I think the early retirement option is mostly the domain of women. Women have options, men have obligations. And one of men’s obligations is to find a woman to marry and support, and to work lifelong for her and her kids. A women can choose to keep working during marriage, but they aren’t looked down upon if they decide to stay home and tend the house.

Also, most women don’t have much interest in their husbands keeping an eye on early retirement. They want and need as much lifestyle as the family can afford, esp. if there is children involved. Big, comfortable, renovated houses, best school districts, safest cars, fashionable clothes, etc.

I think this is rooted in evolutionary psychology. A woman normally has to compromise when choosing a mate, between exciting alpha studs, and reliable, but boring “providers”. If she settles for a provider, and the provider wishes to opt-out of the rat race, and retire early, then she may regret her choice.

She may regret her choice in any case. Which would explain the high divorce rate. At least here in the lower 48.

DW here, borrowing Jacob’s computer for the moment. I’m not sure I understand the first question so much, but I’ll try. I’m not sure what I think of societies consideration. I don’t feel too deprived. There are times that I want some things I want or things I want to do, but I understood that these things weren’t really going to happen with my choice of mate. Not because of his extreme frugality, but just his general personality. He does not like going out, so I’ve gotten used to not going out. My brother and his wife are constantly concerned I’m just going along or that I’m being deprived, but I’m really not. The RV wasn’t so hard, he’d been looking at living on a boat or living in a tumbleweed home. I could relate to this more than either of those. I’d lived in manufactured homes and been in RVs before. I finally told him that I’d give it a few years, so long as there was an option out clause if I didn’t like it. Luckily so far, the adjustment hasn’t been bad.

There are definitely discussions and disagreements (you notice I’m not living in a tumbleweed or boat, I still have my cable tv and my dog (with associated box of toys)), but I have given in on other things. I like the end result, I like having my bills paid off, I like not worrying about the month to month. I really really liked paying for the RV and not having monthly payments.

I might give in and write a post for Jacob one of these days, where I’ll try to articulate my side more coherently.

This post sounds like it could serve as a response to those feminists who tell stay-at-home moms that they are not “serving society”. They seem to think the ultimate goal of feminism should be economic enslavement of women by other women.

I would very much like to see the post you are referring to. My personal opinion is that while I am not disciplined enough to do it, Jacob’s method is practical and wise and will leave the two of you well prepared for anything that might happen. The trick is to see it from that perspective.

Some people take less value in the opinion of the majority than others do. It appears that Jacob is one of those people. I feel like I am that way as well (although not to the same degree). My fiance is in some ways, but she would not want her friends or family to believe that she’s living an impoverished lifestyle.

While I think it would be fun to try some of the things you guys do, I would hate for my fiance to feel embarrassed about her lifestyle no matter how supportive she was on the outside of those choices. I feel the steps that the two of you have taken would require me to have extensive communication with her. I would want her to be where I am, excited about researching possible ideas for reducing expenditures before I was convinced that she was truly ok with it rather than just supporting my decisions.

I’m sure you guys have been through all of this, so if it hasn’t already been discussed in a previous post, that’s the kind of stuff I’m looking for. Thanks.

@Patrick, Lola – I saw a comment to the effect of “if some women stay at home or retire early, they drag down the expectation of female employees, that is, the employer will come to expect that other women would choose to stay at home too; therefore women should not retire early or stay at home” — this was written by a woman.

@SIK – What happened to your blog? I can’t find it anymore?! Verily, refining something which is inherently inaccurate drives me nuts. The concept of striving for precision as a form of social validation is highly interesting!!!!

@Daniel – Actually I even take some value in disagreeing, but I try not to :-). It’s a good point though. I often worry that DW is supporting rather than driving. While we don’t replace our bling annually, we will never go into bankruptcy which I consider the ultimate embarrassment/moral failure. Fortunately DW also sees the ludacris in replacing furniture annually to impress last years thanksgiving guests (not my idea, I heard it in a radio commercial. I am not making this up!).

This comment could have been left on any number of blog entries (“Minimalist Living” comes to mind); however, this is the most recent one that seems to fit.

Have you read any of William Least Heat-Moon’s books? “Blue Highways” is probably the best known. I recently checked out his lastest book “Roads to Quoz” from the library and wanted to mention Jean Ingold, a New Mexico woman he visits and describes in Chapters 13 and 14 in Part III of his book.

She lives on $1,500 a year with the carbon footprint “of a house cat”. People interested in extreme frugality might enjoy pages 306-324 of this book.

“What I am saying is that people are not born indebted to society.”

Thank you. (this is why I still have my battered copy of The Fountainhead on the shelf).

My husband is focused on retiring as early as possible, and in the meantime makes his living as a blacksmith. (An extremely useful trade, by the way.) But his family? Endless reiteration of “but it’s such a waste!” Just because he has a stratospheric IQ doesn’t mean he has to go out and be a nuclear physicist. He would have been miserable, and the resulting life would truly have been a waste.

The idea that there is a social obligation for unneccessary consumption is rather crazy, but it follows directly from a GDP-focused view at the world, which gives a nice indication of how off that view actually is.
Reasonably, one would see that one takes care of the available resources and optimizes their use for maximum benefit.

As a completely unrelated thing, to defend Paul a bit, it is true that the perceived social obligation to work and produce is stronger for men and has less regards for their well-being in the process. “The myth of male power” by Warren Farrell is a nice read on this topic. However, by now women are being sucked into this, too.

In general, it is both sad and funny to see how the old concept of wage-slavery has been replaced with the striving for the ultimate job which will give you fulfillment in life.

Most probably do not even think about early retirement until someone that is ERE tells there story. I believe most feel that they “missed out”, they “were not told”, and jealousy ensues.

Intereresting post, and yeah: From each according to ability is absolute bullshit. It is however what is practised in any country with a progressive taxsystem.
(that means all countries afaik)

What nobody seems to realise is what effect it has on the motivation of the workforce when they are penalized progressively harder the harder/smarter they work. It removes the most productive workers from the workforce because they cant be assed to go the extra mile. Tax rates go from 8% to 59% in Denmark, which means I get to keep from 92% down to 41% of what I earn. That means I have a relative drop in efficiency by 56%. Talk about diminishing returns to scale!

But people don’t get that, and expects a lot of “the workforce”. When I discuss part time jobbing and/or early retirement with people in normo-culture they often retort that I ought to give back to the state budget efter the state took care of my education. That I allready did that is irrelevant, the interresting bit os that they Think I have the obligation

We have the same education level, I’m a geologist. But I didn’t stay in academia after I finished my degrees. I think early on, I was probably more going along, I agreed with a lot of what Jacob said and did, but it took a while to change a lot of the brain washing and indoctrination that takes place in our society. It has taken me much longer than I’d like to admit to come fully on board, but I am not as extreme as Jacob, in any part of my personality. Turns out, 2 years in the RV, living a minimalist lifestyle, I’m happy. Some parts of my family are converted even, others will never convert, but they accept it. There are those that don’t get it, and I am still working at trying to figure out how to not let the misunderstanding affect the relationship.

Also, I did notice that government as well as the private sector pursues ever more ineffective and/or inefficient projects. I think it follows naturally from the fact that we no longer live in a scarcity-world, but an abundance-world.

What should we (government or private sector) produce after all things useful have allready been produced? Something less useful ofc. When everything even marginally useful has been produced we are left with producing counter-productivity. It’s an interesting case of diminishing returns to scale.

It’s also what Adam Smith overlooked because he lived in a scarcity world – that sometimes there is nowhere for the invisible hand to guide people… …we don’t need anything else. As far as I can tell, the only “solution” is progressive taxation to scare the productive members of society into hibernation and/or simply working less, so there’s room for more employed people. (In my case dentists)

That we’re chasing a lot of useless statistics is another matter entirely. I’ve no idea why. I usually stop reading if a text talks about GDP as a measure of growth. Or DMFT as a measure of oral health. It is meaningless to do statistical analysis if you data isn’t valid.

@Mary – The built in search function is not very good. Use google and include “site:earlyretirementextreme.com” without the ” in your search terms.

How can anyone look at our administration today and still think that collectivism is dead? I’m thinking of comments that those who plan their finances to minimize (legally) taxes are now considered unpatriotic. And how many times have you heard a comment that someone who is successful needs to give back to their community? That comment infers that they took something from the community in order to achieve their success, when in actuality it may be that the person was successful in spite of their community, not because of it.

I could go on and on on society’s expectations. Just yesterday I was having lunch with a group of people on cable and how it is possible to cut cable. I explained you can do it with hulu, netflix, an antenna that cuts local channels, chromecast, if you really need to watch shows. But everyone said it’s much easier to sit down and click buttons on a remote. These people are paying hundreds of dollars a month for convenience and then they say they can never retire.
Then, I constantly fight with the cultural expectations that come from family. I’m different and family doesn’t get that. Oh well.