Next time keep your trousers on when you answer the door.
I have actually just thought about the whole, “Drop a trailer on a cheap piece of rural land near a city, and retire with what you have,” thing. (I have also thought about “pick some random small town in a low cost of living area, buy a small house, and be done,” thing.)
The problem, as I see it, is knowing what is a reasonable number to have saved to really feel comfortable you can be done with it all.
I mean, I know how you are supposed to pick that number - your annual living expenses times a multiplier somewhere between 25 and 33 (depending on what you think the safe withdrawal rate is), somewhere between a 60-40 and 100% equity allocation, etc.
But the difficulty in knowing when you can be done is exactly what divedivedive said. You can spend $40k a year for 15 years and think you know what your expenses are, and then one year you have that $100k catastrophic health event, or whatever. Or your health nosedives and it isn’t a single huge event, but years and years of spending $20k or more on health related issues. Or something else that you’re not thinking of (your adult child has a traumatic brain injury or something similar, and you need to help out).
The problem then is, you’ve been out of the job market for years, you see your cash starting to dwindle, and you’re old. People don’t like to hire old people even when they are fresh in the job market, let alone after they try to “early retire” and fail.
I think it is the greatest difficulty with this sort of thing - knowing when you actually have “enough,” particularly before you have any sort of social security and medicare supplementation to fall back on.
All I know is that if the market continued like in 2017, I could have retired in 6 years! But it didn’t do that. :(
My plan is to retire but continue to make a little money doing this or that. Not a lot, but even a few thousand a year can help. I also don’t think I’ll enjoy retirement without something to work towards, something to look ahead to.
And if that doesn’t pan out, you’ll see at Wal-Mart greeting people! Actually never, I hope. I don’t want to be a serf for the Walton family. I think I’d rather be a seasonal serf for the Bezos Empire.
Just start a van-living blog and spam forums you have no interest in every participating in again like the guy who resurrected this thread yesterday!
With the changes to the EPA, not so sure I want to live by the river any more.
At least you’ll be able to easily drive to a more democratic country if you live in a van. Would make escaping much easier.
When the ocean level rises your going to want a houseboat.
My grandfather owned and heavily modified a houseboat for decades, constructing an enormous “garage” to house it on his property, complete with scaffolding and ladders to get up to various levels for servicing it or cleaning out the interior rooms, etc. The walls of this structure were littered with shelves that were littered with tools and fasteners and detritus, etc.
That garage was the scariest goddamn place in the world to childhood me, because every conceivable surface was covered in wasps nests at all times. But the old man would just march on out to repaint the boat or clean the sheets inside or whatever, wasps swarming around him like a fucking cartoon bee cloud.
Pawpaw Riley was a scary ass dude, y’all.
Did he ever actually use this houseboat? Or was it in continual storage?
He did. . . my only instance of seasickness came from a family trip on that thing once. ughhhhh
Oh. That’s disappointing. I was hoping he was named Noah.
I’m being somewhat of a devil’s advocate here but isn’t that what insurance (hopefully heavily subsidized because you have no income so your AGI is very low) from the exchange is supposed to protect one against?
I read van dude’s quest for van in the OP. He lives in an apartment now, with his girlfriend. Van life wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
I can agree that income disparity can be a problem but I don’t see that logic in your post. You are right that even with a terrific saving rate a lower income earner won’t catch up to the net worth of a high income earner with even a really low saving rate but I’m not sure why that matters?
I think MMM and ERE go too far in extolling the virtues of a super low cost lifestyle but, barring the type of medical emergencies mentioned by SlyFrog, I think there is a fair bit of truth in the math behind RE via high savings rate assuming that you want to continue living at the lifestyle you have while saving. If someone can honestly say they are living a life that they chose then I’m not going to complain for them just because someone else is making more and not having to make frugal decisions.
Yeah girlfriend and “living in a van” are mutually incompatible goals. Big time.
I remember watching some show about people who lived in super tiny constructed houses as an experiment, and they interviewed this couple. At some point they asked the woman about the bathroom situation and she pointed to the corner, where a small metal trashcan with a liner was visible … with an interesting expression on her face. That’s when I knew the experiment was doomed.
But but but all the guys posting videos about their van conversions on YouTube have astonishingly, bite your fist and say “goddammit” out loud, ridiculously hot girlfriends! And they show their midriffs, too!
I’ve walked through three or four tiny houses and while there’s a coolness factor, I can’t see living with another person in one. There are frustrations arising from very limited space that will just boil over.
They’d be ok as vacation getaway homes for short stints but I don’t see them as a permanent lifestyle option. And vans would be even harder to handle.
It matters because it is, in its own way, implicitly continuing the criticism of the American mid and lower class. If you can’t retire with a decent lifestyle, it can’t possibly be that the system is rigged against that for a multitude of people, it must be because you’re not saving hard enough. You can do anything, if you just save hard enough.
Oh sure, there are people working in comfortable, air conditioned jobs riding around in vehicles that cost more than the average lower/middle class family makes, but you, you really need to give up your daily cup of coffee if you really “want it.” How dare you enjoy such perks as slightly nicer food and coffee. Sure, they have an in-home chef, but that’s for the well to do. You need to give up your daily cup of Starbucks or else you’re really just not trying hard enough.
It creates this gross story that you can have that eventual comfortable life too, if you just deprive yourself hard enough and long enough. Which is theoretically true, but kind of takes one’s eye off the ball of why we are telling some people to shit in buckets and collect rainwater in order to be able to some day retire, while others just merrily pillage the system and live off of gigantic incomes.
It’s kind of an old protestant work-ethic game. If things aren’t working out for you, it must be your fault. Work harder. Save more. Never question whether the system itself is fucked up.
Yeah, I’m on board with that. I’m all for self-actualizing but I do believe the protestant work ethic has a lot of sins to answer for. I think a lot of people blame themselves, and get shamed by others, for downturns in their lives that they may not actually have much control over. I may be reaching, but I think it could be one of the root causes of self-medication, even the rampant opioid abuse we’re seeing.