FIRE Starters (Financial Independence, Retire Early)

@PKFFW

 

I'll make sure my children know this. So far they have had had three of them fall their way and may, just may, be in line for a fourth. Then they may already know that and are waiting - be it patiently or impatiently. I haven't asked.

 

In my opinion the concept of “financial independence” has been stuffed up by adding “retire early” on the end so that a catchy acronym could be created to gather around. Then like all gatherings; definition, power, control, and monetization of the group starts to creep in.

If you have the financial means to live life on your terms, that’s independence isn’t it. You know you’re there because you get an inner sense of contentment and FU attitude towards anything you don’t want to do. Definitions don’t matter, you sure as hell don’t have to retire to prove it.

 

Are you crazy? Do you want my wife to hunt you down and hurt you?
Her personal shopping budget would be $18k a year.

In all seriousness, I do love a good challenge and on my own I could personally live on a fairly small amount of money. But with the current lifestyle we have built up it would be impossible. I know it sounds silly but I don’t feel like our lifestyle is over the top yet seem to spend a significant amount of money.
To give you an idea our insurance annual cost for cars and home / content is over $15k p.a.
Add $30k for school fees and a few $k more for extra curriculum activity’s, uniforms and who knows what else they need for school and we are at $50k p.a before we have even started.
As long as we can stop the expenditure growing any further I have no issue with the current numbers. The whole purpose of all this investing is to be able to support this level of lifestyle. No point generating all this passive income and not using it to live.

But let’s no be fooled that having a $18k monthly budget compared to $18k annual budget will make you much happier. Sure it gets you some extra pleasures but overall it gets you a lot of crap you don’t need and over time realise you don’t really want either.

 

From a financial perspective what I said is true. You also conveniently didn't quote the part where I said "I respect that he's not on welfare". It's not even about wanting or needing the next shiny bauble it's the fact that 45k is a very low household income in Australia, particularly when you are renting. If you looked at his budget they spend $20,800 on rent so they are left with $24,200 as a household income.

For the vast majority of Australians that would be an insufficient income to "retire". However, if that's enough for them to live good on them.

 

Now this part of the fire community is interesting.

 

No, it isn't.

They may have a similar amount of money but "from a financial perspective" isn't only about the amount, it is also about where it comes from.

Yes, I did. Because "respecting he's not on welfare" while in the previous sentence stating he's not much better than a disability pensioner living with their parents and claiming he's "retired" (quotation marks suggesting it's not true) makes it pretty clear what you really mean.

Totally agree with this. Most people need the next shiny bauble and wont be satisfied with a modest and frugal lifestyle. That's because most people believe buying things will make them happy.

Does that mean Dave is not "retired" and no better than a disability pensioner living with their parents? Obviously we differ on that point. Does the fact most people feel the need for wage slavery to pay for things mean he should go get a job he likes instead of living the way he wants? Again, we obviously differ on that point.

 

From a financial perspective a dollar is a dollar. Whether you receive that dollar from working, welfare, rent, dividends etc. it's still a dollar. Of course it's better to receive the money from passive income instead of relying upon having to work or relying upon the government. However, the monetary value of money is still the same regardless of its source.

I made the observation that his household income is only slightly above welfare levels. For most people that would be an inadequate income to live a nice lifestyle, particularly if they ever decided to travel or have children etc. That's why I was skeptical that he was retired.

 

Om gosh, had a good laugh…. Sowing socks for the tenth time

 

nope
Rents can fall, and it has happened ….supply vs demand

 

Not to harp on it but "the monetary value of money" is an entirely different concept to "from a financial point of view".

I agree "a dollar is a dollar" regardless of how it is earned. However, "from a financial point of view", for example, a dollar earned from passive income is, to any rational person at least, preferable to one that is earned from hard labour.

Exactly. You question his honesty based on the fact that you and most other people have different values and priorities to him. That's your prerogative of course.

I'd not have mentioned it at all if you took the time to read the blog and run the general numbers and considered it in a somewhat unbiased way and then determined that you don't believe him based on that analysis and made any sort of rational argument as to why you think he is lying.

 

As a libertarian I don't care what pther people do.
If you have a website that's an obvious commercial enterprise and you tell me that you retired at 28, is there anything wrong with asking "How did you do it?"
And if you're retirement and don't need more money, than why gather email addresses, promote yourself and have words like "as seen on" all over your blog?

There is also the issue that many people in the neo fire community will have the same reaction as here and stop reading his blog if starts posting that 40k barely covers expenses and he wants to make more.

I like this guys FIRE a bit better

 

From what I can tell, my net worth/wealth exceeds Dave's several times over (so do our expenses BTW).

HOWEVER, I do read his blog every week - I find what he says quite cathartic, his approach of K.I.S.S refreshing, and he also has interesting take on the important things in life. He explains things well and has a knack for writing.

Whilst we've done quite well out of property to date and despite 'mine being bigger than his', I still have much to learn - and have learnt quite a few things from his blog.

I couldn't live on his $ footprint but if that's all he needs to be happy (and eventually free as I think his partner still works PT), then more power to him.

 

The greatest wealth is to live content with little. -Plato

 

As a person born rich such as Plato was, would say.
That's why he had time to sit around and "philosophise" and be a traveling statesman while others were killed and maimed in endless wars.


It's like Buffett or Gate's son saying "The greatest wealth is to live content with little."

 

That might be the case, but it doesn't make it less true

 

Like and agree. This guy's points are good but the implication is that instead of spending money on a glass of wine once a week, we can save that $12 for 50 years and then buy a ferrari. While perfectly feasible, is that what he did? Sounds like he made his money via RE etc and possibly business to start with. Bet he didn't save $12 a week.
I think his main point is to do it sober and clean and no loans on depreciating assets, and he's right in my books too.
Whoever posted that they felt drugged when they didn't work for 6 months, that was also my experience. I did stuff but it was really hard. I'm always going to need to do some kind of work.

 

It's always true. It's called "my own truth". So if I feel $5,000 per week is "little" then that's my truth.
May not be true for the other 95%, but still true.

He made his money selling health products from what I can tell. And lots of it. Buying RE along the way.
Feasable it is. Worked for me, fortunately I went with RE instead of cars. Add some loans for leverage and she'll be right after a coupla decades.
I posted before, most people i know think that I'm... no that Billy line, the don't know what I do for "work".

Absolutely. Retiring was something that I thought about in my 20s, when i got to 35 i realise retirement will be in a wooden box. The word is obviously very appealing as it still used very often, as is "passive income" when trying to get someone's attention.

Being productive, getting "stuff" done, starting a project and making something grow is fun and satisfying.
The problem can be fitting in with others work and time schedule. So it's often a solo thing.

 

My hubby is retiring at the end of the year, aged 42.

Maybe I should start a blog.