Early Retirement Extreme

Financial independence, frugality, self-sufficiency, ecology, capitalism, and voluntary simplicity

On minimizing depreciation expenses

Published in February 11th, 2008

Posted by Jacob in anticonsumerism, consumerism, cost of living, expenses

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!We don’t pay for our furniture. I haven’t paid for my watch. Also I haven’t paid for my HiFi system. If I was a little bit smarter, we wouldn’t be paying for our car either. On the other hand [...]

Am I cheap?!?

Published in January 20th, 2008

Posted by Jacob in anticonsumerism, consumerism, ecological footprint, financial independence, standard of living

17 Comments

Sometimes I’m accused of being cheap or living in squalor because I prefer to ride a bike, eat at home, and because I generally don’t buy very many things. This does not sit well with the prevailing consumerist attitude in this ownership society. I suspect ownership society means that people are owned (pwned!) by their [...]

Stranger in a strange land

Published in January 12th, 2008

Posted by Jacob in consumerism, debt, financial independence, job, mortgage, personal finance, rat race, standard of living

22 Comments

Get a student loan. Get a college education. Get a mortgage and become a home owner. Have a career. Put 15% of your income in a 401k/IRA for 35 years. Plan to retire at 60… any of this sound familiar?
That’s because it is the standard recipe for a “successful” life in middle class America. It [...]

Do I need a million dollars to retire?

Published in January 7th, 2008

Posted by Jacob in compound interest, consumerism, cost of living, expenses, financial security, frugal, household, rat race, standard of living

7 Comments

People keep telling me that I need at least $1,000,000 to retire comfortably. This concerns me somewhat since I don’t have one million and because it would take about 10 more years to save for one. Now, one million would throw off a cost of living adjusted $40,000 a year in capital income if it [...]

Don’t wear sunscreen

Published in December 21st, 2007

Posted by Jacob in consumerism, rat race, spending, standard of living

2 Comments

… a tongue in cheek follow up to yesterday’s Wear sunscreen and retire early.
Spoken to the tune of “Wear Sunscreen”.
If I could give you a single piece of advice. This would be it: Live beyond your means. The long term consequences of living beyond your means have been demonstrated to lead to bankruptcy whereas the [...]

What do you have to show for it?

Published in December 9th, 2007

Posted by Jacob in anticonsumerism, consumerism, entertainment, motivation, standard of living

No Comments

Being part of a thrifty counter-culture can sometimes lead to self-doubt. Why am I being frugal, when everybody else are spendthrift? Adopting frugal habits can often be alienating to people who have adopted a consumerist lifestyle. Some of the comments on this article on Staying Frugal in the Age of the iPhone by Anya Kamenetz [...]

Anti-consumerists can retire early from the rat race

Published in December 7th, 2007

Posted by Jacob in anticonsumerism, consumerism, rat race, saving, spending

1 Comment

Maybe you have heard comments from the 1950s where some people predicted that the introduction of robotics would lead to work weeks of only a few hours with robots taking care of everything else. I’m sure the steam engine lead to similar predictions. In fact the opposite has happened. We seem to work more than [...]

It’s only money…

Published in December 6th, 2007

Posted by Jacob in compound interest, consumerism, financial security, money

No Comments

One thing you will hear if you adopt an extreme savings program is the popular refrain “It’s only money”, “There are more important things than money”, etc. I agree with the last statement, but it is NOT just money. It is what money represents that matters.
Money represents many things.
Money is time. It represents the time [...]

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