From reading the journals and comments of the forum, it seems many of us have at least 12+ months to go prior to hitting "the number". I know that for me personally I likely have at least 3 years to go.
How do you keep yourself motivated and positive?
I was thinking about perhaps making some definite plans like taking a road trip, etc., would give me something more concrete to look forward to and it would be a distraction from the thought that 3 years just seems like such a long time.
I am more like 5-10 years away, but I enjoy the journey.
I guess I'm more ER not ERE. I still travel, I'm trying to scale down my budget to what it will be in "retirement". I'm still working on it.
Maybe someone on a stricter budget should comment.
Good thread.
@m741 made a comment in his journal that really hit home for me:
"3. Another big psychological lever is in how I frame things. The way I've been framing my current job is: "I am trading 6-7 of the best (healthiest) years of my life for ~500k". I still think that's roughly accurate. But I can also plan to come out of those 6 years with more than just the money, and it's my duty when I return home from work to further my skills in various areas. In other words, I can plan to get really good at 3-4 things that will serve me well in retirement, in addition to accumulating that much money." -m741
http://forum.earlyretirementextreme.com/topic.php?id=863
This really turned the ship around for me. When I retire, I want to devote myself to fiction writing full-time. I realized that instead of sulking around feeling sorry for myself because I have to work for an agonizing 3+ years (the horror!) I've decided to pick myself up by the bootstraps and devote myself more fully to honing my creative writing skills in my off-work hours.
Now I'm more relaxed and content at work and can better focus. Yay!
Sounds good, Palmera. After my PhD finishes next year, I'll also have about 10-15 years more to go, very likely. (Depends on the salary I'll get). But I'm currently quite OK with that and I think I can use some of that time to learn more about investing, taxes and about what to do (with my life) after retirement. Some other interesting things are coming up too in my personal life, so they'll probably keep me entertained for a while.
The way I stay motivated is to look back 12 months (I was still eager to quit working then), and say to myself 'That wasn't so bad. If I can make it through that, I can make it through just another 12months'
I don't think I understand the question. Do you guys feel you're currently sacrificing for some future reward? Do you feel you could have your rewards now instead?
No, we can't have our reward now. The choice is between distractions now (consuming stuff) and future reward.
Then there are the social bonds that we agree to, such as I want to ensure my mother doesn't run out of money before she passes away, thus as long as she is living, I need to stay employed regardless of other timetables.
I'm currently sacrificing for a future reward. I'm sacrificing my free time and youth now for financially secure unemployment in the future. I absolutely could quit my job now, but that would make things harder down the road.
To stay motivated, I've included some consumption in my budget.
It helps sometimes, but, it also hurts because I know we have enough assets to already live Jacob's lifestyle. Sell the house & cars, find a cheap living arrangement (possibly even purchase a residence), and make do.
Instead, we go with some consumption and wait out the duration (minimum 4 years and mom's passing, maximum 9 years). Contributions to the early retirement fund continue as steadily as possible, though it sometimes feels like fits & spurts.
If you go for early retirement instead of extreme early retirement you can have the best of both worlds. You may have to work until 45 like me but you will still be checking out of the rat race a full 20+ years before most. All of my needs get met and most of my wants. I never feel deprived and most days suffer from an embarrassment of riches. But I've taken the middle ground where there is much more latitude and a longer employment rate.
@Jacob-
I guess the situation is really this: Once you have made the decision to aim for ERE, there is some dissonance between what you want to spend your time doing, and what you have to do. For me, I make good money at a job I can't stand, but I can't bring myself to leave it, because I'd easily be taking a 60% or more pay cut to do so, and that would severely set back my ERE goals. I am having difficulty coping with this. The sacrifice is 11+ hour days so that in 3-4 years I don't have to ever do it again. I could quit now and get a part time job and make all my bills, but I wouldn't be saving anywhere near as much and it would make the future much more uncertain and less secure, and there would be no ER in sight. Basically what Dragoncar said.
At some point you've decreased the majority of your expenses as much as possible and then you get to spend 3+ years... waiting. The question is: how do you make the waiting as painless as possible?
My biggest demotivator is the loss of employer-subsidized health insurance, but I agree with the challenges mentioned by @LiquidSapphire. Once you've managed your outgo, you focus on your income. Given the recent volatility of the market and the lack of acceptible high-yielding alternatives, it takes more optimism to rely on the idea of living off one's investments.
One idea I'm exploring is separating from my employer qua employee so that I can transfer my 401(k) balance to a self-directed IRA, then returning to service as a contractual consultant for reduced hours but a guarantee of continued health coverage.
LiquidSapphire nails it.
My greatest motivator has likely been watching my [money] progress and knowing that I am getting closer to owning my own life.
Recently, I've tried to adopt a more "balanced" approach by spending more time and money on activities I enjoy. While still saving an ERE amount.
Learning to be less extreme is proving difficult. :)
Maybe consider semi-retirement? I had similar thoughts when I quit. If I had kept working for 5 more years, I would have been a millionaire at 38. Would have been nice, but 5 more years. I'll take the lifestyle that some people call "struggling" and maybe see what comes up. One thing I was pretty certain off back then was that there was no way I could avoid making any money again.
So far (for 12 months now) book sales has actually covered my expenses AND DW's expenses. However, we're still so safety conscious that we don't consider this good enough. There are bloggers like Adam Baker who has taken off with debt and negative security and made off with something like that. Sure, he's not FI, but he's not serving out golden handcuffs either.
I realize that one's attitude to money/independence is individual but it's also important to realize that it changes over time.
However, I still have a hard time accepting making less money than I in principle could have. Just see all the bitching I do about it on the blog.
I stay motivated by starting my post-ERE activities now, like Palmera. I'd like to make video games in retirement...so I just started making them now, between client jobs. It's been very satisfying so far, plus I'm getting a headstart learning about publishing/distribution/APIs and SDKs.
The problem is it's so much more fun I can't focus when I have to do real work.
I also need to start learning the practical post-ERE skills: gardening, woodworking, zombie-slaying.
Actually, delaying ERE by an additional 3 years (i.e. "semi-retirement") might become a very real situation. My partner lives in (nice, tropical) country where it's simply not viable to find another job and next year he's going to start pressing me to move there. Oh well, there are harder decisions in life, eh? :)
I'd rather just save up the cash in a quick and dirty 3 years, but oh well, we'll see.
> So far (for 12 months now) book sales has actually
> covered my expenses AND DW's expenses
Woo-hoo!
Being one of the young ones here I guess I think of myself as being in an "accumulation phase" not just financially but also in terms of life skills and experience. I don't feel that I'm "sacrificing" as much as just working hard and finding the best compromise between having a good life now and having a great life later, and the idea that buying gadgets or getting wasted don't actually make my current life any better so I may as well save the money is a part of that. But then my savings rate and rough timeframe aren't exactly in the extreme category. I want to have great social skills and health so I can actually enjoy my financial independence, so getting there more quickly by living in the middle of nowhere and eating nothing but beans and rice doesn't make sense. So yeah, it's all about finding the best compromise between everything.
Also it just seems like the best path for me - what are the alternatives? Stay in the rat race for another 40 years and get nowhere in terms of freedom? Stop working and struggle on the dole or take a part-time job that only pays enough to get by, and get nowhere financially? Spend all my savings travelling or mini-retiring only to end up back at square one again in a couple of years? I don't see any other way of achieving true long-term freedom, so I just feel like I'm doing the sensible thing as opposed to sacrificing something.
I very much admire @proj's outlook and attitude. It shouldn't really be a sacrifice during accumulation; there are worse things than being young, healthy, working hard and making money. Especially when also accumulating the skills to enjoy the later independence. And, as pointed out, the alternatives of just getting by or mini-retiring and then starting over don't lead to long-term freedom.
The exception is if the job is truly hateful (there are plenty of those) in which case emergency surgery may be necessary. Even if it's only jumping to a parallel position at a similar firm, sometimes you just need to look at a different set of a--holes to last another couple of years.
Maus Master wrote : "One idea I'm exploring is separating from my employer qua employee so that I can transfer my 401(k) balance to a self-directed IRA, then returning to service as a contractual consultant for reduced hours but a guarantee of continued health coverage."
If you have had coverage for 18 months you can often qualify under HIPAA for guaranteed continued coverage, though the rates can be quite high. The first policy I checked today was $3K a month for a family plus high deductibles. Kaiser and some other plans were much cheaper but I think the rates depend on your state laws and the plans available.
If you have a small business I think in every state you can get a guaranteed coverage policy. How many employees you have to have depends on state law but I think it is usually just 1 or 2 employees. I just checked on this today through Costco Small Business Health Insurance and the rates were pretty much what it costs for a policy now through my husband's day job, though of course now his employer pays for most of it now.
We have a couple of web businesses so if my husband quit or got laid off from his day job we would probably just go the small businesses health insurance way of coverage. But even the Costco policy was $1800 a month plus high deductibles. If you are middle age or older and have kids like us I don't know how to get guaranteed health insurance coverage any cheaper, at least for now, other than through an employer.
@LiquidSapphire I think reading this blog on a daily basis keeps me honest and reminds me to stay on track. It's definitely much easier to keep the eye of the prize when you see other people who are making their way to ERE. I find taking things one day at a time and breaking the goal down into small incremental steps helps a lot.
I remember when I first enrolled in the CFA program in 2006, I thought that 3 years plus over 4,5000 pages in reading material was a strenuous effort to dedicate towards a designation. However, in order to make things manageable, I broke down the program into small daily chunks. I told myself that if I read at least 50 pages a day, I would be able to achieve my goal. Soon enough, the three years flew by and I finished the program in 2009!
I think keeping track of your savings on a smaller time scale could help give you that motivation to continue on. You could even bring it down to the minute. Each minute that I am at this job means that I am putting another $0.25 to freedom!
I do yoga at work too to help me get through the rough times. I just focus on my breath for one minute which takes away the stress and it's another $0.25 towards freedom!
Enjoy the ride while it lasts. Soon enough, you'll get to your destination. :)
I do not need to keep motivated to ere. My job and my bosses already motivate every day. In the beginning of this year I discovered ERE and my first calculations said 20 years to go. Less than a year after that and now it is less than three years to go. Keeping this pace, maybe next year I already be FI! Is that motivation enough or not? :)
I read the blog from the beginning to the end, then the book, and I am here on the forums. Everyday I stare at my spreadsheet that has all kinds of numbers and graphs. I am always doing simulations and thinking additional ways to decrease recurring expenses. Another thing that keeps me sane and on track is my practicing of martial arts two to three hours a day monday to friday.
Thanks everyone for your responses. Everyone had some food for thought and gave me things to consider.
Maybe it's not motivation that's my problem. Every conversation with my boss motivates me even more. I read the blogs and forums every day so that also keeps my eye on the prize. Also like some have stated, I don't need the new car, new clothes, blah blah blah, I might as well save the money. In fact I was achieving a roughly 40-50% after tax savings rate basically blind folded before coming upon ERE. I am approaching 70% now, and sustainably saving 80+% is definitely within reach as soon as I pay off the remainder of my debt. I look almost every day to see if I can find a way to shave a few more expenses off the table. The "savings" part is not really the hardship part, neither is the "low expenses" (and maybe I need to go less extreme on that, to make the hardship close to 0%.) It's just the working part that is so painful right now. It wouldn't be so bad if my job was "OK".
From all of your feedback I guess I'll work on the following approaches:
1) I'm going to lay off going carless for now. Winter is coming and I'm not excited about standing in the wind and snow waiting for a bus that is 30 minutes late to go run an errand. I H-A-T-E feeling cold. I'll probably go buy some nice beater car. It's not as cheap as carless, but it's not that much more expensive either, over time. This will reduce the savings/expenses mental hardship significantly. I guess I should live a lifestyle I'd be comfortable living indefinitely, rather than really getting into the realm of "sacrifice." I can always go lower in expenses later, once I have more time and less stress.
2) Start exploring some of the hobbies I was saving for ERE now. This might increase my expenses, but it will help making the "waiting" less painful I think if I view it as a slow transition to the ERE life, and I would get some of the benefits now. An additional benefit is I get the opportunity to try things now, and I'll know if I should budget for them later or not (what if I hate them?) and have a better idea of how much to budget.
3) Tracking savings on a shorter time scale and set smaller savings goals. This will show that I am progressing along even though % wise to goal completion isn't moving much. The problem is that my net worth is such that I don't have much in cash, so while I might be doing awesome on the savings front, I don't see it in Net Worth because lately stocks are going sideways or down. So I'll have to think about how to structure that so I don't get sidetracked by things outside of my control.
4) Work toward identifying a point in time to transition to semi-retirement if it gets just flat out unbearable at work. In other words, instead of working 5 years at a job I hate, maybe I could do a hard limit of 3 years, no matter what, and have a plan to do some kind of semi-retirement for the next 4-6 years, with ER after a total of 10 years of work. That way I can control and plan (and countdown to) a definite exit date, which I think could be motivating.
Great insights, everyone!
For me at the end of the day, I am grateful to be in an 'exciting' and foward-thinking industry that's teaching me skills that will help me during ERE. Plus, my colleagues and bosses are the best a person could work for, which kinda works against me in a way as the culture of my team is so good, I'm relunctant to leave for a job where I could be earning $10k more (I'm due for a promotion but there are no openings, argh).
But yeah, the concept of "work" and of people telling me what to do, and how to do it, and when to do it...I simply don't see myself doing that much longer. Plus, I'm too much of a flaky free spirit wanderer :)
@LiquidSapphire I like your idea of a hard limit of 3 years and semi-retirement/part-time for another 3-6. Also, have you thought of any other money-making schemes that might speed up things? Examples: real-estate, small side business, second job, freelancing, etc? Me personally, I only budgeted half of my ERE principle to come from my 9-5 salary - the rest will be done through side hustles.
@palmera -
I am definitely actively considering a side hustle, and with my current lifestyle it would be best done as some sort of business where the majority of the work is done online. I've considered blogging but this article really discourages me: http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2009/04/21/8-reasons-why-you-wont-make-money-from-your-blog/ She also had a post (can't find it now) about how you pretty much can't make it now unless you have a huge blog with multiple writers. It seems pretty overwhelming to me. Real estate would be a massive massive learning curve, and the properties here are not that conducive to it yet (with putting 20% down, I have yet to find any where the cash flow is attractive. Yeah you might get $200 a month when nothing goes wrong, but the first judgment proof tenant that trashes your place for $5000 eats up 2+ years of profit right there. So... I'm pondering, I guess.
@LiquidSapphire yeah. Overall the side hustle thing is challenging, I can't see how blogging will make me decent cash, I mean, I couldn't build something like ERE.com in less than a year. And the upkeep is too time-consuming(I'm a Penelope Trunk reader too).
I just got a 2nd job working in a bar for the fall/winter/early Spring season. If I can keep this job, we're looking at an extra $1k to $1.5k a month if I work the Friday and Saturday shift. Not to mention that entertainment/bar budget will be drastically reduced ;) In a year I'll be looking to flip houses. The area that I bought my residence now is VERY reasonably-priced, compared to the rest of the city, so I figure a couple good flips (after using them as my primary residence for a bit to avoid capital gains taxes)will play a significant role in my ERE journey.
Freelancing and consulting are two things that I should start building now though.
@LiquidSapphire - I would not let what one person wrote about blogging necessarily discourage you. If you can make a site or blog that makes $1 day, in 4 years that is $1,825. Then lather, rinse, repeat over the months or years and make more sites or blogs. The money adds up if you have enough and the investment except your time is usually pretty minimal.
@LiquidSapphire:
So a blogger tells you that you shouldn't get into blogging because it's not worth it? Isn't there a bit of a conflict of interest there?
While you shouldn't expect a blog to replace your income by any stretch, if you consider it a hobby and have somewhat unique content, or even recycled content with a fresh voice (see Mr. Money Mustache), I would encourage you to go for it.
Screw everyone else's opinions and "advice" and find out for yourself what it's like. Writing can only help you - it improves your vocabulary and sentence structure, and will improve your confidence at making a point verbally as well.
Re motivation
When you reach ERE. Its easy to get sucked back into contract work. It's incredibily difficult to motivate yourself. I'm working just a few hours for good pay, but I'm so frustrated by the waste of time. I may throw it in. I guess the good news is I can just walk away from it. Again.
I guess I'm disappointed in myself. Why did I put my life aside and give them a second chance.
But anyway if anyone has made the switch to ERE, think carefully before returning to work. Chances are the reasons why you left are still there.
I guess it was the motivation of ERE that kept me in the work force originally.
It's not that the author of the post I linked says you shouldn't blog; in fact, she encourages it, as it can generate other income opportunities for you. She just says it is unlikely you are going to make any significant amount of money from it directly, which would have been my primary motivation. I guess if anything it is a free hobby.
There are a lot of former federal employees that turn into contractors in my field so I suppose that is an option, I could do some easy stuff for maybe 4-8 hours a week if I really needed the money, and it wouldn't be too hard to drum up the business since I have the network. But I wonder if I would feel the same as you George, "Why did I even think it was a good idea to go back there", it would generate all of these negative feelings all over again, although if it was just a half day here and there, and I'm able to set some limits and boundaries as to what I will or will not deal with, maybe it wouldn't be so bad? Is this wishful thinking? I was just offered a six week business trip back to Europe to do an HR audit for my former place of employment and I couldn't bring myself to take it... it would have been six weeks of total BS and stress as that place is a total mess and that was one of the main reasons I left.
@LiquidSapphire - Perhaps it is unlikely the casual blogger will make any money blogging. However people who take the time to study the search engine algorithms for hours on end will probably do much better. You don't have to have one site that makes $100 a day. You can make the same amount of money by having ten sites that make $10 each a day or 20 sites that make $5 each a day. So all you really have to do is figure out how to get to that first $5 and then repeat that multiple times. In fact the smaller site methodology is often more resilient to algorithm changes since the risk of any given site tanking in the rankings and losing income is spread out more evenly.
@frugalinCalifornia -
That sounds intriguing. How would you recommend one get started with this? I have a couple of ideas of things I could write on, but when I get into choosing a Wordpress template I just get overwhelmed and it's hard to see the link between the Wordpress template and SEO. Thanks!
@LiquidSapphire - To get good at ranking sites I think it helps to study the sites that rank now plus read up on all of the posts on the webmaster and SEO forums. Then look for a topic that isn't very competitive and/or is pretty narrow niche to start out. It is easier to rank for something like Ramen noodle recipes for college students than it is for just recipes. Some of the bento box lunch sites are good examples of niche sites. Then try to find unique content - stuff that isn't written about in a million other places. To get unique content you have to do things like surveys, unique experiments, or find research from other places than the free Internet listings because that is the same information available to everyone else.
There is a professor who received all sorts of press from going on a low calorie diet of twinkies and other junk food to prove that cutting calories was the main way to lose weight. Anybody could try to do something like that but he was the one who thought to do it. I don't think he did it for a particular web site but if he had I'm sure it would have gotten a lot of traffic as his story was written up in all sorts of major news services and online magazines.
I've been struggling with much the same thoughts lately as some others on this thread. I am certainly at least 3 years away from retirement at the rate things are going currently.
I've been at my current job for three years, I've always gotten excellent reviews, and the organization functions quite well. It certainly has been paying well, and I don't enjoy the idea of looking for a new job. However, the particular nature of it is incredibly exhausting for me as an introvert, and leaves me with little energy for social interaction outside of work.
Mostly, I don't want to go through the effort of finding a different job, but I often feel that my current job is using up a lot of my life energy, beyond the simple time commitment.
What's been helpful for me is carving back more of my personal time. Letting go of careerism/career advancement and avoiding killer hours makes it easier to leave work both on time AND behind at the end of the day. I’m also not as social with work colleagues- a good thing – for both budget and work life balance.
I actually feel more productive without the long term career positioning concerns - it makes the days go by faster (although to be fair they are shorter too). I’m still focused on doing quality work (vs. riding out the clock) but I’m less stressed if I block out the petty concerns and power jockeying of corporate office life. Of course I’m not successful at it 100% of the time so I’m also trying to follow the advice of a previous thread - Vitamin D and a brisk walk – when I start to feel overwhelmed by time until ERE.
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