7Wannabe5-Take9-One Ordinary Day, With Peanuts

[white belt]

Anyways, I agree with your observation about mind-body relationship, and it is my intention to focus on increasing my fun with "movement" while not focusing on my weight or similar movement-metrics. I think Slevin wrote on some thread here that body-building/weight-training is the male equivalent of beauty contests, so also a vibe to be avoided. I think I will start with hiking in the woods without keeping track of time or distance.

I think this would be a step in the right direction for you. I believe the last few posts from you and Jacob are getting warmer in regards to fitness motivation/purpose. I think for you, instead of focusing on exercise/diet to lose weight, you instead should identify a goal that requires perhaps slightly more fitness than you currently possess. Then, in pursuing that goal perhaps you improve your fitness/health as a byproduct. Hiking to forage for mushrooms or identify bird/tree species is probably a good start. In the spring, it could be hauling mulch and heavy pots for your garden. Etc etc. A gender specific problem you might have is that men in your life might try do such physical labor for you, robbing you of the opportunity for development/growth.

For me (~30 Y.O. male), my purpose/motivation for fitness/health is understandably much different from you. I very much view my body as a tool to do things in the world. So my fitness/health is important because it helps me to accomplish things. I suspect that this is in part a byproduct of how much time I have spent using my body to do things in the physical world; a phenomenon you also see reflected in various psychological research about girls and women who play sports. One of the issues I've encountered in the bubble wrapped modern world is that everything is actively encouraging me to do as little physical activity as possible. We've talked about the "brain in a jar" condition before. I can't even literally chop wood and carry water if I wanted to since natural gas warms my rented room and the water flows endlessly from the faucet.

Of course, exercise alone won't cause you to lose weight if you commensurately increase your caloric intake, but I think it will at least improve your overall fitness and perhaps get you going in a homeotelic direction.

[7Wannabe5]

The fact that people will do self-similar activities for very different reasons is fascinating to me(*). It's similar to how some people will live on $7000/year in order to FIRE ASAP while others will live on $7000/year in pursuit of resilience under a moral constraint sustainable equity. What's interesting is that either of the two (or three) gets the other ones for free even if they don't care about those other values.

It is fascinating. A couple other motivations might be "in order to be able to afford one adult to stay home with children/animals/garden/elderly" or "in order to cut paid-work hours immediately towards more hours for random reading." Thus, for example, "I" am pretty much Pareto optimized at approximately 16 hours paid work/week in terms of "enough time to read/garden", but would still like to cut my spending/boost my skillz more towards resilience under sustainable equity. I also have "would be nice to have" level of motivation towards accumulating more savings towards "optionality." For instance, it would be a nice "option" to be able to pay cash for a house in any location, and then rent out rooms towards lowering my own base expense, but it is doubtful that I am going to be willing to do something like work-full-time-for-corporation for number of years to achieve that goal.

In terms of vMemes I'd ascribe my "physicality"-values to Beige (being able to extract oneself from a dangerous situation, like pulling oneself back on a boat after falling off(**), running and climbing over a fence before the crazy dog gets you, ...), Red ("if I can't beat a mugger, I can at least outrun them. And vice versa." (I identify as a pocket battleship)), and to some degree just having an integrated mind-body as a physical being (I'm not sure what color that is) cf. thinking of the body as a mere vehicle for my special mind (Orange) or my beautiful feels (Green) or my sacred soul (Blue).

(**) Which also means---due to a Beige perspective---I'm not a fan of "handicapping" the metrics: Either someone can pull oneself back on the boat or out the window of a burning building or they can't. Drowning or fire does not allow for gender, age, income, education, ... OTOH an Orange/Green value-system would approach it differently: To meet a certain metric while remaining inclusive, different people get different metrics.

Sexuality and sense-uality as related to "need to have" items such as food is also physicality at Level Beige. As Wilber notes in "Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution", our hominid ancestors were already dividing labor at the division of gender, although with less focus on status than was found within the 97% male enclave of co-operative hunting.

In studying gender and possible gender differences, what is required initially is a set of constants that acknowledges certain unambiguous differences in function (women give birth and lactate, and men have on average a moderate advantage in physical strength and mobility...These simple differences might not seem all that important today, but historically and prehistorically they were often some of the most important and determining factors in all of culture.

So, if you do not discriminate based on gender, in the sense of affirming that everybody should exhibit the upper-body muscular strength and mobility necessary to engage in co-operative hunting, I believe that you are actually "seeing" physicality to some extent through a Level Orange Libertarian/Feminist lens that is individualistic, egalitarian, but promotive of more masculine-type functioning for all. Since this is the primary culture in which I have lived, I share this view to some extent.

What does an intelligent female hominid who is 8 months pregnant do in an emergency situation that requires more upper body strength or mobility than she can muster in the moment? She screams for help from the band. Co-operative trade between the genders on the basis of their differences is prior even to our species becoming sapient. So, it is not even possible to begin to consider the emergent levels of culture without first accepting this aspect of objective reality (men and women are different) at Level Beige, before magnifying, solidifying, ignoring, denying, transcending, or simply playing with the difference at other levels.

I think, therefore, that the key to unlocking a "diet" (which originally meant "a way of life" and not "temporary starvation to drop 10 pounds") is to find one's personally motivating values.

Right, and that is why you choose to be on The Warrior Diet, and I choose to be on the Not Suffering Under the Delusion That I Am a Warrior ( I am going to eat some honey, apples and grub worms as I gather honey, apples and grub worms in alignment with my intuition/senses) Diet (or something like that)

The only problem is when anyone develops or is born with subjective values that has no solution in objective space, that is, they value something they can never have.

Overall, I think it rather worthwhile to run an AQAL analysis when it comes to values: What do I want/What can I get/What do they want/What can they get. Acceptance is found once the overlap between the four quadrants is identified.

Yes, this is very insightful and key. Although, I think it is more often the case in our highly affluent and fairly liberal culture that humans are psychologically blocked from getting that which they value. For instance, if my idea of great sex required the validation/security of having a male partner who never thought about having sex with other women, I would have to start by extracting some DNA from Jimmy Carter and breeding forward to improve the strain and/or invent some kind of Harrison Bergeron helmet for male sexuality.

By the end of the 3 months, 4 of the 17 women could do a pull up.

Oops, my bad. Sometimes I read too fast.

If you do the negatives consistently, you will be able to do a pull up. Personally, I have been able to help Mrs. Animal and a female friend of mine go from zero to one with this method, both of whom could not do pull ups previously. I have no doubt, with similar training that you (@7) or any other woman on this forum could do the same.

I am not super concerned about having to pull myself up out of an emergency situation, but I would like to be able to climb a tree in order to fulfill my childhood fantasy of climbing up in a tree with an apple and a book and just hanging out there combined with my adult fantasy of becoming an Eco-Anarchist-Activist. So, maybe what I will do is find a likely candidate as I get into my new hiking routine. That way I will be practicing at what I really want to do rather than some inherently meaningless exercise. I think climbing a tree would also be more productive of the sort of fitness that will help me save myself in emergency situations AND would obviously widen my opportuniti es for my hobbies of foraging and species identification AND my intention to come out as Eco-Sexual AND would help with the possibility of someday building myself a tree house.

UPDATE/ADDITIONS to Skillathon 2024:

January: Meta-Self-Improvement Retrospective Towards Skillathon Planning.
Intuitive Eating/Gentle Nutrition/Fun Movement.
February: YTBD
March: YTBD
April: YTBD
May: YTBD
June: The Wilder Side: Found Books and Lost Arts, a multi-faceted cooperative project with my three sisters.
July: Transcendent Sexuality
August: Data Science Project?
October: Tree Climbing
November: YTBD
December: YTBD

I have a brainstormed list of 58 possibilities for the unclaimed months, but all those YTBDs make me feel kind of lush with opportunity/options in the moment, so I'm going to let it hang that way for a while longer.

@whitebelt:

Crosspost: But as you can see we are mostly on the same page, yay, going on a mushroom hunt, tree climbing outing! However, you believe that possibly the men in my life have robbed me of opportunity to flex my muscles, whereas I work hard at questioning what else can I get from them in exchange for my erotic capital? Obviously, more dinners out is not going to be helpful in reducing my tummy blob. That's one of the reasons I have added Transcendent Sexuality to my Skillathon list. However, it has been my experience that doing anything like handing a man an illustrated manual bookmarked with my preference is likely to create some oppositional defiance, so may require a wee bit of scheming to not make it seem like I am "topping from the bottom", unless I round up a new partner who already believes himself to be an expert in this realm. I chose July for my Transcendent Sexuality month in celebration of the 45th anniversary of my successful seduction of my first lover (and one of his best friends ) What a fun year it is going to be!

[7Wannabe5]

From University Advice thread:

Yes, that (work from home makes corporate full-time job better) is what everybody who is encouraging me to buckle down and finish the program keeps telling me, but if I'm not happy writing pretend technical summaries for stakeholders while studying online, why would I be happy writing real ones while employed online? Also, I'm pretty sure this grad program is what is currently making me fat, unless it is the medication I am taking for my Crohn's. Of course, my cultural upbringing in alignment with Puritan Work Ethic also informs me that my happiness is not a good signal towards what I should be doing. Although, it is also the case that if I was thinner, I would superficially be signalling more work ethic. Maybe I will quit everything and attempt to walk the Appalachian Trail this spring, even if my Crohn's will necessitate much more shitting in the woods than normal.

The purpose of working from home as the DS would be getting good amounts of money. That's why everyone gets those tech and tech-adjacent jobs, right? So, if you want/need "easy money" or just a good money source for the future to fall back on if needed - then buckle down, finish the degree and get on the career ladder. Otherwise, I wouldn't bother if I were you.

As for the grad program making you more "well rounded", that may very well be. I'm now retired for over a year, but when I get into some more intense coding just for fun (I'm currently learning Direct3D 12, C++20 and other related works of Satan), my otherwise relatively healthy eating habits are obliterated after just 3 or 4 days.

Yes, way back in 1984, when I first took a Fortran course that required hours spent in the sub-sub-basement lab of engineering college, I noticed that coding (and similar tasks) makes me "ugly." I mean, there are definitely humans who can do it without turning into a basement or garret dwelling pale-fleshed, red-eyed slob-blob, but I must be of the pheno/personality type which does tend towards that outcome. When I first started this grad program, I was in terrible shape with the Crohn's, so I was actually slowly losing weight and muscle as I spent my mornings in pain running back and forth to the bathroom as I did my "brain in box" course work, and then collapsing in inflammation induced exhaustion on my floor mattress by mid-afternoon after eating some soft, bland, easily digestible foodstuffs.

The Crohn's thoroughly disordered both my eating signals and my movement practices, and now that I am 90% recovered, I am still having difficulty getting back on track, because the grad work is sucking up the majority of my Disciplined Pomodoro Block energy, which is never in great supply for me. Also, beyond these factors, I don't know why in the fuck I have put myself on a death-man-walking path towards full-time corporate employment beyond dysfunctional desire to punish myself for finding myself a Medicaid recipient, even though I would never be harsh judgmental like that towards any other human. I think that this is also why I found myself hitting a hard "Fuck no." boundary at the thought of going on a conventional hard-core diet. I need to be kinder and gentler, yet simultaneously less compensatorially-self-indulgent towards myself.

IOW, the only major thing I really want the more money/corporate job for would be "better" in the sense of "less shame inducing" health insurance. Beyond that, I would prefer to solve most of my problems and accomplish my personal goals/pleasures/bucket list utilizing as little money as possible. Synthesizing an advanced biologic remedy for Crohn's disease such as the one that currently has me mostly in remission is simply beyond my level of competence.

OTOH, there is a minor level on which I do like studying data science for the same reason I found the actuarial exams an appropriate challenge, but it's kind of found at the cold distant basement edge of my core value of The Library, and it is pretty much in direct opposition to my core value of Nature, and it only would help with my core value of My Kids/Our Kids if I gave them money rather than caring for them directly, which I think would be first order efficient, but second order not so good.

[7Wannabe5]

SKILLATHON 2024

January: 1)Meta-Self-Improvement Retrospective Towards Skillathon Planning.
2)Intuitive Eating/Gentle Nutrition/Fun Movement.

February:1)Sixty-Two Pick-Up.
2) GTD/Minimalism/Clutter-Control Reboot

March: YTBD
April: YTBD
May: YTBD
June: The Wilder Side: Found Books and Lost Arts, a multi-faceted cooperative project with my three sisters.
July: Transcendent Eco-Sexuality
August: Data Science Project?
October: Tree Climbing
November: YTBD
December: YTBD

Possibilities Not Yet Assigned to Given Month

1) Music/Theatre/Dance
2) Guerilla Gardening/Mobile/Distribute Permaculture/Multi-footprint Community Gardening
3) Smart Car Camper Build
4) Scavenger Walking Reboot
5) Gonzo Capitalism/New Money Challenge

Unfortunately, in terms of the life-energy/vigor I am able to devote to the Skillathon, my current lifestyle more closely resembles Late Employment Semi-Extreme than Early Retirement Extreme. I am tutoring disadvantaged young children in basic math skills 16 hours/week and older cultural-minority-group private students 6 hours/week in more advanced math skills. Because I obviously lean a bit Green (Inclusive Post-Modern) jin my functioning, and I think of my tutoring as being towards community service, I don't choose to tutor any affluent students who are not minority group members, although I have had a couple older private test-prep students from poor Appalachian heritage type background. Basically, I just don't want to do anything to help humans who are already in a position of advantage/power help their stupid kids maintain that position of advantage/power. Also, given their advantages, I don't see why they can't tutor their own stupid kids. I'm not playing the fucking Nanny/Governess in some Regency Romance novel.

I also should be devoting around 16 hours/week to my graduate program in IT/Data Science. I kind of wish I never enrolled in this program, but it seems like I am now committed to completing it, so will have to remain the overall largest Skill time allotment for 2024. However, my brain is so old, I don't really know if it is retaining much of this new and highly specific information. For instance, I literally blanked out on what "working directory" means the other day. On a more postive note, I believe that I have a better grasp on some of the underlying mathematical theory than some of my much younger cohort. I don't think some of them grok p-value and sample size, irreproducible results, etc. etc.

February:1)Sixty-Two Pick-Up.


Sixty-Two Pick-Up was a mini-project involving looking into the possibilities for early withdrawal of my Social Security benefit vs. later withdrawal and some other senior discount/benefit options. My lifetime earnings since 1982 are less than $300,000, so my Social Security benefit would only be around $750/month if I take early withdrawal. Alternatively, I am also eligible for 1/2 of my ex-husband's benefit, since we were legally married for 23 years, but I highly doubt that his benefit would be more than twice mine, because I don't think he ever earned more than maybe $35,000 while we were married, and he has been even less lucratively employed since our divorce.

My current passive income is only around $200/month, so I would have to get my expenses robustly/resiliently back down below $950/month, if I want to fully retire on early withdrawal Social Security. Coincidentally, $12,000/year PPP is also my eco-ERE spending goal/limit, so that lends some coherence. The main roadblock to getting my spending back down to this level is my current dependency due to Crohn's disease on shelter that provides me with my own private modern bathroom, although shared/group housing with more than one secluded bathroom might also work. I wish I was feeling/functioning well enough to deal with primitive plumbing situation, but I am not. I can't even imagine being comfortable sleeping in the back of a jeep in the winter in the woods, even though that was something I did on a regular basis just 5 years ago. I must report that I still haven't even managed to get myself out the door in the morning to take short hike in the park down the street from me. Although, this in part due to the fact that I have suppressed immune system and constant exposure to germ-ridden children, so also hacking up green phlegm at present.

Sadly, I must also report that I also still haven't felt up to getting myself laid, so now at Month 11 and counting of Longest Phase of Celibacy since July of 1979. I did have dinner with one of my previous poly-partners, and it was semi-romantically validating. And another one of my previous poly-partners literally offered to buy me IPhone 14 with strong implication of particular favor wanted in exchange, but I wasn't even feeling perky enough to be insulted and/or amused, let alone interested in his suggestion. Although, I did briefly consider how the current value of an IPhone 14 might be assigned to the 6 categories of Hakim's concept of "erotic capital' in terms of my ever-dwindling supply, and came to the conclusion that the majority would be assigned to the overlap with my 800 score on Verbal GRE. A group of my middle-aged female friends recently came to semi-drunken politically-incorrect consensus that, overall, Jewish guys were the best in bed, and I think that is also towards a Venn diagram overlap with Verbal GRE combined with other factors providing Portnoy with complaint.

[Henry]

And another one of my previous poly-partners literally offered to buy me IPhone 14 with strong implication of particular favor wanted in exchange

Nice gesture but raises the question why you don't get the 15.

[Scott 2]

Have you read about the social security bend points? It might be worth getting your lifetime earnings to the 1st bend point. Especially with the data science degree, your return on effort could be very high.

[jacob]

The first bend is currently at $1174/month, so that would correspond to [inflation-adjusted!] lifetime earnings of at least 1174*35*12=$493080. You get 90% paid out in SS up to that point. It's a ridiculously good deal for those who collect. The optimal ROI would be to earn exactly that amount in inflation adjusted terms and work for 35 years or less.

https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/COLA/bendpoints.html

Add: If you've been married for more than 10 years AND didn't remarry (remarrying would sever the link and it would take 10 years to establish a new one), you can also file as a divorcee via your ex-spouse's earnings.

[Ego]

My lifetime earnings since 1982 are less than $300,000, so my Social Security benefit would only be around $750/month if I take early withdrawal.
...
My current passive income is only around $200/month, so I would have to get my expenses robustly/resiliently back down below $950/month, if I want to fully retire on early withdrawal Social Security.

I could be wrong, but from afar your situation seems increasingly perilous.

It may be wise to begin touring the subsidized senior housing programs in your area. Most provide very simple (SRO) single room occupancy apartments. The nicer places in more desirable areas have long waiting lists. Getting on those lists as early as possible may pay dividends in the future.

Tread carefully wrt to Social Security as some SS income can be taxable and count toward your MAGI for health insurance calculations. Also, housing assistance including Section-8 can be considered taxable income and can push you above the limits for you current health coverage. While you can begin collecting Social Security at 62, Medicare does not kick in until you turn 65 and can alter your coverage significantly, so it is best to think ahead.

You may want to begin rearranging your finances/investments now to prepare to qualify for as many programs as possible. Lookback periods are typically five years, so the sooner the better.

I've seen situations where a person had too much income and/or assets to qualify for assistance, but not enough to qualify to rent an apartment on their own. As a result they became homeless. No amount of skills can help when it is too late to make the basic changes necessary to get a roof over ones head and to keep indispensable medical coverage.

Volunteering or working part-time at a senior assistance program might be in line with your values while simultaneously providing insights that become extremely valuable to future-you.

[7Wannabe5]

I could be wrong, but from afar your situation seems increasingly perilous.

Yeah, I can grok how it would seem that way from the perspective of an ENTJ/INTJ. eNTPs think differently. We also motivate differently. For example, an eNTP friend of mine in his late 60s who has genius level IQ and a bunch of patents sunk his net worth down to near zero due to a late-life marriage to a drug-addicted-girlfriend-experience-escort-with-very-expensive-lifestyle-preferences (also very intelligent, her father invented some important part of the internet)20+ years his junior and last I heard he was living on his social security in an anarchist co-op just outside of Detroit which charges $150/month for rent. So, that would be roughly Option 17.6 B in my rabbit warren like web of options.

Continuing with the rabbit metaphor, you might also imagine me imagining myself as being rather like the Hare, waking up from her nap in the library, and then bouncing up piston-like powered by the remaining stores of her fluid intelligence, and, obviously due to the reality of compound interest, not beating the Tortoise to the finish line, but still winding up somewhere not likely to be predicted by simple linear analysis of earnings history. Let's label that Option 9.2 A. (See also: Gonzo Capitalism/New Money Challenge on my list of potential Skillathon entries.)

Anyways, my personality type is not such that I am productively motivated by thoughts of peril for future me. I tend to be motivated by curiousity and pleasure. I like being in a state of anticipation. I can also sometimes be motivated through anger and/or something that is kind of like competition or ambition, but not exactly either of those. However, I have a very long fuse, and with age I increasingly find myself extending my compassion to those whom I might have previously designated as worthy foes AKA reasonably well-armed azzholes. The last time I can recall myself suddenly rising to dominance through anger was when some middle school boys kept referring to a girl as "horse face." My sisters, humans who know me best, sometimes diagnose me as suffering from either an anti-anxiety disorder, repressed anger, and/or ADHD. Another theory is that all the asthma medication I took in childhood completely burnt out my adrenal glands.

@jacob@Scott 2:

Yes, this is exactly the sort of calculation I am making with my Sixty-Two Pick-Up mini-project combined with Ego's observations on subsidized senior housing, health insurance, etc. I also need to look into some of the catch-up retirement account contribution schemes/promotions. Even with affording myself my own garret apartment with private modern bathroom ($550 + utilities) and a decently functional car, my current spending/income is still under the 1.5 X poverty level qualification for Medicaid coverage in my state which is a bit over $18,000.

However, it is not the case that even if I hopped super-high-earning in Hare mode, I could double my benefit by doubling my lifetime earnings over the next 3 years. If I set the benefit calculator with my average yearly future earnings set at $10,000/year, my benefit is $753/month @ 62, $1095/month @ 67, and $1369/month @ 70. If I estimate my average yearly future earnings at $100,000/year, effectively doubling my total lifetime earnings in just 3 years, my benefit is $898/month @ 62, $1644 @ 67, and $2304 @ 70. IOW, the indexing is applied over each year of earning, not over the average extended to each year.

Nice gesture but raises the question why you don't get the 15.

Well, his Wheaton-level of frugality is towards Millionaire-Next-Door, so I'm assuming there was a deal available on the 14. This brings me to Option 26.1 B in my rabbit-warren which would be Marriage of Convenience to Millionaire-Next-Door-type. Which is one of the reasons why I have Transcendent Eco-Sexuality on my Skillathon list for this year. If I do contract a Marriage of Convenience, that will most likely close the door on the possibility of achieving Transcendent Eco-Sexuality, so I need to get it off my bucket list first. Also, getting in good enough shape to achieve Transcendent Eco-Sexuality will also improve my options for subsequent possibility of Marriage of Convenience, if forced to resort to such measure. As you may note, I currently have this option numbered in accordance with being currently of lower preference than finding myself living in an anarchist co-op just outside of Detroit.

Anyways, I no longer believe in agency, so it's really more a matter of objective determination of the slopes and lengths of the various tunnels in the warren combined with external factors generally considered to be beyond the control of those who still do believe in personal agency.

[Frita]

Well, f-in’ A, aging is sure an experience. For whatever reason I was thinking of winning a bikini contest at church camp when I was as 14 with 10 bandaids. Never again will life be so easy or my boobs so perky…

Accepting life on its own terms…a task that hits us all at one point or another. Though it’s not commented much here, there’s a HUGE gender divide. From one middle aged eNTP chick to another, strength in the struggle.

[Scott 2]

Full respect to any informed strategy you prefer.


As a min maxer, I'd:

1. earn up to that first social security bend (+200k)

2. delay social security to 70

3. Use the money to lock in original Medicare, with plan G and D supplements, at 65.

It's such a great deal. Those services are dramatically underpriced.

[grundomatic]

Not that you can't google or even make your own calculations, but I liked this article:

https://www.kitces.com/blog/social-secu ... t-roi-irr/

I'm glad the topic has come up...I originally thought that I should keep working enough to hit the bend point each year, but if it's taken as a lifetime calculation, it seems I over-earned enough that I don't need to bother, at least not for SS purposes, anyhow. Will double check when I'm not so tired.

[Scott 2]

I over-earned enough that I don't need to bother, at least not for SS purposes, anyhow.

Assuming you've hit the desired bend point and minimum work credits, most of your social security potential is maxed out. The second bend still has some appeal IMO. The 3rd bend is a terrible deal.

There is still benefit to maintaining eligibility for the disability insurance offered through social security. Last I checked, this requires at least 20 work credits over the past 10 years. So earning roughly $4k per year:

https://faq.ssa.gov/en-us/Topic/article/KA-02459

If something debilitating happens, it's the difference between spending down all assets before having access to SSI, and being able to immediately apply for SSDI.

For someone playing in a lean fire, or especially ere territory, it's a strong consideration. If you're running on a 7 figure net worth, maybe less so.

Something I haven't looked into, is what legally manufacturing that income might look like. Ie - could someone fund a business that fails to profit, but pay themselves $4k per year of social security eligible income out of that business? Effectively buying credits? It's probably easier to do a little work. But I enjoy understanding the bounds of systems. I imagine there's established strategy one could follow.

Thinking more - because credits accrue annually, one could quickly get 8, working December through January. A seasonal job every few years would be enough to maintain SSSI eligibility and is probably path of least resistance.

[7Wannabe5]

Never again will life be so easy or my boobs so perky…

OTOH, I think you might be remembering 14 through rose-colored glasses. I remember feeling extremely self-conscious about minor matters such as whether or not both my nipples were simultaneously furled when I went braless at that age. Two of my private students are 13 year old girls and one of them was recently reading "The Summer I Turned Pretty", and that made me feel very thankful to be 59. Although, it is kind of the curse of repeatedly sending myself out to date again as a middle-aged woman that I find myself having to perform some variation on "turning myself pretty" again. For better or worse, I've determined that how "pretty" I am perceived to be has very strong correlation with how much older my heterosexual male date/partner is than me. At midlife, men pretty much behave as though a 7 year gap is "break even", but when the gap is stretched just another 5 years to 12 years, they tend towards "baby doll-ing" me. So, if I wanted to form a new romantic relationship (as opposed to primarily companionate and/or sexual) at age 59, I would auto-pilot set my age range on dating app to 66 to 76, but I would only date men who are overt dominants if older than around 72. However, even given the bulging Boomer demographic of my dating range, at some point this strategy is going to fall over the cliff. For now, I think I'm still okay, because I was pleasantly surprised by the number of quite reasonably attractive overt dominants in their early 70s available on a site I looked at a couple days ago, even after I filtered for "might have read a book or three this year." I just need to get the pudge back under some level of control.

As a min maxer, I'd:

1. earn up to that first social security bend (+200k)

2. delay social security to 70

3. Use the money to lock in original Medicare, with plan G and D supplements, at 65.

It's such a great deal. Those services are dramatically underpriced.

Okay, according to my more exacting calculations I have already earned $484,866 when adjusted for inflation. I was full-time employed by a corporation for around 4 years total in the 90s, but two of those 4 years which were not consecutive (apparently, I have never worked full-time for other for more than two years in a row before taking a break), overlap with years I wasn't working at all, so my highest earning year (on the books) adjusted for inflation was around $43,000 in 2024 dollars in 1999. I actually made more money than this some of the years I was running my own business, but I was better able to move it around on the books by doing stuff like hiring my own kids. I also rarely worked an actual 40 hour week while I was self-employed, so my hourly wage was significantly better. It also appears that I have exactly 35 working years with at least some small amount of money earned on the record with my lowest non-zero year being the $244 (1982 $$)/$788 (2024 $$). Actually, given adjustment for inflation, two of my lowest earning years were quite recently during the lock-down, since I earned less than $5000 in both 2020 and 2021. Generally, it appears that I have been even more slacker about earning money in the years since I joined this forum than previously, but that can largely be attributed to the fact that I joined this forum right around the time my two kids both became completely financially independent of me which reduced my expenses by around $500/month. My earnings did blip up a bit again in 2018 when I chipped in around $5000 for my daughter's wedding. I obviously have a very strong semi-conscious slacker-metabolism homeostasis.

So, I am actually only $8214 in earnings away from hitting the first bend. That's why plugging ridiculously large estimates of future earnings didn't increase my benefit all that much. There's also, obviously, no way that I am not going to earn enough to hit the first bend over the next three years, so no reason to give it further consideration in my calculations. Whooey, that's a relief. Kind of reminds me of when I got knocked up while I was still an undergrad, but I was able to figure out how to graduate with the bare minimum total credit hours, even though I had switched universities 3X and my major/minor at least 5X.

[Scott 2]

That's a much better position. Have you created an account on the social security website already? Their tools are pretty good. At the very least, it's worth checking what they think your earning history is:

https://www.ssa.gov/

I'd still encourage delaying social security as long as possible. That's the cheapest inflation adjusted annuity you'll ever buy. For the math to favor any other option, you have to make some harsh assumptions about life expectancy.

[7Wannabe5]

Have you created an account on the social security website already?

Yes, many years ago. That's where I got my numbers.

I'd still encourage delaying social security as long as possible.

Yeah, that does appear to be the way to go. Staying semi-retired longer, even just earning enough doing something otherwise worthwhile or fun to cover current expenses, gives me more bang for the buck, and is more coherent with my other goals/values and exhibited metabolism. So, my plan will be to keep low-key working long enough to bump my monthly benefit at age 70 to around $1500, which will give me approximately $500/month inflation adjusted to allot for increased health care expenses given that I've otherwise lowered my expenses back down to $12,000/year = 1 eco-Jacob (PPP). As my earnings record makes obvious, I have a pretty solid track record of being able to keep spending that low or lower, so I just need to come up with a few new tactics to adjust for my Crohn's limitations.

I know that there is generally low optimism for the survival of Social Security among the young, but this 90% rule-of-thumb which I am semi-accidentally benefiting from, might compose a pretty good tactic for those who choose Slacker/Anarchist-Never-Work-For-Or-Invest-With-The-Man Semi-ERE rather than FIRE. The fact that I am currently also doing grad work is making me a bit too busy, but otherwise the task of earning 1 eco-Jacob PP income/year, even as a not entirely healthy-in-the-moment getting-older human is not at all burdensome. One of the other women who does private tutoring at the same cafe as me is definitely up in her 80s.

Now, I just have to figure out something fun/worthwhile to do with my grad degree, so that it isn't a complete waste. Maybe an Eco-Anarchist Data Science project? Or I could do a few grad level courses in math on top of the tech/data stuff, so I could also teach adults at junior/community college level part-time. Another mini-project I thought of was using AI and my cool professional Vegas hip-hop dancer niece to make multiplication fact videos for TikTok. Kind of like an update on the Multiplication Rock videos that were interspersed with Saturday morning cartoons when I was a kid.

[zbigi]

I know that there is generally low optimism for the survival of Social Security among the young,

IMO, before it ever collapses, it will balance its budget by flattening out payments (as this is the way to muddle through with least political unrest). Which means, as long as you're closer to the lower end of the payment spectrum, you could be unaffected for decades.
Interestingly, as far as I understand, British SS is already 100% flat. While working, everybody pays premiums that are percentage of their earnings (up to a cap), but, when retired, everybody gets the same monthly payout.

[guitarplayer]

@zbigi that is the case, irrespective of contributions, what matters is the number of fiscal years that a minimum of contributions has been made. The minimum is low, on a median income it is something like 3 or 4 months worth of these contributions. It occurred to me the system like this is not always the case (obviously it isn't) very recently as I was chatting with my dad about his retirement.

[chenda]

@zbigi - you need to have at least 10 'qualifying years' to get any state pension and 35 years to get the full amount. A qualifying year can start when you are 16 even if you are in further education and not actually working and paying into it. The rules are different for older generations and for them can be different for men and women.

US social security is well regarded system internationally (reasonably fair and transparent, low administrative costs, solvent)

[7Wannabe5]

Which means, as long as you're closer to the lower end of the payment spectrum, you could be unaffected for decades.

Yes, this is the sort of thing that really highlights the resilience of lean eco-sustainable-level ERE vs. FAT-FIRE. Anybody who can figure out how to live well on $12,000/year or less is not going to have a target on their back when the rabble rises OR find themselves in the sheep-flock when the wolves decide it's time to feast and retreat.

Also, covering $12,000/year in expenses only requires 600 hrs. of work per year (12 hours/week over 50 weeks, or just 15 weeks/year @ 40 hours/week) @ average of $20/hr. and there are easily 100X more ways to make an average of $20/hr than there are to make $80/hr or more. For example, there are only two ways I can think of that I could consistently make $80/hr or more and those would be Corporate Tech Work with Some Seniority or Senior Specialty Sex Work, neither of which are very appealing, although I suppose the first could be interesting for around three months of learning curve if I could just drop in/out of the position like Kramer did on one episode of Seinfeld (or Lucy at the Candy factory) and I might be moved to occasionally perform "work" in the second purely on the basis of compassion (grouchy old affluent men have unmet needs too...) and donate any proceeds (or IPhone 14 type swag) to malarial netting charity or similar.