“People working for free are too often taken for granted compared to people who are paid even a small sum.”

I definitely noticed that myself in a couple of situations. I do volunteer my time, but I keep it very limited, and only for my Lions club.

I once worked as a volunteer for a renaissance faire, until I noticed that the paid performers got treated much better than the volunteers. I would never, ever, work unpaid for a renn-faire again. Volunteers are not just taken for granted, they are frequently abused.

Volunteers are not just taken for granted. Responsibilities of volunteers are taken for granted as well. They often are not trained or trained minimally and so feel ineffective in their abilities. Therefore they are given menial tasks that would be nice to have performed but are not absolutely neccesary. Finally volunteers are seen as having either no commitment (could leave at any moment) or organizers have no influence over them. Without compensation they do what they want not what I want.

I don’t think i’ll ever stop trying to make a little money but I am pushing towards unrestricted life, ie retirement. I’m half way there I would say.

On the charity front I plan to do a lot of volunteering as I will probably never be extremely rich.

@et – Because I’d rather teach a man to fish than give him a fish. It is more effective to prevent problems proactively than fix them reactively even though the latter is more popular because it doesn’t require people to understand the connections and implications that people are starving because they don’t know how to fish.

So I’d rather tell people not to set fire to their house than rescue people out of a burning house. I’d rather teach people to save money than serve food in a soup kitchen, etc.

Amazon reviews help me do that.

Consider that most wars are started because country A has something (typically oil or water) that country B wants. If I can reduce this demand by teaching people to consume less, we, the consumers, wouldn’t have to support oppressive governments or even invade other countries to keep our resource prices low.

If everybody lived like me, it would solve the following problems:
1) Global warming.
2) Peak oil.
3) Overpopulation.
And by implication a lot of the derived issues like resource wars and oppression.

Consequently, I have an interest in convincing people to live more like me.

ERE is the best I have been able to come up with to solve these problems. It’s more effective than policy work because it works on people’s self-interest (to retire early) rather than their conscience. It’s certainly more effective than techofixes. And naturally, it works better than storing 6 months of rice and 12 months of water in somewhere in the mountains. The only two ideas I’m aware of with similar power is permaculture and transition towns. They would on the social level. ERE works on the individual level.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with being compensated for your hard work. It all depends on what the market will bear…

Jacob, Im solifying my thoughts on great product vs great marketing and Ill let you know when the post is up!

Cheers,
Jeremy

@Jeremy – Do you know if the plugin works with 3.0.1?

You’re telling us that a person who is capable of researching which companies to invest in can’t do the same for “charities” and find a few that are worth supporting?

Good article I think the word retirement tends to bring up a lot of negative associations with it. Financial independence or finacial freedom is a much more positive

@tmgbooks – I use the word “retired” for the lack of a better one. I wish there was a better one since retirement has too many historical connotations.

I suspect that I suffer from ageism. If I was 60+ years old and living off my savings but made a little money on the side (less than my “pension”) from selling a book I wrote or doing a little consulting, I don’t think people would have any issues with the word. The only difference is the age.

There’s a substantial difference between me and other self-employed people; namely I don’t need the self-employment.

The problem is really that retirement tends to go hand in hand with age, a form of passive income, no work. I have one but not the others.

So maybe I’m self-employed now. But if I never sold another book, I’d be retired tomorrow, right? What about the 60 year old guy above who likes to paint and occasionally sells a painting for a couple of thousand. Is he self-employed or a retired guy making a little money on the side?

Okay; this semantic problem drives me crazy. Is there anyone anyway who is not clear about what my financial and work situation is and how it differs from what we traditional imagine when we say “retired person” or “self-employed person”?

@MossySF – How about this graph?

so Jacob, a question. should your writing and other entreperurial activities dramatically boast your financial wealth, what then?

What will you do with the extra $$$? expand your spending? Let it build to ever greater levels? give it away?

This post addresses obvious questions – why keep earning money if you’ve already got enough to retire, and why don’t you give your money to charity? – but your answers don’t convince me much at all.

Question 1: Measuring success by money alone is a mainly American mis-focus, and your successes are better by far when measured by other metrics than money: you have retired early (mostly by minimising expenditures, rather than accumulating vast sums); you have had a brief but successful academic career (with publications but little money to show for it); you have successfully promoted peak oil ideas (with many webpage hits etc. but hardly any monetary compensation); you have very successfully promoted ERE and sensible ways to live (with loads of webpage hits, people inspired, books sold, etc. but not much money earned); and you have optimised your own life in many ways (healthy fitness metrics, for instance, but not much money involved). It’s perfectly fine to keep earning money as a sport in itself or to give you more freedom to do what you want with your retirement – and no excuses are required, neither for promoting books nor accumulating wealth! – but you’re hardly doing it as an objective metric. I’ll bet that you would not trade $5000 for the 2.000.000 hits on your website; I certainly wouldn’t. In fact, I’d gladly pay $5000 for the chance to help people so efficiently.

Question 2: “I’d rather teach a man to fish than give him a fish.” is generally sensible but sometimes that man will starve before having learnt how to fish, especially if he lives in the middle of the desert. For instance, victims of natural disasters simply need instant, once-off help. Certain other once-off types of aid are really good too, like malaria nets and medicine, or polio vaccines, or the many cheap eye operations that the Fred Hollows Foundation has enabled around the world. These days, there are plenty of charities who are *very* aware of the risks that aid can turn into dependency, and many projects these days try to get the recipients involved, educated, and responsible. If you give a little village a solar-powered water pump, then that’s fine until it breaks down. But if you get the villagers to assemble it and require that they learn how to maintain it, and perhaps even pay for some small part of it, then they will feel as if the pump and the associated responsibility is theirs, and the pump won’t end up as scrap metal a few years down the road. Similarly, micro loans give people (mainly women) ownership of the aid, and good results ensue. Which is why Gates, Buffet, and Clinton all are chipping in for this sort of aid.

I reckon that it is the moral obligation of any rich person to give to the poor – if you are superrich, then give 99%, perhaps in a trickle through a foundation; if you are still poor yourself, then give 0%; and most people should give something in-between. People are generally not poor because of laziness; they actually need help, be it education or investments or cultural changes, or whatever.
I am presently giving about 10% but hope to eventually give about 30% if I stick to my present career and have secured some ER-like existence for my family and myself.

@Britz – Haha, you really love the US, eh? 😀 It’s a grass is greener focus. As you noted, I’ve never made a lot of money. This makes it hard to explain success to about 80% of the population. And if it’s not “successful” in the traditional sense, why would they take it seriously?

@Kelly – I submit that in 95% of the cases, the book is going to have more value to the reader than $20. Unless it’s read for entertainment, you can probably add a bunch of zeroes after that number. Of course pricing books after that model is practically impossible. I would say, if someone can’t come up with $20 for a book, how are they going to come up with $200,000 for financial independence? This is really not a book written for the “Help me get out of debt”-crowd, which understandably can’t afford it.

I’m pursuing the library angle simply to get more shelf exposure.

How to spend the book money? Magazine advertisements maybe. I don’t think book giveaways is going to do it. I want the book to be read a lot of times, not just exist in many copies. (I think I need to do a post on how “little” most authors actually make, unless they appear on Oprah or sell the movie rights.)

ERE is the first time I have significantly felt like being part of a peer group, so this is not what would draw me towards employment. I want to do interesting things; something which will make me a better Renaissance man. My goal is to have a resume as broad as Franklin’s. As DW says, I’m a workaholic—I can’t sit still and twiddle my thumbs. I want to do interesting things. I’m thinking about how I can put these sentiments into a post. I’ve done the science and I’ve retired from science. I’ve done the FIRE challenge. I’m doing the publishing currently…

[…] Jacob at ERE had a post on this some time ago.  His explanation didn’t make any sense to me then and it still doesn’t make any sense to me. […]

I highly recommend World Bicycle Relief as an organization that helps teach a person to fish. It is holistic and sustainable.

“If you supposedly have all the money you need, why are you trying to make more?”
I never get this argument. Would someone say “You are already fit, why are you trying to be more fit?” Of course not. Being “retired” doesn’t mean you stop learning or growing. If anything, it lets you increase the time you spend doing those things. A big part of living is steadily expanding your skill set and toolbox (which includes money). Retirement means more time for living in that sense.

I don’t like the word retirement to describe my life right now either. I tried saying I work part time, and do not like the questions about that. So now I just don’t say much or try hard any more to find a word.

I decided to work after I did not have to in part because I saw how the economy can bottom out. That was a great learning lesson.

But I also decided to work (at $75 an hour) because this gives me money to use in ways I had not planned. Unlike what Jacob described, I have learned about non-profits and charities who do very valuable work. And the work I do regularly allows me to see how sharing money can make a big difference.

So, I continue to earn money because it provides some experiences that make me happy. I can imagine doing it until I am 90.