The Dark Side Of Early Retirement

The article lists the following "dangers of early retirement":

1) Oops, you change your mind.
2) You run out of money.
3) You lose touch with friends and family.
4) You may find it difficult to start your own family.
5) You lose your own self-respect, and the respect of others.

This is followed by sections entitled "Careful who you listen to" (we ER's are dangerous folks, crooning a siren song to recruit the innocent, dontcha know), and "Early Retirement is Selfish". :rolleyes:

Not exactly the type of article that would go over big on this board, I suspect...
 
Why did the author put a question mark at the end of "But the question is whether it’s a good idea" (which is not a question)?
 
The article started out rationally enough. The author pointed out that, yes, skills do get rusty, social ties with one's old social circle do get difficult get to maintain. I noticed that latter point just on vacation. I'm off between Christmas and New Years, but a lot of my friends aren't, so I'm getting no responses to some of my emails. However, a vacation is not like ER or Lifestyle Design where there is sufficient time to pick up a new hobby with a new social circle. Still, what the author pointed out are valid concerns.

Where he lost me completely was at the selfish argument. I wish a few of my co-workers would be a little more selfish and spend a little more time analyzing what makes them such miserable human beings who insist on contaminating their surroundings with negative energy. There is an old Chinese proverb that states, "To rule your country, you must first rule your family, and to rule your family, you must first rule yourself." Instead of running around the world worrying about earning other people's respect through outwardly selfless acts, a lot of folks could use a bit of time to make sure that they are happy with themselves first. Then they can contribute immediately to the greater good by stop being assholes.
 
BunsGettingFirm said:
The article started out rationally enough. The author pointed out that, yes, skills do get rusty, social ties with one's old social circle does get difficult get to maintain. I noticed that latter point just on vacation. I'm off between Christmas and New Years, but a lot of my friends aren't, so I'm getting no responses to some of my emails. However, a vacation is not like ER or Lifestyle Design where there is sufficient time to pick up a new hobby with a new social circle. Still, what the author pointed out are valid concerns.
Click to expand...
If you are young, it is hard to replace your work social life. People employ various strategies which IMO are not exactly replacements-hobby or club affiliations, and an SO. Also, classes, book clubs. From my experience, all these places are easy to use for date/mate hunting, but not that easy to use for finding same sex friends. If you are a really good snow boarder or similar, and you have a car there should be fairly easy same sex friendships.

Most younger people have plenty friends from work. What are usually in flux is boy/girl activities, so that is where most of the low hanging fruit is found. But this is not completely without its own set of difficulties. :)

Young people seem to have 2 things on their minds- career and getting laid. There often is not a lot of time or life bandwidth to broaden much beyond these preoccupations.

Ha
 
Spoken like a man that has to go to work tomorrow. :D


He missed one good reason... because I can afford to FIRE. Tired of the old gig... time to try something different!
 
haha said:
If you are young, it is hard to replace your work social life. People employ various strategies which IMO are not exactly replacements-hobby or club affiliations, and an SO. Also, classes, book clubs. From my experience, all these places are easy to use for date/mate hunting, but not that easy to use for finding same sex friends. If you are a really good snow boarder or similar, and you have a car there should be fairly easy same sex friendships.

Most younger people have plenty friends from work. What are usually in flux is boy/girl stuff, so that is where most of the low hanging fruit is found. But this is not completely without its own set of difficulties. :)

Young people seem to have 2 things on their minds- career and getting laid. There often is not a lot of time or life bandwidth to broaden much beyond these preoccupations.

Ha
Click to expand...

I find that most of my guy friends I meet through the kinds of activities that you would term mate hunting activities. I suppose there is enough of a comrades in arms mentality that we guys get to bond through our, ahem, strike outs. LOL. There is also enough experience with the guys my age (late 30s to late 40s) that we realize that the prize isn't worth hurting our male friendships. However, I find work male friends are competing for real, immediate payouts that I tend to keep them only as work friends. I only let in a few to my social life after they have proven cool enough to be both work and social friends.
 
BunsGettingFirm said:
Where he lost me completely was at the selfish argument.
Click to expand...
He did such an outstanding devil's-advocate job in the article that most readers missed the irony & sarcasm.

I think he also did a great job of shutting down H0ku$ in mid-rant...
 
BunsGettingFirm said:
I wish a few of my co-workers would be a little more selfish and spend a little more time analyzing what makes them such miserable human beings who insist on contaminating their surroundings with negative energy. There is an old Chinese proverb that states, "To rule your country, you must first rule your family, and to rule your family, you must first rule yourself." Instead of running around the world worrying about earning other people's respect through outwardly selfless acts, a lot of folks could use a bit of time to make sure that they are happy with themselves first. Then they can contribute immediately to the greater good by stop being assholes.
Click to expand...
+1
 
Nords said:
He did such an outstanding devil's-advocate job in the article that most readers missed the irony & sarcasm.

I think he also did a great job of shutting down H0ku$ in mid-rant...
Click to expand...

Hmm...finding that blog is like finding all your buds have other favorite drinking holes other than Cheers.
 
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