Where are the failure-stories?

[Chad]

I agree with much of what Spartan said.

[Papers of Indenture]

I'm failing. I paid off about $50k of student loans from 2010 through 2013, then saved $32k between 2013-2015, then used all of that to buy a house. Since December of 2015 i've only managed to put away $7k. That and a 401k with $17k are all I have to my name.

The mortgage isn't what's killing me...it's less than the rent for a 1 bedroom apartment. We just aren't making enough money. I'm at a dead end in my "career" and she is still trying to finish an associates while working. She feels like her window for motherhood is rapidly closing and I promised her a child so that will add to the difficulties. I'm not sure we'll ever truly ERE. I'm looking at different strategies now of combining part time work with self sufficiency (i've got about a 19,000 square feet to garden and I have an 85 year old neighbor who orchards and farms a 2 acre plot...hope he keeps ticking).

I've been down in the dumps lately so i'm probably being over pessimistic.

[Farm_or]

What would falling off the wagon look like? Acquiring a dozen credit cards and going on a drunken spending binge? Crazed boredom of watching television all day resorting to desperate job hunting at the employment office? Coveting a neighbor's new Porsche, so go out and sign the line on a Lamborghini? Stopping by Starbucks to buy ten dollar coffee on the way to a fancy restaurant followed by a newly released 3d movie? Oh, the possibilities...

[steelerfan]

The typical definition of a success story here is a young intelligent person with a high income and no kids that is willing to maintain a college level bare bones budget and achieve FI in 10 years or less, which opens up freedom for whatever. However, this group is an outlier in a subset of outliers. Most people cannot or more distinctly don't want to live in this manner. The average person today does not even earn enough to entertain this. However,there is much to be learned that can be applied to achieve your custom goal.

It is difficult to quantify what is success or failure because everybody has a different scenario. I love following peoples stories in the journals whether it works out, fails or falls in between. I am continually inspired by young people that have it together enough to formulate and execute a plan to be FI by your early 30s. I sure didn't. But this is not typical and even rarer to find a couple that is both on board. Even with people that ERE it seems to be common to have one spouse that is living a conventional work life and it makes defining FI kind of subjective. There are also people that reside here that live a life that at least to me is simply unemployed and "on welfare". If you are low impact I guess it doesn't matter but I can't define someone as retired that receives significant public assistance from my tax dollars.

I always knew going in that I did not fit the profile of the typical person this community is designed for. In my 50s I always was on course for something closer to realistic conventional retirement although before age 60. Above all I was most worried about a late career layoff. My dad was laid off around 50 and he eventually found a job but it was massively downscaled. He retired at 60 but had many bitter regrets about how things went down. He also had a big pension that I won't have. I want to end things on my own terms.

That said, I feel I have learned a great deal over the years. I have to a certain extent mitigated bad habits related to spending unnecessarily although I occasionally backslide. I have invested well however.

I have not pulled the plug and I am at the age I should be able to. We have sufficient funds and own a house in a pricy area. We could sell our house and downsize, relocate and be ok. We will someday. However today, I have kids that need our support, and my wife is not there yet in terms of wanting out although she is moving surprisingly in that direction.

The biggest value I get on a day to day basis is trying to impress upon my kids the need to save early and avoid consumerism and lifestyle inflation that will make you a slave. They seem to be listening although you never know what will happen once they start making real money.

[BRUTE]

in a way, brute's a big failure on this as well. while he'd always had a somewhat high natural savings rate due to combination of job/skill set and personal desires, he's terrible at just executing one plan for more than a few months at a time, and it took years for him to get serious about actually doing ERE vs. just knowing about it. it really feels like there were a few interesting shiny side quests brute wanted to explore first. now that he's checked off those boxes, ERE comes somewhat natural. or maybe brute just changed over a couple of years to fit ERE better.

[Dragline]

However today, I have kids that need our support, and my wife is not there yet in terms of wanting out although she is moving surprisingly in that direction.

The biggest value I get on a day to day basis is trying to impress upon my kids the need to save early and avoid consumerism and lifestyle inflation that will make you a slave. They seem to be listening although you never know what will happen once they start making real money.

You and me both! (Not to mention aging parents with issues.) DS#2 graduates from high school this weekend. He'll be getting "Early Retirement Extreme" and "So Good They Can't Ignore You" as summer reading.

But I like to say/think they learn more from us from what we are NOT doing in comparison to others similarly situated, than what we have to say.

[ThisDinosaur]

I'd call a failure someone who ran out of money and had to go back to work. I'm imagining a person with a religious commitment to the 4% rule, index funds, and Stocks For the Long Run who retired at age 35 just before the tech bubble burst. Having to go back to work just as your former coworkers are getting ready to retire would be very demoralizing. I doubt many would post about that here. Another example would be the oft-cited wannabe homesteader who finds out the hard way that total self-sufficiency is either impossible or way harder than they thought. There is a reason why people stopped living the pre-industrial lifestyle as soon as the urban consumerist option became available.

[bryan]

@ThisDinosaur, I wonder if your first class of person really exists? I've thought that if you have 25x expenses saved and retire, you would end up having some significant changes to your life such that it's unlikely to fall back into an old life down the road. I do agree that the 4% rule will leave some in a less than ideal situation but it's shortfall will be more marginal and not a huge thing. Totally agree on your second class of people, though.

I figure their aren't many "failure stories" because the likely failures of ERE-minded folks are probably pretty tame and not worth mentioning. The failures of friends-of-friends or co-workers are more interesting, as jacob alluded. I recall a "Hall of Shame" on MMM forums which is sort of failure-stories.

edit: and the very obvious reason that ERE hasn't been formally around very long and has coincided with a period of very strong stock market performance.

[ThisDinosaur]

@bryan
Yes, that first class of person was a caricature from the "continued viability of the 4% rule" thread. Jacob described a certain type of person who lived a post-FIRE consumerist lifestyle and figured they could make up any shortfalls by making money travel-blogging. In reality, no one who watched their principal dwindle down over decades would wait until they reached zero to change something. But, wrt the original topic, I figured there must be some educational examples of people being forced back into paid labor after thinking they had bought their freedom.

[bryan]

I'm sure there are some examples where there are personal events that rock your finances (bankruptcies, lawsuits, etc). There is also the case of events like "the great depression". At the individual scale it may be seen as bad luck that is hard to plan for or even if you could you can't take satisfactory actions to hedge against. Of course ERE is a thing that could allow one to be more ready than others in the face of hardships. So does the lack of failure-stories perhaps indicate ERE yields the highest success rates? INTJs don't fail?

I wonder what interesting lessons could be gleamed from the stories? Less interesting lessons to learn: diversify, hedge, allocate some extra buffer, consider the worst case, dig into all of the systems..

As steelerfan mentions "success" and "failure" are subjective. Is it a success if I put 100% of my assets in Bitcoin after finding the FIRE/ERE world/forums a year ago when bryan was saying Bitcoin is a good investment and held onto them until now?

[frihet]

Just posted this in Sabaka's journal and realized that I'm partly a failure.

I envy you a bit who have all this information about ERE just starting out. If I have had it I would not be working by now at 35. Saved and speculated in mining shares aggressively between 20-25 accumulating half of the stash I have now thinking I was on a clear path to FI. Then when the stock market crashed and i lost half of it I lost track and hope for 5 years.

My poor understanding of investments and capital preservation made me loose track. and probably put ten more years of work under my belt. An irony that I read "how I found freedom in an unfree world" by Harry Browne early on but didn't find his "fail safe investing" and thereby the Permanent Portfolio until my 30ies.

[7Wannabe5]

I was talking this morning with my friend who is 77 years old and has a net worth of over 70 million. He walked into his rather messy, very modest living room and proclaimed to me "The more money you have, the more trouble. " He said his number one regret is that he never got around to having children of his own (he adopted illegitimate child of long-time much younger African-American girlfriend, born when he was 55, and is currently in the process of making her very, very wealthy) because his only interests for many years were the stock market and his own business, or "empire building."

A few years ago he visited with the woman who he was in love with when he was in college. She was twice married and divorced, and lives on a small farm in an old house full of antiques, with cats and horse. He told me "She looks just the same. If I had money back then, I would have married her. We both liked the same things. I lived better when I was a boy on the farm then I do now." So, I asked him "Why don't you visit her again, and maybe you could live on the farm with her?" and he instantly, brusquely replied "Oh no, I couldn't do that. I would be bored to tears in 3 days."

I think he is an ENTJ .

[BRUTE]

I lived better when I was a boy on the farm then I do now." So, I asked him "Why don't you visit her again, and maybe you could live on the farm with her?" and he instantly, brusquely replied "Oh no, I couldn't do that. I would be bored to tears in 3 days."

brute has experienced this type of "unable to put cat back into bag" or "what has been seen cannot be unseen" or "ratcheting" effect before, if probably not in such a dramatic way. once certain experiences have been lived, it is hard to go without them.

this is more elastic in some areas of brute's life than others, but it's particularly true in terms of salary and food. it's just really hard to go back from steak and similar foods, and it's hard to go back to a "real life" salary after working in a bubble for years.

on the other hand, brute has discovered that in certain areas he has no problem going "back", because "back" wasn't worse at all - sometimes better. brute actually prefers harder mattresses - or none at all. brute prefers monotony in eating. brute prefers simple to fancy, and often, less possessions to more.

relationships is one that's particularly hard, because humans are so infungible - every human relationship brute has ever had was unique, even if it lasted only hours. in a way, the more relationships brute has had, the worse it's become, because the new ones have to measure up to an increasing amount of past experiences they won't provide.

brute wouldn't go so far as to wish he could un-experience certain things or humans, but as he ages he can definitely see the conservative opinion that having relations beyond marrying one's high school sweetheart will ruin one forever. there is no way brute could have a relationship like he used to, simply because he's known too much. there isn't a human in the world that could fulfill him as much as marrying the high school sweetheart could a high schooler.

all this has made brute more cynical over the years, and he's increasingly had to compartmentalize his life and relations. maybe it's just part of growing up.

[fiby41]

relationships is one that's particularly hard, because humans are so infungible - every human relationship brute has ever had was unique, even if it lasted only hours. in a way, the more relationships brute has had, the worse it's become, because the new ones have to measure up to an increasing amount of past experiences they won't provide

We often reverse-project our desired values and qualities backwards onto the past. This results in putting people onto a pedestal and painting rosy-ier picture of an experience than how the incident originally went through. Then we compare other people / relationships / experiences to this ideal template that exists only in our minds. When new people fall short of this unrealistic high standard of expectations, it leads to disappointment and even greater yearning for the first time it clicked.

This is why people try to find reasons to go for a second child or try to reconcile with old friends. (links to forum threads.)

[Dragline]

These are examples of the "optimal stopping problem" and the Golden Era fallacy as applied to relationships.

[The mathematical solution to the optimal stopping problem is to interview/sample/date for (1/e x 100)% -- about 37% of the time/samples available and then pick the next one available that is better than the previous samples. For example, for someone looking to "find a life partner" between the ages of 20 and 40, it basically says shack up with to the best person you have found in your late 20s. You probably won't do any better after that, unless you adjust your sampling window. YMMV -- this is probability, not a magic bullet.]

I think a lot of INTJs keep looking for "more initial perfection" when life only offers "better than average, could be improved with some cooperative effort" scenarios where relationships are concerned. Knowing my "never pulled the trigger" friends in their 50s seems to support this thesis.

[Loner]

I also observe that “the more relationships you experience, the worse it gets”. I can verily relate to the “ratchet” effect Brute mentions. I sometimes wonder if (or wish that) a part of it might also be attributable to growing as a person and knowing better what I want from life and relationships.

I think it would be very possible to be more demanding of people you let into your life even if you have been living in a cave forever, without experiencing a ratchet effect. As you tolerate less BS in your life, you’ll tend to tolerate less of it from others as well, and refuse to let them in. Sort of an inverse example of “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time around.”

[bryan]

my sympathies to BRUTE. but in this case, isn't ignorance obviously mostly _not_ bliss? Or is it simply bad luck if your first love is a 92+% (and you don't hitch)? I am worried how to teach my own (future) kids this lesson/strategy..

[IlliniDave]

I think a lot of INTJs keep looking for "more initial perfection" when life only offers "better than average, could be improved with some cooperative effort" scenarios where relationships are concerned. Knowing my "never pulled the trigger" friends in their 50s seems to support this thesis.

Certainly that rationale isn't ubiquitous among INTJs. Being demographically similar to your "never pull the trigger" friends, I look at my own situation not so much as case of wanting perfection out of the box, but a case of having enough self awareness to quickly spot untenable situations combined with a healthy dose of "man on a mission". I'm neutral when it comes to relationships. I neither seek nor avoid them, but there things in my path that I just have to do and after most of a lifetime of various compromises it's time to let me be me. So a relationship of any duration would indeed require an unusually strong starting point (mostly in the realm of having already complementary life goals) but that's a constraint imposed by the mission, not the mission itself. Maybe that's a distinction without a difference though, haha.

In general, I can relate to a lot of what BRUTE said above. When it comes to relationships I'm maybe less inclined to view them in the context of the past (the exception being the spotting of "red flags") and more like the other things. Through time we get to know ourselves and typically settle into a relative optimum lifestyle and perturbations aren't always desirable or useful.

[BRUTE]

my sympathies to BRUTE. but in this case, isn't ignorance obviously mostly _not_ bliss? Or is it simply bad luck if your first love is a 92+% (and you don't hitch)? I am worried how to teach my own (future) kids this lesson/strategy..

brute agrees - in retrospect, ignorance is never truly bliss. but in the moment, it seems like it. that's probably why humans came up with that saying.

would brute delete his memories to re-create ignorance and therefore imagined bliss, like Cypher in The Matrix, or in Memento? maybe. similar question to the hedonistic pleasure machine - would bryan get into one to receive hedonistic pleasures for the rest of his life, or would he want more than that out of life?

[BRUTE]

I'm neutral when it comes to relationships. I neither seek nor avoid them, but there things in my path that I just have to do and after most of a lifetime of various compromises it's time to let me be me. So a relationship of any duration would indeed require an unusually strong starting point (mostly in the realm of having already complementary life goals) but that's a constraint imposed by the mission, not the mission itself.

this describes brute's circumstances as well. that's why brute mentioned the compartmentalization of relationships - it's easier to form relations with limited scope, especially when the entire scope of brute's life is somewhat broad and complicated. good luck finding a high school sweetheart who happens to be into deadlifting and motorcycle racing and steak and world travel and programming and is brown or black, likes to talk for hours on end about hypothetical philosophical situations, speaks at least 1 foreign language, is geographically located close to brute, has an optimistic-nihilist view of the world and other humans, makes more money than brute.. even just finding a single one (except ethnicity or proximity) or combination of two of those is very rare, so brute can basically not afford not to take advantage of single dimension matches, having to ignore the mismatches in every other dimension. i.e., compartmentalization.

brute has relations that get his rocks off, relations that stimulate him intellectually, relations that make him smile, and relations that give him coziness and comfort. but there is very little overlap between these relations. he imagines that if enough overlap existed, this would become "love". but that seems elusive at this point in brute's life.

then again, most old humans brute knows, that seem happy with their relationships, are compartmentalizing even stronger than brute - to the point that they face what brute would consider extreme cognitive dissonance on a daily basis, ignoring their life partner for 30-70% of all interactions just so they can enjoy the other 70-30%.

at that level of compromise, brute simply doesn't bother. maybe he'll change as he grows older. maybe these old humans know something brute doesn't - so far, that's been true every 5 years in brute's life.