Class of 1989

[Sojourning]

Any other members?

 

[Cobra9777]

I finished grad school in 1989. Does that count?

 

[Sojourning]

Sorry kid, what was that, grade school? My hearing's starting to go a little at my age.

 

[imoldernu]

Any other members?

Yes... retired November 1989. Thought I was all alone here. Maybe we could plan a retirement reunion party.

 

[Sojourning]

Well who would have thunk I would find a fellow class of 89 member. I posted for a laugh. Just goes to show, it's a small world after all as they say.

Reunion party? You still party?

 

[steelyman]

Well who would have thunk I would find a fellow class of 89 member. I posted for a laugh. Just goes to show, it's a small world after all as they say.

Reunion party? You still party?

I did a double-take, too, when I saw your thread. I'm so used to the happy soon-to-be-retired posts in the yearly rosters.

Maybe they should group all those classes in their own sub-forum, like yearbooks.

I think The Class Of 1989 is a fine addition!

 

[Jay_Gatsby]

I did a double-take, too, when I saw your thread. I'm so used to the happy soon-to-be-retired posts in the yearly rosters.

Maybe they should group all those classes in their own sub-forum, like yearbooks.

I think The Class Of 1989 is a fine addition!

Just think, you both retired the year Taylor Swift was born.

 

[steelyman]

Just think, you both retired the year Taylor Swift was born.

I assume you meant the two (so far) 1989ers. I was a proud member of The Class Of 2011, so if she was born then I can only speculate a high-protein diet for her worked wonders!

 

[Jay_Gatsby]

I assume you meant the two (so far) 1989ers. I was a proud member of The Class Of 2011, so if she was born then I can only speculate a high-protein diet for her worked wonders!

Yes, I meant the 1989rs.

On a more serious note, I find it interesting that we have at least two 26+ year veterans of the RE game still active on this board. It would appear that their projections (perhaps such as they were back then) ultimately proved correct. Perhaps there is something to this FIRE = Happiness canard after all.

 

[Sojourning]

Umm, sorry to disappoint you Jay. Here's what I learned (imoldernu can of course speak for himself).

My 'projections' were based on three simple points. Spend less than your income every year. Never touch the principal and most importantly, never, never, never gamble money in the stock market. Nothing like what I see here under 'financials'.

Re Taylor Swift, here's a more sobering thought that combines time and 'projections'. If you think back to 1989, two common things today basically did not exist. Cellphones and the internet. The world has changed in the last 25 years and no doubt will change again in the next 25 years. No 'projections' last through that amount of time. That makes looking at people working out 25-30-35 year 'projections' pretty amusing to me. There is nothing I was invested in in 1989 that I am still invested in today.

Here's my take on how 'FIRE' works. You THINK you have enough to quit and then you have the guts to quit and find out. EACH YEAR. You may be right, you may be wrong. So far, I'm in going into year 26 and holding my own.

 

[Meadbh]

Umm, sorry to disappoint you Jay. Here's what I learned (imoldernu can of course speak for himself).

My 'projections' were based on three simple points. Spend less than your income every year. Never touch the principal and most importantly, never, never, never gamble money in the stock market. Nothing like what I see here under 'financials'.

Re Taylor Swift, here's a more sobering thought that combines time and 'projections'. If you think back to 1989, two common things today basically did not exist. Cellphones and the internet. The world has changed in the last 25 years and no doubt will change again in the next 25 years. No 'projections' last through that amount of time. That makes looking at people working out 25-30-35 year 'projections' pretty amusing to me. There is nothing I was invested in in 1989 that I am still invested in today.

Here's my take on how 'FIRE' works. You THINK you have enough to quit and then you have the guts to quit and find out. EACH YEAR. You may be right, you may be wrong. So far, I'm in going into year 26 and holding my own.

I think you might be underestimating the age of both cellphones and the Internet. But it is true that they had not become mass market items in 1989. I got my first internet account in 1990 when I joined a Canadian university; we used FTP and UNIX. Mosaic appeared in 1993 and suddenly the Internet became user friendly.

The First Mobile Phone Call Was Made 40 Years Ago Today - The Atlantic

A Brief History of the Internet | Internet Hall of Fame

You say that none of your investments now are the same as in 1989. What is different?

 

[steelyman]

I hope to read more from the 89ers.

 

[M Paquette]

I think you might be underestimating the age of both cellphones and the Internet. But it is true that they had not become mass market items in 1989. I got my first internet account in 1990 when I joined a Canadian university; we used FTP and UNIX. Mosaic appeared in 1993 and suddenly the Internet became user friendly.

Somewhere around here I have a complete map of the Internet, from something like 1982. There were about 30 machines connected, many on leased lines with modems on each end.

Hah! The Wikimedia folks had a copy.

 

[Alan]

I bought my first item on the internet circa 1989, a Prodigy sweatshirt.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prodigy_(online_service)

By 1990 it was the second-largest online service provider, with 465,000 subscribers trailing only CompuServe's 600,000.[1] Its headquarters were in White Plains, New York until 2000, when they moved to Austin, Texas.

 

[Alan]

I hope to read more from the 89ers.

+1

 

[imoldernu]

Re: plans and results... have pretty much detailed mine here on ER.

I guess we didn't connect to ARPANET back in 1986, but we did have a graphic interface - GEOS... which a little later became Geoworks.
Just imagine... instead of looking at the green screen of our Apple 2E, all of a sudden we had a "window"... with links (pictures) to click on, instead of having to input text.
GEOS (8-bit operating system) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
If I remember correctly, we used Geoworks until sometime around 1993, when we skipped over Windows 3.1, to the much more advanced Windows 3.11.

We connected to others with the amazing 300 baud Hayes modem. The book for programming the modem was about 100 pages... and the connection over the phone line was chancy... depending on whether the geek who was running the Bulletin Board was home or not. Chat rooms were really fun, oftern with 10 people (or more) trying to ge a word in edgewise.

It was a time when file extensions were new (to us anyway) and we marveled as new ones became available... gif files for moving stick figures, jpeg for pictures and wav... for sound... imagine... digital sound!

All a little bit hazy in memory, but for sure... very exciting at the time.

 

[Sojourning]

Let's not get pedantic guys. When I gave the cellphone and internet as examples of major changes in the world in the last 25 years, I was referring to common usage, not first time ever usage of some kind.

I can recall being an early user of this kind of phone. http://facultywp.ccri.edu/jkirby/files/2011/12/first-car-phone.jpg
I can also recall getting ready to go on a vacation and my boss asking me to take my phone with me in case they wanted to get in touch with me. I refused his ridiculous request.

Do you ever consider how much freedom people have lost since the advent of the cellphone? Thank goodness I don't need to work for a living anymore. I can't imagine being expected to be available for business the way working people are today. While cellphones do have many advantages they also have their downsides as well. Lose of private time being a big one in my estimation.

As for the internet, sorry guys, it's 25 years old last November according to the inventor of it. Inventor of the web marks its 25th anniversary by calling for net neutrality | The Verge
Whaddaya think, should he know better than you do? Computer 'nets' such as the ARPAnet or Prodigy existed but not the Internet we all use today. Perhaps I would have been more accurate (for the pedants among us) if I had said the World Wide Web instead of the Internet.

The point is, widespread usage by the public of both cellphones and the Internet have changed the world a great deal. Who knows what will change in the next 25 years. Thinking a 'projection' will be valid in 25 years really isn't thinking at all.

Meadbh, you wrote, "You say that none of your investments now are the same as in 1989. What is different?" The simple answer is everything. The complicated answer is too complicated to try and write here.

Here's an example for you though. When I left Canada I had a chunk of money in GICs with a Canadian Bank. Guaranteed around 10% return. However, they also tied me to Canada as being 'deemed to be resident' and were subject to income tax. After being in Greece for a year or so, I discovered that I could buy Greek government bonds that were tax free in Greece, could be held in foreign currency and paid 21%. Taking the money out of my Canadian GICs and buying Greek bonds would also allow me to become 'non-resident for tax purposes' in Canada. At that time, Greece was not in the financial situation it is today. They were a pretty safe bet. So what do you think I did?

There was no way that I would have known about those Greek bonds before I retired and been able to 'project' based on them. Nor could I have projected that a Canadian bank GIC today would only be paying 2.5%. That's why I say projections are just a guess and nothing more. I just stick to my 3 rules and play it by ear, year by year. You cannot make a future decision in the present.

Now I gotta go, time for my siesta, one truly great life changing discovery I made in Greece.

 

[braumeister]

Maybe I can be an auxiliary member of the class.

My first retirement was in 1989, and my second (final) retirement was in 2001.
First was from the military, second from a civilian career.

 

[Sojourning]

I see no problem with giving you honourary membership braumeister.

What do you think imoldernu?

 

[imoldernu]

I see no problem with giving you honourary membership braumeister.

What do you think imoldernu?

He's a party guy, so he gets my vote!

 

[steelyman]

I am curious: do the 89ers recall what they did on or immediately after their last day of work?

(I'll guess it wasn't "logged in to early-retirement.org")

 

[imoldernu]

I am curious: do the 89ers recall what they did on or immediately after their last day of work?

(I'll guess it wasn't "logged in to early-retirement.org")

Easy to remember this... Went to the hospital for sigmoid section. Unusually long 4 1/2 hour operation, and a 10 day hospital stay. Three months for full recovery. I had been running my own business with two of my sons. They took over and after many, many calculations DW and I took a chance, let them run the business, and decided to live whatever life would be left.

Turned out pretty well. Never expanded into the planned franchising of my computer based sign business... at the same time as FastSigns was developing. Instead we squeezed through the early days and remain totally happy today. Never looked back to a shoulda, coulda, woulda regret.

So no big celebration on that first day, but made up for that every day since.

 

[braumeister]

I am curious: do the 89ers recall what they did on or immediately after their last day of work?

(I'll guess it wasn't "logged in to early-retirement.org")

I'm just an honorary member, but I remember very vividly.

On Friday, I officially retired from the US Air Force, with all the usual folderol in a Pentagon conference room.
On Saturday, I drove from there to Ohio.
On Sunday, I married DW and we flew off to northern California for a honeymoon.

Definitely a memorable weekend!

 

[Sojourning]

Kinda like asking 'do you remember where you were on 9/11?'. Some things are more memorable than others and I think early retirement is one of them.

I too retired on a Friday and on Saturday I was hung over. My advice, try to avoid attending your own retirement party if you can.

Actually, I would say the 'day of' was really pretty anti-climatic. More of a relief than an 'exciting' day. That life was finally over with. Thank goodness.

 

[Sarah in SC]

Whoa, y'all are serious fossils. And that coming from Gen X. Damn, I graduated HS in 1988. Congrats on all these years of retirement!