The ERE Wheaton Scale

[jacob]

Granted re: Cleetus, but don't you think social capital once again becomes vital at the top? There are some really cool things you can do with $1mm with the right connections (and probably even keep the $1mm, but you've gotta have it), but spending it doesn't yield so much.

It does, but it's not my impression that WL9s walk around obsessing about how much social capital they have (WL6) or how to build it into (WL7) or make it part (WL8) of their systems. I think once that's done it's just used well along with all the other capitals. This is similar to how the perception of money changes from a scarce resource (WL1-5) to a sufficient resource (WL6-7) to something that's just there when needed (WL8+).

Generally speaking the idea of capital goes from "unconsciously unaware but affected by deficiencies" to "consciously aware of deficiencies and building them" to "unconsciously using what was previously built up".

[7Wannabe5]

@nomadscientist:

Prostitution is not just a job. It is the oldest profession and quite likely the basis for the invention of money. It set the pattern. This is why the expression FU money can be taken semi-literally. In YMOYL, which I first read when I was a young married hippie Mom (relatively quite naive), it is recommended that since you are trading your precious life-energy for money when you work at a job, you should seek the highest possible hourly wage that is not in conflict with your morality, and it immediately occurred to me that prostitution would therefore be the FIRE career choice for vast majority of females who were not morally opposed. But that’s very Level 4 thinking.

Obviously, what you meant by social capital is akin to what allows us all to trust in the value of money or our justice system. Actually, Trust is a pretty good shorthand for Social Capital. Trade in the moment, such as is inherent in overt prostitution or other forms of At Will employment, requires only a minimum level of Trust. I think the point that Frits was trying to make is that Trust, even on a large scale, can be broken much more quickly and easily than many affluent modern people conceive.

@jacob:

I just noticed and I think that the modification to Desired Household Spending is key. Especially since it usually tracks in the other direction.

[IlliniDave]

I disagree. Financial capital is not all that safe. It can be devalued or stolen. I'm not sure if I think one is more secure than the other, all forms of capital are subject to risk and can fail.

I don't think I said financial capital is safe, I just agreed with Frita that social capital has it's frailties, and wondered aloud whether financial and social capital are all that different.

Money is a form of social capital where you coerce strangers to do things for your/ give you resources instead of people you know. It's actually kind of amazing and beautiful when you think about it on a certain individual level.

Well, taxes are coersion. But most people enter most financial transactions voluntarily, whether they know the other party personally or not.

[Ego]

Prostitution is not just a job. It is the oldest profession and quite likely the basis for the invention of money. It set the pattern. This is why the expression FU money can be taken semi-literally. In YMOYL, which I first read when I was a young married hippie Mom (relatively quite naive), it is recommended that since you are trading your precious life-energy for money when you work at a job, you should seek the highest possible hourly wage that is not in conflict with your morality, and it immediately occurred to me that prostitution would therefore be the FIRE career choice for vast majority of females who were not morally opposed.

Even if they are not morally opposed, would you want it for your child or grandparent?

In theory, the difference between theory and practice is small.
In practice, the difference between theory and practice is large.

Many of the objections to the Wheaton scale revolve around the difference between theory and practice.

One of my favorite quotes, "Amateurs talk strategy and tactics; professionals talk logistics"

[BookLoverL]

Honestly if I weren't queer and grey-asexual and instead were actually into having partnered sex more than twice a year maximum or with men at all, I would have considered something like cam-girl or lentil baby myself years ago. I think the context might make a big difference for the desirability of prostitution as a career though - there'd be a big quality of life difference between a high-end escort and a street corner hooker, I imagine. If done right it can absolutely be a FIRE-income level career.

[Jin+Guice]

Can you describe how these people live?

Off the top of my head I can think of four people who have been inspirational to me who I think closely embody ERE ideals.

Friend 1:

I met her when I was 14 and she was basically my MPDG. Once I moved to NYC, she would've been just another hipster, but at 14 in suburban Pennsylvania with 2 engineers as parents, I didn't realize living that irresponsibly was an option. After we graduated HS she hopped trains for awhile. Then she worked for a vendor that sub-contracted to several music festivals all over the United States. They make pizza. Then she started her own similar company selling grilled cheese. She got married and her husband helped her start the company. She got divorced and moved in with her other boyfriend who does construction and sails boats around the world. Oh, she's also done construction intermittently since high school, first with her dad, then with her best friend (they also have a pretty successful band), and now with her boyfriend. I think they live on some dude's land where part of their arrangement is helping him renovate his house. She is very punk rock motivated and I doubt she has any savings or any interest in investment.

Friend 2:

I also met him when I was 14. He went to my HS and we were in several bands together. He dropped out of HS at 16 and is now a professional drummer. After dropping out of HS he lived in his car for several years and taught drum lessons in the town we grew up in. He got married at like 23 or something and divorced at around 27. He most closely embodies the FIRE mindset because unlike the other people on this list he's very interested in investing and saving. However, his income isn't high enough to have accumulated much in absolute terms and his cost of living is high because he lives alone in a pretty sweet (and very small) house in a rural area and has to drive a lot. Basically every time I get a new goal this dude has mastered it. He's a great musician. He's got six pack abs. He knows how to do basic construction. He's always making money investing. He's got a million girlfriends. He put together the curriculum for my social education. He's always had really high emotional intelligence (actually he's how I realized that emotional and social intelligence aren't the same thing).

Friend 3:

I met her when I was 24. At the time she worked part-time as a chef and ran a DIY arts organization in Mobile, AL. She went to a fancy art school in New Zealand. I'm not sure how old she was when she got married, but she was 28 when I met her and had a really rough divorce which had clearly happened several years prior because she was totally over it and had been dating another dude for several years. Not long after I met her she started going to some fancy art grad school in Washington State. It was mostly online, but she would fly out there every couple of months for a few weeks to do some sort of studio residency. About a year after she graduated she got a job at an art museum in Mobile. Now she's the director of a different art museum in Mobile. Her boyfriend and her renovated the house they live in, which they are currently selling to buy a dilapidated mansion, financed by a friend she met at pottery class who got a huge divorce settlement. They will also need to renovate the mansion, which is not currently liveable and will have to couch surf for 3-6 months while they renovate. Once it's finished the mansion will have 2 air bnbs, their apartment with 2 guest rooms (they host a lot of out-of-town guests, including yours truly), 6 art studios and a music rehearsal room. Her boyfriend, who is now also a close friend of mine, could also easily be on this list.

Friend 4:

Uh, he is my roommate and his profession is a secret FOR REASONS. He does not have a boss. I met him when I was 25. He played in a band that I started doing live sound for and eventually joined. He makes a substantial amount of money playing music, but not enough to live on. He also runs a food pop-up that makes a substantial amount of money, but not enough to live on. He runs a small charity in Thailand. He owns and operates the urban garden I live on. YOU GUYS, HE IS TOTALLY NOT DIVORCED. Never married, broke up with his gf of 10 years a little more than a year ago. He is currently obsessed with trading (bartering via facebook, no money allowed) which is very popular in New Orleans right now. He's kind of good at it. He trades a local grocery store "organic*" kale for kind of a lot of tequila, some Israeli dude makes him bread for ???? and he gives a local restaurant finger limes, some rare Indian pepper he grows and radishes for weekly meals. Pro tip: Chicks love finger limes and wildflowers. He recently bought a house, financed by a friend in a "bond for deed" agreement. He has to pay it off in 5 years. He also has substantial savings, no idea how much but my guess is between 10 and 100k.

*It's actually organic, the certifications are impossible to get though.

I guess I view these people as inspirational in an ERE sort of way because all 4 of them view money as a resource that's available when needed. None of them chase money in the way that most do, but none of them think of it quite as we do. All of them view it in slightly different ways, Friend 1 as a tool of the ruling class, Friend 2, ok sort of like us but he doesn't understand why you would ever stop wanting more, Friend 3 as a means to different social or artistic projects and Friend 4 just sees it as something he accesses when he needs it, but is also the most prone to blowing a bunch of money for fun. I think they all sort of exhibit WL6 tendencies, though none of them are fully there. I don't see any of them progressing to WL7, but I also don't really understand what WL7 is or how to get there.


@Stasher: I hear you, the environmental imperative is important for me too. ERE tied together a bunch of different belief systems that I'd held at one point or another, some of which I thought were in opposition to each other. Being able to understand how my relationship and concern for the environment tied together with my own ambition and need for purpose and my occasional enjoyment of things that are fucking terrible for the environment was life-changing. My point with that post was that not everyone who is climbing this particular mountain is motivated by the same things we are. Having the chart be tailored to our way of doing things makes us blind to others who are near the top but coming from different directions. Again, this is intended as commentary to other people interested in climbing the mountain who are looking for inspiration and not as a criticism or request to change our particular table or way of doing it.

@jacob: I guess my sincere question is whether "unlocking human potential" is done by totally eliminating consumption of commercialized products? Is this necessary to get outside of the cave? Is it subject to diminishing returns?

My yammering about "alternative forms of capital" isn't an attempt to get an extra table column. It's a personal addendum to the table for interested readers. It's not surprising that I delivered it in a WL6 packaging because that's where I'm at. Also, I do think the ability to fix and make stuff is crucial for resilience.... Have you considered a column for human capital?


Re: Prostitution: I know two prostitutes and it seems to be working out financially for both of them and, uh emotionally/ in a life sort of way for one of them. I also know several sugar babies and they seem to be doing as well as I would expect them to based on their personalities when I met them (before I found out they were sugaring). Also, I first found out about ERE (which was my introduction to FIRE) from my ex-gf via a forum called Stripper Web, so...

[jacob]

Back in the early days of the forum, the crowd was more diverse than what's my impression of the current participants. (Hence my occasional grumbling about "FIRE movement messaging" focusing too much on the highly-paid tech bro contingent and scaring everybody else away from the solution-space.) There definitely was a sex worker contingent which perhaps saw ERE as a way to retire from a quick career. I think ERE went semi-viral in that community back then. Maybe it still has a presence.

Adding extra columns has two limits.
1) They need to fit on the page. I'll entertain deleting another column. Likely candidate would be the savings rate.
2) Someone has to make them. I'll entertain suggestions.

[7Wannabe5]

@Ego:

Aaargh. I wasn't recommending the profession of prostitution as path to FIRE. I was attempting to offer example which highlights weakness of getting stuck at level of always thinking in terms of "comparative advantage." Generally, as noted in old version ERE Wheaton Scale, YMOYL recommends Level 6 functioning, but even way back when I first read it, I recognized that "just do whatever pays the net most per hour and isn't morally repugnant" was a weak point of the program. When charting personal spending, YMOYL recommended rating how worthwhile you found each expenditure in alignment with your values/preferences, so it was out of balance that this same sort of values clarification was not recommended in relationship to earning money. Vicki Robin's later book "Blessing the Hands that Feed Us" , clearly reflects higher level functioning.

I also think this might relate to a weakness inherent in following Jacob's unique example of the more generalized theory conveyed in "ERE." The notion that you can "do it in 5 years!" harkens back to comparative advantage because of the specified metric. Actually, following Jacob's unique example works much better if you do remove the 5 years! challenge, because Jacob was very likely already working towards the relatively high personal enjoyment/challenge/autonomy he experienced for a number of years (at least 5) during his career as an academic physicist when he was still a child.

Anyways, I chuckled at your quote describing amateur (do it for the love) vs. professional, because I am a hardcore, dyed-in-the-wool, generalist, jill-of-all-trades, lifelong amateur and/or just barely hobby-business type. Loaded with theory. Light on logistics. However, it also struck me as true, because I do become more logistical as hobby crosses over into business. One of my exes who was surprised upon witnessing it, actually described me as being like a shark at a book sale.

So, to answer your question about whether I would recommend prostitution as profession to a daughter or a grandmother, it would depend upon her personality type, preferences, level of maturity, etc. Generally, I don't recommend being a "professional" anything to anybody, because it so does not appeal to me as a person who is more likely to wear beat up Birkenstocks with not quite matching socks than investment banker/high fee prostitute power heels, but if I had a female relative whose personality type was sort of a combination of very sharklike, highly erotic, and extremely low repulsion instinct, functioning at the level of the Wall Street Players book, maybe it would occur to me. For somebody with my personality type, preferences, and level of emotional/cognitive maturity, one level beyond Lentil Baby is sort of where I am headed in that realm of existence (although it is simultaneously highly probable that I have currently fallen back one level below Lentil Baby in practice.) IOW, to myself I am kind of recommending either Transcendent Sexual Union or Retirement or maybe something like being Dr. Ruth or the Barbara Streisand character in "Meet the Fockers" but not likely if I have to go to school for 6 years to get a license to do it. For instance, if I could teach a sex class like you teach a spin class, that would be fun, but first I would have to get myself out of my current grouchy "Dr. heal thyself" post-menopausal rut.

[Frita]

Just how one pimps our for money, the same can happen with social capital. There is a point where one is challenged to set boundaries or go-along-to-get-along/lie by omission/participate in the questionable behavior. Sometimes these red flags are obvious, signaling lack of fit. Other times one and/or others change to the point of irreconcilable friction. Social capital is a myth like $1 million dollars in lottery winnings will solve all one’s (current and future) problems and produce neverending happiness.

Sidenote: The challenge for extroverts is adjusting to less people. Not jobbing, time in nature, and quiet seem to help the adjustment.

[white belt]

@Jacob

I think the Savings Rate column is superfluous if you already have a Spending column. If anything, the Savings Rate column just leads to high income earners patting themselves on the back and seeing themselves as higher WL than they really are.

Edit: I guess things do get more complicated if for example someone is spending $100k a year on charity, but I believe that’s why you used the term household spending.

[Hristo Botev]

I think savings rate and spending are kind of correlated; which is how I read Jacob's revised table. E.g., the actual amount of spending at WL1/2 is kind of unimportant from a scarcity standpoint (though not an eco "footprint" standpoint), as it could be $500K/year or it could be $5K/year. The important distinction is the 0% savings rate. Likewise, at WL8+, spending is SO LOW and savings rate is SO HIGH that the savings rate isn't even really a thing anymore. And then at WL9+ spending isn't even really a thing anymore.

[Quadalupe]

I think replacing the SR or spending by something like the just developed Income Robustness Score might also be a good idea. More generally, I think some measure of the robustness/resilience of ones web of goals (explicit or implicit) also makes sense.

[BookLoverL]

The savings rate column is the least accurate column for me because of my part time income. If I had a regular job it would become accurate, but every time I try to get a job that resembles full time I get fed up of it very soon and quit. They don't suit my temperament or energy patterns at all. So if a column is removed I would also suggest removing savings rate.

[Frita]

The savings rate column is the least accurate column for me because of my part time income.

I think this is an example of how the chart is multi-dimensional, not a roadmap. You are using time and saving money in other ways. To me, it actually seems more robust than just working full-time and saving a higher percentage. It seems more balanced.

Sidenote: I tried to copy the semi-ERE after FI. It didn’t work. At this point, I can’t/won’t tolerate BS for some job of any type.

[jacob]

Table-nerd comment:

I agree the savings rate column has to go away for v3. The v2 spending column in absolute terms shows what [consumer-perspective] lines people are willing to cross. For v1 they were not independent variables as they locked in on a median salary salaryman. The spending column is sufficient for v2.

Also note that when v1 was created in ~2015 savings-rate was still on people's minds. In ~2020 it's sufficiently widely understood so most have internalized the lesson. This obviates the column.

FWIW, obviously the savings rate was not intended to be a table key either. The v1 key was "focus". The v2 is "focus"+"recreation" ... This is abusing the recreation column somewhat.

For v3 or v4, the "retirement" column (a 20th century concept?) will likely be deprecated as well.

[white belt]

@Jacob

Maybe you can change Retirement Goal to Financial Goal, or something along those lines, since we know that retirement is such a loaded word.

[7Wannabe5]

I highly agree with BookLoverL's point about part-time work, but I also think the savings rate math is cool, so should be preserved. Is there something arbitrary that can be removed to generalize it further? I locked on 5 years to retire as the arbitrary factor in my post above, but that was just a stab at it. What happens if you sub annual growth rate of timber or something similar for SWR?

[Frita]

sorry about your dad having died early, i had no idea. and i can confirm your observations re: social capital, having seen many moochers in my rural social circle.

e.g. a number of people owe me work for things i gave them with the promise of returned labor, but chasing after them to pay would make me seem the a-hole and spoil things.

and when shtf, yeah, one can count on only a handful.

the reason the amish can do their barn raisings is due to strong social codes/ pressure, etc. in other settings people just try to get on the winning/taking side of reciprocity and make the other side a sucker.

Thanks, you got me thinking about why. My dad was high status in the community, liked power hungry, had a temper, was smart, and a bid guy in great shape. Cross him and he could kick your ass in multiple ways. I am sure some people just pretended to like him. Fear does that. My mom was/is more passive.

That sucks that sucks you had to learn the hard way to identify the moochers. A good number of people have this mentality of getting theirs and see ya. I understand letting it slide to keep the peace (and not have your place ransacked). How do you cope with seeing these people?

On the surface, the Amish seem cooperative and peaceful. But that seems to be a shiny, candy shell over layers of fear (of punishment, of not getting rewards, of not being “good,” of not being part of the community).

[Alphaville]

That sucks that sucks you had to learn the hard way to identify the moochers. A good number of people have this mentality of getting theirs and see ya. I understand letting it slide to keep the peace (and not have your place ransacked). How do you cope with seeing these people?

i reframe it as charity

well, you know the advice of not lending money to friends and family and giving them gifts instead?

pretty much like that, only after the fact. a trade that does not happen on the spot is actually a loan, it turns out.

[nomadscientist]

Back in the early days of the forum, the crowd was more diverse than what's my impression of the current participants. (Hence my occasional grumbling about "FIRE movement messaging" focusing too much on the highly-paid tech bro contingent and scaring everybody else away from the solution-space.) There definitely was a sex worker contingent which perhaps saw ERE as a way to retire from a quick career. I think ERE went semi-viral in that community back then. Maybe it still has a presence.

As I see it prostitutes* and tech bros have a lot in common in that they're often highly paid but get way less interesting to clients after about 35; those who don't move into management may never reproduce their old lifestyles. They also have in common that they usually don't come from old money families that are used to managing financial wealth and so are prone to blow their long run unsustainable incomes on frivolities.

otoh there are a huge number of people with jobs like ESL teacher, ski instructor, etc. who never explicitly entered any sort of career path, never got megabucks, have little prospect of megabucks, but have lifetime sustainable jobs with freedom to choose employer and often live how ERE-ers intend to live in retirement from the age of twenty or so right away. Maybe they're not here because we could learn something from them? Either way, a shame that they're not.


*sorry, I dont see this word as derogatory, whereas for me "sex worker" is horrible sterile manager-speak; I'll change it if people really hate it