Tag: fire

How to Be an Ethical Reader // The Economics of Books and Libraries

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Those of us who love books want to be able to read without having to do too much thinking about what’s happening behind the scenes in the book world. Unfortunately, the publishing and bookselling landscape is surprisingly complex, and there’s plenty you should know if you wish to be an ethical reader, from how authors make money, to how libraries get exploited by publishers, to what advice on social media you should absolutely not follow.

Retire Early Without Harming Others // A Hard Look at FIRE and Racial Inequality

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My last post was about how the discourse of the FIRE community upholds systemic racism, but today’s is much more personal. This is about how our choices as individuals — as investors, as people choosing where to live, as earners, as tax payers and as charitable givers — impact and likely harm others, especially those who are already impacted by racial inequality. Fortunately, there are plenty of steps we can take to do better, and to ensure that we’re not harming others in our quest to achieve work-optional life.

Downtown Oakland, CA // Structure your life to avoid overspending money and boost your savings // by Tanja Hester at OurNextLife.com // early retirement, work optional, financial independence, saving, investing

Structure Your Life to Avoid Overspending

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I recently had an experience that offered a sharp reminder: despite years of saving (successfully!) and a year and a half of not blowing our early retirement budget, I’m still a spender at heart. But being a spender rather than naturally frugal doesn’t doom you to fail financially. You can still thrive and save at a high rate if you just structure your life in ways that set you up to succeed.

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)

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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.

Building Climate Change Into Your Early Retirement Plans // Our Next Life // early retirement, financial independence, FIRE

Building Climate Change Into Your Early Retirement Plans

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You don’t have to agree on what’s causing climate change to agree that it’s happening, that it’s getting worse and that it will affect those of us who are retiring early (just like it will affect everyone on the planet). So how do you account for something as massive as climate change in your financial and life planning? What do you do with the doom and gloom news stories, besides throw your hands in the air and declare it hopeless? Let’s break it down into actionable steps.

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

Don’t Immediately Dismiss Early Retirement Naysayers

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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

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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!)

The most important early retirement preparedness indicator // boredom in early retirement, part 1 // Our Next Life // financial independence, FIRE, FI

The Most Important Early Retirement Indicator // Boredom in Early Retirement, Part 1

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Like it or not, boredom in both early retirement and traditional retirement is a real thing. Between accounts I read online and notes I get from readers, it’s a phenomenon I see occurring pretty regularly. So I’m digging into boredom with a two-part series, first looking at how your answer to one question in particular tells you if you’re ready to pull the plug on work and retire early.

What Early Retirement Has and Hasn’t “Fixed”

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For a long time, I let myself go down the magical thinking rabbit hole, convincing myself that early retirement would cure everything in my life that needed fixing. And even after I recognized that magical thinking for what it was, I still assumed that early retirement would fix a lot for us, especially things related to work stress and limited time. So how has that actually turned out so far? Let’s take a look.

Getting through the middle saving years slog en route to early retirement and financial independence // OurNextLife.com

Getting Through the Middle Saving Years Slog

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Nearly everyone who achieves financial independence feels some level of impatience at some point, and that’s normal. But it’s especially easy these days to cross the line from normal impatience to borderline obsession, which only magnifies and worsens that impatience. Here’s some of what we did — and what we WISH we’d done — to get through the middle saving years slog.