Early Retirement Extreme Forums

May 2020 Update May expenses: 2482 CAD (1836 USD) Effective Withdraw Rate: 3.8% My portfolio has recovered to roughly November 2019 levels, although that includes 6 months of contributions, including a big chunk from my annual tax return. All in all I can't complain, if the worst is behind us. Than...

That $1.8 million target number looks pretty intimidating, but I noticed you're including the $1017 of your mortgage payment in it... that's $400k of additional savings to cover $79k of debt, that you already have a goal to pay off. So taking the mortgage out of your number: FI number @3%SWR = 3,714...

September 2019 Update Back in 2014 when I started this journal, my goal was to hit FI before my 40th birthday, and relocate to a lower cost area. Well, the deadline has come and gone, did I accomplish my goal? Sort of, but not really. I'm still here in Vancouver, still working the same job. My port...

So there I was, scrolling through the back cataglogue of journals ERE journals, wondering what became of all the journalers I used to read regularly like Tyler900, Spoonman, Pedal2Petal, Akratic, Ebast, JeanPaul, Spartan_Warrior, ... And there was *MY* journal, gathering dust for almost three years!...

December 2016 Been a year since my last update... I wasn't sure if I would post this or not since I mostly fell off the ERE bandwagon this year, but I figure this is the kind of forum to prefer a negative data-point to survivorship bias ;) https://s23.postimg.org/44kj5qtyj/Chart_2016_12.png Financi...

Efficiency: cutting our input cost in half doubles output with no additional inputs. What is the theoretical minimum energy cost for delivering Angry Birds over a network? How close to that are we? Nonphysical Goods: when JK Rowling wrote Harry Potter she created several billion dollars in IP. How m...

@BRUTE I'm curious about how you make WD work along with a low-carb diet. From what I understand the WD is mostly about having one big meal a day, and fasting through the interim? I guess I'm having a hard time imagining how I would regularly eat enough calories in one sitting to make that work. For...

Hey JeanPaul, I've been following your journal since the beginning, and it's been a great read, thanks for not letting it slip into the archives like so many others (mine included, heh). The Peru chapter was interesting in an adventure-travel kind of way, but not something I would seriously envision...

Your bit about the conversation between 20s and 30s acratic has got me wondering... now that you're back from vagabonding and pondering a return to work or academia, what advice would you have given the younger you actively planning his exit? Is there anything you would have done differently before ...

Between English, French, and Spanish you'll have 108 countries covered: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_the_number_of_countries_in_which_they_are_recognized_as_an_official_language Arabic is a slightly better choice than spanish in terms of # of countries, but it's also much more ...

Ok, well lets run the numbers... your costs are 6k in self funding, and 19k - 12*561 = 12.5k annually in opportunity cost. After four years, when you get your ticket, you will be 56k worse off than if you had stayed the course (ignoring investment returns for simplicity). You're looking at a range o...

I'm with brute on this one. 3 of my last 4 moves were by airplane, and I was well under the checked baggage limit. I group my belongings into two categories: (1) fits in a dufflebag, (2) fits in a dumpster.

I wear sandles 8-months out of the year which helps avoid this problem. If they do start to develop a smell, a quick wipe down with a bit of rubbing alcohol paper towel fixes it.

"You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. - Jim Rohn"

I've always had a suspicion this is just a causation fallacy.

Accumulating in a 5-year bull could be a great thing, if it turns out to be a 10-year bull. Just like accumulating in a long-term bear could suck if it turns out you're in 1990s japan and the market has another decade of losses in store for you. Either way it's kind of moot since you don't get to ch...

If you have any interest in electrical work, I'd say go for it. Afiak you have only looked at electrician jobs in your area, but the real money in most of these trades usually comes from investing in your own van & tools and running your own operation. If you're serious about it, in a few years ...

@oldpro at no point did I call those ERE failures, I specifically said *success* stories. My intended point was that most EREs don't sit around passively spending down their assets forever like in a classical retirement, making it hard to find EREs in getting financial trouble. I don't see this as a...

The european and canadian editions were both up 2-3% last year, I think the US version is mostly being impacted by the rising dollar. Gold looks a lot flatter viewed in any other major currency.

@jacob where I live it can get very windy... after going through three $10 umbrellas in a single month (one of them lasted less than 30 minutes, and I walked soaking wet back into to the store to return the twisted pile of aluminum and vinyl) I gave up and bought a $60 umbrella that was made like a ...

I'm more bogglehead than PP, but it's not really important wrt the question I think. My portfolio is 50% domestic, and 50% unhedged international (in both the stock/bond portions) which has been extremely helpful during the recent 30% slide in the canadian dollar. While everyone around me has been l...