The other thing to watch out for is that kids’ assets count more in college financial aid calculations, so keeping it in the parents’ name is usually better. I had enough income that I was never getting any aid, so I didn’t get too far into the weeds on the calculations; there’s a lot of hackery that lets relatively well off people qualify for aid.
I don’t understand this extreme FIRE stuff. That article isn’t even that extreme compared to other stories I’ve seen.
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I’m just tired of people saying they are “retired” when she works… When I copied this over I realized that this article actually includes a link to her financial service, so now I’m wondering how much she paid for this article.
She then takes time to work on her side hustles, which include a financial coaching service and an Etsy shop. Combined, her side hustles bring in between $1,000 and $3,000 in revenue depending on the month.
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I can’t imagine “retiring” on like $30k a year or whatever. God bless people that do it if they’re actually happy but I’ll pass.
$850,000 * .04 = $34,000
$1,000 to $3,000 a month in revenue, we’ll call it $2K = $24,000
Plus her revenue is going to enjoy some tax deductions, like a home office, which reduces her cost of living. So basically she’s living off like $58,000 a year with some of her living expenses being tax write-offs.
That probably goes pretty far in Nashville, I would imagine? It also says she downsized from a house to an apartment, if she owns it, she could own it outright with no monthly housing cost beyond insurance and property taxes. If so, then she probably has enough to get by and take a trip a year or something.
Of course if the stock market crashes she’s back to work.
It used to. Not so much anymore
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I don’t know about $30k because that would depend on a lot of area specific cost of living scenarios. I would say that based on my recent deep dive into the science of happiness, it is definitely possible to be happy without very much money if you have very strong and healthy relationships and you practice all the constructive stuff like daily gratitude. It don’t know how good the median FIRE person is at all that, though, they seem almost obsessive with their magic numbers etc., it seems more likely to me that they will have massive “now what” psychological problems when they quit their jobs and it doesn’t magically make them happy.
I am definitely not proud of the fact that I looked at this and was like, “welp, I guess that’s a no from me dawg”
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Well, there is good news. People that adopt happiness practices tend to have their happiness go up. It’s a lot like weight loss or saving money, it’s very habit/behavior driven so most people will struggle with it, but it’s definitely attainable.
Man I’ve tried all the stuff the happiness people recommend like gratitude, meditation, focusing on relationships, not buying “stuff,” I even dutifully listened to that Laurie Santos happiness podcast, the stuff really just didn’t work for me. However, it’s possible my baseline, while not amazing to me on a daily basis, is pretty high. I was severely depressed and indifferent to being alive at one point so I’m pretty naturally grateful now!
Also I’m not sure the research is quite settled on money buying happiness. I definitely am happier than I would otherwise be being able to travel internationally and dine well and not worry about paying for my kids, all of which would not be simultaneously possible living on $80k or whatever the number is.
We can kick this over to the thread I started on happiness, but IMO this question will never be settled because it’s too political. No matter how convincing the evidence gets, there will always be people motivated to “prove” that money buys happiness (so cutting taxes is always justified and poor people are just jealous and that’s why socialism is bad) or to “prove” that money does not buy happiness (so the government should tax all income over $70,000 at 100% because it doesn’t really make those people happy anyway, they’re just greedy).
Yeah, that’s my plan. When I say “When I retire…” that is what I intend to do.
It is not so much working less. It’s just cutting out all the bullshit parts of a job. If there was a way I could do that now and work more or less full time, then I’d do it. But I can’t really. The only way to do it is to really not care about money at all and just refuse all the bullshit stuff and pretty much only do the enjoyable work. So, the end result will be working less. But it’s not like the main goal.
Just typing that out makes me feel like I should do that tomorrow.
It’s certainly possible I’m delusional and only think travel and good food and knowing my kids are financially secure makes me happier because I don’t know what actual happiness is or that stuff is temporary so I’ll keep chasing increasingly unattainable sugar highs, but I really don’t think so.
To me the real happiness killer is comparing yourself to other people. That’s just guaranteed misery. I certainly agree that travel won’t make someone happier if they spend the time frustrated they aren’t in a nicer hotel or whatever.
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I’ve always felt like this should be the way for the retire at any age crowd.
It’s really weird how we just go from working 40 hours a week one week and then at some point, that just instantly drops to 0 hours a week.
I haven’t thought about it in depth because I’m not there yet, but whenever the “I’ll just work 1/2 as much at 50, be happier, and ease into retirement” topics come up over at Bogleheads, the overwhelming consensus seems to be that the reality rarely matches the plan/dream.
I think part of it is people assuming they’ll just work less, or find a “low-stress” job, and it generally pans out that you’re not actually less stressed, because well, you still have a job and job responsibilities. I also think it’s probably just harder than people think to find that ideal “part-time” job that’s going to allow you that semi-retirement lifestyle you’re imagining. If I’m easing into retirement, I still want the ability to pick up and go to Europe for 3 weeks. Not easy to do even if working “just” 20 hours/week. Unless you are your own boss/consulting.
No, I think what this is saying is that you have the strengths of relationships with your family and the gratitude (even if you don’t call it that) to appreciate the things like nice meals and travel for the experiences that they are. This is a classic example of “your relationship with money drives outcomes more than your amount of money”. Someone who didn’t know what to do with money other than buy new cars and a bigger house and fancy clothes likely won’t be happy no matter how much you give them.
yeah try telling your boss you want to go part time and his/her immediate thought will be “great i get to give this guy all the responsibility and pay him half as much now”
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Yeah, this definitely happens a lot. You have to be pretty lucky to have a workable part time arrangement. I used to do billable hours consulting work, that’s a model for part time work. If you get paid 60% for 3/5 days work you can demonstrably do exactly 60% as the full time people by billing 60% of the hours. I think you might be able to generalize this to regular corporate jobs by actually entering into a $/hour contract with the company and billing 3 days of hours and then if they want any more than that at least you would get paid for more hours.
Doctors often have good set ups for part time work. Many of my doctor friends actually already work a patchwork of part time jobs - they’ll do 2 days a week at one hospital, 1 day at a clinic and another day at a clinic, and 1 day on some kind of research team. Working part time is as easy as discontinuing one or more of these things.
I think there probably are things one could do to reduce work hours and stress, to keep a minimal amount of income flow coming in (e.g., Walmart greeter, usher at a theater/arena, etc.), but I don’t see those jiving with a semi-retirement lifestyle where you are probably thinking you’re semi-retired so you can go take a week off to golf with buddies, or go visit your grandkids next month for 2 weeks, etc.
Internet Retirement Police ITT.
The main letter of FIRE is I, imo. If you’re independent, you can do whatever the fuck you want. There are many ways to do it–side hustles, part-time low qualification job (barista FIRE), big pile of money (fat or chubby FIRE), minimizing expenses (lean FIRE)–and they’re all valid. If you don’t want to be independent, fine, remain dependent.