Mental health consequences of ERE

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M
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Joined: Wed Sep 29, 2010 7:34 pm

Re: Mental health consequences of ERE

Post by M »

I think I will comment some more here about my personal life since this thread uniquely applies to me...

If you look up 'factors for poor mental health' I have all the factors that normally lead to poor mental health. First - poor mental health runs in my family - mother is bipolar schizophrenic and father is chronic depressive and OCD. This is what they were diagnosed with. So I'm genetically predisposed for these issues to an extent.

Second - I suffered a lot of abuse as a child, in an out of foster care, watched people die, low income areas, poor nutrition, whole nine yards. I have a lot of PTSD from childhood trauma. This also typically leads to poor mental health as an adult.

Finally - I am what you would call high trait and high state anxiety and depressive and generally introverted.

ERE and keeping expenses low has been a huge boost to my mental health.

I don't worry about losing my home since it's paid off. I don't worry about losing my job since I have an emergency fund.

I can work an easy, lower paying low stress work from home job since I don't really need the money. This means I have more time to relax, eat right, exercise, and tackle other stressors in life - this has been hugely beneficial.

I don't fight with my spouse about money problems or money stress because...we don't have money problems or money stress.

I don't worry about the stock market prices either since I have solid dividend paying companies and IBonds.

I live simply and don't worry about keeping up with the joness', maintaining a huge fleet of vehicles, boats, etc. So I don't have a ton of stuff to maintain, buy, sell, or any of the associated stress.

All of my bills are on auto pay, I bank 100% of my job income since dividends pay the bills. I am only aware of the expenses when I do trailing twelve month expense reports. The only time I even look at the stock market is when it makes the news or someone mentions it or I'm looking for something to buy. As long as I maintain an ERE lifestyle I could live my life like money does not exist.

Overall the ERE lifestyle has been a huge boost to my mental health.

ertyu
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Re: Mental health consequences of ERE

Post by ertyu »

Riggerjack wrote:
Fri Sep 30, 2022 11:25 am

This seems reflected in your lifestyle. Living in a apt in a city is well suited to a FIRE approach. High earnings and low spending, problem solved, right?
Hm, I disagree that you can't be ERE living in a city. Cities offer different opportunities and challenges - e.g. in a city capturing trash streams and finding ways to dumpster-dive might be easier, if you're inclined to those activities. Socializing is easier in cities. etc. "FIRE people are in the city, true ERE-ers have a rural property" is limited thinking imo. For instance consider this japanese lady

M
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Joined: Wed Sep 29, 2010 7:34 pm

Re: Mental health consequences of ERE

Post by M »

ertyu wrote:
Fri Sep 30, 2022 7:04 pm
Hm, I disagree that you can't be ERE living in a city. Cities offer different opportunities and challenges - e.g. in a city capturing trash streams and finding ways to dumpster-dive might be easier, if you're inclined to those activities. Socializing is easier in cities. etc. "FIRE people are in the city, true ERE-ers have a rural property" is limited thinking imo. For instance consider this japanese lady
Yes - the amount of good trash in and around cities, especially around high income areas, is crazy.

I know some people who go trash hopping in a high income American city. I am constantly amazed at the amount of good furniture, chairs, couches, tvs, video game consoles, tools, lawn mowers, etc that they find and resell. The stuff often works just fine or needs extremely minor fixes. It's like rich people routinely throw things away just because they want to change a rooms color scheme, because they don't use it anymore, are moving, lost the remote for their tv, lost one socket size in a tool set, because they couldn't be botherd to put fresh gasoline in their lawn mower when it didn't start, etc, etc.

I'm convinced a motivated single person can live an ERE lifestyle around a city with high enough income just off the waste streams of the rich without any need for savings or investments or a job, frankly. The skillset would be more focused on fixing things, selling things to people, knowing best places to dumpster dive, finding roommates to live with, etc. It would be more about people and relationship skills and repairing skills and marketing skills and less about production and other skills.

Not trying to make this a city vs rural thread - just saying I think ere would be possible in a city but the skills and challenges would be completely different.

With that all said - I have never actually lived in a big or medium or even small city, so take all this with huge grain of salt. :lol:

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unemployable
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Re: Mental health consequences of ERE

Post by unemployable »

M wrote:
Fri Sep 30, 2022 12:50 pm
I am just personally not going to drink...I don't drink coffee or pop either, not just alcohol. I'm just odd in various ways.
Throw on some magic underwear and move to Utah. You'd fit right in.

M
Posts: 423
Joined: Wed Sep 29, 2010 7:34 pm

Re: Mental health consequences of ERE

Post by M »

unemployable wrote:
Fri Sep 30, 2022 9:25 pm
Throw on some magic underwear and move to Utah. You'd fit right in.
No thanks - I don't need multiple wives and even more children. I tried polyamory years ago and having multiple women is great in theory but in practice they all want your time, attention, money, emotional and sexual affection. It was an ego boost to have sex with multiple women on the same day but I also wound up paying for all the dates, hotel rooms, gifts, and also was their emotional support and built in therapist.

In my experience women also tend to want children as well. No thanks. I struggle enough with just my one wife and four kids. I can't think of any other reason to move to Utah besides polygamy, so I think I will stay here and be the odd guy drinking water. :lol:

zbigi
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Re: Mental health consequences of ERE

Post by zbigi »

Thanks all for the thoughtful answers.


I guess my worries revolve around a couple themes:
1. Very long period of global stagflation, leading to most financial assets underperforming. I guess theoretically I can protect myself by buying inflation-adjusted bonds (which I'm doing), but, with high enough inflation, they payout is still negative. For example, at current levels of inflation in Poland (17.2%), their real return -2% per year after taxes. I guess it's not the worst and this alone would not worry me that much. I just have to oversave, which is what I've done already anyway.

2. Direction that EU is choosing. It seems that in the EU, the idealists prevail over pragmatists. It has some benefits for me, because for example I think some of the decidents in Brussels genuinely believe in "united Europe", and hence are willing to pour hundreds of billions into upgrading lacking infrastructure in Eastern Europe (and if they were pragmatists, as US is towards Mexico, they'd just have a NAFTA-like free trade agreement, utilize all the cheap labor, and not send a single dime of help).
However, that idealism is really risky when it comes to the decarbonization/zero emission goals. This is a big risk to the future of everyone in EU, including me.

3. Propensity of Poles to vote for incompetent populists. Our current government is not only populist, in that it's spending money like a drunken sailor, but also wildly incompetent, clumsy and completely deaf to the perspective of the business (their leader openly said that people running businesses are primitives, who just want an expensive car and a house with a pool), thus make running businesses in the country harder every year. As a result, the Polish stock market is one of the lowest performing in the world - the rats (i.e. foreign investors) are leaving the ship en masse.

4. Russia. Nuff said. If they win in Ukraine, we're next on the list. If they don't, they can start nuking people, possibly including us.


Most of people on this forum are in the US, and, for you, none of the above but 1) are relevant. So, your anxiety levels are understandably much lower. (Remember the anxiety people had in the US in the 50ies about Soviets nuking the US? People building bomb shelters in their backyard etc? Poland is in the same situation now, except we don't have nuclear weapons ourselves that would allow us to retaliate, and we have a land border with Russia).

One could say that worries 2), 3) and 4) are valid whether one pursuses ERE or not. However, if I choose to self-destruct my career by retiring early, and 15 years later find myself holding a bunch of worthless currency due to combination of political stupidity in Warsaw and Brussels, or being a refugee after a Russian invasion (while holding a bunch of worthless currency due to Poland collapsing), my decision to retire early will not look so good. If I continued working, at least I'd still have a CV that can net me good jobs, help in a refugee situation etc. Hence, my conclusion for now is to try to keep my CV alive by doing intermittent contract work.

M
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Re: Mental health consequences of ERE

Post by M »

@zbigi

I work with several people who migrated to the US from a variety of countries and are now US citizens. It sounds like many of your concerns are related to the country you currently live in.

Is moving to a different country an option at all?

ertyu
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Re: Mental health consequences of ERE

Post by ertyu »

M wrote:
Sat Oct 01, 2022 7:19 am
Is moving to a different country an option at all?
I share the same concerns and it's a cost of living thing. I'd need multiples of my current savings to generate a US minimum wage whereas at 2% total return withdrawal rate my savings generate a local minimum wage currently. Zbigi is a bit better off in this respect bc programmer though. Easier to find a higher paying job elsewhere.

zbigi
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Re: Mental health consequences of ERE

Post by zbigi »

M wrote:
Sat Oct 01, 2022 7:19 am
@zbigi

I work with several people who migrated to the US from a variety of countries and are now US citizens. It sounds like many of your concerns are related to the country you currently live in.

Is moving to a different country an option at all?
I guess it is if survival was stake, but otherwise I'd want to avoid. I'm not the kind of person who easily builds meaningful ties in a new place, so I need to stick with the ones I have built at home. That, plus aging parents.

chenda
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Re: Mental health consequences of ERE

Post by chenda »

zbigi wrote:
Sat Oct 01, 2022 7:11 am
(and if they were pragmatists, as US is towards Mexico, they'd just have a NAFTA-like free trade agreement, utilize all the cheap labor, and not send a single dime of help).
Not trying to nit-pick or get political but it should be highlighted that NAFTA is not a free trade agreement. Mexicans have no legal rights to live and work in the US. The EU by contrast is genuinely a free trade agreement, where there is free movement of goods, services, capital and labour.

FWIW, things like nuclear war and Russian invasion are imo both highly unlikely and not really anything you can do anything about anyway. So I wouldn't worry about them. Geographically Poland is actually in a pretty good place for climate change at least.

M
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Re: Mental health consequences of ERE

Post by M »

zbigi wrote:
Sat Oct 01, 2022 11:15 am
I guess it is if survival was stake, but otherwise I'd want to avoid. I'm not the kind of person who easily builds meaningful ties in a new place, so I need to stick with the ones I have built at home. That, plus aging parents.
Gotcha - I understand. Would something like the Alpha Strategy by John Pugsley make sense in this situation then? I.e. stockpile as much physical tools and consumables now to reduce future expenses? This avoids relying too much on money and financial returns and government, taxes, etc. As long as you have a safe place to store things that you own and can't lose. Like a small house, property, small farm etc. I am assuming there are still safe places to store things..?

For example - 6 years ago I bought around 150 bars of soap on sale for 10 cents a bar...same soap is now 40 cents a bar. I am down to my last 40 bars. I probably should have bought 1,000 bars when it was on sale, since my yield on soap is beating the pants off my yield on ibonds, plus I don't have to pay federal taxes on this 'yield' either.

I have plenty of fairly safe storage space though that I procured for cheap. Like the soap it was also on sale.

I'm not familiar with Poland at all. Would this be possible?

Eureka
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Re: Mental health consequences of ERE

Post by Eureka »

My mental health has improved tremendously since I retired some 5 years ago. No more workplace stress and not having to spend most of my awake time and most of my creative energy on other people's projects. Such a relief to quit. Now I have all my time to my own disposal. This is bliss on a level I did not even imagine - I can engage in projects and activities of my own choice and - even better - only need to deal with people whom I chose to deal with.

All this has a strong positive impact on my mental health and I am now much more robust than ever no matter what happens around me or in the world.

My costs of living are so low that even if inflation will double or tripple them, they are still absolutely low. And nothing to worry about. I have little income streams here and there as some of my activities make a revenue. Also, I grow some of my food and exchange favors in my local community (eg I make a webpage and get carpentry done in return). Thus, I am not dependend on what happens to my investments and even if I should lose them, it would not make much of a difference, if any, to the sustainability of my life.

My mental health is for ever grateful that I discovered ERE.

zbigi
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Re: Mental health consequences of ERE

Post by zbigi »

M wrote:
Sat Oct 01, 2022 10:53 pm
Gotcha - I understand. Would something like the Alpha Strategy by John Pugsley make sense in this situation then? I.e. stockpile as much physical tools and consumables now to reduce future expenses? (...)
Yes, that would be doable. Stockpiling would help in a scenario where the local economy would go to shambles, but there would be no physical danger (no russian invasion or nuking). However, for such scenario, it would be easier to convert a big part of my stash into assets in a foreign currency (preferably onces that will hold value in inflation). Unfortunately, due to large foreign exchange fluctuations over time (i.e., in the past 15 years, the value of 1 USD has fluctuated between 2.05 PLN and 5 PLN) , it means one needs to heavily oversave to have enough buffer (and also find a way to protect against inflation in the foreign currency as well.). Nevertheless, I think I should look into doing that, once polish currency is off its record lows (which probably means - once the war in Ukraine resolves one way or another, which might take another couple of years).

WFJ
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Re: Mental health consequences of ERE

Post by WFJ »

IMHO the driver of FIRE/ERE is the primary driver of mental health after achieving FIRE. If anxiety and stress is driving one to FIRE, then this will continue post-FIRE. If freedom/curiosity/others are driving FIRE, these will continue post-FIRE. I also believe that there is an issue with how one arrives at FIRE. If brainpower was the primary driver and this is likely to persist, probably not much reason for anxiety/stress/negative effects. If luck/connections/stressful pursuits were the primary driver to achieve FIRE, stress/anxiety may be more likely.

I personally do not like what is occurring in many aspects of the US and world but if I had to choose between having X million more dollars or my current health and ability to solve problems, I would choose the later (assuming X was less than 25-50+). At some point, wealth can buy a rocket ship and an island, but the stress and risk of getting to that point is not worth it in my mind.

What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.
Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.
Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.
Henry David Thoreau

prudentelo
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Re: Mental health consequences of ERE

Post by prudentelo »

E-RE idea had caused me to stick with bad job ~2 years longer than otherwise, because income too high for me to reproduce elsewhere. Very high saving rate. Unsure if this was worth it. Probably was.

On other hand, have never had to "worry" about money. Easy to forget that this is the number 1 cause of stress in the population over all. For me, for most here probably, the worst that money problem can do is reduce the size of huge pot of "unnecessary" money.

Ultiamtely this came true in another perspective, much deeper perspective, when it became clear to me that I can live an extremely rich life on the minimum wage with no savings at all. While I plan and hope never have to do that, the ability takes all stress out of the career and money issues. There is no outcome in career, including complete blow-up, that can cause a major drop in my quality of life. Again, easy to forget this is very rare.

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