Today, I'm pleased to present a guest article from one of my favorite money bloggers of all time: Jacob Lund Fisker. Fisker founded Early Retirement Extreme in 2007. It quickly became an influential voice for the nascent FIRE movement. In fact, I think it's fair to say that FIRE wouldn't be what it is today with his work.
Fisker retired from blogging in 2011. Since then, he and I have exchanged long emails on sometimes arcane subjects. Occasionally I ask him for advice. Recently, I asked him if he'd be willing to update people on where he's been and what he's been doing for the past decade. He agreed.
Here, then, is Fisker's story of life after Early Retirement Extreme (and extreme early retirement). Be warned: His story is not short.
J.D.'s note: In the olden days at Get Rich Slowly, I shared reader stories every Sunday. I haven't done that since I re-purchased the site because nobody sends them to me anymore. But earlier this year, Mike did. I love it. I hope you will too.
Earlier this year, I sent my wife a text message: "On a scale of 1 to 10, how freaked out would you be if I quit my job this afternoon?"
My wife and I had only been married a short while, but she'd known since our second date that I didn't plan to work in my traditional job until normal retirement age. She also knew that I hadn't been very happy at work in recent months.
The trees have nearly finished blossoming, which means my allergies will soon go away. We're seeing more of the sun, which means the worst of my seasonal depression is behind me. Today, on the 15th, Get Rich Slowly celebrates its anniversary.
In the Beginning
When I started Get Rich Slowly, I had no idea what it was going to become. I had no grand plan or vision. I just wanted to write about money while accomplishing three goals.
Last night, as I do from time to time, I met with a GRS reader. Actually, Debbie doesn't read this site but her sister does. And Debbie means to. Although I met Debbie's sister last year at a Camp FI event, I'd never met Debbie before.
"So, what's your situation?" I asked after our waiter had brought us each a glass of wine. "What do you want to know about money?"
"Everything," Debbie said, laughing. "I feel like I don't know much at all right now. I guess deep down, I know what I need to do. I just don't do it."
This year, I intend to do most of my Christmas shopping during a three-week tour of Europe with my cousins. We're deliberately visiting as many Christmas markets as possible, so I hope to find a variety of interesting and unusual gifts for my family and friends. (They need to be small, though. I don't have much space to carry things home.)
One of my core beliefs is this: It's more important to be happy than it is to be rich. My personal experience bears this out (though I'm fortunate to be both), as do the anecdotes I receive from GRS readers. In fact, of all my fourteen philosophies, this one is most important. It's so important that I chose to open Your Money: The Missing Manual with a chapter on happiness.
No surprise then that for the past couple of years, one of my favorite blogs has been Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project. Rubin is a former lawyer who abandoned her promising high-paying career to follow her bliss: She decided to become a writer. She started her blog as a part of a year-long experiment to find new ways to be happy. She's now turned that experience into a best-selling book.
The Happiness Project (the book) was released in late December. I'd hoped to review it when it was published, but work on my own book got in the way. Last week, as I was happily soaking up the sun in the jungles of Belize, I finally found time to read Rubin's book. It's fantastic.
I first met Tyler several years ago. He was a GRS reader who dropped me a line to see if I'd meet him for dinner. I said "yes" — as I almost always do. Now, several years later, Tyler runs a successful blog of his own. It was fun to see his readers come out to support him.
Note: I've never hosted a meetup for GRS readers, but the more of these I attend for other blogs, the more fun I think it would be for us to have some gatherings of our own. What do you think? Whenever I visit a new city — Denver in September, for instance, and Atlanta in October — we could gather to share stories and ideas.
After giving us a chance to chat, Tyler asked us to break into small groups, to work together to define the word freedom. "What does freedom mean to you?" he asked.
As more of my friends enter middle age, they're talking less about how to care for their kids and more about how to care for their parents. Our mothers and fathers are nearing (and, in some cases, surpassing) seventy years of age, and not all of them are financially prepared.
A GRS reader named Shauna recently wrote with a typical scenario:
My husband and I are in our early thirties and finally getting our finances in order after years of piling up debt. We both have parents who were never particularly good with money, and they've entered their early retirement years with no savings or assets to speak of — no houses, no savings, no emergency fund. We're looking down the road, and realizing that we will probably be financially responsible for all of them at some point in the not too distant future. Do you have any advice for us?
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As January fades and February blooms, we're going to turn our attention from basic money management to something much more complicated: how money affects our relationships.
In December 2016, Bloomberg published a piece that profiled seven different couples from around the United States. The article -- which was essentially a series of short interviews -- offered a quick glimpse at how other people handle money in their relationships.
Here, for example, are Rebecca and Ari discussing what it was like to move in together:
In a nutshell:By diligently applying four simple rules, you can move from being at the mercy of money to being a master of money.
In 2004, Jesse and Julie Mecham were twenty-year-old newlyweds trying to make ends meet. They lived in the 300-square-foot basement of a sixty-year-old home. He was pursuing a master's degree in accounting, while she was finishing a bachelor's degree in social work. Plus, they were planning for their fist child.
No surprise then that for the past couple of years, one of my favorite blogs has been Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project. Rubin is a former lawyer who abandoned her promising high-paying career to follow her bliss: She decided to become a writer. She started her blog as a part of a year-long experiment to find new ways to be happy. She's now turned that experience into a best-selling book.
Continue reading...
