Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Fun tangent: I once visited a Little Free Library in NY which aside from the usual free books also had a box with various school-level math puzzles and science experiments. Kinda like how other LFLs sometimes offer small bags of seeds, postcards, bookmarks, ... except this was small bags of STEM ori...

That sounds amazing - basically an UBI scheme for old people. I'm guessing most countries aren't as generous as Denmark though. It depends #TANSTAAFL If you're single w/o any savings, you should be able to haul in $2000/month AFTER tax. Average cost of living in Denmark is roughly the same as the a...

I have fond memories of my science teacher cutting up lumps of potassium and throwing them in water. But I fear the health and safety people will have a lot to say about that and it won't be favourable. Me too. I bet that the legal profession has had some boring impact on school science experiments...

@7wb5 - I may be using academic metaphors---because I have an academic background, although in this case I was using a cooking metaphor. What I'm pushing is essentially https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_of_hierarchical_complexity ... WL5 - MHC 11 (optimization is the peak of analytical thought) WL...

A Van de Graaff generator combined with someone's long hair was always a hit.

Also potato batteries. You can have them try with different fruits and vegetables. See who can make the light shine the brightest.

I've previously thought that what you are describing in WL9 here actually took place in the transition from WL6 to WL7. Possibly earlier at WL 3-5. @theanimal, @ego, and @C40 talk about this in the thread linked above, noting that some members have naturally focused on developing an integrated syst...

Ah, if you can't tell the difference between the programming and yourself then you're going to have trouble finding purpose. Other way around. Once you can tell the difference, you may want to program your own purpose and that programming is much harder. But perhaps I'm just presuming that anyone w...

Hypothesis:
WL8 - Changing the system from within.
WL9 - Changing the system from without by connecting with other systems.

https://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pil ... 0316796883

An @AH favorite. I think he qualifies.

What are you learning to deal with ill health in older age? I'm still just middle-aged. However, when I was younger, I had the benefit of having regular long conversations with a middle-aged athlete while commuting to weekend warrior activities. I'm only going to be repeating what you already see i...

Ah yes, this is where we disagree. I think any novel solution is interesting regardless of repeatability... though I am thankful you keep discovering repeatable solutions! I agree that repeatable solutions are more interesting. I love taking other people's solutions and playing with them, so a non-...

That seems quite generous! Over here 100,000 euros gets a 50 year old male 312 a month, or 3.7%, and there are no options that correct for inflation. If inflation halves the value of money in 20 years, at his 70th birthday the 50 year old male will have the purchasing power of 156 a month. Been a w...

I think it's possible and maybe even inevitable to work on all three WLs in a set simultaneously, as on is never truly one WL across all things anyway. I don't think I've acquired enough skills to get beyond WL6, but in terms of thinking I may be accessing WL7 and WL8? I dunno, it's not hugely impo...

The trap of not following the FI plan is being "pre-conventional" and thinking you are "post-conventional." This is called the pre/trans-fallacy and it's worth some self-questioning. The fallacy comes about because "conventional" people or mindsets often can not see th...

Worth mentioning is that going from an otherwise sedentary weekend warrior (5000 steps/day + 15-25,000/day on weekends) to a daily 25-30,000 steps/day for 5 weeks straight may be a rude awakening to your "walking work capacity". Or maybe not. If you already do 15-20,000/day then you'll be ...

If you're worried about oversaving or undersaving (or one more year syndrome), you definitely want to play around with this: https://engaging-data.com/will-money-last-retire-early/ The US-centric (at least historically, less so these days) FIRE movement has ended up focusing on DIY approaches to ear...

Insofar the purpose of humanity is "higher ego development"---involuting the universe, if you will---is whether your purpose/what you're doing/the example you're setting (and thus the purpose of humanity or the universe writ large) inspires the next lower level. IOW, if you're self-actuali...

I originally installed something like these tires on my never-went-anywhere-(yet?) touring bike build. https://www.continental-tires.com/products/b2c/bicycle/tires/ruban-shieldwall/? The idea is that on asphalt, the only part of the tire touching the ground is the smooth middle, while on soft ground...

The scarcest resource is never money. It's always creativity. No, for most creative people, it really is money. This is why artists, scientists, or anyone whose contributions can't easily be commercialized tend to end up "serving fries with that" or spend much of their lifetime trying to ...

I'd suggest going to page 51 of the Cook Greuter link (pdf page #53), the page with the arch diagram. Note the pre-conventional ("Don't tell me what to do, I do what I want") and the conventional ("I do what I'm told to do") are described as the "self" being "socia...