor country where an "average" person is working more than half their lives just to make ends meet.
[0]: https://data.oecd.org/conversion/purchasing-power-parities-p...
Be mindful. Informed. Increase your knowledge, consider alternatives, and make decisions given an expanded list of options. (Don't just go with the default, common, mainstream way of thinking that leads to people retiring at age 65 after decades of hating their job.)
I'm a proponent of many of the concepts of FIRE, but in some ways, the attitude started way before I started reading Get Rich Slowly, and Mr. Money Mustache. I'm all about putting effort into things I really care about, while being efficient and judicious with effort being put into things I don't care about. Work is usually not at the top of my list on things I care about. So I have changed jobs frequently to find ones that pay better than the last, and are also a better fit for me. Shorter commute. Better team. More engaging work.
Along the way, spending below my means and ensuring money I do spend actually provides the result I expect (i.e. lasting happiness that a lot of spending doesn't really provide) has been instrumental in making thoughtful decisions while also accumulating that cushion that can eventually wean me off paid work as a necessity.
In other words, I don't choose jobs that suck because they pay well, so I can get to a "finish line" faster. I put all the variables into play, and make sure I'm enjoying life now while also expanding the flexibility I'll have in the future.
While we agree on a lot of things, maybe we read different "FIRE discussions" because many of them factor these things in. Compulsory work limits your options, and even more so, spending all your money or beyond your means limits your options indefinitely. That doesn't mean retirement creates happiness, or is a prerequisite for a good life, but getting beyond that work requirement can certainly give you a lot more freedom in how you choose to use your time.
Often, happiness is simply "what addresses the imbalances in my life right now?"
Today, you're probably busy working a 9-5 (or longer). You spend much of your time overwhelmed by the complexity of your job, delaying gratification and doing things you don't want to do. You're stuck inside all day and working through the nicest months of the year.
In that context, of course all you want to do is sit outside at a beach, play some leisurely videogames, and eat good meals. But that's because your life right now has a distinct absence of downtime, nature, and leisure.
When you are retired, the entire context is different and thus what makes you happy will shift too. Once you no longer have a job, you'll likely find videogames boring and understimulating. When you start taking a walk every day in the woods, you might not crave moving to Hawaii quite as much. And when you have the time to cook and savor meals every evening, eating out loses some of its lustre.
Whenever the situation of your life changes, expect your happiness goals to shift too.
It doesn't take very long at all for the honeymoon to be over.
So what exactly was making you happy there, when you could only eat that meal occasionally in that restaurant? Was it really the food?
It doesn't have to be a very high one though.
I quit my job and spent 2 years driving from Alaska to Argentina. I poked lava with a stick, paddled with icebergs, climbed a 20,000ft active volcano, surfed, etc. etc.
It cost $1,200 per month for absolutely every expense [1]
Before the trip I was earning $48k CAD (about $38k USD).. I just didn't spend much.
Later on I quit my job and spent three years driving all the way around Africa (35 countries around the perimeter, 54,000miles). I rode a camel and camped in the Sahara, I carried Chimpanzees, saw gorillas, petted a cheetah, saw tens of thousands of elephants in the wild, heard to lions roaring while sitting around the campfire, surfed, hiked, ate street food with friendly locals, etc. etc.
That trip cost about $1,650 per month for absolutely all expenses. [2]
Before that trip I was earning $72k CAD (about $57k USD). Again, I just tried hard to save and not spend much money while going to work for years)
I've met plenty of people that have driven their own vehicle to 100+ countries over a ~decade for about $1,500 a month. It doesn't have to be expensive.
Now I do this "for a living". I keep my expenses low and have adventures around the world. I just flew to Australia, and I'm preparing now to spend about 18 months driving all over to all the wild and remote corners I've heard about but have never seen.
I have kids now and when they are old enough to move out, I’ll quit my job (programmer, and I love it) and get back out there because “The mountains are calling and I must go”
Lately I'm finding joy in all sorts of pursuits that I had never thought about. A willingness to try new things was necessary.
So yeah. I'm just sitting at home, playing video games and ordering takeouts. Pricetag is not that high.
And that's the current best answer to "What makes me happy?"
There was a Catch-22 for me, in that "working" at any organization for any normal sized paycheck just seemed ridiculous if it didn't 100% hit on all the "passion" buttons. And honestly, no organization will be free of BS that makes work work. So making that tradeoff became REALLY hard.
So I decided that if I was going to work, I should just make a ton of money. At least the bank account fills while I search for the next thing.
There is a pile of merge requests I need to review when I get time. And the reason I want to review X, Y, and Z is because I personally desire to see improvements X, Y, and Z to the niche FOSS software I maintain.
Funny thing is, we are on a forum named "Hacker News" and I'd speculate that I'm the outlier and yours is the common case.
The most absurd part of it all is how little happiness I got from all that money. Meaning and purpose are things you have to make up. If you can find happiness in a day job, in some ways you're better off than the aimless millionaire.
I'm lucky that I have a huge passion in music and have been focusing more on that lately. It's definitely weird for me to work on something without a direct financial incentive. Yet there are many people in the world, rich or poor, living for purposes outside money.
I haven't really had too many people to talk about this with. But it feels good to share a bit. DMs open to those in similar boats
It was almost as if I didn’t know myself, and in retrospect I suppose that was true.
After several years I’ve started working again but in my own way (roci.dev). I’m a lot better at predicting what activities will feel good, and managing my time so that end of day/week I feel deeply good about how it was spent.
Strongly recommend ^ approach of “rolling with it” for several years and trying not to pass judgement with you conscious mind on where your unconscious is taking you.
Best of luck getting to know yourself.
In my working life, I've only ever taken about a month off at a time, but every time I've taken a longer break like that, I end up ultimately feeling dissatisfied with myself. I go into it with what a I think is a reasonable list of chores/projects that I want to make progress on, but ended up just puttering around— paradoxically, I get a lot more done when I have short bursts of time and have to force myself to bite off a manageable chunk and actually see it through.
I've heard people argue that a few weeks just isn't long enough to trigger productive restlessness, and that's why a sabbatical is more like 6-12 months. But this is what I worry about for myself if I were ever in a position to retire young.
In your second paragraph you mention trying to be as productive as possible during your time off. Seems like you'd be setting yourself up for disappointment there. If you instead approach that time off with 'whatever happens, happens' approach you'll be more forgiving of yourself and may actually be able to relax so you can be more productive later.
The theory I'm exploring is that happiness is healthy. By living happily, perhaps I am repairing whatever damage I did when I was so intensely on the career grind (it was rewarding but, ultimately unhealthy in a burnout way). And, by doing that repair, perhaps I'll be better suited to be even more productive.
You can then pick up new hobbies, or just return to old hobbies with renewed enthusiasm. You can do things that matter even if they're of no economic interest. You can hone skills that aren't career-related.
I think that it also requires a shift in values.
That freedom is truly priceless.
I only wish I too were 2nd at a unicorn startup ;)
I've been retired 4 years now. I wrote one novel ("Inventing the Future", on sale at Amazon!) and finished the first draft of another. But I didn't have any plan for this when I retired. I just started doing it and it felt right.
For most people that really isn't a viable option currently.
I end up doing a bit of everything. I garden, cook, play in the garage, ride my motorcycle, go camping etc. Every once in a while, something grabs me and I'm free to pursue it.
A few years ago, I joked that the American dream sucks, and that the Victorian dream is where it's at. I want to have enough free time to be a gentleman scientist, join societies and make art. Now I realise it's not that silly.
Money to a certain point essentially buys the ability to be free and happy, and that’s why most people are “in the grind” so-to-speak. Being able to even think about making the mindset shift you describe is impossible for most people in the country let alone the world.
The lifestyle you describe is out of reach for the median American making $40-60k a year with a modest amount of credit card debt and kids to feed.
I have to wonder how you pay for your shelter, food, and health insurance? Is that from your unicorn startup money, or is that from your income from building dams?
For most Americans, quitting their corporate job means spending something like 2-4x more for healthcare. It means exhausting a very short financial runway.
Most Americans are one or two serious medical emergencies away from full blown bankruptcy.
That’s the irony here: folks advocating for exotic life experiences like this don’t seem to realize that the bulk of the world isn’t living life in a materialistic and career-focused way by choice. We’ve all just got bills to pay and want to be able to afford to go to the doctor or get our kids education or buy gas to get to Grandma’s house.
If you throw me a modest $5 million lump sum I’ll join you on your shift in mindset. But until then, sorry, I’ve got to get back to work.
Personally, I reduced my target to a mere fraction of the $5 million you mentioned.
Finally, I completely agree that this is privilege, but without any negative judgement therein. Privilege is a thing we should be trying to give to more and more people.
Ah, of course. Poor unfortunate Americans. How could you possibly feed your children on just $40k a year. No doubt that explains the emaciated appearance of the average American child.
> A comment like this is privilege in a nutshell.
Copy that out on the blackboard 100 times until the lesson sinks in.
Things are expensive. Happiness of your wife and kids are even more expensive.
Sorry to go off on a tangent, but this really has me wondering. How big of a dam are we talking here? Is it actually legal to build a private dam?
Touching anything on it required permits from multiple agencies at each of the above.
Be careful doing ANYTHING with water, as that is regulated by feds, states, and ofen localities. Wetland regulations are extremely restrictive. And wetlands are often not wet! (Depending on where you live, state and local often try to "out green" each other by layering on even more restrictive regulations.)
Not likely. Unless it is a very small stream.
They're rich.
> Of course, some lucky people already know exactly what they’re retiring to, answers firmly in hand.
> Examples:
> It’s been a lifelong dream of mine to quit my current career and take something lower paying and more meaningful: teaching or contributing to a non-profit.
> I’m going to do a lot of parenting. My kids can easily eat 14 hours a day, every day.
The _second_ example here already calls out that it's going to be common to do parenting 14 hours a day if people retire early. For someone who has kids, it's pretty unlikely to be able to roll with life and see what comes up. It just isn't possible, with or without a job, being financially independent or not. And whether we like it or not, a large percentage of the population above 40 do have kids.
This is purely my opinion, but I'm actually not sure that, for a child past 2 years old or so, if it's a good idea for a parent to be with their child 24/7. I think there's a lot of value in learning social interactions with other children in a daycare or preschool. I did this exact thing for 3 years and am transitioning the child to preschool at 3 years old, and it has been difficult.
On top of it all, let's say your kids are school age, somewhere between 3 to 16. Let's say they go to school during the day, and you have free time during the day. There is another discussion to be had about your kids' mentality if they grow up with parents who don't need to work. Sure, maybe in the near future, in this next generation, we'll enter a society where work is unnecessary and everyone lives off of UBI, and maybe the discussion is moot. But assuming that won't be the case, would you want your children to grow up with the impression that when they grow up into adults there's no need to do any productive work, or have parents as role models who contribute meaningfully to society?
Maybe I haven't thought it through, maybe I'm just not smart enough. I'm at a point in life where I could feasibly "lean FIRE" if I really want to, but for the sake of my child I'd rather continue to work. Which then leads to answering this post, my FI and retirement almost isn't about me, it's about my child/children. Or maybe that just means I'm that guy who said "I'm going to do a lot of parenting" then.
By meaningful, I mean to someone other your yourself or your extended self (family). Our purpose is to serve others, not ourselves.
I think people who misunderstand the FIRE movement think that early retirees don't want to do meaningful work, like volunteering, painting, making music, etc. I think that is the point of FIRE - to be able to do the most meaningful things you can think of.
I took a 3-year early retirement and didn't do anything for anyone but myself and loved every minute of it. I watched TV, went to the movies, read books, went to the gym, rode my bicycle, and that was it. Had no need for anything else.
If I could do that without having a job, I'd happily do it for the rest of my life with no problems.
For example, I really want to open my own cidery. But doing so would be such a massive paycut that it wouldn't be worth pursuing right now, even though it's ultimately what I want to do.
So, I'm software engineering until I make enough to FIRE, after which I can pursue that dream.
See, your life philosophy isn't universal.
Only if you take the narrowest view of what FIRE is. There's a reason the largest subreddit for it is called r/financialindependence. It's not about retiring as early as possible. It's not having to work to survive. It's choosing to work on things which are intrinsically meaningful, as much or as little as you like. I don't think anyone in the FIRE movement would tell you it's wise to retire to a beach and sip mojitos all day.
The "freedom" and "F the man" movements (crypto, 4HWW, FIRE, MLM, Kiyosaki, etc.) all seem to share a similar narrative: Spend your most productive years in retirement while feeding off from other's labor - a somehow irresponsible worldview.
The beauty is that one human can spend 70 years meditating and find purpose in that and another human can build a rocket ship and go to space and find purpose in that...and then you have everything in between and outside!
Meaningful WORK? Not necessarily.
I am also glad that the author now opens the door for getting married and even having a kid.
Work, spouse, kids, the traditional way of life have been explored and chosen by human being for at least thousands of years. The psychological / economic needs for living with a family do not go away just because you "decide" you don't need them. There are people live alone, but most of them are not happy, for most of the time.
When you are young, you may like to wonder why do I have to live a life like my parents? When you get older, you will slowly or quickly realize that you are just a regular human being like everybody else.
Vast majority of people did not “choose” all that throughout human history. There was zero alternative. They had to work to survive. If you want to make your argument you should only look at those who were born rich enough to not have to work.
The earlier the better, one of the best revelation that I had is that 'nobody actually cares about me that much'. So much of the peer/social pressure are self inflicted.
the focus of former for most everyone was just to survive; you worked (probably sustenance farming) to survive, you married for resources, you had children to help with work, etc.
modern work and family is vastly different because work isn't solely motivated by the need for survival, many people today are privileged enough to think about other motivating factors like meaning, prestige, and satisfaction. only now do people had the ability to question things like how they structure relations and relationships, and find what works for them
I think trying to extrapolate in the way you are is flawed
Here are their discussions: https://livingafi.com/post-fire-relationship-disconnect/
TL;DR: He has to go back to work due to medical issues, and his relationship didn't work out. But he's still got his chin up and it's great.
> [article author's wife] Not exactly. I wanted to have kids with you and work and be like everyone else. Live a normal life. I’m tired of being weird. And I don’t want to go back to work if you aren’t. That’s weird too. You wouldn’t even be a stay-at-home-dad. You’d be nothing.
> [article author] And that was it. That the second big ticket problem, critical issue #2. She couldn’t get her head around the idea that we were different.
I don't buy his analysis. I don't think she wanted to do those things because others were doing them. I think she wanted to have kids and a classic family and happened to point out, oh, by the way, other people do those things too. Maybe it's easier to think that your former partner is shallow and busy comparing herself to others, rather than admit that the desire to start a family is a normal and genetically ingrained emotion.
Ironically, his new partner has told him she's interested in having kids and they're both working. I know, it's easy to claim to understand from an armchair, and I'm not saying I've necessarily got this right, but it's definitely interesting to consider.
I can relate to the anxiety and ennui they experienced in 2018. Something good about being in the rat race is that even during bad days you don't feel adrift or wasteful. During the first couple of months after I quit working, and after moving abroad, I hadn't yet enrolled in full-time language classes. At first it was easy to enjoy myself meeting new people, going rock climbing, traveling a bit, going on dates, etc. But after a while, I started noticing that if I woke up at 11am and didn't have "something to do," i.e. a plan, I started feeling a very strong sense of unease, something like a very mild sense of panic or alarm. Like here I am with no work to eat up my day, plenty of money, nothing but free time. If I wake up on the wrong side of the bed, or just don't feel like I'm enjoying myself, I am utterly wasting my precious time on Earth. That's a pretty dark chasm lurking just beneath the surface. If I'm having a bad day but can still pour a cup of coffee and go to work, I'm at least banking up money for some future day that I can enjoy it.
I feel like he was a little unfair in how he characterized his partner's experience of that ennui, although I don't blame him for feeling bitter after an affair. I've never wanted to keep up with the Joneses or spend my life jockeying for status, but I still don't think I'd feel okay permanently quitting work this young. There's more existential dread in being immediately responsible for enjoying every single day to the fullest than I'm ready to face.
Work serves as a default purpose for lots of people. Family and children are a pretty good built-in biological one.
Learning things, building a company, making things can all serve that need. Working on big unsolved problems can too.
I think most people feel uneasy and unhappy if they're not part of a community doing something they think is valuable. A lot of religion serves this purpose for people (though I personally find religion to be a net negative).
Finding different things that motivate you and are worth dedicating your life (or some subset of your life) to work on is hard, but I think knowing that it's worth trying to find something is the first step.
True financial independence is a way to make the search more possible without anxiety of financial ruin, but it doesn't remove the non-money related anxieties and it doesn't fix all the other sexual selection incentives that remain.
I also agree with your assessment of his partner. Keeping up with the Joneses sounds shallow at first, but I think it belies the true human desire to be respected by others. Maybe his partner felt like they weren't "accomplishing much" in life, which doesn't mean a 9-5 per se or an annual income $ per se, but that accomplishments were the best way to get respected by other people.
We're social creatures, so I don't think it's wrong to seek social validation by others. I think when one is single and looking for a partner, what other people think does matter a lot. I think if the author was still committed to not working, finding a partner would be much harder.
If we actually listen to the original author instead of looking for confirmation of our own worldviews, the author tells a different story. He says, (this is a copy-paste quote): "The initial plan itself was fine." His original plan wasn't unrealistic, at least not any more unrealistic than any more traditional life plans--it simply fell prey to life events which would cause almost any plan to fail. His partner left him for another man and he was diagnosed with a serious medical issue.
And critically, while the author's plan has changed, the goals still haven't. Not working is still the goal.
I've seen the plan that's common on Hacker News fail too. Lots of startups fail, and even if your startup succeeds that doesn't mean you're satisfied. The best case scenario has nothing to do with economics: it's coming to peace with yourself, finding meaningful relationships, and feeling a sense of purpose and belonging. I won't write off the possibility of finding those things in a startup or a career, but in my life I've seen it far less than the self-congratulatory posts here would lead you to believe.
Both of those events are very common – especially medical issues. Once you're getting old, developing a "serious medical issue" is more common than not! Any plan which assumes that you'll neither break up with your partner nor develop medical issues for the rest of your life is a plan destined to fail.
Though maybe this is colored by the relevation that follows shortly thereafter. To me it shows an unwillingness to think critically about this. It sounds like his partner communicated with him changes she wanted to make (go back to work and not live like college students) and he just ignored them because he thought they were stupid.
My take away from the post is that they fundamentally felt 2 different ways about it. The author did not feel the stuff his SO felt. But she was on board with retiring on “lean fire” so I doubt she predicted this about herself either.
I read this post a few weeks ago, so maybe I’m remembering wrong, but I thought the author was perfectly open to SO returning to work, but she wasn’t sure in the middle of all this if she really wanted to do that? I don’t think it’s the author’s responsibility, and I don’t think he thought it was his responsibility, to decide for his spouse if she worked or not, that was up to her to decide.
One thing that I missed the first time this article got posted is that he and his (ex)wife had separate finances.
He had an income of 30k/year, she presumably had a similar income.
Living on 60k/year seems like a whole different ballgame than 30k/year.
I can relate to his outlook. I hope he was more diplomatic during their discussions about this, but now that it's after the fact, we are reading his blunt opinions on the matter. It's hard to know if he is "right" and she really was influenced by status-driven thinking via Instagram, or if he was just being hard-headed. Either or both are plausible to me.
> And she wasn’t trying that hard anyway, because she had acquired, somehow, New Life Dreams, which had to do with Conspicuous Consumption and Keeping Up and being Visibly Awesome — dreams which are at odds with my own.
The desire to be seen and take part in society is fundamentally human. Yes, you can overdo it, but you can also underdo it. There is nothing wrong with going to nice restaurants, posting about it, discussing it with your friends, etc.
My guess is that they simply stopped having a social life with their peers (he hinted at such). That sounds horrible to me.
There is a reason that retirement communities exist. Just because you retire, that doesn't mean you exit from community.
It can come out in different ways, but I suspect it's not that divorced from the above. It's not very attractive to be unemployed and not very ambitious. Maybe the introspection of why is missing, but I suspect that's the reason.
That is so smug and self-important. He clearly has social needs, he just feels them differently. And also, not everyone who wants to work and have wealth is just doing it to keep up with others.
I like having some wealth because it makes a lot of things easier. I like the stuff I buy, for myself, for its intrinsic value. A lot of things I spend money on I never even show anyone else. I don't post on social media or go on social media, but I still like a nice house and some toys.
The goal of retirement is to have enough that you will be able to avoid working even if some things go wrong. Otherwise you're not ready to retire.
2021: life is perfect with a new perfect partner who's never going to leave me unlike my previous perfect partner
2023: any guesses?
People have a different balance of either, so some are happy with just living while others need to do something, anything beyond the basics.
Neither is wrong from a personal point of view - if it makes you happy/fulfilled, that's it.
From a societal perspective those whose primitive brain has more control are seen as useless, however.
This is amazing, and so incredibly and refreshingly honest. This helps to repair some of the damage that FIRE bloggers have done to my professional motivation. I have been feeling the isolation during COVID and his description of the isolation than comes from hitting the career off switch really hits home. I have some thinking to do.
It’s actually a common failure point of FIRE post-mittens that didn’t work out. Especially with couples, where it’s more likely that at least one person will realize that maybe jobs, and the sense of purpose and social life that comes with them, aren’t so bad.
The other big issue is that people underestimate their spending in a post-work FIRE lifestyle. It’s tempting to subtract out costs like commuting and work clothes and assume your costs will go down. In practice, if you plan on traveling and spending more time on hobbies your costs are likely to go up.
I understand the bordem argument but I think that sort of boredom is socially conditioned on us. During my time at university I worked almost constantly. I remember after graduating and getting a job only working 8-hours a day, I suddenly found myself with excess fee time I didn't know what to do with. I distinctively remember my first day returning from work, that I got home and was lost: what do I want to do (not what do I need to do or should do)? I have no papers or assignments due tomorrow. No major project efforts weeks behind I'm trying to catch up on, no looming deadlines, no new tech I need to learn to be ready for the next job, etc.
I came to the realization that I was bored and didn't know what to do because I was conditioned to be constantly busy working, largely for other people and not myself --from my parents, church, schooling, society, and so on. A goal can be for yourself but often the processes to attain said goals are for other people. I chose to do certain aspects because they were interesting but it was more so because I needed to, had to or should do to get to my goal.
I believe most people don't need work to find value in life, they need the time to discover what it is they value, the basic resources to pursue it, and ability to live decently while doing it. Unfortunately, we have an economic system that doesn't really allow for that. There is some choice in our economic system but for many, that choice is an illusion or at best, heavily constrained.
I believe we need to move away from this work tied to life value concept, but I believe too many people currently rely on exploiting this concept to have others create value for themselves while constantly selling the idea of work giving purpose in life so they can pursue their goals without working. The issue isn't that work exists and is needed to maintain certain structure to society, it's more that it's used as shackles on many.
It’s not that simple. I felt the same way before I crossed the FIRE threshold and took some time off (mini-FIRE, I guess).
It turns out, most of the things I had been putting off weren’t as time consuming as I thought. I found myself regretting not doing many of them sooner, such as putting a few hours in on weekdays and weekends or scheduling a 1-week vacation to make a trip happen.
It’s hard to truly understand until you’ve crossed the threshold and tried it, but there’s a certain aspect of FIRE discussions that divides life too much into pre-retirement and post-retirement activities in a way that isn’t always necessary. In retrospect, there was little stopping me from doing most of the things I wanted to do while I was working, and plenty of people do manage to accomplish a balance of work and other things just fine.
I’m not alone in this. Even the author of this blog later returned to work after his interest in his writing hobby slowed to a crawl, his friendships started dwindling, and his relationship came to an end at least in part due to the FIRE lifestyle: https://livingafi.com/2021/03/17/the-2021-early-retirement-u...
Being in tech, I've had the privilege to be able to quit my job every few years and take extended sabbaticals. Without fail those breaks have been the best times of my life. Even when I just spent the time "doing nothing" from the point of view of an outsider - not taking up a new hobby, not working on any personal projects, not operating a side-hustle, just sitting around watching the world go by... it was fine. It was better than fine - it was great. It seems bizarre to me that anyone would prefer structured labor to that kind of freedom, but it turns out some people do.
I just wish we had a society that would allow for both types of people to have the life they want.
There are so many things I like to do or would love to do if I didn’t ha RTP work, but I doubt it would be maintainable in the sort of withdraws I see early FIRE people talk about taking. I often have problems figuring out how to afford my hobbies while working.
However, I would say that some things on the list turn out to be false. That is, I like the idea of doing them, but not enough to actually do it. So do account for some of your post FIRE ideas turning out to be just daydreams you aren't actually committed to.
Obviously not everyone has problems filling their time. But for most people it's difficult to imagine what it'd take to fill years worth of free time, when they've never experienced anything close to having to do that.
I’ve saved enough to have multiple year breaks in my career and not once was I at a loss for something to do. Quite the opposite, it was apparent exactly how much of my life was being wasted on goals I found uninteresting (at best), all in the name of not starving to death or living on the street.
I was unemployed for six months during the pandemic. Boy did I fail to be bored! I overhauled my garage, building a French cleat system and organizing all of my tools. I built a movie/reading nook for my spouse, with a sliding bookshelf door. I caught up on cutting and splitting firewood for winter. I played board games, cooked, baked, rode bike almost every day, sat in the cool breeze overlooking nature, sat by the fire pit and boy, was I not bored.
I also spent a lot less on clothes and commuting...
Your post looks a lot like what I did along side a 40 hour per week job before I reached FIRE. Sure, I couldn’t do it as quickly but it’s not as though having a job is mutually exclusive with riding a bike every day or overhauling the garage on weekends.
One of the biggest things I learned post-FIRE was that doing the things I enjoy wasn’t as difficult as I had come to think while I was employed. There’s something about FIRE blogs that makes it easy to think of activities as pre-FIRE (work) and post-FIRE (fun).
Instead, I’d rather work on balance. Find jobs where 40 hours per week is average and I don’t have to waste time on commuting. Then make time in the evenings and weekends to do things I enjoy.
People are different, I suppose. Perhaps not in FIRE circles but this is certainly discussed regarding 'normal' retirement, and I don't feel the same way at all. I'm in my twenties, and honestly think I could fill the rest of my life more than once with non-work. Especially if I'm allowed to get paid for doing what I consider to be hobbies rather than work as part of that. At least one of those lifetimes could just be reading!
Do you really find yourself reaching the end of a weekend and thinking Oh thank God I have work tomorrow, I'm so bored?
The comment above you is channeling the common need to say anything, no matter what it is, in response to an attack on tradition. This is why people in Oregon hear about a proposal to make pumping your own gas legal and respond "but what if somebody doesn't know how?", as if it were difficult to know what would happen in that case.
This is a frequent misunderstanding about early 'retirement'. It's not about not working at all. It's about not working for a living. Very important distinction. If tomorrow I'd acquire 'fuck you' money and not have to work, I will quit my job and finally start the book I've been planning for a while now, travel to my home country and build my genealogical tree, volunteer some of my time to the OCCRP or ACLU, etc.. It's not about not working. It's about working on the stuff I really do want to work on, without the threat of scarcity if I don't 'increase shareholder value'.
At first, I'd do a lot more of my hobbies, but then I'd probably move into finally making video games. I'd finally have the time to just sit and play with it. Right now, I don't feel like I have that kind of time, and getting more than 3 hours in a row is hard on weekends, and impossible on week days.
It definitely isn't about not-working. It's about working on what I want to.
I have also realised that there's no need to wait to write a book. I've procrastinated for many years and have finally got my act together and I'm writing one.
Wouldn't it be nice if you could trade pay or hours for avoiding arseache like you can negotiate a salary? Like, "I'll take a 5% salary cut but I'll not be required to attend certain meetings" or "I'll work an extra x hours a week for free but I'll never have touch an Atlassian product ever again".
I ask because I see many people saying "couldn't pull the trigger" for a variety of reasons, and while I don't think I would have that issue, those people have also said that they didn't think they'd have that issue.
Not if you have a hobby (or hobbies) or have an interest in working in art or science or math or with computers… (Did I just say “working”?)
Interesting. Most of discussions I've seen explicitly deal with this, it's probably no2 topic (first being status updates).
And the advice given usually boils down to "don't run away from work, run TOWARDS something", which is perfectly sensible.
However I also believe that fire is a symptom and not a solution. It seems to be mostly popular in countries with little or non existent pension security.
In the US, it's also largely a fantasy thanks to our uniquely-shitty healthcare system, unless you're actually rich. Most of the frugal-FIRE schemes will fall apart as soon as someone in your family gets sick.
Some of us are just naturally full of panic, others can jump into the mist and be OK with that.
EDIT: Added this scene from Indiana Jones (#3) that has stuck with me my whole life (and I'm an athiest!):
He posted a follow-up blog post years later. Sadly, it didn't work out for him. He had to return to work.
I agree with your general sentiment: Some of these extreme early retirement stories are really pushing the limits reasonable amounts of money to retire with. I don't think it's reasonable for people in their 30s or even 20s to look at their finances and assume their spending will stay constant for the next 6 decades of their lives.
Once I FI'ed, then I can take whatever job I want based on fun or personal aspiration.
Its not the lifestyle for everyone though, I agree. Though, I do think its prudent for younger people to plan _as if_ they might need to retire early, since the market may decide that they are no longer needed or desirable as workers. Perhaps especially so for tech workers, who already face ageism-based discrimination.
And yes, I think any American should rightfully be terrified of being bankrupted by medical bills. But the world is a big place and a lot of it is much safer than the US.
FYI: Retirement accounts are protected from medical bills in many states, even without filing bankruptcy. This varies, and the amount protected, by state. The feds allow one million dollars in an ira to be protected from medical bills if declaring bankruptcy. [0]
[0] https://pocketsense.com/can-ira-pay-medical-bills-7887792.ht...
TL;DR: Start investing as soon as you can, and by "investing" I mean the Warren Buffet way on the diversified mutual fund grid (cap vs valuation), and not this memestock/crypto B.S.
Finding passions outside of work and approaching ideas as a child would is the simplest way to phrase the solution. As a child everything is new and exciting, it's easy to entertain yourself (quite cheaply too), there is less aversion to doing new things than someone who has spent decades being conditioned via a familiar and habitual routine.
If it's easy to envision yourself without work (or a passionate constructive hobby like art or writing), you're probably not a very interesting person.
One thing I think the FIRE folks can miss is the sense of worth, improvement in personal power and confidence that comes from struggling. Struggling could be making things, building a business, learning job skills, writing a novel, whatever. However, 5 years of just 'I checked my investments, I'm in within 1% of nominal, I guess I should feel no stress right now!' shouldn't be the end; many people interested in this lifestyle seem to feel like they have arrived when they can do that. As a launch point, it has its benefits. But to my mind, it shouldn't ever be thought of as a goal in itself.
I read the follow up post as a sort of tacit admission that the FIRE lifestyle can lead to this huge gap in personal development, and often during really key years for relationship and brain development, 30s and 40s are super prime years for learning and applying learning. It seems like a terrible waste to spend it sitting on one's metaphorical porch, sipping tea.
It takes him a year and a half to realize that maybe goals and purpose matter: "without my former partner, I became depressed and anxious and again struggled with one of the great questions that terrorizes us all: Purpose."
To be fair, he also acknowledges that "money doesn’t make you happy. People do. Connections and relationships do. Purpose helps, too." Those are all true. But going so far as to make someone else "the most important cog" is problematic, as the author had a chance to learn. Making someone else responsible for your personal happiness puts an enormous amount of pressure on them, and infidelity is a predictable (though morally wrong) reaction to a relationship of dependency.
The author still doesn't "get it" looking back: his "one regret" is that he "didn’t take [his] partner’s initial unhappiness more seriously." But he describes how seriously he did take it: "I encouraged her to explore her own life and find activities and goals that would help her feel better. I suggested therapy and offered to go with her. I was clear that if she wanted to go back to work I was eager to support her in this. I wanted her to do anything that might help."
He concludes: "my suggestions and support weren’t enough — I never could figure out what she wanted or how I could help." But this is just more of the same problematic dynamic re: boundaries. It wasn't his job to fix his partner or to make her happy any more than it's fair to make the other person responsible for his own happiness.
On the other hand, he's currently "not so much worried about a life without work as I am a life without meaning or purpose or love" and making those "exist in harmony, and without a ton of financial stress." And that's about all any of us can hope for. I hope he stays focused on finding meaning (outside having a particular person feel positively about him!) for the long haul.
One of the things that I didn't expect (but that this article and some other sources hint at) is that I would fall into a trap of consuming a lot of alcohol. I recognized my problem and dealt with it. Now almost every day is alcohol-free, and I only drink when with other people who are also drinking. (For anyone struggling with a drinking problem, I urge you to try something called the Sinclair Method, which involves taking naltrexone or nalmefene. [1][2])
I don't really have much of a fixed address and spend 95% of my time abroad. I usually like to stay in a place for several months or more at a time. This sometimes involves long-term visas. Throwing money at immigration attorneys will solve a lot of those kinds of problems. Many countries have visa programs for self-employed or self-sufficient people. If not, you can always enroll in a language program and get a student visa to study the language of your host country.
I also spend several months a year just traveling around to new places and visiting old friends.
I enjoy my life. Sometimes at moments I miss my job in Silicon Valley. Then I realize how much grief and pressure it was, and I'm thankful for the life I have.
At this article's author states: you have to know what you are going to fill your life with once you leave the working world. If you don't fill it with something positive, negative things will fill in.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Cure-Alcoholism-Medically-Eliminate-A... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EghiY_s2ts
1) People derive a lot of meaning from their interactions with other people.
2) For most people (at least, most people reading blogs like this) today, that meaning comes from employment, from the exchange of time for money in the service of others.
But pre-television, and in many parts of the world still today, people gather socially for many reasons other than the strict definition of work above.
The rat in the race doesn't know what to do when the race is over, because all the other rats are still in the race, and he's never been outside before.
The list in this post is about how to make the outside world look like the race you just left: Do things! Find people to do them with! Get out of your comfort zone!
These are mechanisms for people without strong social and community ties to fill their time.
I would encourage anyone in this situation to consider what aspects of their prior race-like lives they would like to lose first, and to find communities they would like to belong to. Some of those many be activity-oriented, and there's nothing wrong with that, but they don't have to be interesting activities.
Enlightening. Thank you.
work - noun - activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result.
The flip side to this is, as a society, we should probably start paying for all the unpaid societal work people do for free. IMO this is the best argument for something like UBI.
My understanding is that it isn't captured by most standard economic measures, like GDP.
But anyway, an interesting thing happened. I am in talks to buy a small cheap piece of land that needs a lot of work. And suddenly I had all these ideas of what I could do there once I clean it up. Not only gardening again, but hobbies, learning new things etc. Basically all the things I want to do now, of which I just occasionally get to some of them, but am otherwise to drained to really get to it. So it's not about not working, it's not about not doing anything, I think I would die if it was like that. It's about doing something meaningful or at least something I don't feel is 60% BS.
How many of you really have a problem answering that? Am I the only lucky one who's got a gazillion projects I want to finish all at once???
> If you are one of these people, congratulations. You’ve already got the answers you need. Although you may be retiring FROM something, you’re also very clear on what you’re retiring TO. You can stop reading right now.
What I really learned is that my digestion problems and benign heart rhythm issues got a lot better during this period. I also just enjoyed parking my car in various locations within 20-40 minutes of my home and just reading, or studying, or listening to music.
I'm curious to know what practices pushed you over the edge.
I sometimes struggle to keep emotional distance from work, especially when I feel that others are making our collective effort less effective. I have to remind myself sometimes that I don't actually need to care. At the same time, I wonder if I would be happier starting my own thing, and calling the shots. Of course, then I would have to care.
Hey, I have these, and don't know anyone else who does. Could you tell me more? Email is in my profile, if you prefer.
> Let’s talk a bit about the idea of loss. Having a sense of loss is not restricted to things that you like or love.
I don't feel that much yet, but intuitively I see how it might creep up in the coming months.
> When most people ask you what you’re going to do with your free time, they typically see you sitting at home, alone, in an empty space.
Personally, I absolutely do not have that problem and is probably why I knew I could take the leap. There is SO much that I want to do and work on, I don't even think a year is enough time.
> folks who cruise into post-employment life with a firm vision of how things are going to look tend to do better.
One thing that's helping me a lot is that I pick a focus for each week. Last week I worked on my grandpa's autobiography (he told me stories and I turned it into a coherent chronological text and I'm now in the process of making a website out of all the stories, supplemented with historical photos). One week is a decent amount of time to make progress and then by the end of the week I start to get bored and get to transition to something else which keeps it exciting and fun. I also lined up a long list of goals before the sabbatical started.
> My favorite method was created by Ernie Zelinski, author of several early-retirement lifestyle books.
I'm not seeing anything on this author. Does anyone have a link to his most popular work?
> We sort of know what we want to do, but when given a full day with no obligations, it’s common for us to fritter hours away.
So far, this is not as much of a problem for me as I expected. It's not hard to focus on things that are interesting to me. I'm actually more aware of wasteful habits (Instagram, HN) because I know that I only have a year to really do all this sabbatical stuff.
The TL;DR is that it was great for the first few years. He started diving deep into his writing passion and notes that he was very happy. Later, his writing hobby slowed and his partner became increasingly dissatisfied with their retirement lifestyle. Sadly, he talks about slowly losing friendships, losing interest in his writing, and eventually losing his marriage over FIRE-related lifestyle choices. I'm sorry it didn't work out for him, but it's an interesting contrast to this prior post about how he imagined his FIRE lifestyle.
1. You defer consumption today to instead spend it tomorrow. If you create $100K in value in a year, but only spend $50K of it, shouldn't you be able to instead spend most of that $50K in the future? Our whole retirement system is predicated on this.
2. If you take some of the wealth produced today, and instead of immediately consuming it, you "invest" it in something that enables more wealth produced tomorrow than otherwise would have been possible, you should be rewarded with some of that extra wealth produced.
3. Time value of money. Loaning your money or investing it carries a risk. If there is some chance that you may not get it all back, then there must be a premium charged to whomever wants to use your wealth today. Otherwise, you might as well spend it all as soon as you receive it.
From the point of job creation, this does make more jobs, but I think there's a strong argument to be made for living a lower-impact life that lets you live on your savings after a shorter career.
And as for return on investments, are you suggesting that investing in the stock market is immoral? I'm not sure I follow your logic about how buying shares in a company and benefitting from dividends is immoral, or maybe you had something else in mind.
That's me. I'm working for free, and happier n' a pig in poop.
That sounds completely alien to my experience. I go on vacation around 2 months a year. I work only the stipulated hours. And I have a great job, with great conditions, working with amazing people, learning things and having fun.
This kind of mindset and approach to life gives me a peace of mind that allows me to have meaningful discussions, to mediate in disagreements and to not be too invested so I can easily adapt to new circumstances. Working "harder" just creates a tunnel vision, maybe is ok if your job is to sit in a chair and do nothing. But for any job that requires mind or body to be in shape, you need vacations and take it easy to perform at top capacity.
On the other side if it really as you say and everything is about competition, then investing so much in just your job is going to make you lose at the rest of non-work competitions in live. But, I do not think that this is true.
Why should one care about helping one "society" at the expense of another?
> there are highly motivated people elsewhere who will gladly put in effort to take your place
If I already have enough to be happy they're welcome to do so.
Work, if executed correctly, has a purpose: personal development. It is hard to fulfill this endeavor by spending your most productive years in retirement.
The "freedom" and "F the man" movements (crypto, 4HWW, FIRE, MLM, Kiyosaki, etc.) are all missing this essential ingredient of the human experience.
> "Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) Definition
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/financial-independence-...
Followers of FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) plan to retire before the traditional retirement age of 65 by dedicating up to 70% of income to savings while still in the workforce."
It's always a blend of:
- bad or absent hierarchy: bosses that never come down, that have no idea what's going on or the way things are done, that mostly only talk to you to send back more stats (on paper, with stick marks, no one will setup a shared spreadsheet to at least avoid pencil accounting every week)
- absurd lack of material support (you need a table god damn wood tablet extension for your desk... hell no, it's 2020, come back when alien technology landed on earth) no-one hired to fix stuff, even in large offices, absurd stuff breaks, people only complain
- incredibly bad division of labour: no training (people struggle with every tool interaction), no notion of efficiency (let's rewrite everything on another post it or file, with new doc IDs), desk/office structure is obsolete to the bone, the amount of paper flying between rooms is astonishing. imagine doing databases by moving db rows to another computer and waiting to reintegrate it back when (if) it comes back. For that reason only I do more to avoid justice problems because I don't want my life hanging in the hands of a bored-out secretary that forgot who took my file to where.
- causing as bad human interactions: people don't understand shit, they walk on eggs, nothing has value to them, everyone is slightly adversary and will reject blame at the slighest possibility of an issue. Of course one can end up in a good-minded team where people are chill and communicate nicely and work together .. but it seems a low prob event.
coming from computing, I cannot help but to see things as processing steps.. and the amount of work in most jobs is minuscule now that everything is digital. Computers / clusters are mostly waiting for sad humans to press the button. I kinda ballparked that my last company (retail store) entire operation could fit on a single machine (granted people stopped duplicating excel files with bad content causing them to all be over 3MB for instance) and a few programs (in terms of computation there was nothing going on, a few figures updated here and there, gameboy level arithmetics.
when the world is gonna shift to humanless operations it's gonna be a cold day
[0] not talking about ping pong tables and cloud shape cushions, more like having good ergonomics, good interactions with coworkers, and more importantly good understanding of the process and value of what you're doing.
ps: I said "two jobs" because, at least for minds like mine, food production (or similar very linear, production-chain like ops) felt like a job. You had to prep 100 tunafish sandwhich, someone showed you the right way to perform, it was clean and fast, then you sell, then you clean. It's almost lubricated.. you sweat but there's no drag, no confusion, no hidden state.. very zen in a way.
So much, in fact, that I couldn't imagine going back to work ever again.
I couldn't imagine living polyamorous with more than two partners when working 40h a week. Let alone having some hobbies on the side...
No more throw-away decoration bought at ikea. No more physical products like books, any stone with a small piece of cloth, could be a book.
No more displays of status by buying advertised products - instead, status is what you create, growing out of your footsteps as you walk down a public street.
If all those products fade to grey, lots of work will become unneeded. And we are almost there.
The felt sense of Agency is VERY different between a) still making some income, feeling like your hand is still somewhat on the wheel and b) sitting in the back seat, with nothing to do but continually recalculating if / how long your nest egg will last (this quickly turns pathological)
I believe the slow build up of stress in B) is unmitigable (probably goes against our species’ DNA). Doubly so if you’ve attached lots of self-worth to making B) happen.
And if the author reads this comment: you need to get over yourself if you want to become a ‘writer’, I don’t know if there is an equivalent term for aspiring writers, but you are firmly in the equivalent “wantreprenuer” category. Be bold, fail, then learn, then fail some more. Don’t surround yourself with other wantreprenuers and blame them. Suck it up buttercup.
Do they? I mean, no doubt individuals might miss this. I don't think "the community" misses this. Lots of people are very aware of how agency plays into life satisfaction. In fact, being compelled to work for someone and do what their boss tells them to do severely impedes their agency.
And a lot of post-FIRE reports are that money is much less of a concern than it ever was while working. Because once you are completely behind the wheel of your life, you often find work you really enjoy, that also happens to add some extra money to that nest egg. Most reports I've read indicate that money has actually grown while they were "retired." Even LivingAFi reports this:
> I still have an amazing stash of money. I mean, I was able to take close to five straight years off work and still have more than I started with, inflation-adjusted
He later explains going back to work in more detail:
> My fiancé is a librarian and she doesn’t make a ton of money. This drastically changes the early-retirement numbers for the two of us.
> Anyway — bottom line is that my own asset sheet funds the lion’s share of our future together.
> Additionally, I’m spending more than that 30K/yr I had estimated back in 2015. I’m at 40K now and we’ll be at 55K together I think, once we consolidate assets and buy a home.
this problem doesn't exist if you correctly math out your existence to guarantee survival. having the ability to choose how to spend your time is the definition of agency.