Getting serious about early retirement

[Veritas]

Howdy, folks. I'm Veritas. I'm a 27-year-old divorced male software developer. I think and read entirely too much for my own good. I grew up exceedingly poor and think that most people are pansies; early retirement and saving has always come naturally to me, although the last 2-3 years have been...let's say, spent on educational experiences.

My long term aspirations are to semi-retire and live doing international entrepreneurship in a middle income country, taking advantage of arbitrage opportunities as well as helping the local economy transition to high income. Right now my current target is Taiwan, due to the immensely low cost of living due to their artificially low exchange rate. However, Puerto Rico has its own appeal, since it is fairly low cost, is the only place in the world where US citizens can really avoid taxes, and offers a gateway into the Spanish-speaking Latin American market.

Which I go with, I will probably start a custom software localization firm either focused on the Mandarin-speaking or Spanish-speaking world. Maybe I'll do both!

I'm going to be sharing pretty personal details in this journal, because I believe that we live in the post-privacy age and learning how to be resilient against the obstacles of others knowing your situation is more important than trying to maintain privacy.

Now, to my present situation:
Net worth: -$31,000 (student loans)
Post tax cash income Income: ~$60,000 total compensation
Current Spending: $1600/month
Projected Years to Retire at Current Spending:
~9.6 years

My current goal in terms of tackling new frugality is starting to actually cook for myself. I haven't had a car in years. Instead, I walk and rely on public transit -- which I get a free annual pass for from work, because my boss is awesome.

I live in a single small bedroom about 3.5 miles from where I work. I have a terrible coffee habit, but it isn't so bad since I get free good quality coffee at work. I haven't yet firmly established the habit of cooking for myself. This is my current goal.

I project I can save around $400/month by cooking for myself, and experience a surge my nutrition quality, as well. This will drive my monthly expenses down to around $1200/month. That will in term drive my time to retirement down to around 8 years.

My main life goals right now are to find/create better relationships (I have a few good friends, but not enough to make me happy), find more social and physically active hobbies, improving my dietary quality, become a bicycle commuter, and establish the habit of self-reliance in cooking.

I love talking about this kind of stuff, my goals, and so on, but there aren't a ton of people in my immediate vicinity who like frugality and self-reliance rants, or who don't take it as some form of bragging. I'm hoping this journal will enable me to contain my excitement.

[Dragline]

Howdy, folks. I'm Veritas. I'm a 27-year-old divorced male software developer. I think and read entirely too much for my own good. I grew up exceedingly poor and think that most people are pansies; [SNIPPED]

My main life goals right now are to find/create better relationships (I have a few good friends, but not enough to make me happy), find more social and physically active hobbies, improving my dietary quality, become a bicycle commuter, and establish the habit of self-reliance in cooking.

I love talking about this kind of stuff, my goals, and so on, but there aren't a ton of people in my immediate vicinity who like frugality and self-reliance rants, or who don't take it as some form of bragging. I'm hoping this journal will enable me to contain my excitement.

Welcome!

You should realize that the former view -- that "most people are pansies" -- may be inconsistent with the goal of creating better relationships. Arriving at early and firm judgments about others usually does not lead to better relationships, just lots of arguments and missed opportunities. Many people that you might not agree with on some things may still have something to offer on some level. Better relationships are usually created by allowing space for disagreement, even if irreconcilable.

There is a reason that your relationships thus far have not been sufficient, and the responsibility is at least partly due to your handling of those relationships. Consider what you might change to reach your goal and how to lay it down in concrete terms.

Veritas (truth) is often like beauty.

And remember what Emerson said in the epic essay "Self-Reliance": "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds . . ."

[Veritas]

Point taken, Dragline, and thanks for making it. It is something I'm aware of and working on.

[Veritas]

Your goals sounds pretty good. I will caution against doing both Mandarin and Spanish at the start. Spanish is much closer to English and much easier to localize than Mandarin, despite the major variances due to the variety of dialects. There will be process kinks that you'll want to work out with just one language before you tackle something like Mandarin. There's certainly nothing stopping you from doing both further down the line, but I would not do that at the beginning.

Oh yeah, I'm with ya. I'm definitely not doing both from the beginning.

I'm personally thinking Taiwan first, simply because I'm way more interested in that culture, and I plan to 'retire' with 500k and invest about 200k. I can live off of the returns from 300k pretty easily, especially in Taiwan. I could lose it all and be okay.

However, I'm often torn about this. Although I enjoy and am interested in East Asian culture far more than Latin American culture, I can't deny that Latin America is much more promising economically. And I am a believer that we will benefit more from better integration with Latin America than from better integration with East Asia. East Asia is more a direct competitor economically, in that they have a big economic focus on high technology products and manufactured goods, all things we produce, and Latin America produces mostly raw material inputs and basic components. Both have protectionist barriers, but the Latin American protectionist barriers are more about preventing rich foreigners from buying up tons of land and forcing out the locals, whereas the East Asian protectionist barriers are more about preventing foreigners from penetrating their consumer markets at all.

In other words, Taiwan would be cooler, and Puerto Rico would be far easier.

[Veritas]

Oh yeah. I'm trying to visit one foreign country for at least a couple of weeks each year. I do all of my spending on a rewards card that gives me quite a few air miles; it will cover most of my trip. I then tend to airbnb/couchsurf my way to cheap lodgings.

Taiwan is next on my list.

As far as the Taiwanese dialect of Mandarin goes, I have considered it. I'm learning Beijinghua in bits and pieces at present. Since I'll be localizing principally for the mainland Chinese market, though, what looms larger on my mind is the simplified vs traditional Chinese writing systems. I have no idea how easy or hard it is to find consistently good Simplified Chinese written translators in Taiwan. That's something I mean to find out when I'm there.

[JamesR]

My long term aspirations are to semi-retire and live doing international entrepreneurship in a middle income country, taking advantage of arbitrage opportunities as well as helping the local economy transition to high income. Right now my current target is Taiwan, due to the immensely low cost of living due to their artificially low exchange rate. However, Puerto Rico has its own appeal, since it is fairly low cost, is the only place in the world where US citizens can really avoid taxes, and offers a gateway into the Spanish-speaking Latin American market.

It sounds like may you have been influenced by Tim Ferriss (Four Hour Work Week) or some other lifestyle designer? I was too. I ended up doing affiliate marketing & assorted startups while living abroad for a total of 2 years in the Philippines, and later, in Thailand.

Ultimately it was a bit of a fail in terms of income, my marketing didn't really take off because of lack of financial capital (I was in debt at the time) & my other business attempts tended to fizzle early because of lack of skill capital (or lack of confidence, in conjunction with lack of income). However, I absolutely don't regret living abroad since it was so affordable, for my Thailand segment of 17 months, including airfare there and back, and some tourist adventures - I spent a total of $11k, that's $650/mo average.

After I got back, I happened to read the ERE book as well as the "So Good They Can't Ignore you" by Cal Newport (which discusses the skill/career capital required to "pursue your passion"). I realized that I was ultimately missing both kinds of capital.

It sounds like you're pretty focused on ERE which is a great way to get that capital going and that'll make your future business that much more successful.. I'm somewhat optimistic that you should be able to go abroad and pursue your international entrepreneurial goals way before 9 years or even before 5 years.. Shouldn't have to wait so long.

It would help if you can figure out how to get remote work. I figured out how to get work on odesk and it made a big difference, it was easy to get work even though the pay is perhaps a little lower than a real contractor would make. I didn't figure out odesk until after my adventures abroad sadly - mostly because of hubris

[Veritas]

It sounds like may you have been influenced by Tim Ferriss (Four Hour Work Week) or some other lifestyle designer? I was too. I ended up doing affiliate marketing & assorted startups while living abroad for a total of 2 years in the Philippines, and later, in Thailand.

Mmm, maybe a bit, but it's not the primary motivating factor. It's more that I can't see myself truly "retiring" or putting up the spurs on all of the skills I've accumulated. I could see myself applying those skills in a different fashion, though, principally overseeing other developers, handling clients from a different perspective and so on.

I'm somewhat optimistic that you should be able to go abroad and pursue your international entrepreneurial goals way before 9 years or even before 5 years.. Shouldn't have to wait so long.

I'm pretty okay with waiting that long. I got most of my hangups about work out of the way in the last year. Really, I've learned to view work as something that enables other happiness-producing behavior. That I also happen to enjoy my job most days is a bonus. That said, I do suspect it'll be closer to 5 years as I keep finding small ways to get an outsized return ROI on a few thousand dollar chunks of change, I'm learning to live with less, and I negotiate well and stay on top of my skill development, so I expect my wage growth to be pretty substantial over the next 3-5 years.

It would help if you can figure out how to get remote work. I figured out how to get work on odesk and it made a big difference, it was easy to get work even though the pay is perhaps a little lower than a real contractor would make. I didn't figure out odesk until after my adventures abroad sadly - mostly because of hubris

Thankfully I've got this down. Right now my boss pays me like a full time employee even if I'm only working part of the time for clients. He would be happy to retain me at a somewhat reduced hourly rate if I offered to receive money only during the hours I'm doing billable stuff.

Overall I'm just cautious and like having piles of money and freedom, so building up my skills, cash reserves, and industry connections for a few years seems like a small price to pay for relative security in the long run.