I could probably retire on 10’s of bitcoin if I went back my default monkish frugal state.
tbh though I’m more afraid of retirement than not. Needing money forces me to be useful or otherwise suffer materially. Without the threat of suffering, I find myself (and others) prone to delusions of usefulness.
Obviously, there’s a balance to be struck. You want to be “hungry” yet not so hungry you’ll enslave yourself to eat. I’ve noticed some wealthy people accomplish this by constantly upgrading their lifestyle (or taking risky bets on new ventures), but I’m not sure it’s always conscious.
We are born a marble slab. The goal is to die a beautiful sculpture.
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I have to disagree tbh.
Way too many people are working at zombie jobs that are easily replaced, for far too long and paid far too little.
I know this very well because I work in manufacturing, it's not rare to see a whole department replaced completely by machines.
And it wasn't that the factory couldn't do it sooner, they just couldn't be bothered.
What's worse is they can only really fall back to another manual labor job, which still face the same risk.
Being able to choose when to retire and expand your knowledge/skills in things you actually enjoy doing is great.
Sometimes it do mean you won't be earning anything, but what's useful to society (/business) doesn't mean what's useful for your own personal life journey.
I have taken a few long leaves from working due to personal reasons, every time I wished it could be longer just because there's so much to do.
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I don’t think we disagree. I think we just might not understand what each other means.
When I didn’t graduate from high school, I worked dead end jobs and barely got by for the first 4 years. That sucked and I’d much rather “retire” than do that forever.
But those also aren’t always the only two options.
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probably a lot of selection bias for the complainers but /r/FATFIRE is filled with unhappy people
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I can imagine.
ime most normal FIRE people are pretty grounded. The game keeps them grounded/focused.
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Don't worry, you are always one serious medical issue away from being homeless.
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I'm exactly the same.
It's a great thing not to be rich (without being poor). I am close to some very well-off families and their kids didn't really become good at anything. I always guessed their feeling deep down is "Daddy will provide" or "will eventually get the inheritance"
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I am close to some very well-off families and their kids didn't really become good at anything.
Terrifying. I'm not sure what's worse: being a cog in a machine you hate or a cog that's never been put to real use.
In a similar vein, I've seen people plateau as adults once they hit an income/wealth level. There are rare exceptions of course, but it seems to require replacing the hunger for survival with a hunger for something else (afaict achievement in the admirable cases).
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Yeah. There are so many things that can be improved in the world. I'm sure that "hunger" has to do with having had some kind experience of hardship or discomfort as a child.
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We can convince ourselves that false things are true.
In this case, we convince ourselves that we are useful when we aren't. Utility is something you can test in the market. If you aren't for sale, there is no such test and instead our utility is self-graded.
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I agree. Our lives are ours to live, and regardless of whether we get a second opinion, the self-grade ends up being the one that matters most anyway.
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