The rub of it is that we don’t know the future, the extra SS income stream if you delayed could be key if you run into health problems later in retirement that necessitate long term care. That stuff is expensive, and the places you’ll end up if you’re out of funds aren’t the places you want to be. Which isn’t to say your choice is bad, just offering another perspective where you might care about this even without kids or a spouse to worry about.
I’ve thought a good amount about it, but I’m only on the cusp of 40. I think for many people it’s not even a choice to start pulling SS early, it’s a necessity. For example my dad has terrible finances and started taking payments at 63 because it was that or building up (more) credit card debt.
Going back to the FIRE angle, I plan on retiring far enough out that I don’t foresee SS being a major factor either way. I’m also far enough out that whatever is going to happen with payments will long since have happened by the time I’m eligible. So my current thinking is to frame it as longevity insurance — basically leave it until 70 so if I live longer than I expect I’ll have a stronger income stream from SS for long term care or whatever else.
How heavily does SS figure into your retirement plans?
Jokes on them, we used IVF, they got picked for who knows what reason under a microscope.
From your most photogenic swimmer.
I’d love to see more content and engagement. It’s hard when you’re a niche community within a niche platform. More posts amongst the same small set of voices may or may not end up leading to meaningful engagement.
Perhaps a parallel question to consider that ties in with your goal of helping more people improve their financial lives: What content would attract new members to the community? Naively the back to basics type focus seems like something that could be welcoming for newcomers, even just explaining what FIRE is and how the (Shocking Simple™) math works.
Honestly it’s a shame there wasn’t a meaningful migration of FIRE folks from reddit to lemmy.
Nobody exists on purpose, nobody belongs anywhere, we’re all going to die. Come watch TV.
I’m pretty sure all insect fragments, rodent droppings, and the like all vanish as soon as they cross the EU border in accordance with food safety regulations. /s
I did start reading into said EU regulations a bit, but I won’t ruin your day.
I’ll let you know when it happens. 😅 I’m solidly in OMY syndrome.
I think I’ll stop in the next year or three, but that might just be the one more year syndrome talking.
Why I think I’ll do it:
You’re not going to be encouraged by everything else they allow.
Though I think (anyone feel free to jump in if I’ve got it wrong) that the coffee limits are not 10% non-coffee matter by weight but rather 10% of beans demonstrating insect damage/infestation/mold. This is not exactly reassuring, but it’s almost certainly far less insects than 10% of your coffee bag’s weight being ground up buggies. You can read about the FDA’s coffee analysis process which is interesting, if somewhat opaque.
I’ll have you know roachfee is a sustainable alternative to pure coffee. /s
More seriously it looks like this is primarily based on anecdotes and was directed at ground coffee vs whole beans.
I don’t know, it looks pretty sturdy to me.
I’m getting Mona Lisa vibes.
… Now I’m curious how you change the oil.
I have a fire pit in my backyard that I enjoy, does that count?
Definitely wait for the second or third version, you don’t want to pay the early adopter tax.
Our moon hours are longer than your primitive earth minds could possibly comprehend.
Yeah, the time to heat has been my only real complaint. I know you can get point of use solutions to eliminate that too but that’s even more $$. Going tankless and remodeling one of the bathrooms to be a wet room was a big value add now that we’ve got two little kids who splash everywhere and have to be dragged out.
I too have found home ownership to be a money pit, but mostly in a self inflicted way. We bought a 100+ year old house in an expensive neighborhood and elected to do some large renovations. Though we did get hit with some fun (expensive) surprises along the way that weren’t our fault.
How has your experience with the tankless water heater been?
Nice! At one point I wrote a novel. I still have it, but I never did anything with it. Now between kids and work I can’t muster the wherewithal to drive these kinds of projects on my own time.
I do software development and AI tools are increasingly slipping in as an augmentation. Copilot in the IDE to suggest code (moderately useful and I’d be annoyed to lose it), pull requests with AI to provide an extra analysis or explanation of what a proposed change is doing, etc. So far it seems best suited to raising the baseline effectiveness of people rather than replacing them or raising their ceiling.
When someone offers a large sack of cash to leave, I wouldn’t take it as a sign to stay. Unless your employees are super inefficient right now, keeping the same workload for 2/3 the head count sounds like being setup for failure.
I realized it’s been just over seven years since I started pursuing FIRE proper. Prior to that I was saving and thought about retiring early but without much of a framework or depth. Since then our net worth has gone up five fold. Our lifestyle has also inflated a bit, we’ve bought a house and had kids. I’m contemplating pulling the trigger in the next year or two, or at least stepping back and changing what I’m optimizing for with work (eg. less hours and stress, more enjoyment and balance).
Looking back at some old mint emails I had about an early retirement goal I’d setup it’s fun to see how far I am ahead of that timeline and also how much lower the target was.