One of the most common objection consumers have to extreme early retirement is that it’s impossible to enjoy life on a low budget and therefore not worthwhile. That spending 75% of the best daylight hours working 9-5 so they can afford to “live a little” for the next 40 years is a better strategy.

I’ve heard many of these objections and they all boil down to statements like this (which I lifted off the comment thread of a single article about extreme early retirement)

• “…shouldn’t wait for tomorrow, but have fun now”
  
• “…can’t afford little luxuries”
  
• “…don’t want to live in austerity”
  
• “…doesn’t enjoy good food”
  
• “…going to be missing out on concerts, games, toys…”
  
• “…can’t buy nice gifts”
  
• “…should live for the moment and don’t count on an uncertain future”
  
• “…can’t buy a collection of nice shoes and purses”
  
• “…never leaves the house”
  
• “…has no life”
  

This pattern of objections is repeatable. It happens every single time. In general, if you ask the average consumer what enjoying life is all about, it distills to the following trifecta: buying tickets, going to restaurants, and shopping.

That’s it. Those three things are all there is to enjoying life. The uninformed opinion is that if you don’t have these these three things in your life, your life sucks. I know, because that’s what I used to think. And it’s also what consumers keep bringing up.

Ever wonder why that might be?

It’s true too! But only insofar that you’re unaware of any alternatives to buying tickets, going to restaurants, and shopping.

When I first started saving massive amounts of money by reducing my spending, I had no replacements. Now, if you have no other known way to enjoy life than pulling out your credit card to buy something, then having cut up your credit card is going to suck. By not spending, you just lost the only way you know how to have fun.

What to do?

Well, once “your eyes are opened”—after some investigative effort on your part which is as easy as clicking on a link these days, you’ll find that there are tons of things to do. Especially once your time is fully liberated. All you have to do is learn about them.

Here’s a list of things I did after retiring from my career at 33.

Work:
Quit a career that I didn’t enjoy.
Started a new career that I do enjoy.

Sports:
Placed 1st and 2nd in 2010 in two bay regatta series on a J/105 (35′ yacht) [was out on the water racing almost every week]
On the winning team of the city’s roller hockey league four seasons in a row (center forward)
Various bike rides (3 centuries) around the east bay. Also a grind up Mt Diablo.
3 years of Japanese swordsmanship (three times per week).
Clean&Press 2×70 kettlebells.

Skills/hobbies:
Bike repair
Furniture making
Gardening
Ham radio
Book publishing
Investing

Profitable projects/business/second income:
Freelance editing
Book selling
Nonprofit startup founding

Writings:
The ERE book + another one.
The ERE blog/wiki
Various magazine articles

Readings:
Lots

Adventures:
Lived in an RV (I consider that an adventure. Not an austerity measure.)
Ocean racing
Dinghy sailing on the local lakes and estuaries
Mountain biking in the hills of the east bay
Road biking around the east bay
Long distance running (only 13 miles, but self supported in 90F)
A trip to Yellowstone and Nevada desert
A road/tent camping trip to Portland, OR and back again
A road trip across the country.

It might surprise you just how little money I spent on all this. But it was not a lot. It was less than what the average household spends on furniture per year.

This is just my list. My idea of fun is mainly mastering various skills (intellectual, technical, and sports) and creating big projects. Other people have other ideas of what fun is. The point is, you can almost always find a low/no-cost way to have fun no matter what your interests are. Do you want to travel? You could move to South America for a few months and live there ERE style for $300/month. Here are some other examples from other people pursuing ERE.

So let’s compare that list to the rather expensive entertainment budget of the average consumer

• Buying tickets to see a 4 hour long game.
  
• Eating a steak at a restaurant
  
• Shopping
  

… for 40 years … maybe interspersed with a trip to Disneyland or some other country. That’s okay if you enjoy that. But there are also many other things to do. What I’m saying is that not spending money is not limiting.

However!

It does take some time to figure out what to do without spending money and how to do it. This typically takes 6-12 months. I, therefore, also want to warn any neophyte that this period probably IS going to frustrating and suck and feel like you’re not living. It’s also going to take some effort. If you’re not spending money in order for other people to make your life fun by serving you steak and playing baseball in front of you, you have to make it fun yourself. This is a skill that most people lack having spent most of their waking hours in a largely uninspiring job. However, I’m quite confident that everybody is capable of figuring that out if they put their mind to it.

Originally posted 2013-04-13 11:57:43.

The word “retired” as it is commonly used and defined in the dictionary belongs to the industrial world, say the years 1920 to 2020, where it is understood in the sense of disposing of a worn out piece of machinery or employee. We can call this the social security era. This is one understanding of the word retirement.

When the world was poorer with less access to information of different solutions and all followed the same solution, as seen on TV, beginning some 30 years ago, there was a transition period wherein only some old people would reach the financial independence stage. We can call this the 401k era. This is another understanding of the word retirement.

However, with the aid of the internet people are learning how to reach it much sooner. What we have now is the beginning of a post-industrialist concept where the need for work becomes optional for those who have saved enough money and a mandatory life-sentence for those who haven’t. This is a third understanding of the word retirement.

So we have the same word trying to describe three different concepts. Having multiple concepts described by the same word is very confusing to some people. If someone reaches for the dictionary in order to think about something, you gotta realize that you’re talking to the philosophical equivalent of a wall. These people are incapable of thinking outside the box that is their “phonebook of words”.

When bloggers talk about “retirement” concepts with the intent to REACH other people, they HAVE to use the word “retirement” even if their concept doesn’t match the concept of the majority(*). They then have to explain it in detail.

However, many people don’t try to understand before they start complaining. It’s way easier for someone to say that they “somehow can’t wrap their heads around it, so therefore it’s impossible.” Now that’s a fairly ass-clownish attitude, but surprisingly it’s commonly accepted—like being bad at math is cool (rather than embarrassing like it should be…no one brags about being a bad speller for instance), having an opinion based on ignorance is cool to.

(*) If it was referred to a “Concept X” people would never find them.

As a blogger it’s not funny being on the receiving end of that. YMMV. Hence the “damnit, I wish some people would stop being so closed-minded”-responses, like the recent MMM vs the IRP post.

When MMM and I use the word “retirement”, its meaning is closer the third meaning.

Interestingly, the third meaning is actually close to the pre-industrial meaning. Back when people where more self-reliant and not the helpless consumers they are today. From a comment from Simply Rich Life on the post above:

“Retiring is a good word if you consider its other meanings which include “withdrawing from something” (in French, retirement is almost the same as “retreating”). For example there are great philosophers who “withdrew from” their primary occupations to think and write more which is how we ended up with all those books.”

MMM doesn’t think about software development anymore. I don’t think about physics anymore. At all! We’re permanently retired (withdrawn!) from that short but intense career. Just like Franklin retired (check his biography, it says retired) from book publishing only to pursue science, geography, politics, …

I’m currently pursuing trading and MMM pursues construction/general contracting, but the difference between us and most people is that we don’t need the money. Most people do. We pursue it as a hobby. They pursue it as a career. We can leave at any time. They can’t.

Tip: Don’t limit your pursuits to only those activities that industrial-world has classified as hobbies. I would be far to boring to spend 60 years under those (type 2) constraints.

We don’t need to make money because we already made enough. This is akin to the second sense of retirement—being financially independent—with the main difference of not being “old”.

We still have energy to do stuff, just not any interest in what was the career where we made our money. We’re not too worn out to do nothing ever again, like in the first sense of retirement.

We’re generally very resourceful (how do you think we figured this stuff out?!). Such resourcefulness, last seen in the pre-WWI generations, which, barring an extremely high salary, is what makes it possible at a young age for the majority of the people who “buy into it”. Hence resourcefulness is a sufficient but not a required condition.

Of course, those who keep claiming that extreme early retirement is so impossible that neither they nor I can do it will not have read this far… and with this inspirational conclusion, I sign off again.

Originally posted 2013-02-19 09:33:04.

When I started commuting I put in 3800 miles on my bicycle. For those fitness nuts out there that is 171,000 kcal (figure 20mph corresponding to 900 kcal/hour) or the equivalent of 40 pounds of fat or about half a pound a week. How is that for weight loss? (*) No wonder I eat like a horse to stay at a constant weight. Horses eat oatmeal, right?

(*) Yes, you can get in shape, lose fat, and save on gas while not paying a dime all at the same time. Why not try it?

However, those miles are starting to take a toll on the equipment. First it was the pants! Then I noticed that my rear tire was starting to look frazzled. Rear tires tend to wear out three times as fast as front tires. Besides, I have not been keeping my tires fully inflated lately (stupid me). Now my old (very old) self would have considered this an excellent excuse to go and buy some new tires and discard the worn ones. However, this goes against the maximum use philosophy. There is still plenty of life in the front tire and the rear tire still hangs together, so I simply switched them around. At the same time I cleaned the bike and the drive train. It is almost like getting a new bike.

Originally posted 2008-08-28 17:40:16.