As the title implies, this is a spurious, ill-advised putting of pen to paper. This is not some investigative journalistic burning of the midnight oil trying to perfect a narrative and balance personal thoughts against what sells well. This is just a stab in the dark from one guy that wonders what saying something on the internet might do. Hopefully my comment section is on and not blocking too much, I love comments but there is so much spam out there. And I don’t really check in too often, given that this is just me actually (as opposed to MMM saying it) typing shit on a keyboard. I collect no income and have no advertisements or sponsors or affiliates. It’s really just this page – 2D. What you see is what you get.
So, Early Retirement seems to be captivating an audience. I don’t blame them, I used to be enthralled. And, although it hollows out your formative experiences with money woes (working to save as opposed to blowing the load ecstatically again and again), I still would not complain. It is undeniably foolish to work and have nothing to show for it.
But maybe there is some middle ground. I probably should have enjoyed my 20’s more, like going out to restaurants and bars and stuff. I did actually enjoy my 30’s since I was married and things went from being tough (but not unbearable due to my 20% down-payment on a starter house and having no student loans) to my wife getting pregnant a second time and being able to quit her job. It would have been barely possible for me to retire at 45 or 50 going the route we were on, a single income family and two kids.
But then, sensible people as we were, we got opportunities to make more money and had no need to spend it. In our early 30’s we made 200k for 2 years and we saved over 100k/yr. In my mid 30’s we did the same again for 2 years.
So technically, I hit FI at 35 (1 million dollar net worth), but at that point, life had just become interesting. Now we had options and I had great experience in my industry.
From 35 to now 45, life has been incredible. I can’t imagine passing it up knowing what I know now, but such is life. Are you stretching for FI looking to collapse in ER on the ‘finish line’ or are you going to hit your stride and pass the FI milestone feeling young and fresh, the world being yours to take, and ER being whatever you want it to be.
ESCAPEVELOCITY2020 