A Skeptic Wrote an Article about EER

[thebbqguy]

I found this article tonight quite by accident. I thought you might find it amusing.

http://www.darwinsmoney.com/early-retirement/

[Tyler9000]

Nice rant.

My favorite line: "And by the way, on $15,000, you’re not eating organic. Plan for diabetes, cancer and more."

Reminded me of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToWcEqQhnIU

Forget it, he's rolling.

[C40]

Funny seeing him and Financial Samurai go at it in the comments. Reminds me of the time I saw two middle-aged men (both apparently idiots) get into a fistfight in a grocery store parking lot.

Funny stuff here:

#1 - The whole premise of his post is that he found a poorly written article about ERE and trashed the entire concept of ERE based on the shortcomings of that individual article.

#2 - Extreme cognitive dissonance: He repeatedly says "they’re not really retired or they’re living off a spouse". By "they", he seems to be referring to 100% of early retirees. His rules seem to be: A - if you have a spouse that works, no matter any other conditions, you are not retired. B - If you're younger than 55, you're most likely not retired. C - if you don't travel, or basically spend less than the median income, you're not retired, and you're not living a life worth living.

#3 - His #1 reason for early retirees not being retired is that they do some kind of work. Then he ends up defining things that in his opinion don't count as work. Two examples: managing an investment portfolio, and being a landlord. Seriously. Landlording is ok. He notes that he is going to retire and then landlord... but if you write a blog you can never be considered retired! (oddly enough, he is a blogger himself, so I wonder if he is going to have to stop making any more blog posts or delete his blog to feel retired)

[Dragline]

Yes, he's a Boomer bullshit artist. And I agree with your points 100%, especially the cognitive dissonance issue.

Honestly, the guy is just a loser.

[DividendGuy]

Yeah, his article was mostly a direct attack on me.

I generally don't really mind the noise, but this one kind of pissed me off coming from a fellow personal finance blogger. Then I poked around the rest of the site and realized what an a**hole I was dealing with. His premise is mostly a joke, so I tried to argue my viewpoint. But it was to no avail.

Persona non grata to me.

[jennypenny]

@DG--I think you did a nice job of explaining your position in the comments.


Ignoring the usual objections to ERE in his article and the comments, the thing that struck me was that he seems to assume that people are living on much larger budgets, and then scale them back once they retire. He doesn't realize that people who retire early have lived at that level (quite happily) for years. Early retirees probably have a smaller adjustment to make to retirement living than regular retirees.

He's stuck in the anger stage of the five stages of money/lifestyle grief. He just wants to vent and have people yell "Right on, man!"


I'm getting pretty good at ignoring the typical ERE criticisms, but if I ever go postal, it will be because someone intimated the 'wife/kids = baggage' idea to me one too many times.

[Gilberto de Piento]

It's just controversy to get readers to the site who will click through the links to the credit card affiliate offers. It's a standard play in the blogger playbook. The best thing to do would be to delete this thread and ignore him.

[KevinW]

@DividendGuy, what is his joke of a premise? I can't muster the will to read any of his other posts.

[GandK]

I read his article and the comments. DG's response was great.

The dude who wrote it has issues, there's no question. Basically in his post he's taking issue with other people's lifestyle choices, financial decisions and word usage, but won't admit that's what he's doing when he's called on it. His responses to comments that disagree with him are nothing but a series of bandwagon and personal incredulity fallacies... he doesn't believe minimalist lifestyles could ever possibly be fulfilling so it's cheating to live that way and claim retirement, 99% of people would be unhappy living on 15k because the government says that's poverty, his opinion on stock market returns is clearly the logical one so dudes claiming otherwise are deluded, most people who pool their resources say things his way so any other word choices can't be valid, etc.

Basically he's a full-fledged member of the Internet Retirement Police, despite his assertios to the contrary.

[plantingourpennies]

It's click bait for his blog. Obnoxious, but it it works.


No idea why people get so upset about the term "retirement." It seems so innocent!

[Ian]

I read these, because I like to expose myself to different points of view, but I can never find them amusing. People seem to be coming from such different positions that there's no real possibility of communication.

[jacob]

The funniest(*) part of is seeing FS and Darwin going at it in the comments since FS is also notorious for writing inciting pieces and in fact took Darwin's side in a similar manner before he retired himself.

http://www.financialsamurai.com/the-dar ... s-dangers/

(*) Actually I don't find the IRP funny at all, but I'll take what I can get.

[USAF Sgt]

I find it disturbing that people are so willing to take a side, and vehemently attack the opposition, in a matter that in no way effects them. ERE isn't for you? Fine, don't do it. I promise I won't force you to.

I understand that some people believe that to have a positive impact on humanity, an individual must be employed, and I suppose we can debate that logically, but why take such an angry stance against the mentality behind, and the methods that allow, ERE?

[Dragline]

At the root of this kind of hostility is usually cognitive dissonance.

If someone has formed a strong narrative about "how things are" that he or she preaches (a/k/a, "closed-minded"), which explains their position/status in life and relative happiness/unhappiness, and then is confronted with facts that don't fit (i.e., people achieving happiness while violating the preaching), the ordinary human tendency is to try to ignore or discount the new facts and/or destroy the messenger so that the narrative can be maintained.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance for a brief summary of the phenomenon

The other explanation is simply using controversy to drive traffic to the site. This is how news reporting and punditry works. And many blogs who are looking to drive traffic. And all those click-bait headlines with superlatives about "the ## worst/best/most outrageous ___ in the state/country/world/ever made"

[Retiree]

This anger is something those of us who have actually retired face very often. Not just online, but in the real world as well. It is important to understand it, this apparently inexplicable anger, so that we can take it in our stride.

One important cause for this anger is envy, pure and simple. Envy is far commoner than one would imagine!

The other important reason is : people take this as implicit criticism of their own choices. If imitation is implicit flattery, then doinng the exact opposite thing is implicit criticism! And here "they" are correct, we DO find their lives wanting. Don't we? Their anger is misplaced, but the twisted logic behind that anger is not wholly wrong.

And the third reason is, as Dragline says, that these sorry losers need the illusion of virtue to give some meaning to their miserable lives. And we early retirees, by retiring early and staying happy, take that illusion of virtue and happiness away from them. Especially when we also open our mouths to talk about the whys and wherefores of our early retirement.

It is important to not lose ourselves in the negativity of these losers.