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Once again, while exiting from the workforce and the putative “rat-race” at a mere 30 or 35 seems to be arrantly extreme, a similar query could be posed at any age – even 65. Take for example a 60-year-old. Why retire then? Why not keep working until 65? Or if one follows Suze Orman’s advice, until age 70? The answer of course is highly personal and highly situation, but one broad rationale, is that the passion for one’s career that one felt as a young-adult, eventually turns into ennui and cynicism. It all starts to feel pointless, rote, redundant.
My own take is that at age 30, if indeed one has burned-out, it’s readily possible and advisable to switch careers, instead of outright retiring. But shift that by 15, 20, 25 years later, and the career-change becomes more of a fantasy than a viable strategy. It’s at that point that one might decide to retire.
At age 65, you have Social Security and Medicare as your backstop. In your 30s, you are young and healthy so health insurance seems unimportant. Having Social Security as a backstop seems unimportant. You game the system and get Medicaid. What happens at age 55 when you need good health insurance as bad health issues pop up and all the physicians refuse to take Medicaid patients? As states get crushed with enormous Medicaid costs, they’ll have no choice but to slash coverage. Where I live, 25% of the state budget is Medicaid. As Boomers who have run out of money start using Medicaid for nursing home coverage, anyone “able bodied” is going to get booted out of the system.
Suze Ornan tells people with limited assets to work until age 70. When someone calls in with $200k in savings and a $15k age 62 Social Security check wanting to early retire, she’s giving them a reality check.
I burned out at age 40. I’d just had divide-by-2 divorce math happen. My best friend was diagnosed with ALS. I’d had years of long hours doing metro Boston tech startups. I took 2 years off to recharge. Skied 100 days for a couple of winters. Burned lots of frequent flyer miles. Spent some quality time with my father. Got my very lapsed golf game back into respectability. Sailed the boat. Rode the bicycle and hiked. Recharged, I started working in my field again.
"It's been at least 15 years since we've had a car. For several years my main form of transportation was a used bicycle I bought on Craigslist for $50. I later sold it for $60. It also doubled as a gym membership."
This was telling. In many areas, you simply cannot get to the job site reliably without a vehicle. This can work in a handful of major metros. I live in small town Tennessee. You're basically driving anywhere you go.
Now here's the math. I took 25% off the top for taxes, then rounded down to 100k. Then I applied a 48% savings rate. So you live on 52K and save 48K. 52K after tax is about what the current median U.S. household income is. So, while we're not talking fancy here, we're very far from deprivation/poverty/living like a monk/living in a van down by the river, like we hear from so many naysayers.
I'm not arguing that the math itself cannot work on paper. However, living on 52k in a high COL metro area (like DC where I am) is definitely pinching pennies. It means that you're monthly rent is limited to being at most $1300. You won't even be able to afford a townhouse on that. You have to live in a 1-bedroom apartment in a less than average suburb for all those years.
It is not practical to live that way when you're trying to raise a family, want to live in a good school district or enjoy the good things in life a little bit. You would definitely be depriving yourself and your family materially. Maybe some people are determined enough to live that way in order to do what it takes to save money. But that is going to be far from the norm.
I'm not arguing that the math itself cannot work on paper. However, living on 52k in a high COL metro area (like DC where I am) is definitely pinching pennies. It means that you're monthly rent is limited to being at most $1300. You won't even be able to afford a townhouse on that. You have to live in a 1-bedroom apartment in a less than average suburb for all those years.
It is not practical to live that way when you're trying to raise a family, want to live in a good school district or enjoy the good things in life a little bit. You would definitely be depriving yourself and your family materially. Maybe some people are determined enough to live that way in order to do what it takes to save money. But that is going to be far from the norm.
Yep. Throwing in a couple of kids adds an additional layer of "quality" you should be responsible for. It's easy to pinch pennies if you're a bachelor. If you have kids, you owe them a good school system and a place with opportunity.
"It's been at least 15 years since we've had a car. For several years my main form of transportation was a used bicycle I bought on Craigslist for $50. I later sold it for $60. It also doubled as a gym membership."
This was telling. In many areas, you simply cannot get to the job site reliably without a vehicle. This can work in a handful of major metros. I live in small town Tennessee. You're basically driving anywhere you go.
What he doesn't mention is his wife owns a Suburban
they are also traveling more since they got free time, traveling increases risk of injury and illness. More people met, more pathogens exposed (the FIRE crowd don't seem the type to get immunized for each country's vaccination recommendations). They also go off the beaten tourist path, so more risk of injury due to the place not being catered to tourists. From riding a scooter to get around or hiking up "hidden" trails. No, none of them are increased risks by themselves, its that they do it a lot more frequently that the risks add up. Look at all the news stories from injured or sick travelers every year, and having FIRE amount of money isn't going to cut it for most of them.
While young, they might be able to deal with it, but as they get older, those old injuries start to surface. Like I asked before, do FIRE people have good old age planning/insurance for things that happened when they were younger?
maybe I see a lot of the muscular-skeletal issues that vets have from serving, but some of the activities of these FIRE bloggers are nearly on par with the extremes that servicemen go through. But they don't have the VA/US government behind their healthcare
Having $X amount of money to call it quits, isn't going to cut it if they planned it around their current "younger" lifestyle. Unless they planned out expenses at all their different stages of life, it isn't really adequate to call it FIRE. They really are banking on being medical tourists in another country, or major healthcare reform in the US. Neither of those two costs are in their control
A few months ago I was watching some news station and they were giving a sob story of two tourists (one full-time traveler, the other, a teacher) that were injured from motorbike going down a steep slope. Unable to move or call out for help the full-time traveler used facebook to get in contact with friends around the globe and they used his phone to locate his exact location. The article described their injuries and ended with two Go Fund Me pages asking for $30k to pay for medical bills and each of them gushing how they couldn't wait to get back out there and see the world.
I went to the comments of each of their charity pages and was annoyed by all the donators celebrating them, "Oh how I wish I were young again and could live out this dream.. here take my $100!".
I'm not arguing that the math itself cannot work on paper. However, living on 52k in a high COL metro area (like DC where I am) is definitely pinching pennies. It means that you're monthly rent is limited to being at most $1300. You won't even be able to afford a townhouse on that. You have to live in a 1-bedroom apartment in a less than average suburb for all those years.
It is not practical to live that way when you're trying to raise a family, want to live in a good school district or enjoy the good things in life a little bit. You would definitely be depriving yourself and your family materially. Maybe some people are determined enough to live that way in order to do what it takes to save money. But that is going to be far from the norm.
There is no requirement to have kids in your 20's. My wife and I put it off initially because we were fairly low income. Come to find out she probably can't have kids anyway. We are kinda sorta looking at adopting now but we are all set up for the future. Pinch your pennies first and then go do what you want. So many are focused on this graduate -> get married -> buy house -> have kids -> then save for retirement with the crumbs left over life. There are other ways to do it that don't involve putting kids in crappy apartments or bad school systems.
Why would you work to become an engineer at Microsoft, only to want to quit that job after 10 years? And then brag about not having to work.
The fact of the matter is that ... there are lots of people who are independently wealthy and lots of them work, some of them work quite hard.
Yes, financial freedom presents a great opportunity, but at the end of the day, MOST people do want to work.
So, might as well just get it right the first time, and go into something you want to do or something that means something to you. Then, you can circumvent all of this huballoo.
they are also traveling more since they got free time, traveling increases risk of injury and illness. More people met, more pathogens exposed (the FIRE crowd don't seem the type to get immunized for each country's vaccination recommendations). They also go off the beaten tourist path, so more risk of injury due to the place not being catered to tourists. From riding a scooter to get around or hiking up "hidden" trails. No, none of them are increased risks by themselves, its that they do it a lot more frequently that the risks add up. Look at all the news stories from injured or sick travelers every year, and having FIRE amount of money isn't going to cut it for most of them.
While young, they might be able to deal with it, but as they get older, those old injuries start to surface. Like I asked before, do FIRE people have good old age planning/insurance for things that happened when they were younger?
maybe I see a lot of the muscular-skeletal issues that vets have from serving, but some of the activities of these FIRE bloggers are nearly on par with the extremes that servicemen go through. But they don't have the VA/US government behind their healthcare
Having $X amount of money to call it quits, isn't going to cut it if they planned it around their current "younger" lifestyle. Unless they planned out expenses at all their different stages of life, it isn't really adequate to call it FIRE. They really are banking on being medical tourists in another country, or major healthcare reform in the US. Neither of those two costs are in their control
Maybe you are on to something. There’s one guy that used to post in early retirement forum, in his early 40s, did lots of traveling all over the world with his wife, I like his photos and read his website, but somehow overnight he disappeared. I have no idea what happened to him. Very odd. Perhaps he got very sick. Perhaps he died, who knows.
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