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Early Retirement Extreme

1 day ago

in why you’ll be richer without kids on brip blap
Hahahaha... If I were to have children, I'd probably aim to train them for more modest purposes such as mowing the lawn and doing the dishes.

1 day ago

in why you’ll be richer without kids on brip blap
I think the $250k figure comes from the same crowd that "needs" one or two millions to retire despite the fact that lots of people retire just fine without millions on the bank account. Likewise, it is possible for people to spend less than a quarter million on raising a kid.

Second point. We have chosen not to have children. I guess one could explain the reasons either via cost-benefit or the law of comparative advantages. I'm simply better at not having having children compared to all the other stuff I want to do. Right right ... my point was that having children also have tremendous time costs and hence large opportunity costs. (I hear they're worse than owning a TV ;-P )
1 reply
bripblap @ERE: Well, again, the 250k figure is a high end figure, and I'm sure that it's probably heavily skewed towards northeasterners and people highly involved in the cello-lesson mentality. I am certain that my parents, for example, spent less than a quarter mil on my brother and myself combined, simply because their salaries, net of taxes and housing, etc. combined over 20 years probably didn't pass that level (although you could argue that taxes and housing might be considered part of that cost).

The time cost is another thing entirely, and gets more into a comparison of non-financial and non-quantifiable benefits: time versus the intangible emotional satisfaction from having children. For me, it's a life experience that I'd be sorry to have missed - but I didn't think that way 10 years ago, so I understand the mindset of not wanting kids. I guess it's like eating sushi. It's hard to know if you'd like it or not until you try it, although many people assume in advance that raw fish wouldn't be something they'd like, and decide not to try it at all. And I'm sure many people live happy lives without having tried sushi, finding satisfaction from eating other things instead...

Tortured analogy, sorry. Still think it's as accurate as I can get, though.

2 weeks ago

in heading to the feds on brip blap
Seems that the US is turning into France. Landing a cushy government job has been the aspiration of many French university graduate.

BTW what happened to the left margin?
2 replies
Layoffman Brothers Landing a cushy government job has always been the aspiration of many upper class kids, it is just that now people are waking up to it. You get money, power, and fame all at once with minimal risk. Why do you think rich families children and rich people go run for offices after they've made their money?

Did you know that a prison nurse or fireman in California can make $200k/year? Cops can retire with $100k/year pension plans when they are 50?
bripblap @ERE: I have no idea what happened to the left margin - is anyone having trouble with the layout? I tweaked the column widths but not the total width of the layout, so I didn't think it would affect anything.

The US is turning into France if you of course mean France without universal health care and social benefits... we are getting the ugly parts without the good parts.

6 months ago

in the big present I gave my first employer on brip blap
Academic research is fairly similar although I suspect it pays less (the hours are the same). The pressure is more indirect. It's up or out as well, but not in the sense that one gets fired, but rather than one does not get rehired into yet another temporary position. The competition is due to each professor essentially training 10 potential replacements which then get to fight each other for his seat when he finally retires. In general each new position feels much like another chance to play the lottery from grad student to postdoc to second postdoc to untenured professor and then finally to tenured professor around age 40. The liberal arts may substitute postdoc for adjunct which is a somewhat worse position to be in. Approximately half fall off at each iteration. At the top sits the tenured professors enjoying the fruits of the labor while lamenting the fun they had while they were on the bench. Ah, the irony of it all.

7 months ago

in Can I tolerate my son’s religious education? on brip blap
From the age of two I was told about Santa Claus both by my parents, and children's TV shows. I knew that he wore a red outfit, lived somewhere up north and that he would distribute presents each xmas if I had been good. I even knew some of the spiritual chants such as jingle bells and I remember wearing special head gear as part of the ritual too (some kind of red pointy hat). However, at the age of six I was getting disillusioned about the whole thing. Santa had never brought me anything but toothpaste, school bags, and other boring "gifts" regardless of how good I had been. Being somewhat precocious, this led me to believe that maybe Santa wasn't keeping an eye on me or worse .. maybe someone just made it up to make me behave nicely and perhaps Santa didn't even exist. I think the other kids caught on as well. Later on in school, I was taught about God, who lived in a nice place called Heaven and that one would go there if one had been good. There were songs to sing and also special headgear to wear. I figured by analogy that this was just Santa for grown-ups, so it was hard for me to take the teaching seriously. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, ...

7 months ago

in the gold rush of 2008 on brip blap
I think gold could be considered a short on the morality/integrity of fiscal and monetary policy of the world's governments. As such it definitely has value ;)

9 months ago

in a clear and present danger: the humanities on brip blap
This tack has actually been taken by a number of European governments. The problem is that higher education does not make people smart or more intelligent. Rather it serves as a function of a) separating the rich parents' kids from the poor parents' kids b) getting money from students to fund the university sports center + a bunch of professors who are researching increasingly irrelevant subjects c) regulating entry to the job market. The more young people there are demographically speaking the higher the degree is required.

I think the idea that education leads to a more productive society is wrong. Hard work and intelligence leads to productivity. What happens when we send 70% to college instead of 30% is simply that the levels are dumped down. To keep getting the cream of the crop education is extended for the smarter part (the 30%). The other 40% get a degree that no longer means a lot. So it is not increased education that leads to more productivity. Rather it is increasing productivity that leads to the country being able to afford parking their young in essentially unproductive endeavors for increasing amounts of time.

10 months ago

in giving gifts in the office on brip blap
I don't think I can recall being subjected to direct pressure tactics. Sometimes somebody gets a card and we all sign it. There are several indirect money drives e.g. corporate sponsored charity, or some random person that I've never heard about leaving or having a baby or a birthday or whatever, etc. but these requests usually arrive by - sometimes several - mass emails which can just be ignored. But yes, I am a little bit conflicted by the indirect peer pressure to fit in ("be popular"). For instance, the social group for new employees is all about going out and eating and going to the movies which is something that I don't particularly enjoy. Instead I just hang out with the hockey players. I do worry how much this hurts me career wise. For instance, many people consider all these departmental eating arrangements mandatory. I suspect these events are mainly driven by a few extroverts and tradition.

10 months ago

in linklings 10,000 B.C. edition on brip blap
One of the longest living technological artifacts of this civilization is ceramics (plastic is gone within a few hundred years). In a couple of thousand years when everything else has decayed, the ceramics will still be found in our landfills. Someone will look at our toilet bowls and wonder what we did with them.

10 months ago

in lazy equals poor on brip blap
Nice post. One thing that "lazy" programmers (like Lazy Man) are generally not lazy with is optimization and efficiency. Good programmers spend a lot of time thinking about how to be more efficient at what they do. I recently saw this in action where a colleague spent 15 minutes trying to extract some data from a file by writing a program in a familiar language. If he had known awk, perl, or a similar language, he could have done the job in 30 seconds. Of course what often happens at high efficiency is that the amount of available work does not expand proportionally. Thus a lot of time will be spent simply waiting for work to come in the door. This is particularly bad in jobs where you're only supposed to do one thing. Being underutilized is almost as stressful as being overutilized.

10 months ago

in how to write gooder on brip blap
Even though English is my second language, I also made the list so I guess I talk English good too ;-)
I would credit Orwell as my greatest stylistic influence. This article really lays it out: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm

11 months ago

in and lo, at the Outback they rejoiced on brip blap
For me the pertinent question is whether people should be rewarded relative to expectations or relative to an absolute measure. I think I am firmly in the latter camp.

11 months ago

in developing a millionaire mindset on brip blap
1) My current assets / retirement savings ratio is over 60. Doing the 401k/IRA thing exclusively excludes early retirement.
2,4) I think there are some "economic inefficiencies" in terms of cost of living and location. NYC and SF are overpriced compared to what they offer (in my mind). Now, where are the underpriced locations?
5) Net equals income minus expenses. Depending on your situation, it's easier to change one or the other. I have worked harder on changing my expenses, because they leverage the income required. Reducing expenses by 25% is like increasing income by 33%, reducing expenses by half is equivalent to doubling the income. Of course now I have pretty much reached the law of diminishing returns in terms of expense reduction and therefore I should work on increasing my income instead if I want more money.

11 months ago

in net worth or net worthless? on brip blap
I think net worth is about as useful as equity in evaluating a company. I have had some fun lately in evaluation my finances as if I was a company e.g. making an equivalent balance sheet, income statement and cash flow statement. Rather than net worth (which I also hate, when it is used as a bragging point) I think the pertinent numbers are profit margin (which is the equivalent of savings rate), and free cash flow. For home owners, debt to equity is also important. Overall, I think it comes down to what kind of financial lifestyle one leads. For instance, if I had millions, I wouldn't care about income since I could never spend that amount of money anyway, whereas for early retirement purposes, the profit margin is an important measure of financial independence and the free cash flow says something about post retirement capabilities.
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