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Greetings!

Posted: Wed Aug 09, 2017 6:16 am
by Lillailler
Hi everyone,
I have only just discovered this amazing place, been reading here over the weekend and have ordered the book. I look forward to participating in the ongoing conversation.

My own interest in FI/ER has been slow-burning over a number years, driven by firstly, my income becoming very irregular several years ago. This forced me to separate my spending decisions from my earning, in other words to stop spending on autopilot and get a firm grip on my finances (I have been tracking my savings / investments for more than 20 years now). It was only a small step then to move from thinking about being able to pay the bills in the next couple of years to thinking about being able to pay the bills over the next decade, and then finally to ER / FI as a goal.

The second driving event was moving house, which made me come to terms with the 'stuff' issues. I did a triage of Sell (thanks Amazon and eBay!) / Donate / Scrap, for all the things I did not want to take with me, and it was deeply moving to realise how much money had gone to buy things which literally had neither use nor value. Well not quite. It was utterly crushing to physically experience how much of my hard work, ingenuity and stress of responsibility had been squandered on compete rubbish which I could not even give away, but instead had to sort by material and then spend yet more time and money taking to the waste tip. This experience pretty much cured me of the 'must buy more clutter' mindset, and did a lot to help me conquer the "Money is for spending, therefore I will spend this money now on that shiny thing" mindset.

I find the SWR idea a beautifully elegant way to solve the conundrum "How much is enough?". Plus, it can be used backwards: A Starbucks habit of 5 USD / day translates to 1 750 USD / year = 70 000 USD invested (at 2.5% SWR). For me, it is not worth it, I would rather have the 70k.

OK, enough, hello!

Re: Greetings!

Posted: Wed Aug 09, 2017 8:57 am
by Gilberto de Piento
Welcome!

It is shocking how much work you have to do to buy items that are often worthless in a few short years. Electronics are particularly bad in this regard.

Re: Greetings!

Posted: Wed Aug 09, 2017 10:47 am
by wolf
Also a welcome from myself. Hello!