Financial independence MMG

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Fish
Posts: 570
Joined: Sun Jun 12, 2016 9:09 am

Financial independence MMG

Post by Fish »

I’m starting a MMG for individuals with a goal of becoming FI but have not yet attained it. The MMG format is intended to encourage more personal discussion than can take place on a public forum with a large number of participants and observers. Here is how it will work:

No meetings. Instead, this MMG is a persistent, asynchronous text-based discussion on a private Discord server. There will be general purpose discussion channels, and each member will have a dedicated channel for sharing individual progress and receiving feedback.

Active participation in discussions is required to maintain membership in the group. At minimum, expect to respond to others’ personal updates on a weekly basis and to write a substantial personal update of your own every 1-2 months.

Because FI is a shared goal of this MMG, participants are expected to share some basic details about financials, demographic info, location, vocation and living situation. This also makes for more relevant feedback. As purely financial discussion is tiresome, members should also expect to share regular updates about hobbies and other personal goals.

Any personal info discussed in the MMG stays within the MMG. After the MMG launches, new members will not be added without unanimous consent. To make the environment more conducive to sharing, I may allow or require participants to assume new identities within the MMG instead of using their forum names. Let me know your preference when signing up.

Send me a PM to sign up or indicate potential interest.

Fish
Posts: 570
Joined: Sun Jun 12, 2016 9:09 am

Re: Financial independence MMG

Post by Fish »

The FI MMG has reached critical mass with 3 others signing up. All are active members whose names I instantly recognized and would trust. Sign-ups will be available through this weekend. PMs with further instructions will go out next week.
AxelHeyst wrote:
Sun Jan 23, 2022 5:55 pm
Make clear that there’s an expectation to not totally drop off the radar on the forum. [...] Report back on group progress, update your journal, participate in threads, etc.
I didn’t address this point earlier in the interest of space, but I need to state that the FI MMG/discord is a forum supplement, not a replacement. Discussions not of a personal nature will continue to take place here when possible. We’ll contribute insights to the greater ERE community as they are uncovered through this experiential learning.

FYI, so far no one is insisting on using a separate identity for the MMG which would make logistics easier and shift the center of gravity of the MMG towards these forums.

Fish
Posts: 570
Joined: Sun Jun 12, 2016 9:09 am

Re: Financial independence MMG

Post by Fish »

Let’s introduce ourselves to start the MMG. If you received an invitation from me, fill out the following and send to me in a PM. All fields are required. You will be provided with a link to the discord once your response has been validated. Each member will post their response in their private channel to start the discussion.

I intend to open-source the materials and process for organizing the MMG as a starting point for others who want to do the same in the future.


====================================

Forum username:
Preferred name for MMG, if not forum name:

Age:
Gender:
Country of residence:
State/Province/Region:

Current Wheaton Level:
Target Wheaton Level:

Marital/Relationship status:
SO’s Wheaton Level:

Children:
Pets:

Occupation:
Industry:
Education level:

Household income: __________ /year [ ] pre-tax [ ] after-tax
Household expenses: __________ /year
Net worth excluding primary residence:
Top investment category:

Shelter type: ___________ [ ] own [ ] rent
Transportation:

Financial goal (be specific):
Expected timeframe for achieving goal:
Plan for achieving goal:
[ ] increase income from work
[ ] decrease expenses
[ ] investments: capital gains
[ ] investments: passive income
[ ] side business
[ ] other (describe)

Non-financial goals (be specific):

Describe what you would like to get out of the MMG.

What advantages do you have?

What are some challenges unique to your situation?

What are some topics you would like to learn about or discuss?

Stahlmann
Posts: 1121
Joined: Fri Sep 02, 2016 6:05 pm

Re: Financial independence MMG

Post by Stahlmann »

Dear IRS, I haven't thought we will meet on eccentric online forum :P

2Birds1Stone
Posts: 1596
Joined: Thu Nov 19, 2015 11:20 am
Location: Earth

Re: Financial independence MMG

Post by 2Birds1Stone »

@fish, your PM inbox may be full. Jacob has capped it at 10 messages.

Fish
Posts: 570
Joined: Sun Jun 12, 2016 9:09 am

Re: Financial independence MMG

Post by Fish »

A brief retrospective: I like this MMG discussion format, which encourages a bit more openness than a public forum. The launch group is diverse, and it is insightful getting feedback from different perspectives. Following the original plan, we set up the discord with a few shared channels for general conversation. As it turns out, these are hardly used, but when they are the discussion is interesting. Each member also maintains a private channel for journaling and discussing matters specific to themselves. This is where the action takes place. The MMG member has full ownership of their channel, including the ability to limit access or delete it if needed. Though no personally identifying information is shared, I can sense that this setup is appreciated. There has been no need for moderation, and almost no admin work. One area where I would like to do better is to operate more synergistically with the forums, but that’s a problem for later.

We launched with 5 members, and are now at 3 due to attrition. Experience has taught us this number is barely viable and an ideal group size would be 6-10. The reason being that discussion slowed after most of the value was extracted in the initial exchanges. Participants are now working independently on their own goals with little need for feedback. The group continues to exist for accountability reasons. Those of us that remain intend to continue, preferably with a few more members to get to critical mass.

We are extending an invitation to join the FI MMG, please review the info in this thread and send me a PM if interested.

jacob
Site Admin
Posts: 15907
Joined: Fri Jun 28, 2013 8:38 pm
Location: USA, Zone 5b, Koppen Dfa, Elev. 620ft, Walkscore 77
Contact:

Re: Financial independence MMG

Post by jacob »

Fish wrote:
Mon Nov 21, 2022 4:34 am
[...] One area where I would like to do better is to operate more synergistically with the forums, but that’s a problem for later.

We launched with 5 members, and are now at 3 due to attrition. Experience has taught us this number is barely viable and an ideal group size would be 6-10. [...]
Yes, the network effect is real. As more and more people and conversations disappear into discord and slack, the main forum gets chopped up and its activity decreases exponentially. Perhaps this [dark forest of the internet] is the way of the future. However, once the attrition on the "main forum" becomes too large, it's going to be hard to form new MMGs, because there will be no one around.

Individual groups setting up dark subforums was an unintended side-effect of the MMG strategy. The idea was that zoom meetings would connect people better than "words on a screen". This would lead to more conversation and thus more activity on the main forum leading to even more MMGs. Instead things went the other way---with the same people being members of multiple MMGs. The problem with the dark conversations is that very few bother to replicate a parallel conversation on the main forum ... and so even if someone bothers to write a summary (also rare), the rest of the population doesn't benefit from the conversation.

As the guy running the main forum, this is a me-problem, but it will eventually become an us-problem, when the "effective group size" of the main forum also drops under 6-10.

ben2000s
Posts: 44
Joined: Fri Dec 31, 2021 6:13 pm

Re: Financial independence MMG

Post by ben2000s »

Is there room on this MMG? I can't find one

ertyu
Posts: 2893
Joined: Sun Nov 13, 2016 2:31 am

Re: Financial independence MMG

Post by ertyu »

I would also like to participate if you guys would have me

Fish
Posts: 570
Joined: Sun Jun 12, 2016 9:09 am

Re: Financial independence MMG

Post by Fish »

Thank you for your interest. Due to the ongoing meta-discussion about MMGs and their contribution to a forum death spiral, I am not processing sign-ups at this time. In fact, I’m thinking about disbanding this MMG with the hope that its “discussion energy” returns to the main forum.

MMGs which focus on specific skills and activities don’t seem to pose as much of a forum threat as FI MMGs which take the ERE journey dark. It would not be helpful for those who follow us to see a progression of:

1. I started a journal on the forums,
2. I joined a MMG,
3. ???
4. Now I’m ERE

A cultural difference between MMG and main forum is the expectation that journal updates will be met with replies. The feedback offers encouragement and insight to the author. This motivates behavioral changes and the writing of another update.

On the main forum, I see many journals (particularly those of new and lesser-known forumites) where the authors are essentially talking to themselves. Eventually the journals are abandoned. Presumably to address this problem we should suggest people to participate in discussions and others’ journals before starting a journal of their own. That might make for more interaction and constructive behavior that provides some of the value of a MMG without the conversation going dark.

Basically, what I’ve just described is forming your own public MMG by interacting with the forumites you want to get feedback from. No guarantees it will work but it’s better than quietly hoping for a reply to your journal.

Alternatively, we could be more intentional about it by starting a thread for “journal feedback requests” which would identify who is interested. Or designate a forum member to coordinate such requests via PM. It would function like a temporary MMG where participants agree to write something constructive in exchange for feedback on their own situation. If anyone is actually interested in this I would be willing to run the first iteration to get it going. Or feel free to take the idea and run with it.

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