Poll:Most common personality profile among FIRE enthusiasts

[audreyh1]

I've always been an odd duck.

Same here - or as my high school classmates would put it: weird!

 

[CoastboundPNW]

Also an INTJ - so much for the 2%/rare bird status..at least not in this group!

 

[Nemo2]

I think you are right, but not for the reason you may think. Further research seems to indicate that the tendency to delay gratification is nurtured by the security of being well off. In poor circumstances, it may be a net win to take the immediate gratification, because the delayed gratification may never come.

I was born in wartime London.....my father died, age 67, in the same rented, unheated basement apartment we lived in......we, and to his death, (my mother died unbeknownst to me when I was out of touch heading overland back to Australia, where I lived at the time, age 20), never had a car, a telephone, a TV, a refrigerator, hot water, (and the toilet was outside).

Fast forward to when I was on single status in Riyadh.....a buddy said to me that to make things more 'comfortable' I needed to buy X Y & Z.

I held up my bank statement and told him that this was all I needed.

 

[Gumby]

I was also born in London, to a single teen mother who lived with my widowed grandmother (my grandfather was killed in the Blitz), her younger brother and sister in a council flat in Lambeth. As was then customary with poor children in London, my mother left school when she turned 15. My grandmother, also uneducated, had supported the family as a charwoman since the time my grandfather had died.

My mother and I emigrated to the US in 1960. She married my dad, who was a high school dropout raised by a single mother (the War, again) from a small coal mining town in Appalachia. He was an enlisted sailor and therefore almost never at home, and we lived an impoverished and itinerant life in the US. We spent most of my childhood living in a succession of trailer parks and cheap apartments. I never actually lived in a house until a few months before I left home myself. There were no children's books in my house, no pre-school, no enrichment activities. I didn't even attend kindergarten, instead attending school for the first time when I was nearly 7. Thereafter, I went to many different schools (as many as 3 in the same year and always the poor ones) and was often out of school for long stretches.

If there were anyone whose chances for ultimate success were bleak, it would have been me. And, yet, I can assure you of this: Despite our dire economic situation, I easily would have passed the marshmallow test, as would my mother before me. I could visualize the future, set a goal, then make a plan and delay gratification to achieve that goal. That ability is the primary reason I am where I am now - rich and retired.

But I suppose the researchers "controlled for other factors" so they could ignore the existence of people like you and me - data points who don't fit their hypothesis.

 

[Blue Collar Fire]

I always end up INTJ or ISTJ on these tests.

Edited to add: an interesting target would be (if you have one) how close or differently you match your spouse or significant other. The last time DW took a test she came up ENFP. It is a wonder we get along.

ENFPs are typically perfect matches for INTJs from what I've read and experienced. The second and third functions in the function stack of these two types are identical, only reversed in order. The first and last are opposite. It seems to result in a perfect mix of similarity and difference. Where one is weak, the other is strong, and contemporaneously there's enough similarity to make the relationship work. I'm INTJ and attract ENFPs like a magnet, and vice-versa. Fascinating! There's a lot written on it if you poke around on the interwebs.

 

[meleana]

I am an ENFS or something like that. I know it is extrovert, feeling, sensing. Not sure about the N or what the N even is. Borderline extrovert- prefer introversion.

 

[GrayHare]

"...the three most common types among Retire Early board participants were ISTJ, INTJ, and INTP.)"

Coincidentally, those three type all have the letters IT, the field many such people made a career from.

 

[klscaz]

Close. ISTJ and yes, my last job was in Healthcare IT.

"...the three most common types among Retire Early board participants were ISTJ, INTJ, and INTP.)"

Coincidentally, those three type all have the letters IT, the field many such people made a career from.

 

[Ally]

ISTJ here

 

[Ger0n1mo]

Close. ISTJ and yes, my last job was in Healthcare IT.

Also, ISTJ, and in IT my entire career, almost all in Healthcare companies.

 

[scottpush]

After interacting with several other members, it seems that we have an abundance of members who have the INTJ personality profile. It's not surprising, given that the characteristics of that personality are very conducive to the notion of ER. Still, at only 2% of the population as a whole, INTJs are a rare breed. I was fascinated to find so many in one place sharing a common interest in FIRE. Made me curious... how many of us have tested as INTJ via the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator?

Funny I just read this. I'm INTJ all the way by the Myers-Briggs Indicator and every other test I've taken.

 

[JasmineJ]

I think the test is probably nonsense but I too am INTJ.

 

[audreyh1]

I am an ENFS or something like that. I know it is extrovert, feeling, sensing. Not sure about the N or what the N even is. Borderline extrovert- prefer introversion.

Intuitive as opposed to sensing.

 

[RobLJ]

Allegedly, INTP, but with some INFP and even some (weak) ISFP.

I don't put a lot of credence in Meyers, other than extrovert/introvert (I'm definitely an introvert); I think people are a lot more malleable, but
a) People change, at least some. I learned to feign extroversion once I went to college and grad school and work and grew to enjoy it, save where I didn't know hardly anyone. It can be draining, still, especially where I don't know anyone. I talk to the latter, but apparently just knowing I know at least a few people is a security blanket.
b) my fraternal twin was an extrovert, almost exactly my opposite, so the differences early were really obvious and, I apparently decided early that I needed to adjust. Talking to the twin was not like talking to others, even the rest of my family. However, according to the AgedP I didn't talk until 3 and a half and instead used him to translate to everyone, if it was necessary. When I did talk, finally to the outside world, it was in sentences and completely grammatical (allegedly; I don't know for sure.)

Mom/AgedP called me the PuppetMaster and usually punished me when the twin misbehaved in unusual ways, since I was likely behind it and couldn't be queried; my behavior was apparently (a lot) more erratic than the twin, who was a rule follower.

 

[BBinTLS]

INTJ just as you say

 

[GrayHare]

INTJ appears the most common here/now, compared to ISTJ when surveyed by the retireearlyhomepage.com report some 20 years ago. Given the different parameters of the survey groups, it's tough to tell if that MBTI difference is statistically meaningful. If it is meaningful, I'm unsure what a shift over the past 20 years from ISTJ to INTJ as the top FIRE type would mean. It could be as simple as ISTJs adopting the internet sooner than INTJs, and thus being around in greater numbers to answer FIRE surveys during the year 2000.

 

[friar1610]

In the early 80s I was the Director of Training at Navy technical training school where enlisted folks were trained in their basic technical specialties after completion of boot camp or on more advanced tech training when they were further into their careers. t the time I arrived, a professor at a local university had devised a program intended to help Navy instructors distinguish between the learning styles of their students so they could more effectively teach their charges. This meant that all staff and students took the MBTI and, of course, the professor had to conduct training for all staff so they could properly employ the insight the MBTI results gave them. He made a pretty penny from the Navy doing this training. Although I found the MBTI interesting, I was never convinced it (or the professor's training sessions) had much to do with student success so I knocked it off after a year or so (with no discernible increase in student failure). I did think the test measured me pretty accurately. I'm either an ESTJ or an ISTJ, depending on when I take the test. But whichever it is, I'm right on the border between extroversion and introversion.

 

[HMMY]

ENTJ
E (extraversion) 24 out of 30
N (intuition) 4
T (thinking) 20
J (judging) 17

I would have guessed that I would have been more sensing than intuitive. I'm surprised I scored so low on judging because I often think of myself as judgy Judy.

 

[Al in Ohio]

INTJ for me

 

[COcheesehead]

I am the unicorn...

Or the independent achiever.

 

[Nemo2]

Mine says: Extraverted iNtuitive Thinking Perceiving.

"Perceiving"? I don't get it.

 

[Steeler75]

Came out as ISTJ-A; seems to go along with the strong A and C from DISC.

 

[jollystomper]

ENFPs are typically perfect matches for INTJs from what I've read and experienced. The second and third functions in the function stack of these two types are identical, only reversed in order. The first and last are opposite. It seems to result in a perfect mix of similarity and difference. Where one is weak, the other is strong, and contemporaneously there's enough similarity to make the relationship work. I'm INTJ and attract ENFPs like a magnet, and vice-versa. Fascinating! There's a lot written on it if you poke around on the interwebs.

Thanks! I did not realize that. Perhaps that explains how, though we have extremely different tastes, we are well matched in beliefs, desires, and goals, and work together in our own ways to support each other.

 

[2retireearly]

ENTP

 

[2retireearly]

Mine says: Extraverted iNtuitive Thinking Perceiving.

"Perceiving"? I don't get it.

That's me! ENTP...!!