Early Retirement Extreme

Try decreasing your spending? The less you spend, the less you depend on the miserable job. Being less dependent (ex. accumulating even a couple years of living expenses's worth of savings) should give a lot of breathing room re: changing jobs or even careers. How to spend less? I personally have found this blog to be both very inspiring and practical: http://earlyretirementextreme.com/

I see someone already mentioned Mr Money Mustache, which is great. But for really getting to "independently poor" you can't beat Early Retirement Extreme: http://earlyretirementextreme.com/ Similar idea, but he got his living expenses down to something under $10k/year (initially, I think they've risen a bit since) so that he could retire a lot earlier. At various points he talks a lot about how having the skills to support yourself is worth more than having money to buy things, a topic briefly touched on in the linked article. I just wish his English was a little more grammatical and properly spellchecked, but I guess you can't have everything. :)

The blog adresses this issue somewhere (it's been a while since I read it) and argues that the topic is so niche that it won't be applied by a significant percentage of people. Whether that's true or not is another issue of course. edit: An earlier (and I think better) blog on this is http://earlyretirementextreme.com/, which is now discontinued. (The author recommended reading Mr. Money Mustache instead.)

> But the alternative is sticking with the 9-5 grind. If you're like me, that terrifies the F out of you. I'm 42, have a great family, a good 9-5, but everyday of my life i think only of leaving my 9-5. There's a quicker and 100% reliable way of getting out of the 9-5 grind: http://earlyretirementextreme.com. TLDR: reduce your expenses as much as possible (ideally to 10-20% of your post-tax earnings), save the rest and, over a couple of years, accumulate enough to just live off the savings (and investment income off the savings) till the end of your life. It's easy, certain and thus non-stressful - basically the opposite of the startup route. The drawback is that, for someone who's been living their life as an ultraspecialized consumer whose only skill is what he does at the well-paid job, while everything else (food production and preparation, home repairs etc.) is outsourced, it could be a shock to switch to a rennaisance man model.

It may be tough for people to give advice, because I think your options are going to vary a lot, depending on where you live. The first thing I'd recommend, though, is that you keep track of all your expenses, if you aren't doing this already. This gives you the starting point for deciding how much money you really need to make in order to live the way that you want. Please keep in mind that expenses can increase as you age: for example, health insurance premiums can skyrocket depending on where you live, and things like hearing aids, expensive dental work, and so on, may not be covered by insurance. You may not want to worry about this stuff now, or maybe you'll get lucky. Anyway, if you track your expenses now, at least you'll have a handle on what you need for the immediate future, barring unforeseen emergencies. A few years back, my goal was very similar to yours. I started tracking every single expense to figure out how much money I actually needed to survive per year. As someone else mentioned, you can amass a pile of money and live off the income stream from that, provided you trust the "4% rule" or one of its variants. Take a look at these blogs: http://www.retireearlyhomepage.com/ - guy who worked till about 40 and retired, living off income from his savings http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/blog/ - guy who worked and made a chunk of money, continues to work on his own fun projects that make an income stream http://earlyretirementextreme.com/ - guy who lived a…

First thing I want to say is that it's very easy for technical people to frame this as a technical issue rather than an emotional issue. The evidence is overwhelming that wealth building is an emotional issue. So if you're not paying attention to that side of the equation, all this tax stuff really doesn't matter. I'll get back to this later and explain the four account types now. Employer: Traditional 401k (pre tax), Roth 401k (after tax) Personal: Traditional IRA (pre tax), Roth IRA (after tax) These are tax designations, not investment types. Roth means after tax dollars (more money up front). Traditional is pre tax dollars (you get pay more later). Both grow tax free, but with the traditional withdrawals count as income so they are taxed according to that tax year. 401k has a contribution limit is $18k / year. IRA has a contribution limit of $5500 / year. $23.5k / year total right now for somebody under 55. If you make enough / spend little enough that you can put the maximum dollars under the shelter, my suggestion is to go Roth 401k and Roth IRA or backdoor IRA. Over a 30 year period, the additional dollars under Roth will make up for most tax percentage differences, so it's a decent bet. Roth is the best way to max dollars under the tax shelter, and the tax shelter is hugely profitable. Also, if you go Roth, your retirement balance will be the real balance, not some fake number that is still subject to unknown future taxation. If you can't max the…

This subject has been researched in great detail. There's lots of great information all over the Internet. I recommend these two blogs if you want to learn more: http://earlyretirementextreme.com/ http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/ The TL;DR is this: you need to be able to live off about 3.5% of your portfolio for one year. That will allow you to avoid depleting your principal over a very long term, and also give yourself an inflation-adjusted raise every year so you maintain your spending power. Often people quote a “4%” rule, but I think it’s meant for people that retire at a more “normal” time in their lives. The extra 0.5% actually makes a big difference in the probability that your portfolio can fail. So, if you have a million dollars, you need to live off $35K a year. If you’re willing to really change your lifestyle, you can retire off $500K, which would give you $17K a year. It doesn’t sound like much in Silicon Valley, but that will put you in the top tier of income in a place like the Philippines. I don’t want to post my own net worth because it might come across as chest-beating. I’ve been living in a few places that are a lot cheaper than the United States, so my expenses are low. Over the last three years I’ve been averaging living off slightly less than 2% of my net worth annually. So, I’m REALLY safe by the “3.5% rule”. My net worth is higher than when I retired. I’m enjoying my life. Every day is a clean slate. There is nowhere that I have to…

>Living on a low percentage of income seems like a great strategy if you're optimizing for dying with the maximum amount of money in the bank. MMM/ERE [1][2] are not about maximizing money at all. They are about obtaining only a sufficient level of capital, so that they are no longer obligated to work for income to continue living happily. The numerical value of "sufficient" gets lower as your expenses decrease. >I'd think people would be better off maximizing their total happiness. Based on your comments, to you, happiness comes from experiences which require money, which is perfectly fine. Therefore, MMM and ERE are not for you, which again is perfectly fine. For others who find happiness in experiences requiring little to no funds, MMM/ERE is an exceptional strategy. I would love to spend my days coding, studying chess, reading books, cooking, mentoring youth, and spending time with the small group of people I am close with (I'm rather introverted). [1] http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/ [2] http://earlyretirementextreme.com/

This leads to an interesting digression... My hacker's mind sees society the same way it sees ie software layers, kernels, APIs, libraries, etc. And from that POV, current society practices seem very inefficient and disorganized, and could be improved readily with a dollop of hacker values (eg lazy but smart) and cold hard logic. One example: I am becoming more and more in favor of a minimum guaranteed income provided by society. Here are some good arguments in favor of that: http://www.xamuel.com/ten-reasons-for-guaranteed-minimum-income/ Of course a MGI is heresy in today's society because we are still in a mindset where it's crucial that everyone pull their own weight lest other people suffer - a lingering meme from the days when 90% of the population was occupied with food production. This of course ignores the notions that 1) society is insanely productive thanks to automation and it requires very little labor to pay for the true necessities of life (see for instance http://www.earlyretirementextreme.com - he lives on $7k a year) 2) many jobs today are marginally useful at best - think paper-shuffling mid-management 3) most of our income goes toward consumerist escapism which fails at making us truly fulfilled 4) much of the economy just exists to satisfy society's need for a status stratification mechanism (eg one is considered middle-class because one has such-and-such job title and education - if this classification went away then there would be general status…

Have a look at ERE. Don't get fooled by the snake oil sounding url. I ignored it for years because of that, but it's a sound framework to help you answer the question you are asking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Lund_Fisker https://earlyretirementextreme.com/

You might take a look at this: https://earlyretirementextreme.com/ This isn't the poster you replied to, but someone with a similar point of view of trying to live simply.

$350k a year is an absolutely massive amount, even assuming you have nothing (no savings/equity) at the moment, you could achieve financial indepdenence within just a couple of years, if you make some lifestyle adjustments. For starters, check out this blog: https://earlyretirementextreme.com/. It's written by a guy who achieved FI within just 5 years of making $80k a year. Granted, he didn't have kids, but you're making over 4x as much as he was.

Similar ideas explored here: http://earlyretirementextreme.com/

I might suggest a slightly different approach. “Early Retirement Extreme” proposes that if you save 80% of your income in a few broad index funds (search bogglehead), learn to live on the 20%, then you can get to where you are financially independent and retire in 5 years. I can’t say I’m personally there yet, but it sounds like you are more motivated and maybe less obligations. Get cheap ass housing, eat cheap, bike everywhere, and work your ass off for 5 years while saving 80%. http://earlyretirementextreme.com/

Yep, I'm currently going in the opposite direction. I'm now spending less on food and clothing than I've ever spent in my entire life. Rent is about the same as before, but I'm going to find ways of reducing that as well. For more info about this lifestyle, see this website: http://earlyretirementextreme.com

I suggest just reading MMM. It's all about savings rate. As an example, I live in Brooklyn, NY (one of the most expensive places to live in the U.S.) In 2016, I spent $32k ($24k was rent!) Assuming a $50k income, that'd be a ~36% savings rate, which requires a 23 year career. Assume someone making $50k lives in not NYC, I imagine this scenario could be a lot better. For a more extreme version of MMM, read http://earlyretirementextreme.com/. This guy (Jacob, who MMM mentioned in this interview) never earned much money (never over $50k prior to becoming financially independent), and retired after working 5 years. With a little creativity, most people can retire far sooner than standard retirement age.

I would also add that the author's book http://earlyretirementextreme.com/ere-book is great, and lets one get the essential points of what he has to say without trawling through numerous posts.

http://earlyretirementextreme.com/ is a bit nicer to read and goes a bit deeper than mrmoneymustache.

That means that for each five months working, you build up reserves enough to last you one month without working. It's not a lot, but it's something. Now make some effort to push it to a 33% savings rate, and for each three months worked, you'll have one month of expenses saved. And so on. At some point, it becomes a game of cutting expenses and raising income. If you get to live on 20/25% of your income and invest the rest, in 5 to 6 years you should have enough invested to pay your expenses for the rest of your life, assuming an yearly average return of 4% over inflation. This formula was made popular by Jacob from Early Retirement Extreme blog/book/forum/wiki: http://earlyretirementextreme.com

It takes 5-10 years of work to retire. http://www.amazon.com/Early-Retirement-Extreme-Philosophical-Independe… http://earlyretirementextreme.com/

Mr Money Mustache and Jacob of Early Retirement Extreme offer some food for thought on reducing expenditure and investing the savings. I can't say I've adopted the whole thing, and the tax structure in the UK seems to be less advantageous to this strategy than the US, but I've foudn reading it has dragged my spending down and savings up - mainly by raising the question of what do I really value enough to spend my money on it. 1. http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/ 2. http://earlyretirementextreme.com/

I just wanted to mention that MMM sometimes rubs me the wrong way too. A more analytical approach that I found more thorough and more intriguing is at "Extreme Early Retirement" here: http://earlyretirementextreme.com/ His book is especially interesting. Granted, the author of this book is quirky and ends up doing a lot of work that you could hire someone to do for $10 an hour. But the author stressed that- at least for him- he'd rather spend his team mending clothes or fixing his bike that being in academia (his prior career).

I'm sure you guys are familiar with this, but I've just discovered http://earlyretirementextreme.com/. I've just started reading the book.

I'm very, very late to the party, but, do consider early retirement, and perhaps a part-time side gig as a consultant for projects that you feel like working on. http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/ http://earlyretirementextreme.com/

Have you read Early Retirement Extreme? http://earlyretirementextreme.com/ Very similar philosophy.

I'd like to also recommend this book. For people who think the $10k/year figure is only possible in cheap places to live, the author lives in SF Bay Area. Here's some more details: http://earlyretirementextreme.com/how-i-live-on-7000-per-year.html

The math is covered here: http://earlyretirementextreme.com/ Basically the thought is that 20-25 years of living expenses will generate enough income for you to early retire on. If you make 100k (post tax) with a 20% savings rate, you save 20k, and have living expenses of 80k. Ignoring future compound growth, for each year you work, you save 1/4 a year of living expenses. If you go the other extreme, and have 66% savings rate, you save 66k, and have living expenses of 33k. With 33k living expenses you need 660k to retire. Each year of working you end up with 2 years of living expenses. Even ignoring the effect of investment growth before you retire, that is only 10 years of working. Of course 20 years of savings maybe be too optimistic. The book is good and has more details.

One solution is to spend radically less than the average and save radically more. There are a few good blogs that strongly advocate this approach [1][2]. I won't claim that it's the right solution for you, but it is a solution. [1] http://earlyretirementextreme.com/ [2] http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/

I believe the closest RV park to SF is in Pacifica. Nice location but not very practical for commuting. There might be some in the east bay with better access. I'm surprised no other comment mentioned Jacob of Early Retirement Extreme[1]. He blogged about living in an RV at the Pacifica RV park to save money. Unlike Mr. Money Mustache who is often derided in these comments, Jacob was extreme, and recognized it. Instead of living in an RV to bootstrap a startup, he had a normal tech job and saved tons of money to invest and retire on the dividends (I'm simplifying). [1] http://earlyretirementextreme.com/

I really like this. Very similar in philosophy to the the ERE movement (http://earlyretirementextreme.com)