The Profile, part deux

[cute fuzzy bunny]

The former thread was derailed by personal BS, and the moderators have elected to not remove the off topic material, so I've reconstituted the thread. My apologies for this, I'll avoid sinking to that level again.

By the way, the stuff about big boobs was ok.

I'm building a profile of the average user of this web site, how they ended up ER'ed, what they do and why they do what they do.

Although I've already started down the road, I'd like it to be a democratic process. Let me know what aspects we want to know about.

Rather than piece-part questions and polls that tell us something about a small fraction, a whole cloth picture of who we tend to be and what and why. And when there are outliers, why they lie outwardly

So far, our average ER visitor to the early-retirement.org web site is

- A computer user
- Interested in web based communities and discussion
- Willing to participate in those discussions (come on lurkers...register and be heard)
- Not put off, at least in the short term, by off topic, off color discussions and occasional light name calling
- Male
- In their late 40's or early 50's
- Overweight
- Doesnt have a mortgage
- Predominately from government/military and high tech backgrounds
- Manages their own investments (although I'm going to poll this...maybe theres a lot of quiet people who dont)
- Either has a lot of friends or very few (interesting how there was little middle ground on that poll)
- Expects social security to provide very little of their retirement income
- We have two spending brackets, 40-70K and 100-200K+ I think thats pretty interesting...probably middle class bracket and upper class bracet retirees.
- We eat a ****load of wheat bread for some reason
- We tear dryer sheets into tiny fragments, at least until our wives start yelling about static cling
- We sometimes own stuffed wildlife creatures

To be filled in:

Investment mixes
Hobbies
Market outlooks
Single or married
How many kids
And I want to do a retired vs not yet retired net worth, because the ones we've already done dont let me pull out how much a retirees nest egg is vs someone still accumulating. I'm looking for the two break even points where people decide to retire - two because we have two spending range bulges.

I've got chores and more thinking to do, so add in what other stuff would be interesting to learn.

Some things I'd like to know

1. State, region or country currently living in (or PT's?)
2. Did ER's move after ER or stay put?
3. Reason for ER (can of worms, but generally to get AWAY from work, or to get TO something else?)
4. Type of work ER'd from (military, gummit, finance, megacorp, minicorp, etc.)
5. If married or coupled, did both ER same time, wife first, etc?

CFB,

I think that the suggested profile fits the more active posters, but the infrequent posters and the lurkers are much more diverse. I think that there a substantial number of women who read here, for example, but seldom post (I wonder why?). There seems to be a growing fraction of 'young dreamers' who have discovered this playpen, too. Only a few of us seem to have the time or the inclination to prattle on, over and over. Even among us regulars the bell curve is pretty broad.

Blah, blah, blah...

Ed

Ed - outliers are often more important than the average and its a point well taken. One of the things I want to do, slowly and over time, is to develop both the core profile and then find out what sorts of outliers we have, why they're outliers, and if their differences contributed in any way to early retirement.

On the differences by sex, i'm going to go out on a limb without having actually pulled data other than random observation, but I think we're roughly 5:1 men to women. I'm betting the active male posters vs female posters also run 5:1. I'm also betting that the primary jobs early retirees come from in job categories that pay strong pensions, large salaries and/or big stock options see a male to female ratio of 5:1 or higher. I do also remember some studies from a while back that showed that men reading email were more likely to respond and to respond more than once than women, who were more likely to read and only respond when a particular topic was broached or when a specific response was demanded. In other words, some of us like to hear themselves talk.

Lets please continue with the questions and suggestions.

Thanks.

 

[HFWR]

I'll bite...

Personal:
Age:51
Gender: Male
Maritial Status: Not married
# of children: 1
# of children at home: 1

Residence:
Rent/Own? Own
Mortgage: Yes
Term: 30yrs
IR: 5.5%
Ratio Mort/Equity: 73%

Career:
Retired/Working: Working
Industry: Semiconductors
Salary/Hourly: Hourly
Mgmt: No
Stock Options: Yes
Income: ~$75k

Annual Spending/Budget
Basics: $25k
Total: $44k

Retirement Benefits:
Pension: No pension, 6% 401k match
Health Insurance: Eligible for co-pay.
Savings/investment: Save around 20% of that, mostly 401k. Balance ~$315k.
SS: will be maybe 1/3 of my retirement income.

Assets:
Net Worth minus principal residence: $320,000
Taxable: $6.5k
401k/IRA: $315k
Roth: $0
Investment mix: US stocks, 36%; Intl - 20%, RE - 12%, FI - 20%, Cash - 12%
Advisor/Self-directed: Self

Market/economic outlook: moderately bearish

Internet Usage/wk: 10

Hobbies: Play guitar, dabble in woodworking and photography.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Hmmm...my first thought was to keep this as polls, but then the data is disassociated. Perhaps both polls AND some associated profiles will be better, as some patterns might emerge. Tough to consume the data though, but I have a little time to spare this week when the wifes off for four days straight.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

By the way, since it isnt as apparent as I thought it might be, I have a set of ideas for this data consolidation.

We have a lot of people who start off here trying to figure out "who" we are, ie, who are they talking to. Or complain about the mass 'anonymity'. Or three pages into their first post say "oh, most of you are engineers and government workers. How like/unlike me". So the first bennie is being able to tell people who and what we are.

Secondarily, as a group we like statistics, studies and so forth. Except there are very few of these found "in the wild" for early retirees. And none will be exactly like we are. So aside from telling others who we are, its a nice idea to know who "we" are as a group.

Thirdly, perhaps there are some interesting outliers. I enjoyed "the millionaire next door" not for its long winded "Piled Higher and Deeper" analyses and "lets tell you where we're going and how we're going to walk for 5 years before we come to the point of why we're going there", but rather for the interesting outliers amidst the averages. Does being single or married make for a better ER platform? How about education? Was moving into management a prerequisite?

Fourthly (why stop butchering the language now), we'll identify core competencies and perhaps write some little 'essays' with point/counterpoint on common issues and put those into "the best of...." category.

More than this can be done, but thats a good starting point.

 

[sgeeeee]

Hmmm...my first thought was to keep this as polls, but then the data is disassociated.  Perhaps both polls AND some associated profiles will be better, as some patterns might emerge.  Tough to consume the data though, but I have a little time to spare this week when the wifes off for four days straight.

Why don't you create a nice profile form?  Suggest that everyone cut's and pastes it into a post and fills in the blanks they feel comfortable filling out.  Of course with this crowd, you will get edits, substitutions, etc.  But you might be able to get a lot of reasonable data.  HF,WR has already given you a start for the form.  

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Question for Dory/BMJ...does this BBS software support forms/form databases? Perhaps as an extension to the profile with a query capability?

 

[HFWR]

I refurbed my previous reply, to hopefully make it more amenable for use as a template. Suggestions/comments?

 

[haha]

CFB - I wish you luck with your profile format.  It should be interesting.

To say the least.

Ha

 

[OldAgePensioner]

Using HFWR's format

I'll bite...

Personal:
Age:55
Gender: Male
Maritial Status: Not married
# of children: 0
# of children at home: 0

Residence:
Rent/Own? Rent

Expenses:
Rent: $30K
Util/Cable,etc: $3k
Food/Ent. $8k
Ins/Med. $8k
Misc. $6k



Career:
Retired/Working: Retired
Former Industry: Spy satellites
Salary/Hourly: Hourly
Mgmt: No
Stock Options: No
Income: ~$175k

Retirement Benefits:
Pension: No pension, 6% 401k match while working
Health Insurance: BCBS(IL) paid by me.
Savings/investment: 401k. Balance ~$675k.
SS: $1500 est. at 62.5

Assets:
Net Worth : $1,970,000
Taxable int/div: $16.5k
401k/IRA: $675k (include in net worth)
Roth: $0
Investment mix: US stocks, 35%; Intl - 45%, RE - 6%, Cash - 14%
Advisor/Self-directed: Self

Market/economic outlook: moderately bullish

Internet Usage/wk: 30

Hobbies: Play guitar, genealogy, uhhh  ??.

 

[Martha]

Looking at the forum's statistics, it seems to me (judging from views of topics rather than replies) that people are very interested in how much money people spend on a yearly/monthly basis in retirement. So if you could squeeze that into your profiles, that would be great.

 

[HFWR]

Done...

 

[OldAgePensioner]

Done.... also.

 

[Jane_Doe]

Bored today and had a few minutes-
Ready to go - just cut and paste - fill in the blanks.
May need some added entries/info and tweaking
Remember fill in/give what info you want to share (if any )



Personal:
Age:
Gender:
Maritial Status:
# of children:
# of children at home:

Residence:
Rent/Own?

Expenses (Yearly):
Mortgage/Rent: $
Util/Cable,etc: $
Food/Ent. $
Ins/Med. $
Misc. $



Career:
Retired/Working:
Former Industry:
Salary/Hourly:
Mgmt:
Stock Options:
Working Income:

Retirement Benefits:
Pension:
401k match:
Health Insurance:
Savings/investment:
SS: $ (est. at 62.5)

Assets:
Net Worth : $
Taxable int/div: $
401k/IRA: $ (included in net worth)
Roth: $
Investment mix: US stocks- %; Intl - %; Fixed- %; RE - %, Cash - %
Advisor/Self-directed:

Market/economic outlook:

Internet Usage/wk:

Hobbies:

 

[Sheryl]

Another thing that would be interesting is to know, for working folk, how long until they plan to ER. When I read a post and someone says, when I'm retired I'll blah blah blah. I often wonder if it's expected to happen in two months, two years, two decades...

It would also hold some of us wafflers accountable, as in, "You said 18 months, 18 months ago, quit wussing around!"

 

[HFWR]

My magic number is somewhat of a moving target, but generally speaking, if my port reaches $625k, and/or I reach 60 (8.5yrs).

 

[Martha]

Quote from: (Cute Fuzzy Bunny) on February 18, 2006, 12:56:37 PM

So far, our average ER visitor to the early-retirement.org web site is

- A computer user
- Interested in web based communities and discussion
- Willing to participate in those discussions (come on lurkers...register and be heard)
- Not put off, at least in the short term, by off topic, off color discussions and occasional light name calling
- Male
- In their late 40's or early 50's
- Overweight
- Doesnt have a mortgage
- Predominately from government/military and high tech backgrounds
- Manages their own investments (although I'm going to poll this...maybe theres a lot of quiet people who dont)
- Either has a lot of friends or very few (interesting how there was little middle ground on that poll)
- Expects social security to provide very little of their retirement income
- We have two spending brackets, 40-70K and 100-200K+ I think thats pretty interesting...probably middle class bracket and upper class bracet retirees.
- We eat a ****load of wheat bread for some reason
- We tear dryer sheets into tiny fragments, at least until our wives start yelling about static cling
- We sometimes own stuffed wildlife creatures

To be filled in:

Investment mixes
Hobbies
Market outlooks
Single or married
How many kids
And I want to do a retired vs not yet retired net worth, because the ones we've already done dont let me pull out how much a retirees nest egg is vs someone still accumulating. I'm looking for the two break even points where people decide to retire - two because we have two spending range bulges.

I've got chores and more thinking to do, so add in what other stuff would be interesting to learn.

And don't forget, the average poster is or was a doper.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

So far is or was a doper, doesnt have or plans to get rid of their mortgage before retiring, usually or always tells the truth on polls, dislikes debt...theres more...I havent had time to figure out the next wave of stuff to acquire yet...