financial samuri - Fire Post

[livingalmostlarge]

I don't know if anyone else reads Financial Samurai. I find him interesting like other bloggers. Anyway he recently posted about losing his FIRE status because he bought a house. But I'm not sure reading it if he makes sense. I feel he hasn't calculated all the draw down/savings/budget correctly.

Did anyone else see this post?

https://www.financialsamurai.com/no-longer-financially-independent-blew-up-my-passive-income/

 

[Aerides]

He's just making content for clicks. He's made this same complaint multiple times in recent years, and every time someone makes another thread about him. He's not someone I would ever take seriously.

https://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f28/financial-samurai-cant-afford-fire-anymore-101275.html

https://www.early-retirement.org/fo...writing-another-self-pity-article-103618.html

https://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f27/history-of-fire-movement-117672.html

 

[Another Reader]

He's just making content for clicks. He's made this same complaint multiple times in recent years, and every time someone makes another thread about him. He's not someone I would ever take seriously.

https://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f28/financial-samurai-cant-afford-fire-anymore-101275.html

https://www.early-retirement.org/fo...writing-another-self-pity-article-103618.html

https://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f27/history-of-fire-movement-117672.html

Exactly.

 

[FiveDriver]

He's just making content for clicks. He's made this same complaint multiple times in recent years, and every time someone makes another thread about him. He's not someone I would ever take seriously.

https://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f28/financial-samurai-cant-afford-fire-anymore-101275.html

https://www.early-retirement.org/fo...writing-another-self-pity-article-103618.html

https://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f27/history-of-fire-movement-117672.html

That right there is the reason I stopped reading the guy's blog.

 

[audreyh1]

He's just making content for clicks. He's made this same complaint multiple times in recent years, and every time someone makes another thread about him. He's not someone I would ever take seriously.

https://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f28/financial-samurai-cant-afford-fire-anymore-101275.html

https://www.early-retirement.org/fo...writing-another-self-pity-article-103618.html

https://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f27/history-of-fire-movement-117672.html

+3

 

[Gumby]

He's got fish overload - full of carp.

 

[Kork13]

I had a similar reaction as the others ... I read this stuff for a couple weeks, and rather quickly saw that he's mostly in it for the marketing & attention... I began to ignore him & haven't looked back.

 

[Koolau]

No interest in financial samuri. Stay here and learn from the real experts.

 

[FLSUnFIRE]

Hasn't done it, doesn't know how to do it, gets cited by media and followed by the naive. He's a self-described "expert" with no expertise. He is good at self-promotion though.

 

[FLSUnFIRE]

The 100% legit FIREd folk generally don't bother with blogging, You Tube, etc. I don't know of any that have not monetized and use the potentially substantial income to either fund their "retirement" or boost their lifestyle/spending beyond the FI they achieved without the social media/publishing. To follow most of their paths you would have to have the skills to publish/produce content.



Not to take away from the legit ones, if I thought people would watch/listen/read my story I'd monetize it too! It would be interesting if one did not monetize or had all revenue put into escrow or a trust/charity they did not touch. I don't think my early "mentor", John Greaney, makes much off of www.retireearlyhomepage.com though.

 

[Andre1969]

In reading through it, it sounds like he held onto his previous house. At least I'm seeing a place where he ponders selling it and clearing around $1.3M, or renting it and grossing around $90-100K/yr. But for the time being, he's doing neither so the house is just sitting there, costing him money. That's a big part of his problem right there.

 

[dunkelblau]

In reading through it, it sounds like he held onto his previous house. At least I'm seeing a place where he ponders selling it and clearing around $1.3M, or renting it and grossing around $90-100K/yr. But for the time being, he's doing neither so the house is just sitting there, costing him money. That's a big part of his problem right there.

I wonder if his rent expectation is realistic?

My brother just sold his home for a bit more than that while an identical unit down the street is up for rent at $5k/mon. That's a gross rent yield of 4% which I believe is typical in these bubble areas. Seems unattractive when cap rate is less than half of current money market yield. OTOH it's hard to part with something that's reliably gained 7-8% per year in value. Stock investors accept a lower dividend yield on a high quality growth name, maybe something for prospective landlords to consider.

 

[ncbill]

Can't make money as a SFR landlord in a VHCOL location.

Rent is nowhere near what is needed for positive cashflow.

Holding for appreciation is speculation, not investment.

 

[jazz4cash]

Can't make money as a SFR landlord in a VHCOL location.

Rent is nowhere near what is needed for positive cashflow.

Holding for appreciation is speculation, not investment.

Yeah but its very very common esp when you’ve subsidized the cost by living there a few years

 

[MarieIG]

+3

+4

 

[HawkeyeNFO]

Sam Dogen is a jackass. He has been for years. I'm not clicking on any of his steaming piles.

 

[Koolau]

It's difficult to relate to someone who prioritizes as he does. Before I went back to w*rk, I'd move instead - I hear Mississippi is a VLCOL area.



Kids are a complicating factor, but none of his current "issues" can possibly come as a surprise. He's smart enough to track his income and expenses. Surely, he's smart enough to figure how to make his income meet his expenses BEFORE he does something foolish like buy too much house. Nuff said.

 

[TickTock]

The 100% legit FIREd folk generally don't bother with blogging, You Tube, etc. I don't know of any that have not monetized and use the potentially substantial income to either fund their "retirement" or boost their lifestyle/spending beyond the FI they achieved without the social media/publishing. To follow most of their paths you would have to have the skills to publish/produce content.



Not to take away from the legit ones, if I thought people would watch/listen/read my story I'd monetize it too! It would be interesting if one did not monetize or had all revenue put into escrow or a trust/charity they did not touch. I don't think my early "mentor", John Greaney, makes much off of www.retireearlyhomepage.com though.

Curious if you know about Billy and Akaisha Kaderli, and if so, if you consider them legit ones.

https://www.retireearlylifestyle.com/

 

[TickTock]

Update: From their website

"How do you define retirement?

When we “retired” in 1991, there was no word for Financial Independence. We don’t really use the word “retired” any longer, but rather describe ourselves as Financially independent – which means we can do what we want, when we want, where we want.

We spend a good deal of our time doing volunteer work, and our website is one of our volunteer projects. We want more people to become free of being wage slaves. We use our free time to travel, learn languages and new skills."

So they self-describe as FI but not RE.

 

[Toocold]

I used to read his blog, but stopped long ago. For this one time, read the article. He says he now needs to go back to work, but he never includes how much he gets from blogging. I think a better, more transparent statement would be that he needs to continue blogging (with more clickbait articles) so that he can make money.. shocking.

 

[nobody]

The real FIRES don't blog about it, we just live our lives.

 

[Koolau]

The real FIRES don't blog about it, we just live our lives.

Strictly speaking, this is a Forum and not a blog, but we sure do share our experiences, hopes, fears, challenges, questions, opinions and just about everything else. I think of FIRE Forums as sort of a discontinuous blog - with limited click bait. YMMV