Early Retirement Extreme

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

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

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!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 [...]

When more is better and when enough is enough

Published in January 9th, 2008

Posted by Jacob in cost of living, motivation, rat race, standard of living

2 Comments

This week we have touched on the subject of how to manage finances when bringing on a minimum wage. The Great Money Challenge wrote about how to live on a minimum wage and I wrote about how to get wealthy on a minimum wage. I think the consensus around here is that while it is [...]

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 [...]

What early retirement means when you’re too young to retire

Published in January 6th, 2008

Posted by Jacob in financial independence, job, rat race

11 Comments

What does early retirement mean for those who chose to save so intensely and early for retirement and essentially had enough money to stop working around age 30? This is a question I have been asking myself and for which there does not seem to be any conventional solutions.
In most cases, at least as far [...]

Modern "Fitness"

Published in December 23rd, 2007

Posted by Jacob in net worth, personal finance, rat race, standard of living

2 Comments

What’s with the quotation marks? Let me begin with a story …
This week DW is in New York. This means the car is parked at the airport. Also, it’s raining heavily which means that I’m not riding my bike. I have made a solemn promise that this bike shall never touch water (grit). 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 [...]

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 [...]

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