Early Retirement Extreme Forums

I can see a couple of patterns that perhaps would avoid some of the idealistic pitfalls that have already been discussed: - Masters apprentices: This seems to be a thing already, where people who are highly skilled in some field (farming, gardening, traditional construction, woodworking et cetera) a...

Some ERE compatible ideas for incorporating more plant based-protein into your diet. My wife is not all that keen on rice and beans, but I've found a few things that she will happily eat. More strategies than recipes: - Seeds - sunflower, melon seeds, pumpkin seeds etc. Cheap, quite nutritious and w...

I think it's really about integrating more of life with what you value, whatever that is. It's easy to detach worthwhile pursuits from their original purpose and worship some idol, like say obsessing over SWRs as a concept in itself instead of the values that drove you to seek FI in the first place,...

Since the virus hit I've been avoiding the gym. At first I did some body weight exercises at home, later complemented by a pull-up bar. Lately I've been using an outdoors gym in a forested area nearby. I've realized that I don't really miss going to the gym for 1-1.5 hours 2-3 times a week, so I lik...

What helped me was realizing that it is a human problem that we're facing. The planet has been through some remarkable swings during it's history, many of them not viable habitats for humanity. It isn't nostalgic about specific species, be they polar bears or Homo Sapiens. So we're not wrecking the ...

When ten people riot, it is a law and order problem. When 10000 people riot, the problem has shifted, and you have to ensure the integrity of the system. Sort of like the old quip about who has a problem when you owe the bank enough money. In that sense, I understand that the police and the politici...

China seems to supply me mainly electronics, and likely quite a bit of parts in machinery and appliances, as well as the proverbial "stuff" (various plastic crap). So avoiding crap and minimizing the use of electronics and appliances, extending their use and fixing broken ones as much as possible wo...

I'm also using GTD (even if my implementation is much less clean than @AxelHeyst's, mine is split between work and home and across various pieces of software. But it works in capturing everything, and I do a weekly review). It is useful if you wan't aid in accomplishing something, there's no reason ...

TOC is always the way to go of course, but you can really only calculate it in retrospect, when you know how long you ended up owning the item, what you sold it for, what cash flow it generated or kept in your pocket etc. For most things I feel the upfront cost works well enough. For example, since ...

QUICK UPDATE ON EXPENSES The first third of the year is now past us. I won't be spending too much time doing detailed expense breakdowns, but I think it's valuable to me to increase accountability somewhat, as I can be quite adept at rationalizing my failures. Our budget is set at just above 2 JAFI ...

I think the practical ethics part (as in "how should we then live?") really is the key question. For this reason I've found much value (and solace) in JMG:s work, as he's basically moved on from collapse and is now more focused on the software side of things - how we work as individuals, in groups a...

It's interesting that you place a lot of focus on owning your time and avoiding the rat race. A stark example of this would be http://newescapologist.co.uk and quite a few creative types (writers/musician/artists working menial jobs to survive while conserving as much time and energy as possibly to ...

Studying nutrition isn't simple as you can't really make interventions in a controlled environment over timescales that are meaningful to study most lifestyle disease - i.e you can't force some people to eat carnivore and some to eat vegan for 50 years and compare results. So you rely on epidemiolog...

Thanks for the recommendation @ertyu! I read the book and it actually really helped me, especially the simplicity of it and the lack of esoteric terms. There is a tendency in me to get dazzled be the terminology and how clever I am for "knowing" a few words of sanskrit or whatever. Not to disparage ...

I think most diets work because they eliminate a lot of the worst aspects of the "standard diet". "The standard diet" does not mean official nutrition recommendations, as they are followed by very few people, that's more like just another diet. I mean what people actually eat/drink: sugary drinks, i...

I've kept this journal for close to seven years by now, a testament to my failure at extreme FIRE and to the enduring qualities of this forum. In light of this, I thought a recap of the last few years might be in order to observe my situation in a clearer light, assess what, if anything, I’ve done r...

Thanks for the link MI, that was a great read. Note that the original article in The Atlantic surgically excluded the 0.1% and then went after the rest of the 10% - the author obviously grasped the real power structures in his gut, if not perhaps consciously. It’s not that all the talk of privilege ...

I've been thinking a bit about this recently as it has been discussed a bit on the forums in recent months, like the thread on Wall Street Playboys etc. There is a lot of thinking in systems and flows in the business man quadrant and on the "elite ladder". The main differences seems to be a lack of ...

For me: Hardware: - Dual monitors. Creation on one, references/communication on the other. I've experimented with this and the difference in productivity is quite large for me. - Extra chair by my desk so that colleagues can sit down with me to solve a problem, instead of confused communication on e...

My solution has been to disable notifications for everything but private email and messaging apps (texts and messenger). Without them I'm rarely sucked in. For websites, I've blocked them in my Adblock app on iOS (on android I believe you can edit /etc/hosts), which affects Safari. I have Firefox Fo...