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The point is you never know. You are taking a risk.
Life is taking a risk. Walking out of your house and into the world is taking a risk. We take calculated risks every day; that's the nature of life. Always has been, always will be.
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next 100 years in the market
I don't need to worry about the next hundred years since I won't be alive. I only need to be concerned with my own time horizon from the point I stop working. And that's true of everyone.
You also seem to think people who FIRE are mostly in their 30s and that is not typical. People in their late 40s and 50s are reaching FIRE so while they're retiring "earlier," meaning not waiting to age 65, they're not living on $300K and prayers.
I'd say with your mindset there will never be a safe time to retire because it's all unknown and all risky and something bad could happen. That cradle-to-grave working hero complex is alive and well, as illustrated. I highly doubt anyone on their deathbed says, "I really wish I had spent more time in life working, going to meetings, drafting memos, and sitting in my cube at work, waiting until 5pm or 6pm."
Reminds me of an article I read a few years ago (maybe the NY Times or similar publication) I read about high earners around the late 90s or early 2000s who left good jobs in the software field to be SAHM and 15 years later were interviewed by the publication and really regretted getting out of the workforce.
It's unfortunate how inflexible most career fields are. I'm thankful my wife is in nursing so that she can work PRN or part-time to keep her marketable skills fresh while still having almost as much time at home as a stay at home parent would. In most fields that's simply not an option, though.
I highly doubt anyone on their deathbed says, "I really wish I had spent more time in life working, going to meetings, drafting memos, and sitting in my cube at work, waiting until 5pm or 6pm."
Life is taking a risk. Walking out of your house and into the world is taking a risk. We take calculated risks every day; that's the nature of life. Always has been, always will be.
I don't need to worry about the next hundred years since I won't be alive. I only need to be concerned with my own time horizon from the point I stop working. And that's true of everyone.
You also seem to think people who FIRE are mostly in their 30s and that is not typical. People in their late 40s and 50s are reaching FIRE so while they're retiring "earlier," meaning not waiting to age 65, they're not living on $300K and prayers.
I'd say with your mindset there will never be a safe time to retire because it's all unknown and all risky and something bad could happen. That cradle-to-grave working hero complex is alive and well, as illustrated. I highly doubt anyone on their deathbed says, "I really wish I had spent more time in life working, going to meetings, drafting memos, and sitting in my cube at work, waiting until 5pm or 6pm."
The entire thread is about millennials retiring at 30. Last I checked millennials were in their 20s and 30s. You seem to be taking my comments as a personal attack. Like I said multiple times I'm in the same boat as you. I'll hit FI to where I could RE after about 12-13 years of full time work, for me in my early 40s because I was in school until I was 29. Like I said, I probably won't retire because I like what I do and my kids will be in school all day anyway, but I have set up plenty of options because of my high savings rate. I quit my job at a large corporation and took a research and innovation job at a small consulting firm where I get to work from home. If you are talking about retiring in your late 40s early 50s then you really only need to make it 15-25 years before you get SS which should cover a person capable of getting to FIRE's living expenses worst case scenario, so you are almost certainly fine with a 4% withdrawal rate. Hell if you put it in 100% bonds it would last for over 25 years, which is where you'd need to be to bridge you to SS. My comments were with regards to the millennials retiring in their early 30s (who will almost certainly have very little paid into SS, as most will have no more than 10-15 years of paying much in) and then needing their money to last until they were 90-95 and even then I said most would be fine because most are still working or generating income in some way.
It's not a mathematical certainty, it's just unlikely. Most estimates of all 30 year periods say it would have happened 5-7% of the time. But 40 starts to get a bit murkier because there are fewer 40 year periods to draw from. My main point was if you look at the failures of the Trinity study most were when you started your withdrawals at the top of a bull market right before a decade or so of really low and negative returns. Plus 30 years for a 35 year old gets you to 65, not to 85 or 90. Anyways, I have no problem with what they are doing. If I didn't have kids that would be in elementary school around the time we hit FI I'd probably want to do the same thing
But, I also wouldn't want to live and die by the trinity study, which only looks at the US markets during a time when the US was the only world power in manufacturing (40s-60s) and when the US started the computer/internet revolution (80s-2000s). Who's to say our market doesn't become like the Euro market over the next 40-50 years and the Chinese market becomes like ours? What's that small notification you always have to read? Past performance is no guarantee of future returns?
Having said that I agree, the majority of people that claim to be retiring early aren't really retiring in the traditional sense, but stopping their traditional career based work and doing something they are passionate about, which more than likely will earn them money.
The entire thread is about millennials retiring at 30.
It started out that way then, as is typical for forums, started to weave in various directions. The word "retire" or "retirement" is the real gotcha because if someone is earning income from their work efforts, they are not "retired." They have, in actuality, pivoted away from standard 8 to 5 jobs working for someone else, to travel and earn income from pursuits of their own making.
Just like the 60-something yr old dude who was contracting at my last company, left after his contract ended, declared he was retired fully, and then several months later took another contract after saying he'd never work again. He's not retired either.
It started out that way then, as is typical for forums, started to weave in various directions. The word "retire" or "retirement" is the real gotcha because if someone is earning income from their work efforts, they are not "retired." They have, in actuality, pivoted away from standard 8 to 5 jobs working for someone else, to travel and earn income from pursuits of their own making.
Just like the 60-something yr old dude who was contracting at my last company, left after his contract ended, declared he was retired fully, and then several months later took another contract after saying he'd never work again. He's not retired either.
Absolutely, which is why I hate the RE part, because of all the "FIRE" people maybe 3-5% are actually RE. I prefer the FI part of the acronym, because then it doesn't matter what you do. The real heart of the matter is, could a reasonable SWR support you if you had nothing else? If the answer is yes, you are FI. If the answer is no, you aren't FI. What you do once you are FI is irrelevant. My dad 'retired' with a nice pension, but got bored at home after 6 months (his wife still wants to work), so he went and got a part-time job at a grocery store working in the back room. Technically he's not retired, but he is FI. He could quit tomorrow as the income doesn't matter to him, doing physical work is what interests him.
FI can be calculated with a good statistical confidence level. Not perfect, but good.
RE is always a choice and there's no one right choice as to if, when, or why/why not.
FI doesn't trigger people. RE for anyone under the age of 50 or even 55-ish, can be and is often a trigger. Once someone is over 60 people think of them as 'older' and don't react to hearing the 'R' word.
I’ve seen enough House Hunters International to realize most countries outside the US are crap when it comes to ANY quality standards for housing. Maybe if you have $10M sure, but the average kitchens are a disaster across Europe and they seem not to understand what a dishwasher is like we are living in the 1950s again or something. Or they put a washer and dryer in the kitchen because they’re too lazy to properly locate it. No thanks, no, I’ll stick with America! I think the whole “first world” thing is not labeled properly because if these countries are considered first world, America must be something above that. It’s not even comparable at all.
Good grief. Have you even BEEN to Europe? Everything is much smaller there. Their buildings are ancient, most of them. Plumbing was added after the fact. Showers are miniscule. Kitchens are small but very utilitarian. Many washers are in the kitchen, and many line-dry. It's nothing to do with laziness. Space is at a premium.
Cultures are different. No one has a dishwasher here, or even wants one. No one has a bathtub.
Places are different, reflecting that individual culture. I'd call "First World" more of ability to provide health care, education, safety and services, above some uselessly gigantic consumer HGTV atrocity. LOL. Our place here is much higher quality than any of our U.S. homes.
At 106 (and 1/2, he'll remind you), Frankland still occasionally consults with patients and contributes articles to journal publications. He loves reading medical journals and keeping up with the field he helped pioneer.
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