FIRE reaching Critical Mass

[jacob]

IIRC, I've run into 1 person who asked me if I knew who MMM was. And I've run into 1 person who knew who I was (in terms of ERE).

I have run into several who either knew about or practiced minimalism. There might be a self-imposed selection bias here though. People might be more inclined to openly discuss their stuff than their financial plans.

[slsdly]

Outside of meetups, and those I've personally converted, I've met a number of people who are into early retirement. In each case I was the one to bring it up first. But given how many engineers are here, and the composition of my social circle, it seems I may be more likely than average to meet those in the movement.

[prognastat]

Of all the people I have met in person, I'm aware of only very few that have made any attempts at becoming financially more secure(not even FIRE, mostly just DR/becoming debt free) and they weren't even able to achieve and maintain being debt free and saving any disposable income.

I think the diet analogy is quite apt in that many spend very little time thinking about their diet/finances, a large minority is familiar with some financial concepts whether it is pursuing being debt free or FIRE, a small minority is actively pursuing some kind of financial goal and an even smaller minority will actually achieve/maintain these.

Though being unhealthy/financially unstable isn't fun it can be quite comfortable in either eating whatever you want or in spending whatever you want without thinking about it. Delaying gratification isn't something most people are good at. Sure it'll feel great to be healthy/in shape/FI, but that cheesecake will taste great now and buying a big fancy car I can't afford on credit will mean I don't need to work to find a good deal on a car plus almost everyone will congratulate me and be envious of my new car.

Most people just care far more about what other people think and also about their short term comfort than anything more than a few weeks in the future. Due to this I'm not too worried about too many people achieving FIRE.

I would actually be surprised if the % of people that are actively pursuing any kind of non-purchase related long term financial goal(so anything from seriously working to pay off debt to becoming FIRE) is in the double digits.

[ThisDinosaur]

A Growing Cult of Millennials Is Obsessed With Early Retirement. This 72-Year-Old Is Their Unlikely Inspiration
Another data point. This is becoming a Millenial Phenomenon.

The financial independence subreddit has more than 350,000 subscribers around the world. A directory on the blog Rockstar Finance counts roughly 1,600 personal finance blogs, many dedicated to early retirement.

This generation is, as a group, anti-materialist and has no sense of civic responsibility or company loyalty. Yes, this could be a cyclical thing. But the cycle will last a generation. A generation of overpriced financial assets and reduced earnings from a lazier workforce and anti-consumerist customers. Maybe airline and RV manufacturers will be profitable as home prices decline.

[jennypenny]

I'm really surprised at the traction FIRE is getting. I wonder if ERE will get a boost when the FIRE crowd cross-pollinates with the Resilience crowd.

[jacob]

The new version of YMOYL is currently ranked in the mid-three-figs on amazon sales rank and has been for a while (some months). That's a lot of books. I'd say (with some degree of uncertainty) that this translates into a hundred copies per day.

Yes, I'd expect some Kondratieff wave/fourth turning to be going on here(*). YMOYL was the most popular/famous outcome of the 1970s, but if I look over what I read and which inspired me, all the good stuff came out of the 1970s. Also 1930s, 1890s, and 1850s ... Enjoy while you can. Otherwise, see you again in 2050.

(*) To steal Sclass's words, ... all those eras were riding the exponentials of the preceding decade (2000, 1960, 1920, ...)

[Mister Imperceptible]

@thisdinosaur

“This generation is, as a group, anti-materialist and has no sense of civic responsibility or company loyalty. Yes, this could be a cyclical thing. But the cycle will last a generation. A generation of overpriced financial assets and reduced earnings from a lazier workforce and anti-consumerist customers.”

I think seeing our fathers and grandfathers get the shaft from Corporate America and corrupt do-nothing politicians will fail to inspire many of us “lazy millennials” to “put the team first,” because for some of us, the accumulated family memories are of other people getting rich off of our hard work.

The best of us will work hard, but as it’s been borne over time, it’s more rewarding to game the system than it is to work hard. So the best and smartest of us will work hard but we will NOT put the team first, and we WILL game the system, and not because we have no morals or integrity, but rather because we have seen the world for the game that it is.

[Mister Imperceptible]

If that was unnecessarily inflammatory, I apologize.

“Millennials are lazy” is a tiring bit. I think effects are being mistaken as causes.

By that I mean, a disaffected generation is not going to be gung ho about student debt/indentured servitude.

The notion of “company loyalty” is laughable. We are barcodes. One of enjoyable parts of How I Found Freedom In An Unfree World is when Browne writes that he fired all of his employees, and then negotiated contracts with them each individually. Pure, honest exchange. “Company loyalty” to me means “willing to be underpaid.” If you want me to stay in your employ, I need compensation commensurate with my worth. Otherwise, you will find me with your competitor. I can’t feed “company loyalty” to my future children.

[Seppia]

"youger generations are lazy" is basically what humanity has been saying for centuries, so I would not worry too much abut the trend (I am not a millennial).

I personally do not understand what "company loyalty" means. I feel I owe my company hard work, honesty and integrity, and in exchange I get a certain amount of money.
It's a transaction that has to take place within a rules based framework that both parties have to respect.

OTOH I also do not understand how "we" should "game the system"?
I'm maybe wrong, but I see a slightly negative/dishonest/selfish aspect in the word "game", sounds similar to "cheat".
I don't see it that way, we are just using the money in a different, more efficient way.

[Farm_or]

"The Sin of Wages" was a book that really helped me to cope with my corporate existence. Maybe that is what you are looking for in "gaming the system"?

To summarize what I got from the book was thinking of yourself as an individual contractor - not a corporate employee. That transformation opened a lot of new options for me and helped me to maximize my earning while in the system.

Without that new understanding, I would have remained the typical disgruntled, under motivated, underpaid corporate employee. Stuck in a dead end job without the energy to escape or the courage to try something novel.

[jennypenny]

"youger generations are lazy" is basically what humanity has been saying for centuries

So true. It's funny that we (GenXers) are so critical of Millennials since we hated being labeled as 'slackers' when we were younger. At least Millennials are upbeat despite the derision; GenXers are pretty cranky as a group.

[ThisDinosaur]

If that was unnecessarily inflammatory, I apologize.
“Millennials are lazy” is a tiring bit. I think effects are being mistaken as causes.

Not inflammatory. I am a millennial. My point in that comment wasn't to trash talk my generation. It was to suggest that certain traits and values are common in this group. And this could have the effect of crowding me out of my preferred niche. In nature and in investing, you're better off when there is less competition.

From jacob's recent journal entry:

This spring, I've talked to more TV journalists than I can keep track off. So somewhere around 5-7 Most of them Danish and one US based. This has meant doing 0-2 skype sessions per week. I used to have a no-TV policy, but the climate on that front has definitely changed from "looking for freaks for our freak show" to "lots of people are talking about this as a solution to stress, sustainability, ...". Yeah, no shit. For 10 years already, ...
...diverted some successfully to other bloggers.

There are a swath of journalists interested in this topic. Because the market of readers is demanding more of this content. Jacob is overwhelmed with the calls, so he is diverting them to his competition (each of which have thousands of readers) because BUSINESS IS JUST TOO GOOD.

Alright, no SWR is safe. Better get a little more aggressive on the homesteading thing so that....

Maybe it's more that homesteading aspirations are the next step after FIRE and that there's just a lot more FIREs now? Maybe we'll see more mea culpas when it comes to homesteading 5-10 years from now.

...dammit. Maybe I should get around to reading the Fourth Turning so I can adopt the next generation's values ahead of schedule.

[jacob]

http://earlyretirementextreme.com/the-gamesme.html

[Mister Imperceptible]

I have a sensitive and perhaps misguided notion of justice. I am doing well in the corporate arena, not only by virtue of outworking people, but also by being charming and playing politics. The idealist in me does not consider being a charming politician to be a virtue. I should not outearn someone unearthing secrets about neutron stars. In that way it feels to me as though I am gaming the system.

Seeing my father and my grandfather before him, physically used up and broken men, comparing my success to their struggles, assisted by my being a charming politician, it does feel like *cheating*. But seeing them does not inspire much confidence in the traditional middle class life, either. There is just too much personal anecdotal evidence to do anything in exchange for promises that will not be kept. I am nobody’s fool.

If we are talking Gervais types, I am enough of a sociopath to succeed, but enough of a loser to find this distasteful. Distasteful enough to want to get out.

It was exactly the blog post JLF linked to that I was thinking of when I said “gaming the system.” I am a Gamesman who has Jungle Fighter origins, but aspires to be a Craftsman. As JLF wrote somewhere else, I would rather say “I have done that,” rather than “I was a part of that.”

[ThisDinosaur]

@jacob
So me and the 350,000 readers of FIRE blogs are disgruntled Company Men following Gamesman bloggers who preach lifestyle optimization. We are a step behind them as they embark on a Craftsman experiment, which they will fail at. This implies I should focus on becoming a Jungle Fighter, profiting somehow off of all these failed early retirees sulking back into the workforce once they've overestimated their SWR and underestimated their future spending.

Am I close?

Possibly related: I've heard my middle aged bosses gripe about interviewees mentioning "work-life balance." Idiots.

Also possibly related: our sitting President sells himself as a Jungle Fighter.

[jacob]

@TD - Yeah close ... or perhaps underestimating the danger of "eat the rich"-sentiments which might destroy the W of the SWR (see the 9.9%- and the is frugality is for the rich-thread). To which degree will voters let a substantial portion of society become a rentier-class if it begins to look too unobtainable(*) for those who don't already have it? Is this something we need to worry about?

Having paved the original FIRE path decades ago, Robin hasn’t worked for a traditional paycheck in 50 years. After stints as an actress and in film production in New York City, she parlayed an inheritance at age 23 into a modest income that sustained a groovy 1970s lifestyle in which she lived in an “intentional community,” which is kind of like a commune, but less marginalized and more centered around mutual values—”the sharing economy before it was the sharing economy,” she says.

Whoa! I didn't know that's how that happened. The more things change, the more they stay the same, huh? In all fairness, they did give all their book money away and lived their values (whereas I've kept all mine and lived mine), but it does somewhat speak to whether this is something everybody can do or whether frugality is really only for the rich or those with rich relatives, at least in practice.

(*) For example, yields on everything are extremely low right now (you can tell because people are talking of investing in emerging markets, which is normally a sign of desperation/last resort, to get returns). In a world where faith in the 4% rule didn't reign supreme, this means that FIRE is already ~twice as expensive as it has been on average in history. If people went with the crossover-algorithm promoted in YMOYL, it is currently twice as hard to FIRE as it was.

[classical_Liberal]

...

[Mister Imperceptible]

I doubt even President Oprah will be able to raise capital gains, interest, and dividend taxes on those in the lower tax brackets, where ERE people live. For standard middle class consumers and retirees, they desperately need to keep what little they have accumulated. If it gets to that point, we have a full-blown dictatorship and confiscation of personal property. Not sure how you can prepare for that.

I would actually expect ERE folks to benefit from law changes that are in favor of the low income strata. We spend little and need only a modest income stream. It may require an adjustment but it would just be a matter of identifying the optimal path. But at the end of the day, President Oprah and her cohorts are capitalists and the new bosses will be the same as old bosses. I don’t think we have to worry about that. I’m actually worried about the opposite happening- if the barriers to obtaining higher wealth become too great.

[Farm_or]

@MI- there is already talk of additional taxation on the ERE nest egg. The latest that comes to mind is the FIFO scene that prevents investors from skirting taxes by unloading losers.

The myth that we can tax the hell out of the rich to pay the poor always comes unwound to tax the poor too to pay the poor! It's a spending problem...

[jennypenny]

Based on a conversation I had today, I wonder if it's not that there are more people interested in FIRE, only that there are more people interested in blogging about FIRE. The proliferation of FIRE blogs doesn't necessarily translate to a proliferation of people actively working towards FIRE. The same was true in the prepping world (blogging without prepping IRL) and is now also true in the food blogger realm.