Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Agree about the normalising shots. How about a plate of ERE food (not only lentils, thinking of the top five meals thread here). Congrats on the media success.

@v87 I personally think net worth is the wrong message. Even the multiplier is the wrong message. If as Jacob says in his overview he was "set for life" when he first had 175k or whatever it was, then having more and spending time getting it isn't something to be proud of really. Getting rich is boring. I could have been like everyone else if I had wanted to do that. The best bit of the message - to me, anyway - is that you don't have to be, and you can use the time you would have spent pilling up the cash doing things you find more interesting.

@Did, I see where you are coming from, yet personally, one of the biggest motivations for changing my spendthrift ways was establishing a substantial net-worth. Net worth of millions meant and still means little to me too, I just liked the idea of a safety net/FU money! As a young man I struggled with cycles of buying gadgets, paying off credit cards, rinse and repeat in a vain attempt to seek happiness and fulfillment, the thought of having £10,000 - 100,000 was totally alien to me and seemed like a far off reality. I bet a substantial portion of potential ERE converts are in similar positions.

It was the insecurity of debt that lead me to search for better ways to manage money... and so I soon stumbled on MMM/ERE. This is sort of the angle I would pursue, not sure how to achieve it in action picture format though.

I suppose the finding fulfillment without buying, so shots of producing things, woodcraft, bike mechanics, baking are good places to look for inspiration, I suppose these are all personal though so that makes it tough.

vexed87 wrote:

sky wrote:Show them that you are fabulously wealthy by throwing handfuls of lentils in the air.

Lentils always seem to provoke unnecessary knee jerk reactions, probably best to avoid mentioning those... Also wasting lentils is technically against the ERE ethos...

Strategically position one's self next to the garden, and fling said lentils in a direction where they will grow.

Artistically, I sorta like the idea of a reverse-action shot. The scene is a city street, maybe outside of your house. You're completely in focus doing something ordinary but rewarding, while the people and cars passing by are all long exposures and are blurry and unrecognizable, hurried in comparison. Make the audience think a little about where they fit in the picture.

I like Tyler's idea ... showing you in your sanity bubble while the rest of the world scurries by.

Why not emphasize your priorities by taking a picture of here you spend the most time?

I consider that a much more potent picture than an image which portraits the ERE life's version of something which fits into an ordinary lifestyle, like a fridge. The former will highlight that it's about different norms, whereas the latter will give a distorted picture of ERE as it only shows a very small part of it.

All the pictures are submitted.

I thank you for all the fancy suggestions but keep in mind that I have/had a hard enough time keeping things in focus and/or upright.

I've spent my life mainly focused on thinking and I still do that even if I'm not working. That's hard to take pictures of. My particular lifestyle doesn't make for sexy imagery. I'm not living in a tiny house on a hill. I don't have a room containing only one mattress. I don't spend my days on the beach. There aren't any obvious differences between my life and "normal life" that noobs would instantly detect. Instead the differences between normal and my implementation of ERE are subtle and when differences are subtle it either takes an expert to recognize them or I have to exaggerate them put putting the differences in focus. So that's what I tried to do: Normal but different, or alternatively, different but normal.

Pics?

pics or it didn't happen

+3 We need something to see