Hi! I've recently read the book and looked around the site and forum. I'm in my 30's, a physician (anesthesiologist), INTJ, unmarried, no kids. I live in the suburban northeastern United States.
As far as my personal FIRE aspirations, I earn a good income doing work that has aspects I enjoy. That work also comes with long hours and high stress, and my training left me with large student loans to pay off. So, I pay off loans, save, and invest aggressively, and plan to focus my work more on the parts I like best, and eventually do that part-time. Unfortunately, physician incomes will probably fall rapidly in coming years.
With no family to support, I have large cash reserves, and a fair amount invested. Loan balances are starting to fall as well. I use index funds for investing with exposure to US/Int'l equity, bonds and REITs. "I want to believe" when it comes to value and quality approaches to the equity markets, but I can't find the evidence, especially for formula approaches like "Magic Formula" and "Dogs of the Dow".
Ideas I liked in the book:
- Overall philosophy; I felt like most PF blog readers could benefit from reading the book. Most working and middle class people have lifestyle aspirations from what they see on TV and in magazines, whereas in reality they are much less affluent than they think. ERE gives the framework for thinking about economic reality.
- I agree with most everything about "the lock in" (I have a worthless humanities degree)
- I thought the economic degrees of freedom classifications and the strategy vs. tactics were interesting discussions of the concepts. I like the idea of the modern Renaissance man. Not sure how useful the discussions were to my situation.
- The lifestyle section was good. Some of it may be wishful thinking for most people: going car free, living in very low-cost housing, yet in a safe, walkable neighborhood, etc. Other parts were great and useful to me: buying quality goods that hold value, and thinking of the whole life-cycle of "stuff" when you acquire it.