Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Here's a blog post listing some older books. There's also a bibliography at the back of Home Economics , [compiled] by Jennifer McKnight-Trontz, that I can drop here if anyone is interested. If you can't find pdfs online, your local library or ebay might have them. I didn't see McKnight-Trontz's 201...

I've always said it as an initialism/alphabetism.

A local commercial flooring installer has a giant pallet pile by their building and a sign that says "free pallets". Try calling around to building supply places.

It's expensive and gets poor reviews, but they do make an updated version.

http://www.llbean.com/llb/shop/84171?fe ... larm-clock

If you don't want to take a self portrait, find a friend who can help you out, and trade something if need be. Take photos for all the different permutations you can think of, and keep the files. Six 2-inch square photos can be tiled into a 4x6 print. Upload the jpg to your local drug store, order, ...

Many big changes are the result of many incremental improvements. If you figure out what little changes will move you toward a big change, you'd be well on your way. Other big changes are the result of a " crowbar maneuver ." The basic idea is to hurl yourself toward the change and then ad...

I read the reviews by Solow, Brooks, and Krugman. (Solow's review here .) I have not read the book. I'm having trouble wrapping my head around rate of return being higher or lower than national income growth. Is it directly related to economic structure and policy, as in the share of productivity in...

<t>Before your latest career, you were looking for cities that had certain qualities. Is that still important to you? When you move on from finance, are you going to be happy staying put in the Chicago area?<br/> If you bought a fixer-upper, it wouldn't be so bad to finish in a few years, sell, and ...

"I don't want to drop $200 on oak for a table in order to learn."
What do you think of using mismatched wood? Reclaimed wood furniture is popular right now (example). I'm sure you could collect enough from beat-up furniture, doors, etc., over time to make a table.

<t>"Feel-good messages like this are designed to distract us from the consequences and take away the very thing that would effect change" (Ego)<br/> Research has shown that getting the warm fuzzies before the task is done can hamper progress. Consider<br/> <br/> this talk about it happening on the p...

<t>I can attest to feeling some level of unhappiness when thinking about ERE. It's mostly wishing I were there already, but I also feel bad when social expenses creep up or when I'm excluded from something because friends know about my values or when my wife wants something that I can't find used an...

<t>"The biggest overhead on the transaction is the real estate agent. I have not bought or sold enough property to have a good solution for getting rid of their cut." - Scott 2<br/> The only ways I can think of are to buy for-sale-by-owner properties, use an agent that refunds part of their commissi...

I'm a big fan of onebag.com, and if I were to spend a decent amount of money on a bag, it would be one of the recommended bags from that site, like an MEI Voyageur or MEI Executive Overniter. (meipacks.com)

<t>"I wonder whether, say 60% down will make a difference on the rate."<br/> It depends on your credit score, but you probably won't gain anything past 40% down. Rejection is less likely with more money down, which would help if George is right. You can see an example of how LTV affects rate here. I...

Thanks for the post. How did you learn to make wine?

<t>From GandK's question, it sounds like they want to account for the fact that the pension disappears upon death, which the SWR idea won't reflect.<br/> I say estimate your life expectancy (given your current age) and sum up the amount for each year that you receive a pay-out, accounting for the ti...

MMM/ERE meetup in late May, early June. I'll post the specific date and time in a few days. PM me for details.

I'll start another thread so I don't have the old date/time as a title.

We're having another meetup in the Boston area, this time for late May/early June. PM me if you're interested, and I can send you details.

<t>I live two miles from work. One day, I wondered whether biking was really faster than walking, considering prep time, so I timed myself. Biking won at 18 min vs 35 min. I would sweat significantly less because it didn't take as long, biking was more efficient, and the wind cools you off. I usuall...