Interesting blog article

[Snow White]

This article won't teach anything to the readers of this blog but it might be a useful resource to forward to newbies or skeptics as he does a fairly good job of simply explaining ER. I forgot I had subscribed to it and almost deleted without reading because of the name, "Raptitude". It sound vaguely religious or even porn related but it is not!

How much of your life are you selling off?

 

[HighRoller]

You're right, not much new info but the article said: "Those of us with jobs have arranged to sell off large parts of our lives (8 hours a day, 5 days a week, for decades) to employers, in exchange for money that we can use to build a life that makes us happy" Maybe that's the norm, I don't know, butI never worked "just 40 hours a week". It was more like 55 to 60 hours a week, sometimes more. Even on weekends I'd work an average of 5 or 6 hours depending on the demands of the job at the time. I'm not complaining since I was very well compensated but if I had a 40 hour a week job (at the same pay), I might have worked a few more years before ERing

 

[steelyman]

You're right, not much new info but the article said: "Those of us with jobs have arranged to sell off large parts of our lives (8 hours a day, 5 days a week, for decades) to employers, in exchange for money that we can use to build a life that makes us happy" Maybe that's the norm, I don't know, butI never worked "just 40 hours a week". It was more like 55 to 60 hours a week, sometimes more. Even on weekends I'd work an average of 5 or 6 hours depending on the demands of the job at the time. I'm not complaining since I was very well compensated but if I had a 40 hour a week job (at the same pay), I might have worked a few more years before ERing

You are complaining (and that's fine), but just chose to donate those hours.

 

[timo2]

This article won't teach anything to the readers of this blog but it might be a useful resource to forward to newbies or skeptics as he does a fairly good job of simply explaining ER. I forgot I had subscribed to it and almost deleted without reading because of the name, "Raptitude". It sound vaguely religious or even porn related but it is not!

How much of your life are you selling off?

I liked the comments to the article.

 

[tulak]

I don't know who Tim is, but Mustache and Fisker are still working. Not the best example of people that have achieved FI.

 

[walkinwood]

The book "Your money or your life" had a impact on me. I found his methods a little extreme for me, but the principle - that earned money represents your "life force" - struck home.

 

[Ronnieboy]

I don't know who Tim is, but Mustache and Fisker are still working. Not the best example of people that have achieved FI.

I read some of Mr Money Mustache's posts, he is a bit too green for me (we are injuring the earth comments) but I would consider him retired.

While he does do home projects, owns a rental, does some construction projects on the side, he doesn't need the income from them to survive.

He has retired from his formal education job and now does what he wants to do when he wants to do it. That sounds like FI and retirement to me. Just because he likes to do construction and doesn't do it for free doesn't mean he is not retired or FI. He just listed his annual spending for last year and his family of 3 was around $25k, supposedly his investments/rental through off triple that amount. I guess his blog supplies even more money and technically it is work, but something he wants to do.

I feel like it would be me who is trained/working in the healthcare field, retiring from that and able to live off my investments. Then doing an activity I like (going to the movies) then starting a blog reviewing said movies, which gets the interest of a local paper who offers to pay me to reprint or edit some of the reviews I had posted. I would still consider myself retired, but doing something I like that never could have supported me during my working years.

But everyone's definition of retirement is different.

 

[tulak]

I should have said retire, instead of FI.


I think it's fine that he was able to quit is day job and live off his "investments." But I'm skeptical he could do nothing and only live on his passive income. Maybe I'm wrong, and really, it doesn't matter either way.

My only issue is that they say he "retired at 30," which implies that you could do this too. Well, odds are you can't, unless you want to still work for yourself after quitting the day job.

 

[walkinwood]

My only issue is that they say he "retired at 30," which implies that you could do this too. Well, odds are you can't, unless you want to still work for yourself after quitting the day job.

Apparently, he beat the odds.