Living with 500k < 1 M < 2 M < 4M ...

[frugal]

hi

what is the best topic of the forum about how to invest to get the safe WR .?

[TopHatFox]

Not a topic, but I liked the book All About Asset Allocation the best to explain how to make a well-diversified portfolio on your own

[frugal]

Not a topic, but I liked the book All About Asset Allocation the best to explain how to make a well-diversified portfolio on your own

hi!

good.

I think all you are in lazy portfolios or/and investing in real state.

Correct?

[BRUTE]

correct

[BlueNote]

Having 500.000 USD or 4.000.000 USD on the bank account will be the same ? Or you adapt to what you have?

I would like to understand the philosophy of spending.

This is something I have pondered quite a bit. There is a good argument that one can experience equanimity as long as the essentials are earned and secured. The essentials to me are:

- Nutrition
- Shelter
- Safety
- Health
- Socialization/family
- Purpose/mission/something meaningful to do with your time

Retiring without adequate net worth to support your lifestyle is almost guaranteed to cause bad things to happen in your life. So the extreme low end of the net worth spectrum is a challenging place that I'll leave to more ambitious people. Sort of like how I will leave climbing Everest to other people, I'd rather just walk through a park or go for a leisurely bike ride.

The limits imposed on someone retiring on 500K vs someone with 2x that amount are mostly tangible. One person may be able to afford a car, the other learns to live without one. One learns to make wonderful meals with lower cost ingredients and the other gets to eat fancy ingredients and go to restaurants more often. One maybe lives in a big house while the other lives in a small apartment. These are all things humans are able to adapt to quite readily. In fact after the initial nastiness of downgrading I think most people feel about the same as they did before. I think it's mostly culture, social networks, and personal beliefs that make people overestimate the effect of having more money. Some people think that retiring on a small amount (<500K) amounts to a sort of ascetic, hobo life. People are constantly comparing themselves to others, it's a part of being human. People often make character mis-judgements based on net worth, they do it to others and they do it to themselves. To a certain degree this is true for almost everyone. The average world citizen would think a typical Post-FIRE ERE person was very rich to be able to live such a good lifestyle without working. They would have to work extremely hard to live the lifestyle of an early retiree who has a ~300-500K USD net worth. It's more a matter of perspective and adaptation than any objective difference to your life along the net worth spectrum. I am actually pretty amazed at how little my happiness, and feelings of equanimity have changed as a result of living at a relatively low spending level.

[frugal]

Hi,

seems to be almost the same to have some or a lot of money for all the frugals here

[SavingWithBabies]

I don't know. I mean, I feel like an odd person out here because our living expenses are still pretty high (we're working on it -- focused on reducing housing after our lease is up).

Is this for the whole family or per person? For me, I'm focused on the whole family so myself, wife and currently two children. We might have more. My initial goal was $1.6M to step away from my day job and focus on my own business. I lowered it to $1.2M. But there are debates like (and we don't need to debate it here, it's been debated in other threads) do you pay for your kids college tuition? Do you want a paid off home? What kind of home? Do you want to work after you reach FI or do you want to become FI and do RE?

I want to become FI but not do RE until later. But I want to be able to do RE if needed (if things don't work out). If things go well, I hope to not touch my savings/investments until later in life so they can grow. So I want a safety net for myself and my family. The safety net lets me try more risky things like starting businesses and lets me live life a bit more on my own terms without negatively impacting my family.

What's the right number? I don't know. For the safety net/RE focus, over the next couple of years we will work hard to lower our cost of living to know what we can live on. Then maybe that will help us better know our number.

I also want to skew high, at least while I enjoy my day job, as I feel very lucky to be working in a field that happens to compensate me well for something I like doing. I think within a reasonable amount of time it would be possible to go back to it but after a certain amount of time, I may not be able to return to regular employment. From the experience side, I think I would be okay as I would be doing similar software development work on my own business. But from the "working for the man" standpoint, I think a couple of years of living my life on my own terms might make coming back to a day job very hard.

[frugal]

Hi,

why do you say that you need to work on your expenses for so long?

Isn't it a question of 2-3 months to know how to optimize and reduce your expenses?

I believe I can decrease my expenses, if I want, in one day...

Regards

[SavingWithBabies]

I mentioned it above but we have signed a lease or a contract for our current rental. I can't move without breaking the lease for another 6 months. So we are paying more than I would like for housing. In 6 months, we can lower housing by about $450/month.

For other expenses, I'd rather change slowly. That is working for us. I'm more focused on the total savings/investments per month. I get that a lowered budget lowers my living expenses and thus lowers my required savings amount and it "reverse compounds". But it only does so if it is sustainable.

Update: Yesterday, I took a look at our budget that my wife tracks. I tried to ratchet down categories and realized how frustrating that was. So for daily budget, I would actually do the "rip the bandaid off" style and try to change rapidly like the ERE book advocates (going down low enough to cause discomfort and slowly increasing until discomfort is gone). I usually look at the income side of things (how much is going into investing, etc) and was thinking of that in my initial reply.

[frugal]

Hi,

What is the RECORD per person for ER ?

20 USD / day x 30 days x 12 months x 25 years = 180.000 per each person?

regards