Change position in profile.

[TiogaRV]

My position is listed as "Confused about dryer sheets."

Don't remember entering that job description myself.* Is that what I used to do for earning $money$?* Maybe this is one of those senior moments?

I've looked and looked and looked, and cannot find a way to change posistion.* Would you help me, OK?* I cannot even find position in the profile.*

George

[REWahoo]

George,

Your "position" is based on the number of posts you make to the forum. Nothing you can do about it but keep posting.

And for information on the dryer sheets, start here:

http://early-retirement.org/forums/i...82830#msg82830

Welcome to the forum.

[dory36]

You can, however, add personal text below your profile info.

Click on the Profile button at the top, then Forum Profile Information on the left.

There you can upload a picture, add a personal text that will appear below your info with each message you post, add a signature that will appear at the bottom of every message, and so forth.

[TiogaRV]

Please let me know the location decribing the beginnings of this forum. Why "fire" and all the stuff that I should know about this forum.

Looked around several times, and must have missed it.

Thank you,
George

[Martha]

George, I have enjoyed reading your web site as well.

At the beginning of the Other Topics board there is a sticky topic about the early retirement home page. That will give you a lot of information on how this forum began. Also, you can read the acronym section in the Forum Admin board for the meaning of acronyms like FIRE.

[dory36]

A bit of history...

In the late 1990s there were a bunch of people who frequented an early retirement forum at The Motley Fool.

Much of the discussion was social and lifestyle, as you see here, but there was also a good bit of discussion around the topic of figuring out just how much you needed to retire early, and avoid the dangers of inflation, volatility, and so forth.

The center of that discussion was a spreadsheet developed by the host of that site (known as Intercst) which used data from Yake prof Robert Schiller and simulated a retirement and subsequent withdrawals, adjusting for inflation to keep spending power constant, for each of the ~130 or so years in our recorded history.

In about 1999, some of the discussions went into talking about the blissful state in which, even if you weren't retired, you were no longer dependent on the earnings of your employment to secure a comfortable retirement -- in other words, you could continue working but know that you could quit any time you pleased, and the decision to continue working was merely a matter of personal choice and convenience, not necessity.

The people in or near this state were interested in very much the same things that the early retirement people talked about, so much so that they were mostly indistinguishable on the forum, and many discussions included some sort of prelude describing this similarity.

I believe it was a member of that forum who went by the name "Wanderer", then living and working in the United Arab Emirates, who pointed out the similarity, and then proposed an acronym *"FI/RE", for Financial Independence and/or Retiring Early". *It soon shorted to just FIRE. (Wanderer joined this forum soon after it started, but never posted here.)

About the time Wander was proposing that acronym, I was writing a web based program to do what Intercst's spreadsheet did, as I wanted to include multiple streams of income and changing spending requirement, and that seemed to demand a program instead of a spreadsheet. I used his acronym, and called my program Firecalc. *Those interested in the calculator project discussed it on the forum at The Motley Fool.

Around the middle of 2000, as I recall, The Motley Fool decided that their forum was so popular that they could make people pay $5/month to read the messages.

I decided not to join for several reasons. But since I had already set up a web hosting account for the calculator, I used that account to start an alternate forum for those who wanted to discuss FIRE issues, but weren't looking for a paid venue for their participation.

OK, that's the origin of this forum, and where FIRE came from.

As for dryer sheets, pets with pancakes on their heads, Jarhead with his wheat bread, and many other inexplicable discussions, well, let's just say our group has developed a distinctive personality, and running gags seem to be one of the symptoms.

[BigMoneyJim]

Glad I didn't start typing before I saw dory36's post.

Interesting point that there is no welcome or history post or link. It might be a good idea to link to the post above since the forum gets daily new signups who are probably lost for a while.

A slight clarification on dory36's post: The board name at The Motley Fool was/is the Retire Early Home Page, named after intercst's site and more or less run by intercst. Pre-2002 the discussion action was at TMF. The Excel calculators and monthly articles were/are at retireearlyhomepage.com .

This board does have a lot of characters and running gags. As much as I read and post I still haven't seen the origin of the wheat bread thing. Come to think of it I never got the origin of "... since 1902" that still pops up from time to time.

We tend to deify intercst and dory36, and we gather montlhly to sacrifice financial planners in their honor. (Burned with dryer sheets.)

Yet for all the in-jokes a straightforward finance or ER question is usually answered and discussed quickly and knowledgeably.

[Martha]

Quote:

Originally Posted by BigMoneyJim Interesting point that there is no welcome or history post or link. It might be a good idea to link to the post above since the forum gets daily new signups who are probably lost for a while.

Good idea.

Quote:

Originally Posted by BigMoneyJim This board does have a lot of characters and running gags. As much as I read and post I still haven't seen the origin of the wheat bread thing.

http://early-retirement.org/forums/i...80930#msg80930

[REWahoo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by BigMoneyJim As much as I read and post I still haven't seen the origin of the wheat bread thing.

I see Martha (yeah, the one who ignores T&A references) provided you a link to Jarhead's famous post.

It's really a shame Jarhead had to give up on wheat bread. But I understand it was keeping him up at night...

[Sheryl]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TiogaRV Please let me know the location decribing the beginnings of this forum.* Why "fire" and all the stuff that I should know about this forum. Looked around several times, and must have missed it. Thank you, George

George,
Be careful! This forum can become very addicting. Before you know it you can find yourself hanging around here for hours and forgetting to do your "real job." I hope you won't start slacking off on your website!

[greg]

Quote:

Originally Posted by REWahoo! It's really a shame Jarhead had to give up on wheat bread. But I understand it was keeping him up at night...

So, are you saying he was puttering around too much?

[ladelfina]

Quote:

Burned with dryer sheets.

BigMoneyJim, I hope you are talking about used dryer sheets here.*

[BigMoneyJim]

ladelfina, it depends on whether we're trying to repel bugs while burning hethans or just need a source of recycled fuel.

After some moderator board discussion we put dory36's history post above onto the early-retirement.org front page and added a news item in the ticker on the index screen pointing new visitors to the history.