Early Retirement Extreme Forums

@guitarplayer, glad I was able to help. @ertyu I am skewing that way myself, but it is quite complicated because I need to consider the expense of leaving and the question of what our living arrangement would be next. It is surprisingly nuanced; I could probably do with going through this by writing...

If I didn't have a hunting dog I would take her in and hand feed her. My biggest fear is that someone will shoot her during hunting season as she has no fear of humans. I was speaking with a neighbor about it and she is going to get a blaze orange collar for her. Now we just have to find her again ...

I know that the market is currently inflated significantly from when we bought, but that year-on-year price changes have started to fall, albeit slowly. This is me talking from a position of little expertise, but I would think that with a recession severe enough, a buyer's market could result, but t...

It wasn't so bad, in that (a) they left a lot of useful stuff (white goods, sofa, table) and (b) they didn't plan to do this, COVID got in the way. And it was my own fault to some extent because at the time I was in a scavenger, anything-could-be-useful mindset, so we didn't get rid of the unwanted ...

Would you mind sharing the name of the dumpster diving app? It would be good to see if it has much of a user base "down here".

Your energy use is amazing; inspirational. Nice one.

@mountainFrugal, as OutOfTheBlue said, thank you for explaining the possible future plans for the group next year. Similar to AE, I think this could be very useful for me in seeing nature while living in the suburbs. I have not read any Plotkin yet, but his Soulcraft book is on my reading list; cert...

When I joined, I'm not sure if reading some mission statement about different strata of forumites being connected in some such and such way would have helped at all. I wanted to be here for my reasons, and I'm not sure how much I would have tolerated something like that if it felt like a directive....

From my perspective, it feels like the MMGs and heavy use of shorthand are all the same thing -- the forum's version of secret handshakes and sub-clubs that are meant to give other people the impression that they aren't welcome. I've generally found domain-specific language important because it can...

MBBboy the leap from robust to antifragile seems vastly wider than the move from fragile to robust, as you say. In fact, I wonder if this gap is mainly that we are almost blind to antifragilities. I was just writing about the spectrum for social connections when I realised that social connections th...

On my evening walk I wandered around the nearby (very) affluent neighbourhood and encountered a fox I had seen there the week before. I have started noticing foxes more regularly as the nights have drawn in, though this is still surprising to me as I am walking as people drive home from work. I woul...

Monthly Overview I really wanted to make November less work-centric, and to spend more time on other things again. I'm pretty pleased with how this has turned out: work days are less intense, meaning I have had more energy in the evenings. I've been walking regularly and taking that time to process...

Thank you AxelHeyst, that is great to know. I had wondered how/if it would work, but never thought to ask. ERE2 is interesting but not personally actionable, and so draw less people. I personally find it interesting from a philosophical angle, and I'll try to share more of the philosophy I've read a...

Positive freedom remains a huge issue for both ERE and espeically FIRE. After going mainstream, most pursue FIRE from a perspective of negative freedom. They simply hate their jobs. FIRE is seen as a magic pill to solve that. Yet we already know that a lot of FIRE'ees default to their old career af...

It amazes me that I can reduce so much and still have so much. I never thought of myself as a particularly acquisitive person but yet things accumulated. I'm much more careful now about what I acquire because I am so aware of how much work it will be to get rid of it responsibly. I think this is a ...

@jacob I'm reading Taleb's Antifragile currently, and his strategy seems to be very similar to yours insofar you both focus on avoiding catastrophic failure. So far the book has been a reinforcement of understandings I already held, but could not have conveyed. I think this point about focusing on t...

Right, some updates on the above. Not long after that post I spoke with my partner and we seriously discussed selling. We both felt concerned about the situation worsening and us being unwilling (I'm not going to dress up a justification) to spend the time/capital/energy to fix the underlying issue ...

Been reading your journal, and found it quite inspiring because of the health complications you have had, and how you've continued through them: sorry to hear about the side effects you're experiencing. Do you also find you can only manage "reducing" in waves? I go through sporadic spurts ...

I found damp in another room yesterday evening, meaning all but two rooms now have damp in them, and existing cases are worsening. I felt delated and defeated by the discovery last night: I have put a lot of effort into elegantly managing and solving the damp issues in our home; I thought it was imp...

Wow, that is extremely impressive. We are using ~3kWh a day on our electricity (we work from home as well); even w/o the heating on our boiler is apparently drawing ~2kWh a day just to do the washing up. I think you're reaping the benefits of having a compact abode!

Hoping to re-establish some routine habits this month, and no better place to start with short days and the cold coming on than walks. Not entirely sure why, but I have always preferred walking in the autumn/winter/early spring to late spring/summer. Perhaps, at least in the dark, I can more easily ...