Take a bow FIRE crowd - we are a rare species

[Dd852]

A new ING Report basically gloomily says most people globally think they’ll never be able to retire https://think.ing.com/articles/earning-in-retirement-the-new-norm/ - it is worth giving thanks for what most of us in this forum have been able to accomplish and the freedom of choice it has given us.

 

[Jerry1]

In all seriousness. I feel blessed and grateful that I'm in this position. Sure, there was work involved but there was also some fate/luck/blessings along the way too.

 

[robnplunder]

I desperately want to go back to work. ER has been a mega disaster .... NOT!


Life is good. ER is better.

 

[neihn]

In all seriousness. I feel blessed and grateful that I'm in this position. Sure, there was work involved but there was also some fate/luck/blessings along the way too.

+1

 

[Nick12]

I thought I was just a working Joe saving, investing, paying off my house and working second jobs not because I needed too but because I wanted to, to go keep pouring money into my index funds. When the deep recession hit in 2008,09 and many people lost their jobs and homes, and the Dow was freefalling, I went the other route and heavily I invested back into the market while others in panic and frustration pulled out their monies. This allowed me to retire early.

 

[Dtail]

+1

+2
Didn't plan for ER for many years like some folks on this site. Thus there was some luck involved, but did LBYM every year.

 

[DrRoy]

I started saving from my first paycheck.

 

[Denverite]

I thought I was just a working Joe saving, investing, paying off my house and working second jobs not because I needed too but because I wanted to, to go keep pouring money into my index funds. When the deep recession hit in 2008,09 and many people lost their jobs and homes, and the Dow was freefalling, I went the other route and heavily I invested back into the market while others in panic and frustration pulled out their monies. This allowed me to retire early.

+1

I did feel some "will the market ever come back" anxiety during that period but never stopped reinvesting my dividends. That paid off nicely as the market rose and was a big factor in my decision and ability to FIRE last year.

 

[donheff]

Yeah, I feel lucky. I have always said, "stuff falls in my bag."

 

[street]

In all seriousness. I feel blessed and grateful that I'm in this position. Sure, there was work involved but there was also some fate/luck/blessings along the way too.

This is how I feel about it and blessed dearly in life.

 

[MRG]

In all seriousness. I feel blessed and grateful that I'm in this position. Sure, there was work involved but there was also some fate/luck/blessings along the way too.

Indeed. I almost was killed twice in my first career. I worked hard to get an education and a different career.

 

[Andre1969]

+1

I did feel some "will the market ever come back" anxiety during that period but never stopped reinvesting my dividends. That paid off nicely as the market rose and was a big factor in my decision and ability to FIRE last year.

Yep, I felt that, too. I think every time one of these dips, corrections, recessions, etc comes around, there's always sort of a "This time it's different!" feeling that goes with it. Plus, even though logically, we know the market will turn around eventually, it just feels like hell until that moment gets there. And then, for me at least, once the market does start to turn around, I start to wonder, it is really turning around, or is this just a false start, "dead cat bounce" or whatever?


I'll admit, I'm still feeling a bit of anxiety over the turmoil we just had in late 2018. Although, I just checked my totals, and it would only take a 4.3% rise to get me back to the end of September 2018, when I had hit a new peak. At my worst, on Christmas Eve, I was down around 17.5%. And, because it takes a greater percentage gain to make you whole again, than what you lost, at that point I would have needed to see a 21% jump to get back to that point.


Logically, I should be happy that I've bounced back so quickly. But, I just have a gut feeling we're not quite out of the woods yet...

 

[Mdlerth]

Said the wise man to the sage

Logically, I should be happy that I've bounced back so quickly. But, I just have a gut feeling we're not quite out of the woods yet...

That's probably because we're NEVER completely out of the woods. I refer you to an intelligent gentleman I encountered on this forum:

...logically, we know the market will turn around eventually

 

[Mdlerth]

My portfolio groweth like my forehead

I read through the ING report, and came away with a question. Do the other (mostly European) countries included in the survey have equivalents to the IRA/401k/403b/457b/TSP programs available in the US?

From personal experience, automating the saving and investing was essential to reaching my own FI. In addition to the incentives (tax deferment and company match) to save and the disincentives (10% penalty for early wd) to raid it, I can't guarantee that I'd have had the discipline to stick with it all those years if the cash had crossed my hands first.

If those silver-haired marchers in France protesting government pension cuts never had access to a similar savings vehicle, it's no wonder they feel like they weren't able to provide for their own retirements. I would probably be just like them... except my hair isn't turning silver so much as it's turning loose.

 

[HI Bill]

We ARE a rare species. We plan, we save, we invest, we look to the future.

But, much of what we accomplished, we were able to do because of some form of luck (accident of birth), country location, parental upbringing, intellect, physical ability, etc. While none of those alone would have gotten us here, without them, most of us wouldn't be here, either.

Imagine being born in the desert in the middle of nowhere. No jobs, subsistence living. Living in adobe houses at best. No good medicine. No vaccinations. No OBGYN, no hospital. No clean water. Life expectancy of maybe 45.

Now, imagine being born in the poorest state and town in the US. Everything has changed. Even the poorest person can rise above, and get out, assuming they have drive and ambition, and a little bit of intelligence.

While I'm proud of what I've accomplished with my very modest upbringing, I didn't do it alone. I was born in California. I had loving, college-educated parents. They paid for my college. I majored in STEM. I was able to get a job within 6 weeks of graduation. Moving around between urban areas of two states, I was able to be employed full-time, without a gap, for the past 28 years. While much of this was hard work and learning, much of it would not have happened if I'd been born into different circumstances.

I'm grateful for the start I was given!

 

[unclemick]

Hmm - hindsight being what it is - best ever event was getting canned/layed off at age 50 (Jan 1993) instead of trudging on to planed retirement at age 63.

Had no idear (grin) of how cheap an SOB I could be. Cutting expenses with fear as a prime motivation got us to levels of thrift I previously believed impossible.

Save first then do whatever it takes to live on the rest is 'the gorilla in the room' in all these articles.

heh heh heh - easier said than done. I did not see until I was forced to see.

 

[Squirrel]

Kinda odd how the right words at the right time make the switch click:

18 years old. Basic Training (1970's). One of the lectures talked about 'pay yourself first' to avoid poverty in old age.

I'm glad I stayed awake during that lecture.

 

[FreeBear]

I thought I was just a working Joe saving, investing, paying off my house and working second jobs not because I needed too but because I wanted to, to go keep pouring money into my index funds. When the deep recession hit in 2008,09 and many people lost their jobs and homes, and the Dow was freefalling, I went the other route and heavily I invested back into the market while others in panic and frustration pulled out their monies. This allowed me to retire early.

+1 Was fortunate I managed to stay employed through that recession. I just scored a promotion that year, but now had to deal with office politics. Started preparing for a layoff and tried to keep my head down. I stopped looking at my 401k and brokerage account, and just kept pouring $$ in. I was all equities; it was scary. Rode the equities recovery into retirement.

 

[Eagle43]

I always thought I was just lucky. Anyway, DW and I have enough loot (I hope) to last until we check out. BTW: I must thank this forum for telling me to get index funds and stay the course. That's what we did and it seems to be working. Life is good.

 

[Markola]

I was in high school and my mother was studying to be a realtor. One of her books was nothing but page after page of compound interest tables. It was about the first book I’d ever gotten excited about, because it pointed the way to some kind of magic in the world. I couldn’t wait to get a nut together and then let the compounding begin.

 

[Nick12]

+1 Was fortunate I managed to stay employed through that recession. I just scored a promotion that year, but now had to deal with office politics. Started preparing for a layoff and tried to keep my head down. I stopped looking at my 401k and brokerage account, and just kept pouring $$ in. I was all equities; it was scary. Rode the equities recovery into retirement.

Freebear, you and me are from the same mold. I was also in all in equities, and also what I had in savings and my real estate. During that turbulent times of 2008,09 I rarely looked at my portfolio balance and kept pouring $$ into equities as the Dow went into a free fall. After April 2009, the huge bets that I made slowly started building my portfolio back since I was buying at dirt cheap prices while many of my friends were pulling their $$ out in panic and frustration. Allowed me to ER'd in 2018. I should have bought several of the foreclosed homes in my area in 2009 and those homes 10 years later today are 2x in value. But that's another story.

 

[marko]

"The results of the latest ING International Survey suggest it's a real worry for nearly two-thirds of people across Europe, the US and Australia, and notably in Spain, France and Poland"

I'm not going to dispute the article's data, but having worked and lived in France for many years, I really can't say it fits my close personal experience with the locals' mindset.

Of course, I could be snide and say that when you've jiggered your holidays, saint's days, vacation time, strike days, sick days and company paid one hour lunch-with-wine into your 35 hour work week, you're already semi-retired anyway. Seriously, my colleagues were masters at manipulating a calendar into a 3 day work week 80% of the time.