Guest Posts
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Guest posts
Debbie M: Retiring early on $500,000
- This is a guest post from Debbie M giving a detailed budget for a retirement plan costing half a million dollars. For most incomes, half a million means a less early retirement. Yet, it is still earlier than the “usual million(s)”.
- This is a guest post from the anonymous blogger behind medicinesux. I have been reading this blog for a while and decided to ask a guest post after the recent guest post from an anonymous lawyer led me to believe that professional careers(*) have much in common. For a book on the topic I recommend Disciplined Minds. Also see this paper and the resulting book.
Sawbones Surio: ERE Explained! Part 1 Part 2
- Following the HUGE forum discussion of the ethics of extreme early retirement which resulted in 133 (and counting) responses. Sawbones Surio wrote a very useful thread summary on the forums. Since more people still read the blog compared to the forum, I asked him if he would be willing to turn it into a summary for the blog. Here’s part 1 of what he sent me. (You might want to read it together with the Borsodi post.)
Waking up from Big House Dreams: our crooked path towards early retirement
- Yesterday, I asked if anyone was interested in sharing their plans for early retirement. TL Black, whom you may know from the comments on this blog and who blogs on The Simple Life in France, was quick to respond, and so here is her story.
TL Black: How is saving for extreme early retirement like learning to swim?
- This is a guest post from TL Black, who recently wrote another guest post on her early retirement plans. It has to do with the difference between experts and beginners and the law of diminishing returns.
- This is a guest post from deegee, who retired at 45 after slowly transitioning into part time work and who has been retired for one year now.
Extreme Early Retirement in Germany
- This is a guest post from Hein Viermann. A freegan in his early 30s, who lives in Germany and wants to get out of the corporate career system. He invests mainly in real estate/rentals.
- This is a brief summary of my financial life. My net worth is currently 580k and my goal is to hit 800k (26 times estimated future expenses) in the next 16 months. My spouse and I currently save 8k/month which is approximately 60% of our net annual household income of 140k.
- This guest post was written by Robert Wringham, the editor of New Escapologist magazine. New Escapologist is a magazine for white-collar functionaries with escape on the brain.
- This guest post is from 20s Money talking about building financial independence from online income streams instead of relying on the traditional income streams from Wall Street.
Introducing Nine to Five’d in Dublin
- I’d like to introduce another one of my applicants: Nine to Five’d in Dublin (MovieWriter for short), who is looking stop working a day job to focus 100% on writing screen plays.
How I became financially independent by writing and selling websites
- This is the story of P_ who is pursuing passive income [assets] through websites/blogging. Blogging is often suggested [by bloggers] to be a good way to passive income. In terms of making money, blogging is easy and it’s hard. There’s no barrier of entry, which makes it easy, but on the other hand, there’s no barrier of entry which makes it hard because you have an enormous amount of competitors. In order to make money you site needs traffic and in order to get traffic it must do some aspect of blogging better than anyone else (for instance, ERE has a diverse amount of original pf ideas you won’t find in many other places). You must write a lot. Think of it as writing on high school length essay on pretty much the same topic every single day for the next three-four years. If you can do that without losing your mind, you can be a successful blogger. P_ has written more than 1 million words! In comparison, I guesstimate the ERE blog to have about 500,000 words—the book itself is about 100,000. In addition you need to be interested in monetizing. This may be fun for you or it may not. If it isn’t fun to you, you’re not going to make much money. In general, a great monetizer who’s a decent writer will make far more than a decent monetizer who’s a great writer. This is something to keep in mind. Okay, I’ve ranted enough … onto the guest post.
Married…with children…my path to financial independence
- After recently discovering your blog, I see you’ve gone to some pretty impressive extremes to secure financial independence. I love it. I only wish I’d found Early Retirement Extreme and Mr. Money Moustache years ago. I could have become SO – MUCH – MORE… Anyway, I haven’t done so bad, my husband is currently “retired” at age 44 and I hope to retire by age 49…maybe sooner. I noticed recently that you asked for submissions about those planning on early retirement and I thought, “Why not?”
Having my cake and eating it too
- This is a guest post from Ryan from Planting Dollars. Ryan currently lives in Honolulu while saving 50% of his income.
- This guest post is from an anonymous lawyer who plans to quit law within the next 5 years. Check out his blog Thoughts of an Anonymous Lawyer. For the blog of another lawyer who quit the race, check out Adventures in Voluntary Simplicity.
Escaping the “9 to 5” before 25
- Here is a new guest post in the series on plans for extreme early retirement. This one is from a young couple of professionals in their 20s.
- This is a guest post from Peter Lawrence author of The Happy Minimalist. He was born and raised in Singapore and lives in Santa Clara, California. He has been able to retire well before the normal retirement age not because he won a lottery, inherited wealth, or joined a start-up. Peter attributes his early retirement to his minimalist lifestyle.
- I am a 32 year-old chick who lives in Seattle. I frame the choices in my life based on the “deathbed perspective”–regardless of whether the choice is related to a career path, or a travel plan, or a relationship, I analyze how I would view the choice from my deathbed. Will a particular choice be something that I remember and something that contributes to the quality of my life?
Why I’m pursuing ERE: greed vs. passion
- This is a guest post from Zev. Many of you may know him from the forums and some of you may recognize the name from the copyright page in the book. He contacted me out of the blue earlier this year offering to correct the book manuscript for me. Knowing that my English is not perfect, I took him up on the offer and we spent about three or four months passing the manuscript back and forth getting rid of 99.9+% of my errors—I’ve never seen so much red ink on any of my papers. During that period he chose to become financially independent himself. You can see the steps he’s already taken in his journal.
It started one Friday afternoon, …
- This is a guest post from Ryan Mitchell who blogs at TheTinyLife.com about tiny houses. I know many of you, myself included, have talked on the forums about building one, but here’s someone who actually build one!
When Good People Give Bad Financial Advice
- In this guest post Hunter Nuttall talks about the challenges of giving financial advice. Although well intended, some advice can be ill suited for the person or just plain wrong. It is something we should all be aware of whether we are giving advice or taking it.
- In this guest post Tim from Canadian Dream: Free at 45 shares his path to early retirement at 45.
- This is a guest post from J_, a reader from the Netherlands. Despite the many comments that “I’m too old to retiree early”, ERE really is relevant for all ages and it’s never too late to start. (In fact ERE is particularly relevant for those who rely exclusively on diminishing payouts in real terms from nationalized pension systems like social security and yet find a way to live well.)
Tips from S on how to spend less eating out
- I must admit I am hopeless to give advice on reducing the cost of eating out, because eating out to me means about as much as a book on string theory does to the next person. Fortunately, I got “saved” by S who has taken a year off to travel around US and Canada by car staying with friends.
Stepping off the Beaten Path by Saying No!
- Cee Aar is a Canadian in his late twenties who is on his early retirement journey. He has resisted (or plans to) convention in some ways and stops by to share his story of bucking the trend.
Retire Early: The Importance of Getting Out of Debt
- This is a guest post from Miranda Marquit. Miranda Marquit is freelance writer and personal finance blogger. She also edits information on debt consolidation for DestroyDebt.com.
The Military Guide to Financial Independence and Retirement
- I’m Doug Nordman, and I post as “Nords” on the forums at early-retirement.org and forum.earlyretirementextreme.com. When I retired from the military at the age of 41, my spouse and I had enough assets and income to raise our daughter and enjoy our frugal surf-bum lifestyle. Nine years later, life just keeps getting better.
A five year plan to leave the rat race
- This is a guest post from Woman With a Plan about her goal to reach a net worth of $1M and retire 5 years from now. You can follow her quest in more detail on her blog, Change the Race.
New Beginnings Post Divorce, Post Kids, Post 9-5
- This is a guest post from P who married young, retired at 38 with 3 kids, and got divorced at 44. She is now 47, runs her own company, and plans to bike across the US next year.
Paul Wheaton on using cast iron skillets
- This is a guest post from Paul Wheaton from permies.com which is the home of the permaculture forums.
War resistance through taxes and frugality
- This is a guest post from David Gross who blogs about tax resistance, frugality, ethics, and other such issues at his blog, The Picket Line. If you want to learn more about his tax resistance tactics, read the FAQ or check out his How-To Guide to learn how you can do it too. Regardless of whether you support the government, learning about the tax code, as demonstrated by the example below, can be much more remunerative than the standard comparative economics argument of “I earn $100/hour so I’m better off paying some $15/hour tax-clerk who took a two-week course to plug my numbers into his software.”
The Pareto Law of Budget Management
- Below is a guest post from rePete arguing that optimal budget solution follows a Pareto law. This means focusing mainly on housing and transportation. Terhorst spent an entire book trying to convince us that if only we’re willing to reconsider our attitude towards these two items a great many of us could retire on what we already have in terms of savings. And he’s essentially right! Interestingly enough, housing and cars are two consumer objects which have been almost completely financialized meaning that instead of thinking of it as a $25000 car, people now think of it as a $250/month car. This has skewed supply and demand and consequently, housing and transportation are significantly more expensive than 50 years ago. If you want to significantly reduce your budget, just say no! The third category is food.
The Quest of Financial Bloggers to Save The World
- This is a guest post from Mr Money Mustache, a software engineer who retired at age 30 together with his wife. He is now 36 and has a 5 year old kid. You should definitely subscribe to his blog.
- This is a guest post from retired@33, who got in contact with me last week offering to write a post about his story. (He’s new to blogging, so be nice!) It’s hard to estimate how many extreme early retirees there are since not everybody has a book or a website, but I bet there are more than you think; only 1 in maybe 2000 write books. You can contact him at retired33 dot 9 at gmail dot com or comment below.
- This is a guest post from firefighter, whom you may have seen in the comments.
- This guest post is from Todd Tresidder who retired at age 35… 13 years ago. He wrote a book teaching you when to retire and publishes the web site FinancialMentor.Com providing various retirement planning tools including articles and calculators.
Three Unusual Investment Options to Help You Retire Early
- This guest post was written by Go Banking Rates, bringing you informative personal finance content and helpful tools, as well as the best interest rates on financial services nationwide. Follow them on Twitter at @GoBankingRates and on Facebook at /GoBRates.
Ten years after financial independence, the story so far
- One of the extreme early retirement questions I can’t answer personally is what to spend all that time on. I’ve only been out of the career race for 2+ years. That’s not a lot of time, so I haven’t had a good answer for this question other than a bunch of plans and intentions. However, here’s a guest post from AspiringYogini who retired at 36 following the principles of YMOYL and who has been financially independent for 10 years by now.
Join the military to retire early?
- Sometimes I get emails asking me whether I think joining the military (with its early pension benefit and paid education, etc.) is a good idea. Seeing that I don’t know how to answer this (I grew up in a country where the military relies on a very small professional core and drafting about 1/3 of all young males (determined by a lottery) for 6-24 months) I asked Nords who wrote The Military Guide to Financial Independence and Retirement for some advice.
Guest post from In The Trenches
- This is a guest post from Carol Schultz, the author of In The Trenches – Financial Survival During Times of Hardship (more reviews here). Carol is a former manager and procedural analyst in banking. Her career came to an abrupt end when she resigned to care for a terminally ill parent. As the family finances plummeted, the single-parent family ultimately moved to a small rural town where they raised animals, planted vegetables, chopped wood, home schooled, and embraced the self-sufficiency lifestyle. She wrote a book about her experiences and financial survival tactics to help others who might end up In The Trenches. Carol maintains a blog at “inthetrenches2009.blogspot.com“. I suggest you check it out.
A plan to financial independence at 35
- This is a guest post by Elizabeth from Working for Rachel. Elizabeth is starting her savings and plans to gain financial independence in 8 years at 35.
- This guest post was written by Robert Wringham, the editor of New Escapologist magazine. New Escapologist is a periodical of funny and practical essays with a focus on springing people from demeaning day jobs.
- And now for a guest post from a writer who needs no further introduction :-) … Okay, it’s Trish from Simple in France.
How to save money on health care
- Seeing that health care costs came in third (after housing and, ironically, (unhealthy) restaurant costs), I asked the Yakezie if they had any suggestions on how to reduce their health care costs. Dr Dean from the Millionaire Nurse Blog stepped up. Check out his blog for more on the intersection between health(care) and personal finance.
- I like this guest post from MoneyCrush for the following reasons. First, it is a big step outside convention. When I grew up I was told that cars should be replaced every two years (it doesn’t really make much sense to me now) and so keeping a car running for that long is impressive; particularly so because modern cars are clearly not built to last that long. Second, it’s a big step … oh did I already mention that? … because getting the idea not to pick the default option is unusual and so it usually works to an advantage. Third, our RV also happens to be that old (it’s a ’91 model) although it only has fifty thousand miles on it.
- Today Early Retirement Extreme presents a guest post by Saj Karsan from Barel Karsan that introduces the concept of hands-on value investing in the small cap universe. I use similar strategies and Barel Karsan is one of the few blogs I read daily.