Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Hi - I'm really excited to be joining this online community. It's the first real online community I've joined after being a lurker here for 2+ years and a lurker on other forums for even longer.

I am an early 20's male who recently moved to a large, medium-cost-of-living southeast city. My job as a programmer is remote. However, I don't have much work to do, I do not enjoy my team or working for such a large company, and talking over a computer is getting old after nearly a year in this job. The job allows me to cover my expenses and save (with health and 401k matching benefits), but that's not enough to push me to continue at it for years. I know some people would kill for this job and my complaints are entitled, but I'm just trying to find what makes me happy.

I will be the first to say how privileged my upbringing was. My parents paid for my college and have given me ~15k, let me live a year at home after college, and let me be my own person. I've started investing in November 2020 in mostly VTSAX and VTIAX (vanguards US and international mutual funds) with some other sector ETF's just to play around and diversify. I saved 90% or more of my income before moving out, whereas I'll save 50% (but hopefully more). That leaves me with around 90k in liquid assets, which I know is a comfortable amount for my age. Currently I'm renting an apartment and paying off a car and trying to live frugally.

For the past 5 or so years, I've always been flipping back and forth between what lifestyle I want. There's the big life with a nice house not having to worry about the small expenses. And there's the small life (or the simple life) where you do more on your own and don't need to work/spend as much. I have the optionality to choose my path since I could work to get a higher-paying job at some tech company or start a business or invest in real estate. I had fantasies of becoming a mathematician or real estate mogul or high-earning tech employee, but I don't think I care about the work enough to put in the hours for something like that. When I find a new hobby / interest, I usually immerse myself in it for a few weeks, then realize I'm not going to pursue it forever and move on to the next thing.

I also have fantasies about being a minimalist tiny-house dweller, spending my days outdoors and working with my hands. Most likely I'll fall somewhere in the middle but closer to the ERE side. I admit I want the "freedom from" more than the "freedom to", mainly since I don't know what I'd do if I were free. I enjoy reading non-fiction, trail biking, cooking, learning new things, and hanging out with friends. My experience with gardening, building/fixing issues around the house, and other ERE habits are minimal, but I'm looking to improve that. It takes a lot to push me to buy something and devote time to learning it on my own, especially knowing I might not use it. I know it's not a productive way to think, and I'm working on it by reminding myself that knowledge is the most useful thing I can use my money on at this stage.

Anyway, that's me in a nutshell. I might start a journal or other posts to start conversations and get feedback. Some initial questions I have for anyone who's reading this:

- what do you think I should focus on? Defining goals, learning skills, planning investments, etc
- do/did you work a virtual job? Would you switch to in-person/hybrid?

I know how knowledgeable, thoughtful, and helpful everyone here is and I look forward to talking with some of you and sharing our journeys!

Welcome! @younggrasshopper if you are focused on “freedom from”, then the efficient path is to keep ahold of the tech job for 5 years (and maybe trade up to a higher paying one, not Google level but there are tiers in between) then mostly minimize expenses while keeping optionality open and not making any decisions with too much friction cost to get out of. I think having a tiny home will probably only entertain you for so long, same with having a big house, as you explained with your other hobby tendencies. But if you are an explorer you need to kinda be greedy on the optionality train so that you can try everything, then skew towards the bits that stick the best / you identify with the best. And buying a house is a high friction cost path. But it’s easy to leave in a housing market this insane, the friction is just monetary friction. With a tiny house you can “move it” wherever you want (theoretically), but you have a much higher friction cost on getting rid of it because you can’t just sell a tiny house (very personalized good) to anybody else, and even when you do, the secondary market for them is small, so it will cost a lot more time + money in friction costs to leave. But on the flip side of that, buying a used tiny house can be ultra cheap (payoff in just a year or two versus rent). So just keep the friction costs in mind while exploring (as they are probably the biggest drags). This is just one small example I’m pulling from your post of course.

Thinking + Judging type minds (and especially INTJs) like to have big plans and system designs that are set in stone and time value the future very very highly compared to most. I think you will find that they are the ones here with the most concrete graphs and systems and locked down plans and the ones pushing the concrete graphs and locked down plans.

The ERE book itself is a level above that, a guide to system design your own system and inside your own system you can build all the slack and hobby and goal changing you want into the system (especially a freedom from system).

IMO The goal of a “freedom from” system should mostly be low expenses and F.U. Money at the minimum, which will let you jump around and explore whatever you want to explore, and then you can more tightly bind yourself into the things you want to do more later on to reach full FI or semi-ERE depending on the findings. The risk of doing only FU money is that you may find that you don’t find work that pays the bills that you also find rewarding, and too much time has passed to be able to hop back into your old highly paid job. So you have to do the risk/ benefit analysis there and make the decision for yourself.

IMO the Ultimate Freedom From system -> FI, because you (likely) never need to worry about money again after that point. And ERE insourcing / values as built by Jacob makes FI cheaper / less resource consuming / less sanity consuming. So maybe create some “freedom from” goals, link them together via a ‘web of goals’ approach or a different approach, and then consider using other lenses (Time cost / gain, satisfaction cost / gain, opportunity cost / gain, social cost / gain, and happiness cost/gain) to try and iron out the connecting details. This is from the system level.

If none of that makes sense yet; don’t worry, just chill around here for a while and read some threads and knock down your CoL + up the savings rate and everything will be fine while you level up on the Wheaton scale.

@Slevin thank you for the thoughtful reply.

I like the idea of being "greedy on the optionality train". If there's any time to do it, it's now since I'm renting, have a car, and work remotely. I hope to buy a home in the future for the reasons you discussed, but that likely wouldn't be for at least a year or two.

The rational solution to my work complaints is to suck it up and save as much as I can, I agree. I've tried learning adjacent skills that would make pivoting between roles/companies easier, but it's difficult to reignite my interest in improving my technical skills, doing the current work, or searching for new work when I've become so disillusioned by my current role.

I have a hard time sticking to systems whether for productivity or study schedules. Yet those are different from planning what I want my life to be like. So building a web-of-goals or system with "all the slack and hobby and goal changing I want" is what I'll try and do.

Welcome @younggrasshopper. Cooking from scratch from recipes of different cultures is a great way to explore and build fundamental skills for something you already like to do. Doubling down on trying to source locally and cooking nearly all of our own meals is a frugal gateway to many other things on this forum. Have fun and enjoy the journey.