Early Retirement Extreme Forums

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Pedal2Petal wrote:I’m doing the pathways myself. Either I’ll lay sod from Costco or I’ll seed the pathways with grass and clover. I want to go heavy on the clover but I’ve noticed most people don’t grow lawns this way. Is there any reason why? I would think the clover would contribute to a much healthier lawn. Any grass nerds out there want to weigh in?

We seeded exclusively with clover in E Washington, and pocket gophers promptly moved in to eat it all. They hadn't been tempted by the previous grass or other things we were trying to grow. Deer also consider clover to be the equivalent of candy. I don't know if either of these would be an issue where you live.

Pedal2Petal wrote: In fact if Trump can cut enough bureaucracy and taxes and political control of everything anybody wants to do, I can even see myself moving back to America in my lifetime.

Now that I already have one really great client, I’m thinking about pursuing more. If I can bill just a day a week, I’d have enough cashflow to start rapidly paying into some property, preferably land. Anybody know of some cheap land in BC?

Osoyoos: In my opinion the most gorgeous city in BC. You’re also looking at the warmest lake in Canada.

The warmest lake in Canada (Lake Osoyoos) is half in the US, and therein lies the answer to all your questions. The Washington Okanogan is at least as beautiful and far cheaper than the Canadian Okanagan (note the different spelling). The Canadian town of Osoyoos is a tropical* resort to Canadians, whereas the town of Oroville is an economically depressed, barely civilized outpost to Americans. And yet: it's the same water, the same terrain, the same weather. If you don't like rules, you'll fit right in. We stopped off in Oroville once to fill a propane tank in our RV on the way to visit Canada. We were worried they would refuse to fill it because it was the old style tank without the legally mandated overfill protection valve. The station attendant waved off our concerns. "Oh, the overfill protection doesn't apply to us," he said. "That's a federal law."

*tropical being a highly relative term here

halfmoon wrote:We seeded exclusively with clover in E Washington, and pocket gophers promptly moved in to eat it all. They hadn't been tempted by the previous grass or other things we were trying to grow. Deer also consider clover to be the equivalent of candy. I don't know if either of these would be an issue where you live.

We don't have any problems like that, nothing lives underground that I know of, probably because our ground is comptelely saturated with water much of the year. Here is one of sub irrigated planters in a sad state after over a meter of rain and snow this winter overwhelmed its systems.



The rural paradise of Vancouver Island has a huge deer problem, but I've never heard of a single one here in the big city. Not many deer make it here to the dead center of a population district of 2.5 million taxpaying canadians. We do have Coyotes in the park across the street from us, here is a video of some of its baby coyotes.

halfmoon wrote:The Canadian town of Osoyoos is a tropical* resort to Canadians, whereas the town of Oroville is an economically depressed, barely civilized outpost to Americans. If you don't like rules, you'll fit right in. We stopped off in Oroville once to fill a propane tank in our RV on the way to visit Canada. We were worried they would refuse to fill it because it was the old style tank without the legally mandated overfill protection valve. The station attendant waved off our concerns. "Oh, the overfill protection doesn't apply to us," he said. "That's a federal law."

I'd love to live deep rural. I don't know if I could ever convince my wife though. She needs a medium sized city at a minimum, a place with a profitable radio station. She says she would work even if she didn't need any money, so there will be no ERE for her. Recent places we've looked at are Salem OR, Portland OR, and Carson City NV. I'm very intrigued by Texas as well.



Speaking of rural, this is the farm I will be sending Miles to work every summer. It's the family farm, and underage labor laws do not apply to farm labor. My plan is to produce several children to work the farm which will have many positive effects.

1. More hands will bring in more farm income, securing its profitabily with the possibility of buying another farm in the far future.
2. It would take some burden off my mother who works 12 hours a day on the farm to bring in its income.
3. My children would learn to work hard and smart from an early age which will give them a permanent advantage against their peers, just like I had.

Income Streams are Flowing Slower

I'm officially promoting my websites on Reddit and Facebook again to gain back what is now is a noticable income drop. I tallied up the numbers from 2016 for taxes, and the hit is big enough that with taxes factored in, I will be below last year's bank balance. A situation I would really like to avoid as I only have around 2-3 year's income saved (embarrassingly low compared to many of you I know) I'm also sending an email out to a colleague who might very well have more consulting work for me.

Expenses are Rising as Well

My wife earns a lot more money now, which has had its own drawbacks. Firstly, she can now afford to put much more into our joint account each month, meaning I am matching a higher amount. Secondly, her high income has big tax consequences for me because our incomes are somehow added together so I end up paying more. Taxes are sort of a wash for us though, since Trudeau's baby dividends are so much higher, and are now non-taxable.

We are also going on a pricey vacation to Hawaii, in about a month. Several months after that, we are having another baby. I don't remember if I announced that already; so if not, I am now announcing it. We have #2 due in June, and its extra baby dividend shortly thereafter. The baby should cost nothing, since Miles costs nothing, so 100% of the money goes to general expenses and savings. It will also mean my wife gets another year off work, which means I get a year off too. I could even spend the year working somewhere exciting and end the year with a nice reflated financial cushion. If you have any ideas about exciting seasonal or temporary jobs I could do, leave a reply.



Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Pedal2Petal wrote: I'm very intrigued by Texas as well.

Eww, why?

Kriegsspiel wrote:

Pedal2Petal wrote: I'm very intrigued by Texas as well.

Eww, why?

What's wrong with Texas? It has cheap land and its people are armed and free.

It's hot as fuck. Even the locals don't go outside willingly half the year.

It's not that bad as long as you don't set your AC at 65 all year and stay inside all the time like an idiot.

Well, I guess it depends on each person, but let's not kid ourselves: it's hot as fuck in Texas. When your thoughts are Oregon, Nevada, and Texas, I think Oregon stands out as being the most pleasant.

Kriegsspiel wrote:Well, I guess it depends on each person, but let's not kid ourselves: it's hot as fuck in Texas. When your thoughts are Oregon, Nevada, and Texas, I think Oregon stands out as being the most pleasant.

Yeah, I actually would prefer to stay as close to British Columbia as possible. I personally like Port Angeles but it's too "small town" apparently. So Oregon and Washington both are good candidates, I just don't like Seattle.

Pedal2Petal wrote:

Kriegsspiel wrote:

Pedal2Petal wrote: I'm very intrigued by Texas as well.

Eww, why?

What's wrong with Texas? It has cheap land and its people are armed and free.

I did a bicycle tour west of Austin for a few days and ~90% of the ride was all private ranches fenced off from the road. Just miles and miles of fence (and great views). Very lame to not have more public spaces/parks/land for hiking, camping, recreation.

Pedal2Petal Q&A

I've been approached to do a Q&A for Spanish language blog called opinatron

I'm posting it here as well because I know my loyal readers will be interested in a lot of this.

What motivated you to want to retire early?

I worked many jobs and got bored of all of them relatively quickly. I would usually hold down a job for 8 months, then quit and live off savings until I ran out of money and had to go work again. I quit my last job in 2011 and took paid roles where I could set my hours like building websites for people and running the small business Pedal to Petal. That cut my hours down to 20 a week, about half time from before.

I got sick of Pedal to Petal and building websites too. You are still not the boss because you are working for clients and customers. Then I discovered ERE in 2012 and used my most relevant skill for building passive income, to build passive income. I built value so fast that retired just 1 year later in 2013 but I actually cut my hours worked from 20 down to about 10 during that period. That period I lived the poorest I ever have in my life while I was building up income from a level far below replacement level.

How old were you when you early retired and how many years did you have to work for it?

I was 26. I started building income generating sites in 2010 so I built the skill up over 3 years. It took 8 months of daily work to build up enough of an income base to live off of.

How did you do it?

By building passive income relentlessly, shipping internet content every day until I met my income goal. You could also build passive income through farming, rental property, investing and general entrepreneurship but I chose websites and writing because that's my most developed skill.

Is it necessary to earn a lot of money to retire early? What’s the key factor?

Hell no. I stopped working my last real job in 2011 with $10,000 in student debt and hustled for rent money doing any odd job, consignment or web design contract I could. I built a social network fast and was earning more than I was spending within 6 months.

How would you define your investment strategy? What do you live from now?

Fringe. I recently invested in an income generating website, because it's the industry I know. I also put 700$ into dogecoin mining equipment that did not generate 700$ before the equipment was no longer good enough to run profitably. I'm also as of last week paying somebody to work for me, investing money into my own business. I played with the stock market when I was in my late teens, made some money with AAPL, lost some money with EBAY. It's not predictable for an income source unless you have a lot of money, which takes a lot of time. And yes I consider 10 years a long time, I retired in 2.

Which were your biggest hits and your biggest mistakes?

My biggest hit was the website five gallon ideas. I wouldn't consider any of my projects mistakes even though I often lost money or spent a lot of time on a site that earns no money.I would call them failures not mistakes, and each failure moved my knowledge forward a lot.

If you had to give some advice to people that’s starting, what would it be? Whats your recipe to reach early retirement?

My advice if you have any skill for it whatsoever, is be an entrepreneur. You can even be entrepreneurial if you are working a 9-5 job. Entrepreneurism does not even necessarily have to provide you a financial income, entrepreneurism is about setting up systems. Read the book the E-myth Revisited, I recommend the audio-book.

What do you do now with your time? Was it worth it?

I raise my son and shitpost on the internet. I have a few research projects I would like to do and I am collecting materials for them. I continue to take on any project that can produce a passive stream of something. It might be money, food, electricity, rainwater, heat, light, grassroots political propaganda; anything that's required for me and my family to prosper. And to ask if it's worth it, is like asking if clean water is worth it, or fresh air, or freedom.

Great answers. My only question: why aren't you writing a book?

halfmoon wrote:Great answers. My only question: why aren't you writing a book?

Interesting, what would the book be about? If I had a large loyal audience that could guarantee enough book sales to make it at least somewhat worth it, I might. I did write a short book on how to start a bicycle composting company but I doubt that's what you had in mind

Book royalties are another source of passive income that don't require any capital to get started. I follow a youtuber who puts out daily videos and self-publishes lots of books on Amazon. As of this year he is doing very well for himself, clearing 40 or 50k $ a year . He only started a year or two ago and could probably already "retire" if he wanted to. Here is his Amazon author page. The vast majority of his books he didn't even write, he converts old public domain books into digital and paperback format and sells them cheap.

Personally, I don't read many books any more. I suspect that to keep costs up modern books are mostly filler, containing only one or two original ideas. Blog posts and youtube videos might also contain one or two original ideas, and can be absorbed in 10 minutes. I found some exceptions to this yesterday, in the reference section of my local library. There are a few titles I'd like to check out but you aren't allowed to take anything from this section home. They're hoarding all the good shit for themselves!

Thanks for answering my questions and for mentioning me If anyone else is interested in helping my readers with his knowledge you can visit the messages in the forum here viewtopic.php?f=18&t=8589

Pedal2Petal wrote:Several months after that, we are having another baby. I don't remember if I announced that already; so if not, I am now announcing it. We have #2 due in June, and its extra baby dividend shortly thereafter.

Congratulations on this. We were going to have a baby this year but we decided not to. Truthfully we are just afraid of the entire prospect of it, so who knows what we'll do.

I also spend a lot of time shitposting on the internet.

Pedal2Petal wrote:

halfmoon wrote:Great answers. My only question: why aren't you writing a book?

Interesting, what would the book be about? If I had a large loyal audience that could guarantee enough book sales to make it at least somewhat worth it, I might. I did write a short book on how to start a bicycle composting company but I doubt that's what you had in mind

Personally, I don't read many books any more. I suspect that to keep costs up modern books are mostly filler, containing only one or two original ideas. Blog posts and youtube videos might also contain one or two original ideas, and can be absorbed in 10 minutes.

When I clicked on the link, I thought you meant a company that composted bicycles (despite having read your posts about delivering compost by bicycle). The curse of a literal mind.

I literally know NOTHING on the general subject of monetizing books, ebooks or blogs, but I try not to let that stop me from giving advice. My assumption: books like Jacob's that offer intensely practical advice and those that tell an interesting story outside of the "normal" life should be reasonably successful. You have both factors going for you.

cmonkey wrote:Congratulations on this. We were going to have a baby this year but we decided not to. Truthfully we are just afraid of the entire prospect of it, so who knows what we'll do.

Just do it and it will work out much better than you think. I promise you that your only regret will be that you didn't have one sooner. Have you ever noticed that most people who have one kid, inevitably at least have one more? There's a reason for that.

Kriegsspiel wrote:I also spend a lot of time shitposting on the internet.

Here's a spicy meme hot off the press

halfmoon wrote: My assumption: books like Jacob's that offer intensely practical advice and those that tell an interesting story outside of the "normal" life should be reasonably successful. You have both factors going for you.

I appreciate the vote of confidence! It's not so much the writing process itself that I hesitate about, but the marketing of the materials. I don't have a following like Jacob does, people who visit my site generally don't care who I am at all. I could try to sell the book to people here in this journal, but I wouldn't expect selling more than a few dozen copies. But you're right I think I have original thoughts, both in regards to business and personal life, that readers might find interesting.

I think you have a good story too.

I don't get the meme though, I thought you liked trump. Maybe it is too dank for me to understand.

Just do it and it will work out much better than you think. I promise you that your only regret will be that you didn't have one sooner. Have you ever noticed that most people who have one kid, inevitably at least have one more? There's a reason for that.

This so depends. I know people who regret they had children early, who should have waited, who are happy with one child, who are happy with no children, who wish they only had one child. To say having children will work out much better than you think is an odd thing to say.