Where were you 4 years ago

[Rerun]

This thread really helped me reflect.

4 years ago I was actually finishing up my overseas screening to be stationed in Japan. I was dead set on doing a full 20 and retiring for that pension. At this point I was at ten years of service in the Navy. Two months later I would take a month of leave and travel around the southern USA realizing I didn’t want to stay in the military. I was freshly debt free and was deep into reading about personal finance. Fire was something I had just begun to hear about.

It’s crazy to think how much your life can change with one little month off of work.

[ertyu]

January 5, 2019, I was at the most highly paid job I've ever had. It was in a very polluted place, I had a lot of anxiety, and I was overworked. I coped with junk food and gained a lot of weight. Unbeknownst to myself, I'd end up pulling a runner for covid, working remotely for a couple of months, and then getting fired. I ended up at my parents', both the pandemic and "home sweet home" messing with my head. Probably the most insane I've been, if I look back. Because I didn't work from May 2020 till October '21 and then bought my money sink of an apartment, these last two years I've been getting back up to where I started in terms of savings. Am also saner - though i don't know if i'd exactly call myself sane right now

[avalok]

Four years ago I was half a year on from discovering ERE and had spent the ensuing time going through an existential crisis. In fact, I recall the period being particularly anguishing as I struggled to apply what seemed so right, while being still so young and naïve. I still thought ERE was only about saving as much money as possible in order to FIRE ASAP; everything was framed in that way.

I was also entering my final semester at uni and going through a phase of hating the idea of working in an office; I wanted to work outside, perhaps as a ranger for the National Trust. I recall I had a second job interview for an entry post-grad dev position but called to cancel on the day because I felt so repulsed by the idea. It all seems very strange to me now, not because I like office work, but because I think I'm more pragmatic and can focus on the parts I derive value from.

We were comparatively much poorer. I remember celebrating (mildly) when we crossed the 20K net worth line. We had no debt (no mortgage) and only one income source (my partner's).

In the coming couple of months my focus on ERE waned and I became heavily invested in meditation and Buddhism, with an ecological spin. I discarded parts of it (though not the frugality and DIY ethics) until early 2021 when I found this video and picked up the book again.

[Humanofearth]

Indexing. Super tight with money. Very not focused on health or building self up, just saving to retire early. Kinda dead inside but at least had some love and joy. Finally single that time but fat, not focused.

Feels like a metamorphosis since then. 2 years ago is when it got to its peak negativity, 6 months after the lockdowns, aya woke me up. Health became #1.

Now, that’s changing but health is central to my life in a way it wasn’t back then.

I ate junk food daily, consumed junk content daily, at least I wasn’t doing drugs or in violent situations. At least I was saving. Still wanted to travel. Now I’m so over it, want to routine now: work, train, play, and sleep shortly after sunset. Nice life.

[M]

4 years ago I had the same job, same boss, same spouse, same house, same car, and was hanging out on the same ere forums.

Nothing has changed except I am now a little older, a little richer, and have more gray hair...

[Bytore]

Bytore on 2/14/21 was totally absorbed in trying to prevent his crop of garlic planted in what turned out to be a seasonal five-thousand square foot marsh from rotting. He was out in the fields at first light that day, and every day since December digging ditches where once were eighteen inch wide walkways between rows. He had started to become successful with this and the water was draining, the garlic was growing vigorously. He had just gotten several huge loads of woodchips delivered and was happily spreading these in the ditches and transforming them into woodchip-walkways that continued draining the water.

He was also tending his baby plants in his custom scrap wood greenhouse and that day had started transplanting various green leafy vegetables into some beds he had earlier prepped.

He was rapidly burning through the money he had saved from his previous career as a light-rail operator to fund his startup small farm with the hopes of earning a net profit of ~7,000 that year. Enough to cover his living expenses.

He was also envisioning a future, about two years out, of owning his own farm land with the help of a USDA farm loan. Ideally on some degraded land on which he could work to increase it's biodiversity.

My present is much different than the future I had imagined it would be.

[Biscuits and Gravy]

Four years ago I was married to a different man, living in a different house, working full time, and my kids were 1 and 2 years old. Now that man is largely a stranger, that house was sold, I’m on hiatus from work (potentially never to return), and the kids are reading and writing and fetching their own snacks. I was paralyzed by uncertainty and fear of the unknown. Thank you, past me, for mustering up the courage/insanity it took to leave.

ETA: Oh, dang. That was five years ago. How time flies. Four years ago I was hemorrhaging money paying for my and my soon-to-be-ex’s living expenses.

[AxelHeyst]

I was building out a shipping container in the forest outside Yosemite, working one day/wk, spending a lot of time thinking about how to internalize semiERE.

[Hristo Botev]

4 years ago I:

- Had just returned from my annual 3-night silent retreat;
- Was debating whether or not to take an offer whereby I would work an extra 100 hours/year for an extra 7.5% in gross pay (I first said no, then yes, then no again);
- Had just finished Kingsnorth's Alexandria trilogy;
- Was reconsidering my investment strategy, and specifically thinking about taking on physical gold as a decent chunk (10-20%) of my total investments (shame I didn't, as gold has appreciated by about 68% per ounce over the past 4 years); and
- Was lamenting some of the journal deletion shenanigans that was happening on the Forum at the time.

viewtopic.php?p=235716#p235716

ETA, this prediction in fact turned out to be mostly true. The caveat being I don't actually plan on retiring early and so we focused our investments more in tax-advantaged retirement accounts than in accounts outside of retirement. But, push comes to shove, and depending on how hard you squint, we are in fact FI 4 years after this post. Yeah for us!

Somewhat relatedly, I did some spreadsheet therapy at work yesterday (the kind of thing I wouldn’t have time for if I’d taken the extra 7.5% in pay), and assuming 8% ROI (big assumption), we’ll be for real FI in less than 4 years. This means the kids’ schooling and our mortgage is paid off, with enough in savings outside of retirement accounts to provide us $2,500/mo. in passive income until we hit 59, which will be comfortable for monthly spending once our 2 biggest expense categories (housing and kids’ schooling) are gone. I can get comfortable with less than 4 years.

[DutchGirl]

Four years ago it was the beginning of 2021. With the Covid situation we were already very happy to live in the house we still live in - with enough space, and a garden. Recently the hairdresser in my parents' village had died of Covid (my mum told me) in his late fifties/early sixties. Vaccinations were starting up and would hopefully solve the whole problem. I was going to start a multi-month sabbatical and I was going to work part time during the sabbatical (and also do a volunteer role in a recovery facility for people who had been in the hospital). That sabbatical would confirm to me that is was time to leave my job at the time (where I had been a bit over ten years) and go find something else. Looking back in the spreadsheet, I had two thirds of the assets that I have now, and started to feel some freedom there to experiment more with my work and lifestyle because I had enough to fund my expenses for 8 years or so even if I didn't have any other income.

[Jean]

I was being burnt by the flame of foolish ambitions

I was living in my garage, trying to do a master but classes were online and it sucked. I thought i wanted to write. I was applying for internships for no answers. I had a slower cpu than now.

[Henry]

Recently the hairdresser in my parents' village had died of Covid (my mum told me) in his late fifties/early sixties.

Sad that his life was cut short.

[chenda]

Sad that his life was cut short.

Curl up and Dye is a favoured name for hair salons which cater to old ladies.

[jacob]

Four years ago:

We were still running around with masks insofar we were running around at all. If we met anyone it was still 6 feet apart (really, more like 12, because fudge factor), masked, and outside. Even in 2025, neither of us have had COVID yet... I'm guessing we're a very rare minority at this point. I know only one other person in that club beyond DW and I.

We were still counting down the days until we could get access to the vaccine. We were part of the hit-reload-to-get-early-appointment crowd and landed one a couple of days after they first became available to the last-in-line: "most vulnerable/least critical"-demographic which was "non-essential worker just under age 50" #FML. I remember being impressed by how the national guard ran the vaccination site after having taken over an empty store space in a mall. Effective, not asking to fill out countless forms to even begin, just getting it done. In terms of effectiveness and convenience, it reminded me of the euroland health care system.

Our neighbor (nurse) died of COVID after likely getting infected by her daughter (also nurse). Pretty traumatic for their family. There was a funeral. This is the only person I personally know who died, but I knew a handful who lost uncles, bosses, ... US life expectancy started declining steeply around that time, dropping below many other developed countries.

Meanwhile ERE HQ was doing fine. We had a garden and a dozen gamma-lidded buckets of staples to carry us through 2020 but at this point we were back to normal in-store shopping.

The global supply chains were still shot to hell as a consequence of the global instituinal failure to deal with epidemic outbreaks. It only takes one major power to screw this up and in this case they all did for various reasons. A short recession was triggered. The markets dipped and my stock-pick defenses played well. I made some significant changes at the bottom. I was never worried about money, jobs, putting food on the table, fixing stuff, ... so ERE works. Second test passed since 2009. Confidence +1

In that regard, by 2021 I was glad that the "adults were back in charge". I'm politically flexible in terms of left/right. I have a wide Overton window in that regard, perhaps maybe too wide sometimes. However, people might be surprised to learn that I don't suffer fools gladly even if I try to pretend otherwise. I was confident that the world had learned and would remember its lesson. (I'm also naively idealistic as it turns out.) This constellation is something I'm still working on as a personal self-development project. Having experienced it once before, I hope to do better this time around.

The forum was dealing with the fallout from the change in government and taking damage both figuratively and literally. Those who previously played offense now played defense. Self-cancellation on the forum once again became popular as it previously had, whenever the shoe got on the other foot. People previously demanding the other side to act more rationally were now acting irrationally. Go figure! Same old same old. Blargh! Plus ca change. So I was dealing with that once again and not happy about it. It would be another year before the final straw broke this camel's back and political disagreement for the sake of debate became persona-non-grata around here.

Overall, four years ago, my focus was still on playing defense in a world that had been broken apart. The positive take-away was how it constituted a trial-by-fire of ERE principles and that living by those principles ERE worked. It's one thing to have a good theory. However, having experience with that theory working out is so much better in terms of confidence and the ability to sleep well at night. It also makes it more obvious/actionable what to do again.

I already ordered more N95s for starters.

[theanimal]

Four years ago I was finishing up the electrical work on our newly built house and getting it ready for Mrs. Animal and I to move in. 2020 was one of the best years of my life and we were still riding that wave in 2021. Mrs. Animal and I were 6 months into our relationship at that time and I had already picked out a ring, knowing I would propose to her. We moved into the house that spring and I proposed shortly thereafter.