"Selfishly Employed"

[stand@desk]

http://financialuproar.com/2015/04/10/f ... mployment/

A Personal Finance Blogger (one that I regularly read) chimes in on "Early Retirement" for a second time.

"50 years later when you kick it, all your family really remembers is you being around, not really doing a whole lot."

The blogger calls Early Retirement by another name, "selfish employment" because, "These people transition from regular employment to a form of self-employment that they enjoy, and then call themselves retired."

"But according to the early retirement folks, “retirement” really just means becoming moderately wealthy and then quitting your job to do whatever the hell you want. Most of the time, that actually includes another job that just pays a whole lot less."

This blogger makes some good points, but suggests to keep working..

[theanimal]

Ah, objections based on collectivist and puritanical values in the same post. Bonus! And questions the definition of retirement. New high score! Nothing new here...

See:http://earlyretirementextreme.com/rant- ... tions.html
and http://earlyretirementextreme.com/that- ... tired.html

[Ego]

Secondly, I question the wisdom of removing people who are smart and dedicated enough to save half a mil in a decade from the workforce. If you have the earnings power and dedication to save that much, I’m going to assume you’re smarter than the average bear. You owe it to your fellow man to keep building things.

He assumes that people stop doing worthy things after retiring. For many the opposite is true.

[saving-10-years]

This guy says that he does not *get* 'early retirement'. Its not the only thing that he does not get ...

I don’t even have kids and I’m already looking forward to when my kids are too cool to hang out with me. Oh, I don’t have to hang out when you go bowling? Excellent. Now I can watch real athletes.

The part that I focus on is 'I don't have kids' [no experience], and from the preceding paragraph 'hanging out with your kids all day until they turn 14 and tell you to GO AWAY FOREVER DAD YOU’RE SO ANNOYING GOD' [no experience but very definite expectations].

He is calling his blog 'uproar' for a reason. Write something to stir people up and drive them to the blog and make money. His 'About me' tells us that he quit his job and lives in South Korea and blogs for a living. Taking a year off and expecting his net worth to go up. If he were a poster on this forum he might describe this as being ERE. Or at least trying it out. He's not as knowledgeable or as productive as the people who post here and his site bombards you with annoying popups. Which is, I assume, the point of his writing. (Unless he just likes annoying people in which case he is quite a successful guy?)

[jennypenny]

Gah!!! It's been a long time since an anti-retirement article really pissed me off. I'll resist the urge to pick apart the entire article and just pick two quotes that really bothered me.

But according to the early retirement folks, “retirement” really just means becoming moderately wealthy and then quitting your job to do whatever the hell you want.

How on earth could that ever be construed as a bad thing?!

I remember when my grandmother died and my mom was talking about her life. “Grandma,” said my mom, “had a good life. She had kids, grandkids, got to travel to a bunch of places…” her voice trailed off. That was pretty much all she did.

Times were different when she was young, of course. She had jobs throughout the years, but mostly just dedicated herself to her family. That’s not to disparage her for doing so, because I have many, many fun memories of time at my grandparents’ house.

But imagine being smart and ambitious enough to actually do things that matter, even if it’s just in your mind. But instead, you wrap it up at 35, content to hang out, work on your handicap, and make sure your kids don’t become juvenile delinquents, apparently without realizing that, chances are, they won’t end up that way even if you do go to work. 50 years later when you kick it, all your family really remembers is you being around, not really doing a whole lot.

Does that motivate you? If it does, what the hell is wrong with you?

He's got that all wrong. It's not that Grandma didn't do anything worth remembering. It's that the stuff like being part of a family or social group, pursuing personal dreams (like traveling), or being happy with your life IS the stuff worth remembering. Those are the meaningful and sustaining parts of life. "She had a good life" means she was happy. Why is anything else in life necessary or even desirable?

We know this, which is why we pursue early 'retirement'. The length of a person's resume has no bearing on how happy they are. I don't want my family reciting a long list of accomplishments at my funeral--I want them to recite a long list of fulfillments. Sometimes fulfillment comes from work-related activities, sometimes it doesn't. Does it matter? Does pursuing fulfillment make us selfish? Is it wrong to want to be fulfilled instead of accomplished?


I think a big issue with this blogger, and many others who've complained in the past, is that our lives don't fall into a neat pattern of education--work--family--retirement--leisure. ERE's live dynamically, whereas most people live, and think, linearly. In their compressed, single-dimensional view of life, we look like we're cheating because we hop around the board in the Game of Life to get to the good bits quickly, and skip over as many of the bits that we don't want as we can. To mix the metaphor, most people go through life like Pawns, whereas ERE's live life like Queens.

[Dragline]

Now, that's what I call a "dry hole" -- read his "About".

It's essentially a relatively ignorant person who has bounced around doing things he didn't like and is now making noise to attract attention in hopes that he can turn that attention into an income stream. I'm not even sure he know who his target market is.

But he'll send you stock tips . . .

[arrrrgon]

If we cared about the opinions of others we wouldn't be on this path.

[Chad]

Save money, invest better, AND be more attractive. Proven by science. Oh, and we give away cash and prizes monthly. Sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Is he going to make me taller too? And, ...bigger?

[jennypenny]

Save money, invest better, AND be more attractive. Proven by science. Oh, and we give away cash and prizes monthly. Sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Is he going to make me taller too? And, ...bigger?

Well, if he does, I'm going to change my tune and agree with him. You would owe it to your fellow citizenry to stay in the game and use your talents to enrich the rest of us.

[jacob]

Oh my ... these IRP posts are becoming common enough to either make a bingo or drinking game out of them.

[fiby41]

The Internet Retirement Police strikes again trying to create FUD!

[7Wannabe5]

IMO,there are a couple nuggets of truth in his spew. From my perspective, being somebody who was already very frugal and self-employed and is just trying to achieve the further degrees of freedom that increased liquid funds and ability to earn more $$ at the margin would provide, the notion that any one of the very capable people on this forum would have to survive on nothing but passive income after quitting full-time career-type employment seems like redundancy to the point of overkill. Unless you sink into a major depression, you will employ yourself after retirement. You will get up in the morning and set tasks for yourself and find pleasure in successfully completing them. Totally socially isolating yourself is the only way you will not eventually experience some money (or other valuable stuff) flowing into your life from other people as you perform these tasks you set for yourself. OTOH, the author of the article totally misses the mark because he equates the desire to increase personal autonomy/optionality with selfishness when really it is a form of self-aware self-care. Selfishness is as blind to the reality of interdependence as selflessness is blind to the reality of ego in others. Possessing autonomy and optionality is like being the child who can let go of Mommy to go play but trust that she will come back to pick him up, except that you are the Mommy and the child.It is never possible to say "I have already completed the work of taking care of myself while functioning in community."

[stand@desk]

This blogger recently posted that he has lived the "digital nomad" lifestyle in Korea and now finds it unfulfilling and pines for the normalcy of his regular life back home in Western Culture. I guess there are packaged lifestyles out there in the blogosphere with different handles but really we are our own lifestyle with bits and pieces from others. People just get hung up over names really. Things need to be named right damnit! (sarcasm) A very human thing of us to be doing.

[jennypenny]

This article is mostly click bait, but check out the images that accompany each "sign" in the article. Each photo is of someone distraught except for the guy pictured in "Work is still important to you." More subtle programming that we should all work until we're dead.

9 signs you're not ready to retire

[GandK]

This article is mostly click bait, but check out the images that accompany each "sign" in the article. Each photo is of someone distraught except for the guy pictured in "Work is still important to you." More subtle programming that we should all work until we're dead.

You're right. Every photo but that one is an image of a "scary" financial instrument, or it's of people who either feel a migraine coming on or are confused.

Kudos to whoever picked out the smiling photo for "Work is still important to you," though. They could easily have gone with a constipated face to keep up the pain theme. But perhaps that would have made the slideshow too... dark?

[cmonkey]

Edward Bernays would be proud.

As a side note, it seems I am 90% ready to retire.

1. Yep
2. Nope
3. Fail! I still need to work for money.
4. I assess weekly, if not daily.
5. Most definitely have.
6. Even while at work, only about 20% of my mental energy is devoted to it. I would say nope.
7. I have never thought about my "work" identity. Life identity, quite a bit more so.
8. Nope & the parents are on their own.
9. We aren't on the same page - we are the same page.

So I only failed number 3. Doh!