For me a typical day is pretty full. Morning coffee and news, then either spend a few hours working on the book or spend a few hours working on Spanish homework. Then figure out what to do about lunch. I have Spanish class two afternoons a week; otherwise afternoons are for errands / chores / and (when permitting) work. We have a regular dinner with friends one night a week and impromptu ones a couple of times a week. I play cards with a small group on Saturday mornings.
We travel to South Africa every year (C’s mother still lives there) and usually try to include a side trip somewhere else. Last year was Spain, this year Spain again. And we travel to the US to see my folks every year too.
My grandfather had a pretty good deal going, he passed away a couple years back at 89. He never technically retired really, though you couldn’t really call it work as we know it. He was a barber, owned his own shop, and pretty much came in three mornings a week to drink coffee and chat with his buddies. And if someone needed a trim while he happened to be there, well he could probably swing that too. If he liked you.
Thanks for linking to the update. I remember reading his blog years ago. It seems he stopped blogging right around the time I stopped actively following most FI blogs so I never really noticed that he had stopped.
Very timely read as I have about 4 months to decide if I want to retire in 2022 or later (which realistically means 2024 or 2026 due to the nature of my job). In many ways my situation mirrors his with a spouse who is seemingly on board with the idea. I’m not quite as young and my wife has been retired so the change will not be as big but still close enough to be interesting.
Good lord, he’s young enough to think about having a kid in the future and he retired on only 950k? That’s insane.
At least he didn’t sell stock in March 2020. If he had done that, he would really have needed to close down his blog. My stocks are up 96% since the trough on March 23rd 2020. Not a typo. And even ignoring that correction, stocks are up 36% since Feb 18th 2020, before the COVID drop began. Unbelievable, 36% in 16 months.
I’m retiring, not early but normal, very soon, like in a couple of months. Get this doom and gloom out of my dreams (I am in much better shape than this guy so I’m not concerned about running out of monies).
Yeah, I didn’t read the whole thread or earlier on his blog but I gather he’s some blogger trying to retire super-early by living extremely frugally. That can work, if you save up enough money to buffer for when god rolls the dice and your situation suddenly changes, as his did. Really difficult to do it in the US, would have been much easier in southeast asia or central America or something.
Retiring on 950K is more than doable, maybe not in the expensive areas of the US, and certainly not if one is trying to live like a star, but there’s lots of places where that money would get you a comfortable retirement for a bunch of years, and some of them are even in Europe, not exactly the cheapest continent.
It’s fascinating to consider how the human condition, a very complex, non-quantitative thing, collides with the very quantitative process of financially preparing for retirement (or living in retirement/pseudo-retirement).
Personally, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself being retired at like 37, like this guy did. Does that mean I’m a sucker that’s caught up in the rat race and keeping up with the Jonses? Maybe. Or maybe it sounds like a job itself trying to stay sane without the easy guiderails of a job and other material accomplishments to measure progress.
My problem is left to my druthers I stay home and don’t do shit. Work gives me structure, wfh through 2020 was a lot of wallowing.
Anyway that guy is bonkers. He calculated every expense to the penny yet never considered that he might see unexpected expenses or that his wife might stray.
The living in a van down by the river is probably the easiest way to give life structure. You go somewhere new and you stay there for x weeks and then you move, never staying in the same place long enough to get into a rut.
Probably not the easiest to do financially though.
Bonkers? Heh, he seems like some guys I know. Granted, retiring at 37 on 950k is projecting calm waters for 40 years.
Contributing to retirement info: My mom’s went well for her. She bought a 20 year life annuity at 65 and finished it off last year. She had less than 200k in assets, but between the teacher’s pension and annuity, never ate into the assets. Her health disaster last year doesn’t change the success. She had a long term care insurance which has kicked in now, and even pre paid her funeral.
My brother is retiring at 59. I think he’s rather secure. A house, a pension — man I wish I had one — plus over 2M in wealth. And his burn rate is quite low.
Me, not sure yet. I’d like to retire but I’m still under 1M and my house doesn’t pay off for 3 more years. The big bonus is that my 3rd (last) kid finishes college next year. Pleased that all 3 have low debt out of school.
I don’t think the unexpected expenses derailed him. He says that his net assets actually grew since retirement. His capital U unhappiness is due to failing to account for being human and for the people around him being human.
While his plans to potentially get a house and have a child are a fair digression from his original plan, its good to see that he seems to recognize that his new partner is going to need more from life other than planned out financial sufficiency.
Can’t get into someone else’s head, but I feel like if you make your goal to retire as fast as possible on a self admitted shoe string budget, after the elation of making your goal wears off, what is there really to be excited for. Just like 50 years of Netflix?
It’s one thing to retire from the career you don’t like early and pivot to volunteering or working a lower pay job or something. But retiring to just retire with a goal to sit around forever? Sounds terrible to me.
I think the impetus to do something less demanding and soul-destroying is understandable. As I’ve said before, I don’t really ‘do’ anything in terms of formal work. I dabble in writing novels (and trying to record them), I take Spanish lessons, I travel. The difference is that I like those things, and I can decide any day or week or month not to do them and watch Netflix instead. It’s freedom.
Take some classes. Play a sport or two. Travel. Read. Write. Game. Take up a new hobby. Volunteer. Work on yard projects. Work on house projects.
If none of that works, go back to work.
I think retiring before 50 is difficult for nearly everyone, but believe me when you get near 60 you really start to think about how much time you have left and how you don’t want to spend it working all the time.
The other consideration is how much good time we have left. Maybe we’re going to live to be 85, but maybe the last 10 years will be years of limited physical ability. Stuff happens to us.
Dude was 37, with no kid, no house. He also aimed to live on 30K a year (which affects what activities he can do and how often), in the US. I’d say the odds of doing that for like 40+ years is psychologically tough/impossible for most folks. I’m pretty damn sure it would be, for me.
He says he spent some time in Portugal with his SO family. Now, 30K per year, he could have easily lived in Portugal a very comfortable life, maybe get into something related to tourism, just to have a project that wasn’t writing and that maybe his SO would have liked.
But that means changing how he lived completely, and it seems like the plan was to live as close to usual as possible but without having to go to work.
