Where are the failure-stories?

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Dragline
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Re: Where are the failure-stories?

Post by Dragline »

steelerfan wrote:
Fri Jun 02, 2017 8:58 am
However today, I have kids that need our support, and my wife is not there yet in terms of wanting out although she is moving surprisingly in that direction.

The biggest value I get on a day to day basis is trying to impress upon my kids the need to save early and avoid consumerism and lifestyle inflation that will make you a slave. They seem to be listening although you never know what will happen once they start making real money.
You and me both! (Not to mention aging parents with issues.) DS#2 graduates from high school this weekend. He'll be getting "Early Retirement Extreme" and "So Good They Can't Ignore You" as summer reading.

But I like to say/think they learn more from us from what we are NOT doing in comparison to others similarly situated, than what we have to say.

ThisDinosaur
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Re: Where are the failure-stories?

Post by ThisDinosaur »

I'd call a failure someone who ran out of money and had to go back to work. I'm imagining a person with a religious commitment to the 4% rule, index funds, and Stocks For the Long Run who retired at age 35 just before the tech bubble burst. Having to go back to work just as your former coworkers are getting ready to retire would be very demoralizing. I doubt many would post about that here. Another example would be the oft-cited wannabe homesteader who finds out the hard way that total self-sufficiency is either impossible or way harder than they thought. There is a reason why people stopped living the pre-industrial lifestyle as soon as the urban consumerist option became available.

bryan
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Re: Where are the failure-stories?

Post by bryan »

@ThisDinosaur, I wonder if your first class of person really exists? I've thought that if you have 25x expenses saved and retire, you would end up having some significant changes to your life such that it's unlikely to fall back into an old life down the road. I do agree that the 4% rule will leave some in a less than ideal situation but it's shortfall will be more marginal and not a huge thing. Totally agree on your second class of people, though.

I figure their aren't many "failure stories" because the likely failures of ERE-minded folks are probably pretty tame and not worth mentioning. The failures of friends-of-friends or co-workers are more interesting, as jacob alluded. I recall a "Hall of Shame" on MMM forums which is sort of failure-stories.

edit: and the very obvious reason that ERE hasn't been formally around very long and has coincided with a period of very strong stock market performance.

ThisDinosaur
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Re: Where are the failure-stories?

Post by ThisDinosaur »

@bryan
Yes, that first class of person was a caricature from the "continued viability of the 4% rule" thread. Jacob described a certain type of person who lived a post-FIRE consumerist lifestyle and figured they could make up any shortfalls by making money travel-blogging. In reality, no one who watched their principal dwindle down over decades would wait until they reached zero to change something. But, wrt the original topic, I figured there must be some educational examples of people being forced back into paid labor after thinking they had bought their freedom.

bryan
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Re: Where are the failure-stories?

Post by bryan »

I'm sure there are some examples where there are personal events that rock your finances (bankruptcies, lawsuits, etc). There is also the case of events like "the great depression". At the individual scale it may be seen as bad luck that is hard to plan for or even if you could you can't take satisfactory actions to hedge against. Of course ERE is a thing that could allow one to be more ready than others in the face of hardships. So does the lack of failure-stories perhaps indicate ERE yields the highest success rates? INTJs don't fail?

I wonder what interesting lessons could be gleamed from the stories? Less interesting lessons to learn: diversify, hedge, allocate some extra buffer, consider the worst case, dig into all of the systems..

As steelerfan mentions "success" and "failure" are subjective. Is it a success if I put 100% of my assets in Bitcoin after finding the FIRE/ERE world/forums a year ago when bryan was saying Bitcoin is a good investment and held onto them until now?

frihet
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Re: Where are the failure-stories?

Post by frihet »

Just posted this in Sabaka's journal and realized that I'm partly a failure.
frihet wrote:
Sat Jun 03, 2017 9:09 am
I envy you a bit who have all this information about ERE just starting out. If I have had it I would not be working by now at 35. Saved and speculated in mining shares aggressively between 20-25 accumulating half of the stash I have now thinking I was on a clear path to FI. Then when the stock market crashed and i lost half of it I lost track and hope for 5 years.
My poor understanding of investments and capital preservation made me loose track. and probably put ten more years of work under my belt. An irony that I read "how I found freedom in an unfree world" by Harry Browne early on but didn't find his "fail safe investing" and thereby the Permanent Portfolio until my 30ies.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Where are the failure-stories?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I was talking this morning with my friend who is 77 years old and has a net worth of over 70 million. He walked into his rather messy, very modest living room and proclaimed to me "The more money you have, the more trouble. " He said his number one regret is that he never got around to having children of his own (he adopted illegitimate child of long-time much younger African-American girlfriend, born when he was 55, and is currently in the process of making her very, very wealthy) because his only interests for many years were the stock market and his own business, or "empire building."

A few years ago he visited with the woman who he was in love with when he was in college. She was twice married and divorced, and lives on a small farm in an old house full of antiques, with cats and horse. He told me "She looks just the same. If I had money back then, I would have married her. We both liked the same things. I lived better when I was a boy on the farm then I do now." So, I asked him "Why don't you visit her again, and maybe you could live on the farm with her?" and he instantly, brusquely replied "Oh no, I couldn't do that. I would be bored to tears in 3 days."

I think he is an ENTJ .

BRUTE
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Re: Where are the failure-stories?

Post by BRUTE »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Sat Jun 03, 2017 10:37 am
I lived better when I was a boy on the farm then I do now." So, I asked him "Why don't you visit her again, and maybe you could live on the farm with her?" and he instantly, brusquely replied "Oh no, I couldn't do that. I would be bored to tears in 3 days."
brute has experienced this type of "unable to put cat back into bag" or "what has been seen cannot be unseen" or "ratcheting" effect before, if probably not in such a dramatic way. once certain experiences have been lived, it is hard to go without them.

this is more elastic in some areas of brute's life than others, but it's particularly true in terms of salary and food. it's just really hard to go back from steak and similar foods, and it's hard to go back to a "real life" salary after working in a bubble for years.

on the other hand, brute has discovered that in certain areas he has no problem going "back", because "back" wasn't worse at all - sometimes better. brute actually prefers harder mattresses - or none at all. brute prefers monotony in eating. brute prefers simple to fancy, and often, less possessions to more.

relationships is one that's particularly hard, because humans are so infungible - every human relationship brute has ever had was unique, even if it lasted only hours. in a way, the more relationships brute has had, the worse it's become, because the new ones have to measure up to an increasing amount of past experiences they won't provide.

brute wouldn't go so far as to wish he could un-experience certain things or humans, but as he ages he can definitely see the conservative opinion that having relations beyond marrying one's high school sweetheart will ruin one forever. there is no way brute could have a relationship like he used to, simply because he's known too much. there isn't a human in the world that could fulfill him as much as marrying the high school sweetheart could a high schooler.

all this has made brute more cynical over the years, and he's increasingly had to compartmentalize his life and relations. maybe it's just part of growing up.

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fiby41
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Re: Where are the failure-stories?

Post by fiby41 »


relationships is one that's particularly hard, because humans are so infungible - every human relationship brute has ever had was unique, even if it lasted only hours. in a way, the more relationships brute has had, the worse it's become, because the new ones have to measure up to an increasing amount of past experiences they won't provide
We often reverse-project our desired values and qualities backwards onto the past. This results in putting people onto a pedestal and painting rosy-ier picture of an experience than how the incident originally went through. Then we compare other people / relationships / experiences to this ideal template that exists only in our minds. When new people fall short of this unrealistic high standard of expectations, it leads to disappointment and even greater yearning for the first time it clicked.

This is why people try to find reasons to go for a second child or try to reconcile with old friends. (links to forum threads.)

Dragline
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Re: Where are the failure-stories?

Post by Dragline »

These are examples of the "optimal stopping problem" and the Golden Era fallacy as applied to relationships.

[The mathematical solution to the optimal stopping problem is to interview/sample/date for (1/e x 100)% -- about 37% of the time/samples available and then pick the next one available that is better than the previous samples. For example, for someone looking to "find a life partner" between the ages of 20 and 40, it basically says shack up with to the best person you have found in your late 20s. You probably won't do any better after that, unless you adjust your sampling window. YMMV -- this is probability, not a magic bullet.]

I think a lot of INTJs keep looking for "more initial perfection" when life only offers "better than average, could be improved with some cooperative effort" scenarios where relationships are concerned. Knowing my "never pulled the trigger" friends in their 50s seems to support this thesis.

Loner
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Re: Where are the failure-stories?

Post by Loner »

I also observe that “the more relationships you experience, the worse it gets”. I can verily relate to the “ratchet” effect Brute mentions. I sometimes wonder if (or wish that) a part of it might also be attributable to growing as a person and knowing better what I want from life and relationships.

I think it would be very possible to be more demanding of people you let into your life even if you have been living in a cave forever, without experiencing a ratchet effect. As you tolerate less BS in your life, you’ll tend to tolerate less of it from others as well, and refuse to let them in. Sort of an inverse example of “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time around.”

bryan
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Re: Where are the failure-stories?

Post by bryan »

my sympathies to BRUTE. but in this case, isn't ignorance obviously mostly _not_ bliss? Or is it simply bad luck if your first love is a 92+% (and you don't hitch)? I am worried how to teach my own (future) kids this lesson/strategy..

IlliniDave
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Re: Where are the failure-stories?

Post by IlliniDave »

Dragline wrote:
Sat Jun 03, 2017 10:02 pm
I think a lot of INTJs keep looking for "more initial perfection" when life only offers "better than average, could be improved with some cooperative effort" scenarios where relationships are concerned. Knowing my "never pulled the trigger" friends in their 50s seems to support this thesis.
Certainly that rationale isn't ubiquitous among INTJs. Being demographically similar to your "never pull the trigger" friends, I look at my own situation not so much as case of wanting perfection out of the box, but a case of having enough self awareness to quickly spot untenable situations combined with a healthy dose of "man on a mission". I'm neutral when it comes to relationships. I neither seek nor avoid them, but there things in my path that I just have to do and after most of a lifetime of various compromises it's time to let me be me. So a relationship of any duration would indeed require an unusually strong starting point (mostly in the realm of having already complementary life goals) but that's a constraint imposed by the mission, not the mission itself. Maybe that's a distinction without a difference though, haha.

In general, I can relate to a lot of what BRUTE said above. When it comes to relationships I'm maybe less inclined to view them in the context of the past (the exception being the spotting of "red flags") and more like the other things. Through time we get to know ourselves and typically settle into a relative optimum lifestyle and perturbations aren't always desirable or useful.

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Re: Where are the failure-stories?

Post by BRUTE »

bryan wrote:
Sun Jun 04, 2017 3:35 am
my sympathies to BRUTE. but in this case, isn't ignorance obviously mostly _not_ bliss? Or is it simply bad luck if your first love is a 92+% (and you don't hitch)? I am worried how to teach my own (future) kids this lesson/strategy..
brute agrees - in retrospect, ignorance is never truly bliss. but in the moment, it seems like it. that's probably why humans came up with that saying.

would brute delete his memories to re-create ignorance and therefore imagined bliss, like Cypher in The Matrix, or in Memento? maybe. similar question to the hedonistic pleasure machine - would bryan get into one to receive hedonistic pleasures for the rest of his life, or would he want more than that out of life?

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Re: Where are the failure-stories?

Post by BRUTE »

IlliniDave wrote:
Sun Jun 04, 2017 6:37 am
I'm neutral when it comes to relationships. I neither seek nor avoid them, but there things in my path that I just have to do and after most of a lifetime of various compromises it's time to let me be me. So a relationship of any duration would indeed require an unusually strong starting point (mostly in the realm of having already complementary life goals) but that's a constraint imposed by the mission, not the mission itself.
this describes brute's circumstances as well. that's why brute mentioned the compartmentalization of relationships - it's easier to form relations with limited scope, especially when the entire scope of brute's life is somewhat broad and complicated. good luck finding a high school sweetheart who happens to be into deadlifting and motorcycle racing and steak and world travel and programming and is brown or black, likes to talk for hours on end about hypothetical philosophical situations, speaks at least 1 foreign language, is geographically located close to brute, has an optimistic-nihilist view of the world and other humans, makes more money than brute.. even just finding a single one (except ethnicity or proximity) or combination of two of those is very rare, so brute can basically not afford not to take advantage of single dimension matches, having to ignore the mismatches in every other dimension. i.e., compartmentalization.

brute has relations that get his rocks off, relations that stimulate him intellectually, relations that make him smile, and relations that give him coziness and comfort. but there is very little overlap between these relations. he imagines that if enough overlap existed, this would become "love". but that seems elusive at this point in brute's life.

then again, most old humans brute knows, that seem happy with their relationships, are compartmentalizing even stronger than brute - to the point that they face what brute would consider extreme cognitive dissonance on a daily basis, ignoring their life partner for 30-70% of all interactions just so they can enjoy the other 70-30%.

at that level of compromise, brute simply doesn't bother. maybe he'll change as he grows older. maybe these old humans know something brute doesn't - so far, that's been true every 5 years in brute's life.

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fiby41
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Re: Where are the failure-stories?

Post by fiby41 »

Getting back to the OP, its a success people!

We were finally able to talk brute into getting a pet at some point. This time not just a dog... But maybe a hooman.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Where are the failure-stories?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@BRUTE: Yup. Happens. Then maybe other things happen*. The problem with BIFL based on complete, detailed compatibility is that you might change too! Even phases that seem like the peak (or pit) of forever-supreme-adulthood when you are in the midst of them may come to an end after two or three decades. My current BF told me that I was different than most women because most women are looking for the reason to say "No", but I am looking for the reason to say "Yes." I told him that's because I regard myself as being more like a vacation rental property that I will profit from keeping tenanted until eventual (but soon approaching) complete decline of value on the market. OTOH, I also told him it is possible that I will shop for another husband when I am 57. IOW, after idealism comes cynicism, but after cynicism you might find yourself in the realm of cheerful practicality.

Back to original topic. My affluent friend is an interesting case to study because he is probably in the 99.99 percentile for both wealth and health, but a complete disaster in a number of other categories.

Anyways, IMO or as I read it, ERE is a set of tools for lifestyle design, not a set of instructions for constructing one particular model, so FAIL/SUCCEED depends on what you are attempting to build.

*See Wheaton Levels

FBeyer
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Re: Where are the failure-stories?

Post by FBeyer »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Sun Jun 04, 2017 2:55 pm
...
Anyways, IMO or as I read it, ERE is a set of tools for lifestyle design, not a set of instructions for constructing one particular model, so FAIL/SUCCEED depends on what you are attempting to build...
No nonononoono ERE is a stamp of approval that you get -from Jacob only- after posting on these forums. That's why it's very important, whenever you do something new in your life, to ask here first whether it's ERE or not. Sort of like asking if a recipe is kosher or not.
You risk being ostracized if you think you're doing well for yourself but you didn't get the ERE go-order first.

It's the same with Mindset practice (ask Dweck before you do anything), the same with habits where you have to get a stamp of approval from Duhigg, and Mindful meditation (although Nhat Hanh can be hard to reach these days)...

Always ask yourself: Is this ERE?

Tools. What a silly idea :roll:
/s

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fiby41
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Re: Where are the failure-stories?

Post by fiby41 »

Did the editor of ERE book make it? It depends on who you ask so find out for yourself.

And see Did zev make it? and zev's journal viewtopic.php?t=263


Also invoking rule 34b* of the rules of the internet here...
Which states if you think you have a question, it has already been asked iow if it exists, there's a forum thread for it


Where are the failure stories
(the original one)

This explains the this has happened before in a past life deja vu feeling while typing out the OP.

*Rule 34b is an off spring of the original rule 34 which goes if it exists, there is porn for it.

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