PlantPedaler's Journal

[PlantPedaler]

Welcome to my journal! A bit about myself — I'm a 27 year old living in NYC. My yearly expenses come out to ~24K. This translates to a 2% withdrawal rate from my 1.2M portfolio. This portfolio and the fact that I was laid off from my software engineering role last year, led me to use 2024 as an opportunity to explore post-employment living. The following a bit of reflection on my year.

I spent my time learning how to cook from scratch, instilling healthy habits like meditating, exercising, and stretching into my routine, and bootstrapping various hobbies like guitar, drawing, and bicycle repair. Overall, I'm very happy with how I've been able to spend my time. It feels amazing to finally have time to learn the skills I’ve wanted for so long but couldn’t pursue because of my busy work schedule.

But yet I've spent the past year grappling with feelings of self doubt in the face of the open abyss that is the remainder of my life. My fears are two fold.

First that I've been too brash with my decision to remain unemployed, and if I do not return I will lose my opportunity for the traditional two-kids-and-a-picket-fence life style that so many of my peers are pursuing. Essentially, boxing myself financially into a lifestyle that I carved out for myself in my 20s. While there is some truth to the idea — mainly that I should maintain the flexibility to adapt to a different lifestyle if, in the future, I decide that an ERE lifestyle isn’t right for me and my expenses increase — I can’t help but feel that giving in to societal pressure would be failing myself. After all, I’ve never cared about having children, I view suburban sprawl as an unmitigated climate disaster, and I have no interest in international travel or fancy consumer electronics.

Secondly, there’s the concern that my early retirement might involve spending my time on hobbies purely to pass the time, with no broader impact beyond reducing my consumer footprint compared to the traditional salaryman — essentially idling my days away. While this form of living might be enjoyable for me, I value making an impact on the world, and this idling of time on hobbies to avoid boredom feels no more meaningful than spending all day watching Netflix.

I suppose what I'm looking for to ease the above fears are:
1. some sort of self or part time employment to provide security for potential future changes expenses
2. some project that aligns with my values and makes me feel like I'm contributing to the world

Preferably a solution that combines 1 & 2. Some areas I'm interested are plant-based diets, bicycling as a means of transport, anticonsumption for the sake of sustainability. Maybe one solution that solves 1 & 2 is to be a private-plant-based chef operating on a sliding scale fee to expose plant-based cooking to a broader audience. Or maybe the solution to 1 has nothing to do with 2 (though this is probably not great lifestyle design!). Like if a solution to 1 is to do seasonal tax prep work and a solution to 2 is to host a workshop for acquiring a commuter bike on a budget.

Going forward into 2025, I want to continue to think about solutions for 1 & 2. I'd love to hear if others on this community have dealt with similar problems.

[AxelHeyst]

Welcome PlantPedaler! Congrats on post-employment. I imagine that making NYC work on 24k/yr is quite a feat. I'd also guess that that's an environment where there is a tremendous amount of social pressure/expectation to be doing something more hustley than enjoying post-retirement.

I haven't dealt with exactly the same 'problem' (still not FI), but reconciling financial security with activity that aligns with values/desire to contribute is something I've spent a great deal of time thinking about. A couple thoughts off the top of my head:

• You're a 27yo with a 1.2M NW and a 24k COL in NYC. The notion that you don't have the intelligence, perseverance, and self-possession to spin up a remunerative gig (a job, a business, whatever) if needed even after several years away from whatever your original hyper-specialization was is ridiculous. You'll be fine, even if you decide later in life that you need the picket fence etc and so need more than your current NW (however I'd point out that with a 2% WR, just keep doing what you're doing, your NW is likely to go into runaway, and there's your funding for future picket fences).
• The dream is to do (2) and it incidentally covers (1). Because of your financial situation my suggestion would be to forget about (1) for now and pursue (2) via low-cost-of-'failure' experiments. Start on the commuter bike workshops now, this evening, execute it. Reflect on how that project went. Did you meet any cool people? Is your stoke saying "do more of exactly this" or is it saying "that was cool, but let's tweak and do something slightly different"? Follow the stoke. Keep iterating. Go all in, if that's what you feel like doing. You've bought yourself the freedom to do exactly this!
• Hobbies are indeed lame.
• I think a thing that can block people from actually executing on (2) is that they think they've got to figure out The Thing that they'll want to do forever. I think this is wildly unrealistic. I think you have to start, and by starting you generate information, and you iterate your execution based on that information, and if you keep doing this it leads to wonderful-to-you places.

Looking forward to following along! Keep us updated!

[jacob]

First that I've been too brash with my decision to remain unemployed, and if I do not return I will lose my opportunity for the traditional two-kids-and-a-picket-fence life style that so many of my peers are pursuing. Essentially, boxing myself financially into a lifestyle that I carved out for myself in my 20s. While there is some truth to the idea — mainly that I should maintain the flexibility to adapt to a different lifestyle if, in the future, I decide that an ERE lifestyle isn’t right for me and my expenses increase — I can’t help but feel that giving in to societal pressure would be failing myself. After all, I’ve never cared about having children, I view suburban sprawl as an unmitigated climate disaster, and I have no interest in international travel or fancy consumer electronics.

Big strategic decisions like foregoing a career in jobbing does close off some paths, see https://www.getrichslowly.org/fifteen-y ... etirement/ Yet, having children or a mortgage provides their own kind of inescapable lock-in. If you're not sure, the best strategy is to reduce the time horizon for commitments (at least you won't have to suffer long from wrong choices), focus on maintaining options, and prioritize reversible choices.

Secondly, there’s the concern that my early retirement might involve spending my time on hobbies purely to pass the time, with no broader impact beyond reducing my consumer footprint compared to the traditional salaryman — essentially idling my days away. While this form of living might be enjoyable for me, I value making an impact on the world, and this idling of time on hobbies to avoid boredom feels no more meaningful than spending all day watching Netflix.

On the other hand ... I've spent the past 20 years since I graduated turning my entire life[style] into making an impact on the world. TBH, I've probably been feeling the effects of burnout from that over the past 5 years. It's only in this last year (2024) where I made a deliberate decision to prioritize myself and hobbies that were specifically chosen so as NOT to impact the world instead of continuously "carrying" the sense of having to impact on my shoulders. It feels nice to do something "irrelevant" for a change.

It fairly easy to create a nominal balance in your life but balance doesn't actually mean anything unless you feel it. E.g. taking time off or doing something else doesn't work if all that time is spent thinking about the "mission" or the "vision".

"Broader impact" can become its own kind of lock-in and turn into a career on its own. Indeed, "impacting the world" can definitely become boring in its own way with its own kind of hedonic adaption. For example, at this point, I've had the same conversations/arguments dozens or even hundreds of times. It does get old.

To return to the Plato's Cave metophor, impacting the world is pretty much taking the role of "freeing the prisoners" or "projecting shadows on the wall". Being a prison ward is effectively only one step removed from being a prisoner. A ward can technically leave yet they still spend most of their waking hours inside the prison. It's a weird irony.

[loutfard]

Welcome, PlantPedaler!

What AxelHeyst said. You've won level 1 in record time once already. I'm almost twice your age and still haven't cracked it. You've built yourself a hyper efficient personal affluence generator in record time. You're its maintenance and repair specialist. You control its inputs and outputs.

I might not have fully cracked level 1 yet, but I'm well on my way. And I have observed quite a few people play level 2 successfully. Level 2 is about meaning in life. Unlike the meaning of life, meaning in life is easy enough to discover by experimenting. Don't let the free form scare you. Just bolt any efficient project you like onto your affluence generator. Become a parent, write a book, play the guitar, become a master computer gamer, camp, build a billion dollar company, grow a forest, eradicate polio, you name it. Apart from helping you discover meaning in life, you'll discover these projects have a funny tendency to generate you even more personal affluence as a side effect.

What if the free form experiments of level 2 yield you just boredom or confusion? May I suggest you speed run level 1 again and hook up the resulting money generator to anything that brings others relief or joy? Effective altruism comes to mind. Meaning in life almost guaranteed.

Good luck! Looking forward to further journal posts!

[PlantPedaler]

@AxelHeyst, thanks for sharing your thoughts! You're absolutely right about the importance of just starting. I've been spending a lot of time trying to find examples of people in the FIRE community who've solved the above challenges in order to emulate their path. While that's not necessarily a bad strategy, it's not the best either. Like you said, chances are if I simply start taking steps toward challenge 2, I'll discover something — whether it's an actual solution or a way to improve my search. The sooner I start, the sooner I'll know, and the sooner I know, the quicker I can iterate.

PS I read Deep Response earlier this week. It's been a great read! I found that it almost perfectly encapsulated my dilemma. I'm looking forward to discussing it once I've digested it a bit more more.

Yet, having children or a mortgage provides their own kind of inescapable lock-in. If you're not sure, the best strategy is to reduce the time horizon for commitments (at least you won't have to suffer long from wrong choices), focus on maintaining options, and prioritize reversible choices.

@Jacob Right, the grass is always greener ... there are no such thing as solutions only tradeoffs. I'm living in indecision in order to postpone the consequences of said decisions, but I would be better off just committing and then iterating on the result.

On the other hand ... I've spent the past 20 years since I graduated turning my entire life[style] into making an impact on the world. TBH, I've probably been feeling the effects of burnout from that over the past 5 years. It's only in this last year (2024) where I made a deliberate decision to prioritize myself and hobbies that were specifically chosen so as NOT to impact the world instead of continuously "carrying" the sense of having to impact on my shoulders. It feels nice to do something "irrelevant" for a change.

It fairly easy to create a nominal balance in your life but balance doesn't actually mean anything unless you feel it. E.g. taking time off or doing something else doesn't work if all that time is spent thinking about the "mission" or the "vision".

"Broader impact" can become its own kind of lock-in and turn into a career on its own. Indeed, "impacting the world" can definitely become boring in its own way with its own kind of hedonic adaption. For example, at this point, I've had the same conversations/arguments dozens or even hundreds of times. It does get old.

Based on my post-employment experience so far, I’ve found that striking a balance between impactful and entertaining uses of time (especially when those two don’t overlap) is the most sustainable approach for me. Otherwise I feel too burned out from too much impact or too selfish from too much entertainment related hobbies.

It's difficult for me to picture a sustainable lifestyle for myself where I continuously prioritize either impact or excitement over the other.

@loutfard thank you for your encouragement! I have since ruled out Effective Altruism as a sustainable lifestyle for myself. In my opinion, Effective Altruism leans too far in the impactful direction to the point where I'd burn out and be fairly bitter towards pursuing any future impactful projects.

[AxelHeyst]

I've been spending a lot of time trying to find examples of people in the FIRE community who've solved the above challenges in order to emulate their path.

I find it interesting how few examples of lifestyles I want to emulate come from the FIRE community -- at least the *visible* aka online-and-posting-or-blogging-about-it community. I tend to find freedom-to lifestyle inspiration either from ~dirtbag culture or intentional-living culture (personal preference) -- and then often but not always think to myself "Imagine the possibilities if these people were FI!"

A recent example of someone doing something I find inspirational is the Christian Sawyer episode on Nate Hagens. The guy lives in S Az and has spun up a community work party thing (I wonder if MidsizeLebowski is in this social circle?). So cool! I took notes and am incorporating into my own thoughts on post-employment projects.

[bos]

Welcome! Same age here, but not the same net worth sadly Looking forward to reading your journal.
Having kids can absolutely align with ERE if approached intentionally. There are some forum member with kiddo's and I think it's lovely and interesting to follow their journey. Parenting seems to be a great project that one can aligning with the lifestyle and philosophy one values.

[Biscuits and Gravy]

Having kids can absolutely align with ERE if approached intentionally.

I mistakenly read this comment before I went to bed last night. I slept poorly because of this comment, but I also slept poorly because I’m on week two of the flu and my five year old flew into my room at 2 am screaming because he “had a nightmare” (really he was scheming ways to sleep in my bed).

Look, all of your good intentions fly out the window when you have kids. Every week, I buy a $15 12-pack of individual chocolate milk boxes (that’s $780/year JUST ON MILK) so that my children won’t ask me to make them chocolate milk. Because I’m tired. It’s a waste of money, a waste of resources, and it generates more trash, but I’m tired. You can daydream about intentionally parenting and raising a kid in alignment with ERE all you want, because you’re not tired yet. And if you’re impressed by the forumites who only have a baby (which is a lot like having a dog) or just one healthy kid, I bet for every one of those, there are two or three forumites who had kids and fell out of the community and stopped posting.

And really, when it comes to kids, it’s all dumb luck. Did they get a good combination of genes? Were they born healthy? Will they avoid any traumatic accidents? I could pepper this with anecdotes of parents who had bad luck that completely derailed their lives and their plans, but I’ll spare you and just point you to Far From the Tree for further reading. With every human you add to your family, you are introducing more complexity, more chances for shit to go sideways, and a ravenous devourer of resources. Kids are nigh impossible to plan around, and ERE1 requires a great deal of planning and risk-calculation. I’m not saying don’t have kids. I’m just snarking about them there rose-colored lenses you seem to have donned.

[bos]

@Biscuits and Gravy, fair points being made. I am not a parent, however have plenty of family with kids. The holiday season just ended so I indeed might see everything still very rozy after all the little kiddo's anyway, needing to buy {X} because kids ask for it does not sound sustainable. I know family members who got derailed after having kids—but they were barely on the rails to begin with and had been derailed plenty of times before.
Personally, my life has only improved when taking on more responsibility. Most of the inspiring journals here seem to show the same pattern, even with the challenges that come with it. Whether that means having kids, publishing a book, or building their house.

[Biscuits and Gravy]

needing to buy {X} because kids ask for it does not sound sustainable. I know family members who got derailed after having kids—but they were barely on the rails to begin with and had been derailed plenty of times before.

You know what, I apologize for snarking at you for your inexperience and idealism. That was a dick thing for me to do. Thanks for your pushback. Maybe I do have flimsy integrity when it comes to my kids. I can't help but be emotionally enmeshed with the little jerks, but my lack of differentiation eats away at my integrity and hobbles their development. It's a process and, as you said in your initial post, a great project. That said, I could only come to this realization after two days away from my kids and two good nights of sleep. They, and the exhaustion, make it difficult to hold onto myself.

@plantpedaler To your "I'd love to hear if others on this community have dealt with similar problems"--I can't think of a forum member who hasn't dealt with these problems and navel-gazed about it extensively in their journals. Have fun reading! You're in an excellent position and I hope you keep sharing your thoughts and direction.

ETA Imagining becoming a parent is like that scene in Month Python and the Holy Grail when they get to the Bridge of Death. The Bridgekeeper asks one dude what his favorite color is and the others waiting to cross shout “that’s EASY!” but the Bridgekeeper might ask you what the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow is and off you go flying over the side of the bridge.

[DutchGirl]

@plantpedaler... while a hot and hip traveling lifestyle where you, I don't know, accumulate credit card points and get free upgrades to first class and then go on free one-week trips to the other side of the planet and you make lots of instagrammable pictures... maybe just isn't your thing...

I can still imagine you slow-traveling. How about making one trip (plane? boat? train? bike?) to an area of the world that you're interested in and staying there for as long as the country permits travelers to stay or as long as you want (whichever is shorter)? Is there a culture, a climate or a nature area that you'd like to experience? Is there something you'd like to learn in the country or city that is famous for teaching it?

[PlantPedaler]

I can still imagine you slow-traveling. How about making one trip (plane? boat? train? bike?) to an area of the world that you're interested in and staying there for as long as the country permits travelers to stay or as long as you want (whichever is shorter)? Is there a culture, a climate or a nature area that you'd like to experience? Is there something you'd like to learn in the country or city that is famous for teaching it?

Traveling doesn't make the list of things that I'm interested in pursuing because I just naturally lack the curiosity about different places/cultures. Given that lack of curiosity, traveling just falls to the bottom of the list of things I could be doing now that I'm not employed. For example, answering the question of whether someone like me, with zero musical ability, can learn to play the guitar is much more interesting to me. Though I will say that I am looking forward to doing more group bikepacking trips in the future just because I enjoy the bonding that comes out of those sorts of trips.

[suomalainen]

Whether that means having kids, publishing a book, or building their house.

One of these is not like the others.

[loutfard]

For example, answering the question of whether someone like me, with zero musical ability, can learn to play the guitar is much more interesting to me.

Trust me on the following advice. Just don't ask me why please.

You want an experienced teacher with attention to detail, a very systematic approach and lots of patience to guide you, especially the first few years. This combination of qualities in a musical instrument teacher is rare, but anything less risks guiding you on a path towards a low local maximum. The only way ahead from these is unlearning and relearning differently to advance. That is an incredibly hard and frustrating experience you want to avoid.

Good luck!

[suomalainen]

On the other hand ... I've spent the past 20 years since I graduated turning my entire life[style] into making an impact on the world. TBH, I've probably been feeling the effects of burnout from that over the past 5 years. It's only in this last year (2024) where I made a deliberate decision to prioritize myself and hobbies that were specifically chosen so as NOT to impact the world instead of continuously "carrying" the sense of having to impact on my shoulders. It feels nice to do something "irrelevant" for a change.

Not that this is necessarily what you were saying, but it’s always been fascinating to me that an aspired-to freedom-to, once achieved, after a while, becomes your next freedom-from. The lesson for me there has been to reduce the aspirations and to look around and enjoy wherever it is I currently find myself for whatever enjoyment it has to offer.

Also, this sounds a bit like the web of pleasant distractions discussed way back when.

[jacob]

No, this is exactly what I was saying/thinking. A "sense of mission" can easily turn into "caves all the way up".

The only way out is probably to develop a "good enough" attitude for whatever cave-level on is satisfied with.

However, in my case it seems more like a mode of "go for the next one until I succeed, otherwise take a longish break and then try again" until I die.

[PlantPedaler]

A "sense of mission" can easily turn into "caves all the way up".

I'm not convinced caves are the best analogy here. Mainly because there's the implication that leaving the cave is the goal. This tends to ignore the fact that life on the outside of a cave is isolating and thus seems to thwart the sense of community that most people tend to need for fulfillment.

A common pattern I'm seeing from reading through people's journals on here is that they quit their jobs and then within a few years end up feeling a sense of meaninglessness. Maybe the lesson here is that people need a balance of engagements from those that are entertaining to those that satisfy a need for purpose?

Also, this sounds a bit like the web of pleasant distractions discussed way back when.

I have the same qualms about "web of pleasant distractions" since distraction tends to imply that there's something being avoided. I think "engagement" would be more apt here since it frames life as an opportunity rather than a punishment.

[AxelHeyst]

I'm not convinced caves are the best analogy here. Mainly because there's the implication that leaving the cave is the goal. This tends to ignore the fact that life on the outside of a cave is isolating and thus seems to thwart the sense of community that most people tend to need for fulfillment.

The trick is that once you see the cave for the simulation it is, it becomes impossible to enjoy/relax into the easily-accessible sense of community that you reference. That's the whole reason the blue pill contains amnesic compounds: the cave is only enjoyable insofar as you don't realize you're in a cave.

Life outside the cave can indeed be isolating because there are fewer people wandering around up there and if you don't put in an unfair amount of effort to Find the Others, you will not find the sense of community most people desire. There is nothing inherently anti-community about post-Cave life.

A common pattern I'm seeing from reading through people's journals on here is that they quit their jobs and then within a few years end up feeling a sense of meaninglessness.

Some of us are overachievers and get started on the sense of meaninglessness well before quitting our jobs. For some, we see w*rk as an activity that distracts us from being able to spend time figuring out the truth the sense of meaninglessness is pointing at, and a major motivation for FIRE is to 'clear the deck' of obligations so we can focus on figuring out what the kernel of that truth really is, and if there's anything that can be done about it, and if not what then?

[suomalainen]

I have the same qualms about "web of pleasant distractions" since distraction tends to imply that there's something being avoided. I think "engagement" would be more apt here since it frames life as an opportunity rather than a punishment.

Two sides of the same coin? Every engagement is a distraction from everything one is not doing? Perhaps the connotation is engagement is healthy while distraction is not? I’m having this same conversation with my son currently and it seems this is more about the narrative we tell ourselves about the action (the meta-action) than about any useful distinction in the action itself.

[jacob]

Two sides of the same coin? Every engagement is a distraction from everything one is not doing? Perhaps the connotation is engagement is healthy while distraction is not? I’m having this same conversation with my son currently and it seems this is more about the narrative we tell ourselves about the action (the meta-action) than about any useful distinction in the action itself.

Yeah, also some people's engagements are other people's distractions and vice versa (watching sports, for example). There are (at least) two dimensions to this. In terms of distraction, we need to distinguish between voluntary distractions and involuntary distractions. In terms of engagement, the degree of engagement depends on our ability to see and connect [the object [what we see] with the subject [ourselves]).