Recent content by jacob

The current policy is to write an update whenever something "significant" happens. Kinda like an epilogue/"where are they now". I think that's somewhat useful to have without attracting too much publicity.

Not sure how you fail to find it? Are you looking in another state? (Prices can vary a lot from state to state.) I just checked again. 62 y/o male, non-smoking, my current zip-code (60640). This gives 88 plans. Sort by price. I count 14 plans out of 88 that are over $750/month. The rest are...

Well, it's my ultimate hope that eventually people will stop caring who I am and just consider the ideas and concepts objectively and critically for what they are and apply them to their own situations if they so desire and otherwise just let it be. I think this is a general problem with our...

It's actually possible if you do a lot of the footwork. Google "epchan" and read his book. You'd have to take a Series7 exam, do your own accounting and tax reporting, and hire some software engineers (he suggests hiring two and having them work on independent parts of your code so they don't...

I'm offering this more as a strategic concern/suggestion [for anyone who's public about something that goes against the mainstream culture]. There are some saying that bad PR is better than no PR; that it's better to ignore "smear" than to defend it actively. Actually, I've found that active...

It's my strong impression that regular readers were fine with it. Some of them even guessed at it coming(*)---I had been [mostly] autopiloting the blog for over a year and apparently it showed that I was getting bored/frustrated with the blogging process. I think anyone on E-R will understand...

You raise some good points. One of the problems with blogging, at least when a certain popularity/wide audience has been reached, is that one must deal with all kinds of different people. It is incredibly hard (I can't do it) to communicate a message using the same words and ensuring that it...

Given that numbers is hard, I fear that adding one more might only increase the confusion ...

That's not really MY issue. That's an issue of not separating the message from the messenger and not looking at the ideas [in the book] objectively. I suspect it's also an issue of having different preconceived notions of what the word "retirement" means to different people, but lets rather...

LOL you'd be surprised at what impresses people these days. One of my neighbors was quite taken with my mallet which is essentially a round of firewood with a hole drilled into it for a handle. All I'm saying about the handmade cableknit sweater is that if you had to buy a similar one, you'd...

It should have been called "SELF-SUFFICIENCY DIY ETHICS PERSONAL FREEDOM LOW ENVIRONMENTAL FOOTPRINT AND FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE" dot com or something. The word retirement has so many unfortunate connotations depending on who's using it. Very many can not see past their own definition. It's my...

I guess those are cool, but ... How about working on "Wall Street"? Or building furniture good enough to get commissioned? Or selling 10,000 books? Or getting published in a professional journal? Or getting a PhD? Or flying rescue missions? Or designing airplanes or new economies? Can I buy...

No it won't. To use a metaphor, you're comparing an efficient swimmer to a bad swimmer who's splashing around in the water. Both need to cover the same distance but they need different amounts of effort to accomplish this. I can get as far on a "shoestring" as others can using much more. I see...

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...

I think "pimpmyretirement" captures my sentiments best. Some points 1a) A quick calculation shows that I have 45 times my annual spending saved up. I haven't increased my spending so far even though technically I could have increased it by 30% safely already. My withdrawal rate is 2.22% To me...