Intentionally deprive?Fish wrote:It's up to each individual to decide what their material needs are. The typical E-ER narrative of "less is better" makes sense when using our wasteful consumer culture as the baseline, but it can be taken too far, especially if people intentionally deprive themselves of things they want only because there is a synergy with lower absolute expenses enabling even earlier retirement. If one is ERE-minded, the ultimate goal is not to have very low needs (Level 1), but to meet needs and wants using the full web-of-goals approach (Level 3).Ego wrote:Do skills trump all? Should we be striving for a FIRE number of zero?
Many of us have had that ah-ha moment where we realized that buying a Gucci dress or a red Porsche will bring us a little bit of status and pleasure in the short-term but the ultimate cost is much higher than the satisfaction of the desire. So we focus on more reasonable material needs. Is it possible that some people look at every material need in the same way we look at Gucci/Porsche?
In that same post I linked to Jacob's writing on standard of living. It makes for interesting reading. Since we are using standard of living as the ultimate measurement of (skills + home(tools) + cash expenses) in this thread, I think it makes sense to ask..... why are we doing that?
Is that the correct measurement? If not, then what is?
It is possible to become so enamored with the math involved in reaching FI that we devise a mathematical formula to satisfy that enamoration. We don't like the fact that the truly important measurement cannot be measured with math.