Early Retirement Extreme Forums

I'm not a business owner, but I'd guess most business owners do not live near their suppliers. If that's a problem, there are other possibilities, such as WFA jobs and also jobs with local demand in many countries (e.g. English teacher). I would guess an English teacher is less likely to be obsolete...

Not sure what you mean by contracts in satellites. There are interesting things happening today in smart contracts and so on, but I'm not talking necessarily talking about the future or about property-owners exclusively. Being mobile has been useful to people for centuries and has been useful to pur...

So far the Russian one looks like the best. You can get in Serbia without having any connection to the country (apparently there are a lot of anti-vaxers in Serbia).

1. Depends on personality type but I enjoy switching things around every now and then. I crave new experiences and am easily saturated/bored. Most people seem to be otherwise. But that doesn't matter to me. 2. While there's a great deal of propaganda from universities owned by states that contract l...

Aptitude tests are at the HR/screening out phase. It's not surprising there's no personal discretion. Manager probably never heard your name, and HR does not care what quality of workers they hire in so far as it isn't reflected in their KPIs. If you got two managers who know you bidding against one...

Were Americans cutting each other off over WWI?

Jacob observed on the WL thread that all the FIRE bloggers (including himself) are still targeting the same nominal level as ten years ago and (apparently) succeeding. Is that improved skill? Deflation for smart people only? Are they kinda the same thing, i.e. smart people tilt to buying deflating i...

That definitely works (not that I would try the letterhead thing specifically) and I've got no idea why. I have an ex-colleague who almost certainly got a promotion out of a company that was otherwise just about to fire him* by getting an offer from a rival. Like, we don't like this guy but we can't...

I have a pristine resume, despite not really making any effort to get one (I made no effort to find a job before graduating, but swung a career track job randomly from someone over coffee just after my final exams). But as I get older I think the pristine resume is a negative signal. It shows you ar...

The main significance of Russia is as mine and farm for China, which makes US blockade impotent. Annoying, yes, but not existential. At some point the US will also lose the ability to blockade China, but not yet. This is a medium term (10-20 year) consideration. Demographic changes come later. The U...

I'm not suggesting those weapons aren't real or effective (although I don't know), only they're not a necessary assumption to reach the same conclusion. China is rapidly launching warships and is close to local superiority against the USA already in regular types. Local superiority is easier because...

btw, my main concern about holding Russian equities would be the US government seizing or otherwise rendering worthless that holding.

There's no need to believe in novel superweapons to predict US defeat here. The PRC will soon have a larger economic capacity as well as the big geography advantage as being on the same side of the ocean as the conflict. It will be able to defeat the US in a direct confrontation with whatever are co...

My experience in covid time is that you can choose to have the regulations or choose not to have them. Choosing not to have them requires some mild inconvenience doing obvious moves, but otherwise not much more than a tiny bit of chutzpah. I am not talking about breaking laws here. But, most people ...

FWIW I was nowhere implying that Jacob is off the scale in terms of thought or something like that, only that his intent is obscure. An interesting and smart guy to be sure, but still a guy living an ordinary lower middle class lifestyle in a mid-West USA city (as he has described himself in the pas...

The early levels are universal because they involve correcting errors induced by the current society e.g. almost no one should be in credit card debt regardless of their values, people have credit card debt because of insufficient knowledge and/or self-control. Up to optimization stage, no real valu...

I kinda like the table.

It is pretty accurate to my own development.

Of course, one could have got to the same place from much different starting points and on much different paths. But most people don't.

A careerist would be always working toward lowering the risk of being out of a career rather than lowering risk by having noncorrelated income sources. I am now able to obtain a work income something like 10x my minimum spending in a field that has been in demand for decades, which should still be ...

Back in the early days of the forum, the crowd was more diverse than what's my impression of the current participants. (Hence my occasional grumbling about "FIRE movement messaging" focusing too much on the highly-paid tech bro contingent and scaring everybody else away from the solution-...

@7w5 Prostitution is not what I mean by social capital. Prostitution is just a job. @jacob Granted re: Cleetus, but don't you think social capital once again becomes vital at the top? There are some really cool things you can do with $1mm with the right connections (and probably even keep the $1mm, ...