Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Here’s a metaphor that almost works: Instead of thinking of the different PF Wheaton Levels as a numbered list, let’s take the world map and assign each level to a continent. Then this becomes a map of where the levels stand in relation to each other, where continents (mindsets) that are geographica...

Have we identified all the relevant mindsets and accurately characterized them? I tried doing this above , using Jacob’s levels and limiting it to the personal finance dimension. The ordinal numbers on the PF Wheaton scale are not a rank, but are used to provide an indication of “Wheaton distance” b...

@Jacob: I think your table more or less captures the different Wheaton levels of personal finance. I found the PF blog-space categorizes people by stages by comparing income and net worth relative to expenses ( typical example ). While motivations might correlate well, people in similar financial si...

Instead of trying to operate at the highest level of insight, it seems the goal is to be able to assess one's situation, recognize the paradigm, and apply the appropriate focus. People who skipped to level 5 wanting an easy answer for early retirement might be better served by adopting a level 2/3 m...

@Tyler9000: Interesting way to think about it. What differentiates your levels 5 and 6 is reliance on financial capital. Complete reliance at 5, and becoming less relevant at 6. There are two ways this occurs. First, a diversification of strategies where skill-based activities generate income and ot...

At this stage it's just too easy to pile up money to the <3% level without taking the extra effort to diversify income streams. There are plenty of people who believe that the PF game is won when expenses reach 6k or accumulated capital to 3-4% SWR. That's enough for someone whose end goal is to re...

Starting from viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7870&start=75#p120658 and extending the Wheaton levels to other areas of personal finance, I ended up with this. Not going for precision here, just a concept. Anything non-financial was intentionally left out because the ERE philosophy acknowledges that each...

Since we are using standard of living as the ultimate measurement of (skills + home(tools) + cash expenses) in this thread, I think it makes sense to ask..... why are we doing that? Very relevant link to the ERE blog post. I don't think anyone here is confusing quality of life with standard of livi...

Home(+Tools) + Cash expenses + Skills = Standard of Living I like how this captures the main financial angles of looking at a lifestyle: how capital-intensive it is, the required cash flow, and the skill level demonstrated. The ratio (Skills/Standard of Living) tells us what proportion of the perso...

I see ERE as something quite different from "extremely ER" both in terms of skill-set and attitude when it comes to earning and spending. I see ERE as multidimensional and E-ER as fairly one-dimensional. To me, FI is just backstop safety-net. It's not something I depend on. At all. Thanks...