Early Retirement TOO Extreme? Jacob Fisker unRetires

[Sarah in SC]

Thanks Jacob for your clarifying points. And as someone working in the bottom rung of the finance field, I am grateful that you are putting your plentiful intelligence to work in quant. We need you!

[unclemick]

Hormones.

Resistance is futile.

heh heh heh - where life leads can get very interesting - with financial independance, energy and curiousity.

Truth like sanity is way overrated - the 2003 Blond in the basement in Missoula grew up, works the night shift at Waffle House. Or not. 'Follow your Bliss' and if one creation myth gets boring - make up a new one.

[Midpack]

Jacob: Thanks for sharing more of your thinking, I was hoping you'd post here too. I learned from and enjoyed reading your blog and your book. Best of luck...

[eridanus]

Yes, thanks for posting, Jacob. Have fun in Chi-town.

[bikeknit]

I've been reading Jacob's Early retirement Extreme blog for awhile and I wasn't the least surprised that he decided to move on. His posts were getting repetitive and he sounded bored. There were a couple of times when he mentioned not having near age peers to hang out with in the daytime. People change their minds and move on. Just because you have a blog doesn't mean you have to live the same way forever. I wish him the best.

As a 58 year old however, I'm really looking forward to retiring in a couple of years!

[bikeknit]

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Originally Posted by haha Jacob's example may show only that living in poverty is not much fun, once the "can I do this?" aspect has been settled. He is young and educated, so he can reverse field. It was similar back in the 60s when plenty of Stanford, Cal Poly, etc grads became hippies. Everyone knew they could reverse fields and become doctors or lawyers or bond traders if they did not tarry too long in lala land. Not so true of the working class kids who also thought that "tune in, turn on, and drop out" was a good idea. Ha

I remember realizing this in my early 20's. Most of the hippie kids were from affluent families who could help pick them up and send them to grad school when they got bored with the simple life. Rescuing me would have wiped out my parents so I knew that I had to take care of things myself - which meant a job with benefits.

[Spanky]

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4) I don't know about you, but I "like" money. I'm not going to say no to it even if I'm not going to spend it.

I enjoy earning money so that I can afford a certain life style albeit not extravagant by any standard, but I am definitely not in love or attached to money.

BTW, good luck in your endeavor.

[Spanky]

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As a 58 year old however, I'm really looking forward to retiring in a couple of years!

+1. I am hoping to get off the vicious cycle of "a few more years".

[Nords]

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Originally Posted by pimpmyretirement This is my biggest concern about deciding to ER upon reaching FI. My experience has been leisure pursuits are really fun as an escape to whatever challenges I am currently facing. When the challenges requiring expertise are gone from my life, I can't enjoy "relaxing" activities. I find them dull and pointless. My life seems meaningless and without direction. Pursuit of a challenge makes me feel useful, especially if the output of my pursuit is valued by other people. Maslow caputures this at the peak of his needs hierarchy, as Esteem and Self-actualization. YMOYL calls this work and describes ways it can be valued other than dollars. Unfortunately (), my experience is that money is the glue that holds people together for work on significant, long term efforts that are truly interesting (ie those which enable development of and provide an outlet for expertise).

Lemme get this straight.

People on this board have managed to somehow stumble through the years of analysis, planning, & discipline required to earn money, save it, cut expenses, and otherwise do incredibly creative and innovative things necessary to achieve financial independence. I suspect that this achievement places them in the top 1% of the American population. Maybe in the top 0.01%... in a strata so rarefied that it has to be plotted on a semi-log scale.

Having finished that accomplishment, the next comment out of their mouths is "OMG, I don't know what I'm going to do all day!!!"

And here I thought that only military veterans had an occupationally-imposed inferiority complex.

Folks, get a grip. If you made it to early retirement then you can surely figure out how to ENJOY early retirement. You might even be able to figure out how to enjoy it without re-creating the workplace environment and without bribing paying a bunch of people to entertain you. I know-- that's a stretch and you're skeptical-- but that's just the sort of wild-eyed seat-of-the-pants out-of-the-box thinking that your co-workers accused you of when you mentioned that you're planning to achieve financial independence. Right?

And if ER doesn't work out then you can always go create yourself a real job...

Quote:

Originally Posted by pimpmyretirement Jacob, for instance, is going to be in a technically rich environment filled with pragmatic math and physics Phds - certainly not something he would find at the trailer park or martial arts dojo.

I'll acknowledge the "trailer-park" stereotype (Hey, Jacob, what do you think of that?) but I think you have a distorted perspective on the types of people you encounter at a martial-arts dojang.

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Originally Posted by jacob It's like the difference between cruising sailors who prefer to sit in the cockpit and sip daiquiris and racing sailors who like to pound waves. To the former the latter looks like misery. To the latter the former looks boring. It's just different personalities. IMPORTANTLY: This lack of mutual understanding does not prove that sailing is impossible.

To torture the sailing analogy for another paragraph, I'm surprised that you chose to sign on as crew instead of skippering your own boat. No matter how good you are at trimming the sails, and no matter how much they respect your skills, someone else has their hand on the rudder. Someone else is deciding how to handle the wind and the waves. What happens if they're taking you where you don't care to go? Is the voyage wasted when you could have spent that time in charge of your own voyage?

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Originally Posted by jacob This is indeed an unsolved problem for me: What to do with unnecessary money. Remember Buffett's comments before he finally gave it all to the Gates Foundation? He thought he could take care of the money better while he was alive and make a much bigger contribution if he grew it in the mean time than handing it out. For the reasons above, I think the same thing.

I haven't solved the "extra money" problem either. Part of it is the emotional reflex "But I might NEED that someday!!" Part of it is being able to self-fund a life annuity... hopefully with the same "guarantee" as an insurance company.

I guess the good news is that successful quants need a Buffett-sized ego confidence to succeed in that field, along with a host of other skills. However it would appear that Buffett changed his mind when another choice finally presented itself. Perhaps the key is regularly assessing one's performance against the benchmarks and being ready to align one's decisions with the facts.

That same confidence lends itself to entrepreneurship, not so much to paid employment.

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Originally Posted by jacob I believe I've found that (yes, I spent plenty of time during the interview finding out if I'm just "headcount" or not. Obviously, I'm not ).

I'm still not sure. Who was interviewing whom? Are you being paid or are you sharing a partnership profit pool? Deciding whether you're headcount rests with the person signing the checks-- not your opinion.

I think you're about to rediscover the long-term relationship differences among dating, weddings, honeymoons, and (after everything else is "over") marriages. Hopefully you chose partners who really believe that they're partners, not employers.

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Original post deleted

Is the discussion board on ERE being run by Quinstreet or by Jacob or by someone else?

Jacob, is the ERE blog going to start running fresh content or will it keep recycling your posts?

I'm a little confused by the link between "selling the blog" and "free to pursue YMOYL".

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Original post deleted

Thanks for the insight. Interesting. I've been posting on discussion boards for seven years and find blogging to be at least as satisfying. There are times when the self-imposed deadlines are a drag, but that's the same thing with eating healthy and exercising and doing chores.

So far I haven't found the need to "move on" to anything else. It's more to be managed than to be ditched.

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Original post deleted

I'm acutely aware of finances, but I'm more interested in the "writing" part than in the "making money" part. Since The-Military-Guide blog revenue is being donated to military charities, I find that I don't have much interest in the first dollar of revenue or the ten thousandth. I'd rather write.

I think that another aspect of writing is a desire to share knowledge, impart a legacy, and pay forward the effort that people put into training us when we were younger.

Now moderating a discussion board... I can understand how that motivation would disappear in a hurry!

[arebelspy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nords Is the discussion board on ERE being run by Quinstreet or by Jacob or by someone else? Jacob, is the ERE blog going to start running fresh content or will it keep recycling your posts? I'm a little confused by the link between "selling the blog" and "free to pursue YMOYL".

The poster you quote was saying JD Roth at Get Rich Slowly sold his blog (though he continues to blog there), not Jacob at ERE.

He was saying part of the reason JD can now travel is that he sold his blog and only works as a writer there now, not owner running everything.

[Spanky]

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Original post deleted

He can do whatever he wants to pursue or change his mind at anytime.

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And of course some bloggers are purely altruistic, but I feel that those bloggers are the exception that prove the rule.

Those bloggers deserve a lot of respects as they are truly passionate about their topics for sharing as opposed to making money.

[haha]

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Original post deleted

I don't care how badly some business endeavor might pay, like you say, getting paid is the primary thing on the mind of the guy who is running it. If what you are writing doesn't help sell, sooner of later you will learn to write something that does sell, or quit. Not much purity around, or at least not for long.

Ha

[jacob]

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Originally Posted by Nords I think that another aspect of writing is a desire to share knowledge, impart a legacy, and pay forward the effort that people put into training us when we were younger.

I agree. That was a large part of what motivated me to write. Now, start thinking about what you're going to do once you've shared everything you know and it's all out there in the form of a thousand or however many blog posts and a book. Do you keep repeating yourself? Do you deal well with repetitive tasks? I don't. Others do.

Also, what will happen if the blog becomes big is that the "douchebag"-count, which measures personal attacks/libel/people posting wrong presumptions about you as if they were facts/etc., increases from an average of 1/year to 1/day or 1/hour on some days. Will it still be fun to run a blog? How thick is one's skin? How thick is the skin of friends and family? There's a big difference between a small blog and a big blog. I'd say "year 2" or 20000 visitors/month of blogging was the best time: You're big enough to attract the positive people but not too big to attract the negative people.

To answer your other question, I still own all the rights to everything: The blog is mine and the book is mine. That's not to say that I'll guarantee that I'm immune to selling those rights, but the price would be severe. I'll keep recycling posts on the blog. Some prefer a daily dose instead of just reading all the archives. The reposter works for this purpose. Frankly I'm surprised that more bloggers aren't using it if they're writing timeless material anyway.

[pimpmyretirement]

Nords, I intend no insult to the trailer park residents or the martial artists. My point is the subset of those groups that will be interested in, good at, and have access to enterprise quality tools for financial modeling is very small. Taking an interest in finance to the highest levels requires specialization which is typically only found in a business.

Pursuit of most skills at the highest levels requires becoming a professional in that field. You pay dues through work, but in return get access to experienced peers, mentors and their resources. The end result is performance that far exceeds all but the most exceptional hobbyists.

Imagine if I developed an interest in submarines and tried to be an expert submariner without learning through the Navy or a major defense contractor. I bet my skill set, even with years of study, would be laughable.

I'm a smart guy, but still young and short on life experience. Maybe I'll come around to your perspective as I learn more about the world.

[lhamo]

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Original post deleted

Wow -- did he announce that on the blog? I remember posts where he talked about stepping back a bit, but not this level of detail. Interesting, and it makes sense in a way. But he clearly chose a good firm to partner with because although there are more flashy ads on the edges, the main feel and content of the site remains true to its origins.

Thanks for the info.

[lhamo]

Thanks for the post, jacob. I work in the non-profit sector so I understand your distaste of a lot of what is out there. But there is good stuff going on, too. I hope you will consider your "blogging fellow" idea further. That is a great idea that could really serve as a launching pad for people with important things to say and a good way of saying them.

Sorry if I was too negative in my posts. I've been reading "All of the Devils Are Here" this week, so I'm a little down on the finance industry. But you are right that there are certainly lots of problems to solve there, and if you can find a way to make the system healthier and more sustainable then maybe we'll be saying "we knew him when" when you win the Nobel Prize for economics.

Best of luck to you and come back to let us know how it is going. A good job can be a great thing. I have found my own drive to reach FI mellowed considerably once I started working for a humane employer doing work that isn't always rocket science, but is usually fun and makes a positive difference in the world.

[MooreBonds]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nords Lemme get this straight. People on this board have managed to somehow stumble through the years of analysis, planning, & discipline required to earn money, save it, cut expenses, and otherwise do incredibly creative and innovative things necessary to achieve financial independence. I suspect that this achievement places them in the top 1% of the American population. Maybe in the top 0.01%... in a strata so rarefied that it has to be plotted on a semi-log scale. Having finished that accomplishment, the next comment out of their mouths is "OMG, I don't know what I'm going to do all day!!!"

Not trying to start/add to the flames rumbling underneath the surface, but I wonder if the ERE website shouldn't instead be more described as "ESL" (Extremely Simple Living)?

If a new person posted on this forum that they retired at age 33 with a scant $200,000 portfolio, lived on $8,000/year for 3 years, then went back to work because of boredom, would there be 10 pages of posts saying "congrats, good luck in eradicating your boredom"?

It's a generally accepted definition that people strive for Early Retirement for a single purpose: to eliminate their dependency on their job and use that time to pursue interests other than warming a cubicle chair. Many have reached FI or near-FI, but choose to continue to work to push the portfolio a little farther from that FI-line for more confidence that they'll never have to return to work.

But when someone sets out for such a hallmark standout goal of retiring in their early 30s, and makes a point of doing it on such a shoestring budget, then 'returns to work out of boredom', it would be like someone training for a marathon, then running the race's first 2 miles at a 4:25/mile pace, and then quitting because they were so far ahead of the pack that "it wasn't worth the challenge of continuing". In all probability, they wouldn't have been able to continue that 4:25/mile pace for the rest of the 24.2 miles...

I'm all for people taking on challenges, and continuing to work to build buffers to add to their stash to minimize the chance they'll ever have to return to work once they reach FI - but I'm not quite sold on trying to make a name for yourself precisely because of an "early retirement extreme" concept...then hitting the reboot button because of 'boredom'. If he had retired with a portfolio of several million, kept withdrawals to under 3%, had amazing traveling/social experiences and still chose to return to work for the 'challenge', I might be a little more convinced than someone who lived on half of a shoestring budget and was trying to woo a significant other....

[Midpack]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MooreBonds It's a generally accepted definition that people strive for Early Retirement for a single purpose: to eliminate their dependency on their job and use that time to pursue interests other than warming a cubicle chair. Many have reached FI or near-FI, but choose to continue to work to push the portfolio a little farther from that FI-line for more confidence that they'll never have to return to work.

Plus a lucky minority who pursue FI with no intention of quitting because they really enjoy their work. Or the lucky few who pursue FI indeed to eliminate their dependence on their first job, so they can enjoy an encore (work) career. These lucky folks may not quit until they're physically unable to work. YMMV

[NW-Bound]

I only learned of the ERE site from a reference in a post here in this forum. I have read a few posts of Jacob, and will say that he is a bit eccentric. I will not hold that attribute against him however, as some people consider me a bit weird as well.

So, he is going back to work. Somehow, it does not surprise me. He is just too young. I am 20 years older, and there are still technical things in my field that interest me. Gosh, they even pay me to go study these new-fangled things and see how to make use of them...

But, but, but I hope that Jacob will keep some of his investments safe, and not put all of his nest egg where his job will be. Didn't LTCM employ some quants, along with some Nobel prize winners? Heh heh heh... (Darn, I sound more and more like Uncle Mick, though I currently have only about 1% of portfolio in Wellesley. One of these days, I will transfer in more, I swear...)

Anyway, Thoreau himself lived on the edge of Walden Pond for only two years, and people still talk about it. And if Jacob does not like his new job, he can always walk and return to his ascetic life. By learning to live minimally, he has created for himself some options. People change all the time. Jacob knows what makes him happy.

And by the way, about Kumbaya, here's a youtube for you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3H-MeS6LhhU

About 30 seconds into the song, the singer explained that the origin of this song was not certainly known. A quick check on Wikipedia provides elaboration on that: Kumbaya - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

PS. Heck, the post that mentioned Kumbaya was removed before I could submit my post. Oh well, I need to listen to this song once in a while anyway...

[Spanky]

Quote:

I'm all for people taking on challenges, and continuing to work to build buffers to add to their stash to minimize the chance they'll ever have to return to work once they reach FI - but I'm not quite sold on trying to make a name for yourself precisely because of an "early retirement extreme" concept...then hitting the reboot button because of 'boredom'. If he had retired with a portfolio of several million, kept withdrawals to under 3%, had amazing traveling/social experiences and still chose to return to work for the 'challenge', I might be a little more convinced than someone who lived on half of a shoestring budget and was trying to woo a significant other....

His new theme will be how I achieve FI again in a different way. That is, retiring in comfort by working as a quantitative analyst/trader for just after a few years. Living under a shoestring will be a distant memory.