Tag: fire community

There Is No Financial Truth, But Why That's a Good Thing // Our Next Life // Early retirement, financial independence, FIRE, retire early, happiness, adventure, work optional

There Is No Financial “Truth” (But Why That’s a Good Thing)

We’re supposed to save 2 times our salary by age 35, or is it 25 times our expenses to retire early? We’re supposed to ignore Social Security, but also claim it at 62 to hedge against market risk. We should try to get out of debt as quickly as possible, but also paying off a mortgage early is missing out on potential market gains. There is so much “truth” out there, so many “right” answers, and many of them conflict. How to make sense of them and decide which are actually true? Start by tossing out the whole notion that financial truth exists in the first place.

Early Retirement Naysayers // OurNextLife.com -- financial independence, early retirement, FIRE

Don’t Immediately Dismiss Early Retirement Naysayers

The FIRE movement has recently faced one of its biggest bits of criticism ever, from one of the country’s most famous financial experts (yes, that’d be Suze Orman), and the responses have been interesting. While plenty of folks have already responded to her critiques point by point, this is a good moment to remind ourselves why it’s so important not to write off any naysayers immediately, and instead to really listen to what they have to say.

Even in Early Retirement, You Still Have to Make Time // Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky // Our Next Life // financial independence, FIRE, early retirement

Even in Early Retirement, You Have to Make Time // Q&A with John Zeratsky + Book Giveaway

Something that I think takes a lot of early retirees by surprise is that the things you always dreamed of doing when you were slogging through those saving years don’t automatically happen just because you subtract a job from your life. The minutes, hours and days still slip away mysteriously if we aren’t intentional about how we spend our time, and for those things that mean most to us, we truly have to make that time, which happens to be harder than ever in our distraction-filled world? This is one example of an area where we’ve made up our minds to make more time for something important, and an interview with John Zeratsky, co-author of the new book Make Time that’s all about this challenge. (Plus a book giveaway!)

OurNextLife.com // Everything I've learned about blogging anonymously // early retirement, financial independence, adventure, happiness

How to Blog Anonymously Like a Secret Agent

If you’re interested in blogging anonymously and making sure you don’t get found out — or if you’re just curious how it’s done! — today’s post is a full compendium of the technical and content directives you’ve want to follow, from someone who successfully stayed anonymous for years en route to early retirement.

A Reminder That What We’re All Doing Is Still Unfathomable to Most People

So many of us, upon learning about early retirement, dive in headfirst, and discover this community full of people working toward the same goal. And along the way, we adjust our baseline based on the people we meet here, and we might even forget that we are the outliers, not the normal ones. Recently, we were reminded just how not normal this goal is, and that’s made us all the more grateful.