From "She Retired at 35. The Only Problem? It’s Lonely" (NY Magazine).
"And only since I retired have I started looking hard at what achieving all this shit was actually going to do for me. What emotional need was I trying to meet? My ambition level, the way I used to think of it, is now gone. But what did it serve?... I have a lifetime goal to foster and adopt out 100 animals, and I’m three-quarters there already.... I am not bored or underchallenged at all. I feel like I am busier than I’ve ever been, just with different things. I have the flexibility to help my friends with their kids, which — as I don’t plan to have kids — is pure joy...."
పోస్ట్లు
112 కామెంట్లు:
35? I'm not buying it.
Unless she banked millions and millions.
Seems as if there's a theme today ...
Everywhere you look, it's ennui on the scroll and Peggy Lee on the Muzak. Self-negation and self-actualization fighting a battle royal.
"If I drop dead of a heart attack tomorrow, most of my friends will have had more fun in their lives than I had in mine."
Perish the thought.
Red meat on the menu today.
…so you decided on this goal but never considered or later learned you really wanted to be doing other things? You made bad choices is all. We all do it. Don’t keep doing it…
More modern mental illness.
Adopt and foster 100 animals? WTF?
This woman should have kids and raise them. It's the best job in the world and she'll have fun doing it. But she won't. Because she's an East coast liberal.
…at thirty five now she probably earned her undergraduate in 2013, where I recall those kids were the first we had to offer six figure salaries because they had twelve other job offers and the women especially were in high demand. I don’t know what she was doing but if she landed somewhere with a smidge of equity participation it profit sharing it wouldn’t take her long to earn a million…with a continuing frugal lifestyle and a good head for personal finance some single could afford to not work…
I'm glad I don't know or have to interact with any of these women we have seen lately in these NY postings. The would be exhausting, annoying and I want to slap them.
It’s not a race.
she's 35, and retired, and has no kids, and wants no kids..
(which is GOOD; cause she's TOO OLD* to HAVE kids)
she's dedicated herself to cats, and to "help my friends with their kids"..
that is;
she is the old spinster aunt, that people pretend is the "cool aunt"
trouble is: once her friends kids are past the child stage;
there is NO NEED, USE, or WANT for a "cool aunt".
The "friends" will forget her, and;
She will die alone, and the cats will eat her dead body
TOO OLD* well, not "technically.. but LITERALLY
the possiblity that a childless 35 year old would (or COULD) have kids is not statiscally relevant
Click bait to keep her blog relevant...
When somebody shows y.ou who she is, stop tossing chump change. Congrats, I guess.
oh, some old dane would probably tell her:
Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?
"and offered to pay to have their cars parked in a safe garage for the day."
Why do you need a "safe" garage in Boston? What is a safe garage? What is the state of garage parking in Boston? Why hasn't the Dem mayor brought safety to Boston? Where are the unionized cops? Can Matt Damon help?
Make Boston Safe Again. MBSA.
Later she refers to her husband as her partner.
These East coast people have substantial problems.
"When I was younger, I definitely felt smug about how much money I was saving. I felt like I was doing something secretly smart..."
Saving money when you’re young IS smart. Keeping it a secret is even smarter. And investing secretly saved money, when you’re young, into assets that will increase in value through COMPOUND interest is the smartest thing of all.
I retired when I was half her age. Retirement CAN be lonely but doesn’t need to be. Just do some work you enjoy or volunteer to help on a project you believe in or study something that fascinates you. Guaranteed: you will attract enjoyable good interesting people.
Or dogs.
She established an ultrafrugal lifestyle, so she needs less money going into the retirement, and nothing stops her from getting a job again or doing other things for money. As for children, the most frugal thing you can do in life is not to have children. I don't think it's frugal to have pets, but maybe pets, though they impose various costs, can help in some forms of frugality — they may keep you from traveling or going out to restaurants, and they may provide entertainment and psychological support.
My husband retired at 58 because it's damn hard to find another very high income job at 58 in his field. Close enough to our friends' retirements, we thought - and largely still think, as, increasingly, our friends are retiring under exactly the same circumstances: breadwinner let go from a high-paying job in his or her late 50s, job search yielding no nibbles, investments indicating that continuing to bring in a paycheck is not necessary.
But my husband is headed back to Houston while I go out to California to help out with some family stuff, and while there, he's going to have trouble filling his days. Most of our friends there, and our daughter who lives there, are working, and it's August (also known as "hell"), such that hikes and bike rides are not very appealing. Plus there's the dying dog, who, at 5 months' lymphoma remission, suddenly seems to be taking a turn (woke me up twice last night to go outside and have diarrhea), so he'll probably have to handle that alone. Not a fun time for him.
But I've wondered about these FIRE people: when you start down that path, the likelihood is that you will only have been in any current relationship for a few years. You might think you and your Other are so in love, and such solid friends, that you can be one another constant companion for the next fifty years - but can you? It's kind of like homesteading; you could be "alone" for years before anyone else is where you are.
Or do these FIRE advocates form communities the way the "retirement travel" people apparently do, organizing meetups and coffee klatsches and such because they're the only people with the available time, and (as the headline says) it's lonely? The retirement travel people acknowledge that loneliness upfront.
Meade said...
"..I retired when I was half her age. Retirement CAN be lonely but doesn’t need to be. Just do some work you enjoy
Guaranteed: you will attract enjoyable good interesting people.."
easy for YOU to say!
not ALL of us can find a hot redhead to let us mow their lawn
This woman is extremely selfish. Why not have children? Too much money? Too much trouble?
She has completely broken from both Western traditional and the core biological aspect of womanhood: continuing the species.
But you can bet all the illegal aliens in Boston are having children left and right.
She's disconnected from her community and humanity.
And not to go too far on this point, but this is how the United States loses Western civilization. We are out-bred by Third World people living in the US.
And I can guarantee she is a Dem and voted for Joe Biden.
I appreciate how Ann posts these articles from these East coast Dem publications. It shows how fucked up in the head these people are.
If the blog has a theme today, it's women and their money and the way that annoys other people.
These people... She has enough money to choose to not work, that requires a significant amount of money and she should be happy. BUT working twenty years, striving, sacrificing, scrimping, etc. changes a person's character. She's not going to be nice and outgoing anymore! Example? She won't respond well to her sister asking to "borrow" a $ 100,000 (even if she can afford it). If this woman was was like most Americans and she chose not to work or got laid off, she would be poor and destitute. I think she should just shut up or just have a child or something and obsess over that.
I wonder how these people feel about universal basic income? It's pretty disgusting right? I have to work and sacrifice for decades to achieve financial independence and these jokers expect the government to provide them a monthly check, a place to live, food and healthcare? In Norway, these losers are even guaranteed sex! No way.
I'm confident this woman is a regular NYT reader. To bring some fun into her life, I suggest polyamory. No kids to worry about. And it would cut expenses even more. Three can live cheaper than two.
Wonder if she is one of those who took the weight loss drug and lost appetite for other things as well. New reports show that some people who take those drugs to control eating also lose ambition and drive. I wish her well in the quest for fun.
$2 million is not enough to retire at 35 or 40 years old. If they put the money in the stock market they're going to have big capital gains taxes. But even if it's in retirement accounts, they can probably draw $100,000 a year (taxable). That might be fine for the lifestyle they want now, but there won't be much left for emergencies or for when they need help if they make it to old age. And they won't have kids to help them either.
My brother and his wife don't have children. He's miserable. He spends his days hating on Trump.
when i retired at 55 (in Jan 2018), i ASSUMED that i'd have to go back to work at sometime/somehow..
BUT; so far i've got nearly as much money in my IRA as i had when i retired. It's surprizing how little it takes to live a boring life:
IF;
you don't have any debt
you don't have any kids
you don't have drug/alcohol costs
On the other hand.. I don't have any kids; so when you hear Me belittling the idiots that were So Stupid as to not have kids; you can see i'm projecting.
I have NO CATS (or other pets), so my body will just go to waste
And they say the yoots don't want to work.
Anyway...I loved work. And through work I met so many great people in my life, saw so many amazing places, accomplished- and failed- many times. All of it made me more full, more learned. If I had quit at 35 I'd have missed my life.
We have so many young people whose goals are to become influencers. Whatever that is. This person wants to dote on her friends children, while stating that she doesn't plan on having her own.
Who'd have seen that coming? A child doesn't want to have children. Too much fun to make up. Children would just get in the way.
Fast forward the story ten years into the future. She's now 45. Her friends have moved on with their lives, their children now in their teens with their own special problems. Most of her friends stopped calling years ago as she really got in their way, they with their busy lives. And those other things that kept her so busy? She moved past them years ago. Really, they were just placeholders, time-suckers to eat up the spaces she had in her life. And as she has for years, she finds herself in a bar multiple nights a week. But that got old 5 years ago. And lonely. Sure she meets guys but...now at 45...she's not attracting those guys she did at 35. It's just different. It's all just different. And quiet.
And on most nights she goes back to her quiet condo. That condo that seemed so chic when she bought it now seems...stuck in time. Stuck in a period of time she used to live but has outgrown it now, like a top she used to love when she was 18, but looked stupid a year later.
And so she joins the millions of other single women in our nation. Searching, but not sure for what. Something is missing here.
On the side: Meade...you retired when you were half her age? You must have been on salary at the age of 12. And while volunteering can be something, it is not a replacement for the full working life. At least not for me. But then I work with dogs, so you could say, my life has gone to the dogs.
"I retired when I was half her age."
You retired at 17?
I buy it. I have a daughter nearly that age and nearly that situation. She has no debt, no children, and lives well within her means. So I very much believe she can retire. If we owned her home, my wife and I would be retired as well. Except, we own a more expensive home. We own it, because we needed more space to raise are children and entertain them and other family. We weren’t lonely. My daughter isn’t lonely, because she spends most of her free time visiting family.
The lonely bit I get too, but I think it is a function of how this particular woman chose to live her life. My wife and I learned that shared experience is more enjoyable than personal experience. The reason is simply the shared experience is easier to relate. It is the IYKYK aspect of life. When your experience is deeply personal as this lady’s, then nobody else can relate, and that’s lonely. I sense regret in her future, but as I can’t relate my experience with her, she wouldn’t understand just now.
"If the blog has a theme today, it's women and their money and the way that annoys other people."
Put me down as 'not annoyed'.
These "FIRE" people ("financial independence, retire early") don't spend $ 100,000 per year. They are serious skinflints. Some of them can get by on $ 30,000 per year.
I don't doubt her frugality, but retiring at age 35 in a world where expenses pile up... that does not seem frugal at all.
The topic is women and their money and the curious way that seems to irritate some people. Strip away the noise, and the financial lessons are universal.
Pay off your mortgage as soon as it makes sense—without forgetting there’s a life to be lived.
Invest as much as you can in appreciating assets and as little as possible in depreciating ones.
Choose your life partner carefully. Building wealth is much easier when you’re pulling in the same direction over the long haul.
Most importantly, remember that every financial plan rests on assumptions. We spend endless time debating pensions, investments, and taxes. Perhaps we should spend a little more time asking the question that matters the most:
“What assumptions does this plan depend on?”
btw- I generally approve of extreme frugality.
I know too many young people who spend spend spend - and save nothing. They also vote D.
“If I drop dead of a heart attack tomorrow, most of my friends will have had more fun in their lives than I had in mine."
Something like this happened to a friend of mine. He and his wife put off expensive vacations until after he retired. But not long after he retired he asked his doctor about some arthritis that was bothering him. It was stage 4 bone cancer.
at 35 - if she really is financially set for life - stop bitching and go have fun.
The stated goal of a Jesuit high school is to create young men and young women for others.
This woman did NOT go to a Jesuit high school.
"at 35 - if she really is financially set for life - stop bitching and go have fun."
The bitching is the fun. It's an NY thing. We wouldn't understand.
“ You retired at 17?”
Well, not plain 17. 17 and 1/2
Like rhhardin preaches, earn money doing what you love and never work a day in your life. I feel immense empathy for people who can't or won't have fun in their day to day. Always living in the past and dreading the future, it must be hell.
'...We have so many young people whose goals are to become influencers. ...'
What can a person influence, when they don't know anything, because all they've been doing is 'influencing'?
I started investing the year I graduated from university and got my first full time job. Staying mostly out of debt is not that hard, if you pay attention and defer gratification. Buying a home is about the only thing you would need to go into debt for, normally - if you're willing to work.
Retiring in your 30's locks you into a lifestyle for life, and it might be a penurious one, in terms of stimulation, challenge, and long-term gratification. Get a challenging job and grow - and save your money. That gives you a lot of options when you've matured enough to pick them.
Meade didn't t retire at 17 or 18... he dropped out.
Being a kept man is not something to aspire to, and you were mooching off somebody else before ann tick you in, right?
Sit down, son.
A GED mind is no way to go through life...
Lil meade fell off his homemade skateboard, his parents sued, and he's been on permanent disability for his brain injury since...
?
People pity him and let him play with their dogs and pick up sticks in their yard... Most men would not be caught dead living such a soft, kept life as a non contributor at his age...
The country still needs to emulate working men, even if we have to import them.., usa usa usa
No woman today really wants a lazy sluff.. ann settled to set her gay sons free and she was willing to pay for company... sad.
Best advice I have heard on retirement.
"Don't retire from something, retire TO something."
If you don't have a plan on how you will spend your time, you might become bored rather quickly...
If I were 17 again today, I’d be doing almost exactly what I do now: rise before the sun, walk, take pictures and videos, post them on YouTube, cook, garden, wash the dishes, pick up after myself and others. In other words, I’d be an influencer.
Viktor Frankl in his Man's Search for Meaning (1946) told of his observations while in the Nazi camps. Those who had no objective, no goal to live for, would be the first to die. It was the loss of hope that proved to be one's undoing more than the harsh treatment.
You can retire from a job; just don't retire from living.
"...most of my friends will have had more fun in their lives than I had in mine. Right now, I’m playing catch-up on fun. But I’m still pretty far behind..
The "haunting fear someone, somewhere maybe happy."
Lol... kept man you mean.
Even atb17 you had no ambition, no desire to strike out, stand on your own teo feet and make something of your life?
They give you a stIcker for changing your undies daily, and putting you plate in the dishwasher, and that is all you asked of life... ? Too,lazy/passive for my blood. No wonder you found a longstanding home in madison with the ponytail men and lib ladies..,
Your low T levels are showing, but it's good you met a strong German woman whose son's were aging out who could take you in. Go scythe her little patch of lawn and post a photo from your to do list. We're all so jealous... lol
You should try planting roses, that will be a hoot. Thx for the giggles you silly fool.
Quack, quack. Those music vids really deserve a Grammy but you drop out white guys today just can't seem to garner a win... heh heh as glen would say.
We read Man's Search for Meaning at my Jesuit high school.
I recall one Althouse post about children. Big discussion in the comments. Not a single person regretted having children. One comment stuck with me: If I had to go it over again, I'd have more children.
When America stops arming Israel,
cheerleaders like meade can donate
their bodies to be dropped on Gaza
to kill women and children...
Ann can get a medal and a flag,
foe her husband's service and sacrifice,
and you will finally have found a way
to contribute to the US like other American men
unfit to physically serve...
Put your body where your mouth is and work?
"Pay off your mortgage as soon as it makes sense—without forgetting there’s a life to be lived."
[shrug] Maybe. We've owned five houses, serially, and haven't come close to paying any of them off (except by selling them when we moved - and fortunately we did make money on each of them, although very little on House #4). Now we are living without a mortgage as we do the retirement travel thing, with the proceeds from our last house earning the best reliable interest we can find until such time as we decide where to settle (which means giving our young adult kids time to figure out where they think they'll be settling - something we know from experience is a moving target, so we plan to buy our early-stage retirement home in a place they'll enjoy visiting if they happen to move out of the area).
It wouldn't have made sense for us to pay off any of our mortgages early because of work that required relocating; instead, we focused heavily on investing elsewhere while keeping those mortgages as low as possible to keep our expenses down.
Lady Law 101: A woman can't know what she wants until she has what she wanted.
I disagree on the advice to pay off your home early, as long as you have a decent interest rate, but I do think that you would do well to buy a house you really like, and live in it for the 30 years until it's paid off, or more, and somewhere around year 20 the payments seem so low that it's like you paid it off. I remember once buying a house and my payments were what seemed huge, $1,400 a month, but I had neighbors paying $140.
The narcissistic world of I Me Mine.
It’s their world and they are welcome to it.
Pay off your mortgage as soon as it makes sense—without forgetting there’s a life to be lived.
I actually agree with IEE here.
Let me add that in the early years of a mortgage, you can pay off months of mortgage payments for nickles on the dollar.
In the early years, a $1,000 monthly payment may be $100 to principle and $900 to interest. That reverses as you get to the end of the mortgage and have little remaining principle.
So pay your regular payment plus an extra thou and you have paid off 11 months.
The bank will give you a sheet that shows how much of each payment goes to principle, how much to interest and how much to taxes etc. Or you can download a payment calculator from the web.
My income tends to be lumpy so whenever I get a big check, I put a bunch to principle. I paid off a 30 year mortgage in 12 years that way.
"But I will lose the interest writeoff" a lot of people will say. This is something that drives me nuts. If you have, say, $5,000 in interest deduction, you deduct that against your gross income and reduce your taxes by about 25% of the deduct. So you save $1,250 on taxes, great. Now you only paid out, effectively, $3,750 in interest.
You are still $3750 worse off than if you had paid no interest at all and gotten no deduct.
John Henry
Making 1.5 payments means paying 150% of your regular monthly amount each month, with the extra half applied directly to the principal. This approach can reduce a 30-year mortgage to around 15 years.
It is an effective and relatively straightforward strategy when your budget allows it. The exact number of years saved—and the total interest reduced—depends on your interest rate, remaining balance, and how consistently you stick with the extra payments.
"what achieving all this shit was actually going to do for me."
Here's a plan. Live for your self. Don't procreate. Be a dead end. Shrink the population enough that AI and robotics are not sustainable and we go back to pencil and paper and no air conditioning. No digital constant connectedness and you still get to die. Congrats. Marriage and children are the most difficult thing ever. It's voluntarily indefinitely making your life difficult when you could simply live for your self and find your flow.
At 35 it sounds like the writer of the article still has not found any significant purpose greater than her own happiness - stuck with the universe revolving around her. Unless she learns what Galileo learned simplifying the math and explanation of how the planets move around the sun and not the universe around the earth, her self-centric conundrum will be ever more complex to understand.
I had the most fun when I was broke. Having nothing to lose is incredibly liberating. Just the opposite of what people imagine.
She doesn't seem to regret being retired -- she's not bored, not "unchallenged," and finds joy in raising pets and helping out with her friends' kids -- she just regrets having lived so frugally pre-retirement. It sounds like her entire issue is that she scrimped hard to retire at 35 instead of maybe working ten more years and retiring at 45.
If you just pay cash, you don't need to think about all this stuff.
“instead, we focused heavily on investing elsewhere while keeping those mortgages as low as possible to keep our expenses down”
….this is a very prudent strategy I agree with and you don’t need to move around all the time to benefit from it…
We know two couples who were frugal and had no kids. They both retired in their mid 50’s and have to watch every penny to do the things they want to do. They do not seem happy or carefree in their early 60’s.
I retired at 65 while living below my means, investing in the market and waiting until 70 to take SS. My wife did the same while retiring at 62. We are financially carefree and enjoy a lot of travel.
Our house and our cars are paid off because we wait until we have the cash to buy cars and have always paid off mortgages early. It’s not rocket science. It’s more about impulse control than financial savvy.
I see a lot of online offerings on the theme "How Long Will $2 million Last in Retirement? We Asked an Expert."
Since I don't have $2 million, or even half of that, they are easy to skip.
I can't imagine bitching about retiring at 35, but some people are very creative that way.
It seems to be impossible to just be happy and grateful without caveats. We need at least one victim card to feel complete.
As for the lady's choices, I've always thought that people who say they don't want children know themselves and should not have children.
“If I drop dead of a heart attack tomorrow, most of my friends will have had more fun in their lives than I had in mine."
Depends what caused the heart attack. If mine is from overexertion while being gang banged by Sidney Sweeney, St Vincent (not the commenter!), Carol Kane, and Pam Grier, then I probably had more fun in one day than all of my friends lifetimes put together. CC, JSM
"I had the most fun when I was broke. Having nothing to lose is incredibly liberating. Just the opposite of what people imagine."
She was left behind and sour
And she wrote to me equally dour
She said, "In the days when you were hopelessly poor
I just liked you more"
- The Smiths, Half A Person
I enjoy working and don't really even want to retire. Admittedly, (I'm 64) the last few years I've been part time and it's in an interesting field (what I did my PhD in), so it's not like I've been doing drudge work for years. I find personal satisfaction in work. Working with other people to actually get something done. And learning things.
Plus, a lot of the people I know who kept working lived good, long, healthy lives.
Meade: "I retired when I was half her age."
That must have been one hell of a paper route.
You retired at 17?
Ah, the Brene Brown cliche of reaching middle age and wondering what it was all for, while discounting that the work you did when you were young was the only way to have this problem. If you had been lazy, you'd be scraping by and bitter about it, or a mediocrity. "Tapestry" is one of the best Start Trek TNG episodes. It deals with this exact question: that if you did it all over again as a middle aged person would, it would turn out worse.
That being said, yeah, you can't do the same things in your 40s that you could have done in your 20s. Use your time. It's the only currency. This isn't all or nothing.
"I see a lot of online offerings on the theme "How Long Will $2 million Last in Retirement? We Asked an Expert.""
Those are not aimed at 35-year-olds. To amplify on my earlier comment: They can live somewhat comfortably (and certainly frugally) on $2 million over the next few decades. But there is inflation risk, and more important, the risk of major expenses (medical, in particular) as they get older. They can do what many people do, draw down their assets and when the time comes, go to a nursing home that accepts Medicaid. But that really limits their options, and who knows what that will look like 40 years from now? They are gambling on good health versus a relatively miserable old age.
"If the blog has a theme today, it's women and their money and the way that annoys other people."
What? Where do you see that? The woman was smart enough to save a lot and retire early, but not smart enough to understand that life goes on and to plan for it.
Also I don't think anybody sees this as a "woman with money", or her money--as opposed to her apparent foolishness-- as being annoying. I certainly don't. She doesn't seem to have "real money" of the type that (some) people might resent. (I don't know the details, but I wonder if she really has enough to sustain her for another 60 years).
Althouse, children definitely keep you from traveling, going out to eat and expensive entertainment. They can be expensive but realistic material expectation can help the family “build character, as my father used to say.
I suggest that she buy and restore an old house. Endlessly fascinating, lots of big problems to occupy your time and attention, and in 5 years she will have to go back to work. Don't ask me how I know...
The secret is to save twice as much as you make.
Don't ask me how. I don't do details. I'm a big picture guy.
"I see a lot of online offerings on the theme "How Long Will $2 million Last in Retirement? We Asked an Expert.""
If ya have that kind of money, the wiser approach is to invest it so that you can live off of the income generated. It's easy to spend the seed corn.
"Having nothing to lose is incredibly liberating."
That famous sentiment echoes Joplin's lyric, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose."
One thing to remember in retirement planning is that you reach a certain age, different for different people, and if you have put off spending your pile of money, well, actually spending it becomes work.
"You are still $3750 worse off than if you had paid no interest at all and gotten no deduct."
Assuming that you didn't invest it in a conservative fund that produces a steady rate of growth, if you pissed it all away, sure. Let inflation shrink your mortgage payments and grow your portfolio. If you double the principle payment for a month, you lop a month off of the end of your mortgage, but at the end of your mortgage, that payment is going to be worth less than the money wisely invested at the same time after all of those years. But I will allow that a lot of the advice is good for people without the self control to not waste the money and to invest it properly. It's like forcing yourself to invest.
In the thirty yeas following 1991, the Dow went from @ 2,500 to @ 35,000. If you had invested $2,500 for thirty years at 4.5%, for example, by paying down your principle on the first payement, for example, per Grok you would have about $9,400.
:
Also per Grok had you invested that same small amount in the S&P 500 in 1992 (I chose that date because I took out a mortgage that year for a house I kept until it was paid off)
"Approximately 9.6% per year (compound annual growth rate / annualized total return, including dividends reinvested) for the S&P 500 from the start of 1992 through the end of 2022."
Of course there is always risk some risk of a market collapse and a depression, so it's not a free lunch.
My amateur pop-psych read on this lady is that to do what she's done, one has to be kind of autistic. That may explain the loneliness.
Grok also said this:
"The long-term historical average for the S&P 500 (roughly a century) is often cited near 10% nominal annualized, so the 1992–2022 period was close to that long-run average despite including the dot-com bust, the Global Financial Crisis, and 2022. Past performance does not guarantee future results."
Since I have only one life to live, let me live it as a cat lady.
Mosby, are these time-traveling sex fantasies? Take it easy on the grandmas.
…mortgage money is cheap- over my lifetime sometimes very cheap. Use the money you’d use to pay it off to invest instead. VTI or similar is an A minus on the test without studying…and if you’re paying off cheap money instead of maxing out an employer fifty or one hundred percent roi in a 401k, that’s just dumb….don’t believe some joker on the internet but somewhere Charlie Munger says the same thing I just did…
Funny, my wife and I were just talking about how she shrimps and saved in her early years to get the retirement account going while her friends went out and had fun. Context was a paycut she is going to take when changing to a new job, but having substantially higher quality of life. My input was that the early years scrimping had paid off, and money invested now is worth substantially less than it was 20 years ago, in terms of total retirement contribution, so the hit is not so bad (still looking at another 20 years of work). But everything is an opportunity cost, so make each decision deliberate. If you end up making the wrong one, bank it for next time.
Of course, it's lonely. People don't retire at 35 because their peers are still working. Naturally, the premature retiree doesn't have people of her own age to pal around with.
One thing I found out lately: contrary to what you may have heard in the 1960s, young people are a lot more uptight and have more hang-ups than young people. Old people don't have to worry as much and aren't as judgmental. They pretty much are the 60s generation that thought they were so laidback. The young (millennials, zoomers, alphas) have a lot more to worry about.
She's not bored, but she is lonely. I wonder about that. Loneliness can cut into one's pleasure and one's life -- maybe more than boredom does. Is boredom or loneliness worse? How different are they? Is one malaise really distinguishable from the other?
Just speculating here, but the 100 animals can maybe take care of themselves without fostering. Human children, not so much.
It's absurd to say you retired at 17 unless you had a trust fund to pay for rent, health care, food, transportation, dental, retirement, auto insurance, bike parts, and so on for life. So you either lived off the taxpayers who didn't want to pay for you to have food stamps and subsidized healthcare as you wandered around doing nothing; you lived off other people, or you gambled that taxpayers would be there to pick up the pieces if you got unlucky. You apparently did not contribute to the system that we did and that you now live off. You can justify that to yourself, but it sounds like a very selfish choice.
Unless you define retiring as doing odd jobs. If so, did you pay taxes on those jobs, as we do?
Never evaded any taxes and never “lived off” anyone besides my own parents which ended when I left home at 16. I’ve lived very frugally while contract selling my labor, skills, property, and enterprises. Never cheated, swindled, or committed fraud. Since 1945, there has been an enormous amount of wealth in this country with numerous legal ways to tap into that wealth without paying for a college degree or taking a position as a salaried employee. Step 1 is the proverbial ‘never spend what can be saved.’
Maybe he retired (his car).
In which case I’ve retired several times.
My problem now is how not to die and leave my 4 heirs more than they deserve. Retiring from solving that problem will be my ultimate retirement.
I guess I'm weird, but loneliness during the many years I lived alone never bothered me. I found it wonderful and relaxing. If I needed company I would come here, and that was enough. Then I would enjoy a bottle of wine on a Friday night and play guitar in my back yard alone till midnight. Don't waste your solitude ignoring it's benefits. It's how you see it that makes it what it is.
LOL Eva Marie.
And now I must retire to bed because as we all know: early to bed, early to rise is the only way to be there when the sun comes up.
Or you can just stay up all night waiting for the sun. It rarely lets you down.
Ann Althouse said...
She established an ultrafrugal lifestyle, so she needs less money going into the retirement, and nothing stops her from getting a job again or doing other things for money. As for children, the most frugal thing you can do in life is not to have children.
There's a difference between "frugal" and "miserly".
No kids is the most miserly thing you can do, but it's not frugal at all.
Because "Frugal" means "preparing for the future", and she's ensured she has none
I was never really alone though. During those years I always had 6-10 rescue dogs living with me. I did the 100 rescues while I was living and making money. It's not one or the other, but it takes a special someone to put up with the work of you and the other rescues at the same time, but I think I and my four-legged gang were pretty fun.
"Or you can just stay up all night waiting for the sun. It rarely lets you down."
That's what I do.
"Never evaded any taxes and never “lived off” anyone besides my own parents which ended when I left home at 16. I’ve lived very frugally while contract selling my labor, skills, property, and enterprises. Never cheated, swindled, or committed fraud. Since 1945, there has been an enormous amount of wealth in this country with numerous legal ways to tap into that wealth without paying for a college degree or taking a position as a salaried employee. Step 1 is the proverbial ‘never spend what can be saved.’"
That's not "retirement." You were self-employed. Not the same thing at all.
@Dave Begley - I’m evening the score, Dave. I am outbreeding Third World people IN the Third World. One day my descendants will be a mighty people and return in force to reclaim America.
Then you didn't retire, Meade. You actually did exactly what I did, with a lot of similar-sounding manual labor jobs. When it was thin, I went to Manpower. Never could not find a job. You just didn't have a boss. You sound like you still haven't retired. You rejected a corporate lifestyle.
I saved a lot of money on the last house I'll ever renovate, a burned-out shell on the once-worst street in the best school district in the county. My husband got a gym pass and I used an outhouse for a year as I rebuilt the entire back of it, then the rest. We lived in one room with a window unit and space heater on the floor for the first year. I screwed a sink to my porch and did dishes out there and ran electric for a stove and well pump and a toilet and showered under a tree year-round, which was exhilirating.
Then they changed the zoning at behest of wealthy incomers from one city in South Asia. So I'm stuck. In all ways and won't live to see a return in my last sweat equity, a planned community for low and middle-class grocery workers, farmers' offspring, etc. Continuity and predictability should be priorities of government. If they want a middle-class, which they don't, neither Party. We're all just government workers or government serfs now. The government workers win. The rest of us lose.
“That's not "retirement." You were self-employed. Not the same thing at all”
Good point. “Retirement” can be defined narrowly, so narrowly that it means one thing and one thing only. I should say, I started to broadly retire before I finished high school.
@Tina: 😊
Meade, you're living in another man's house.
Your the kept woman who moved in to replace the husband after the divorce.
Millions for your heirs, but living in the althouse-cohen marital home, buddy...
We see ya. Did you splurge on a new bed, or just flip the mattress?? Lol.
I didnt know meade finished high school...
Thought he was a GED landscaper living in the servants' shed on a big estate cutting lawn before ann whisked him off to liberal leisure life in madison...
Didn't the wife kick him out after he was spending so much time at althouse? Hm
Nyt story made you look smaller than you are?
Meade are you laffin at tina' 414am tale of woe.
Only thin better with being a gubmint worker is dropping in at the last minute a few years pre,retirement to live off her state pension... damn shame walker didnt take that away as undeserved...
Keep saving! They'll take it from your undeserving heirs...lol
USA USA USA
Who is going pay for all these wars you boomers are championing?. Open up those wallets...
@Dave Begley is this you
https://northeast.newschannelnebraska.com/story/249025003/nebraska-supreme-court-files-formal-charges-against-knox-county-special-attorney
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