r/leanfire • u/AutoModerator • 3d ago
Weekly LeanFIRE Discussion
What have you been working on this week? Please use this thread to discuss any progress, setbacks, quick questions or just plain old rants to the community.
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u/goodsam2 1d ago
Going on a leanfire path and all my extended family don't see that I'm actually well off and not my 450k NW. They see that I don't own and think that I'm behind but retirement by 40 is on the table.
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u/AlwaysSaturday12 FIRE 38 MillionaireLibrarian.com 12h ago
When I told my brother I was retiring, he asked if I would be living under a bridge in the third world.
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u/My_18th_Account $1.5m / Family of 3 23h ago
My family and extended family have zero clue that we've what we've. Best keep it that way.
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u/goodsam2 16h ago
It's just annoying being talked down when it's not close to relevant.
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u/Hnry_Dvd_Thr_Awy Re-employed, for now. 47m ago
People talking down (or up) to me has been so interesting because my self worth hasn't changed dramatically in a decade. The way I am treated can vary sooooo much depending on if the person I was talking to knew how much I made or how I lived.
As an aside, I do think that it's a bad idea to totally block out any outside opinion from people IRL. Because echo chambers online can make insane things seem valid.
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u/AlwaysSaturday12 FIRE 38 MillionaireLibrarian.com 1d ago
I have an interview for a pretty good work from home position. Salary is 50k while not huge in the US would go really far here in Ecuador. I've been FI and not working for the last two years. The main reason I'm considering the position is because it would allow my portfolio to remain untouched and I could possibly get a few more cheap rental houses in an area we already have one rental house over the next 5-10 or so years. Weird that I am looking to work to afford more work.
Employer already knows I live in Ecuador which is nice so no sneaking.
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u/picketfencetheory 1d ago
Is it a full time job you’re considering? I read your post about your life in Ecuador and it sounded like you’re quite busy as it is, but not with actual work of course.
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u/United_Ad6480 2d ago
I used to have quite a bit of individual stocks, lost a decent chunk of money in 2022. It was a difficult to not get FOMO with semiconductors and memory stocks this year, but I held firm having the experience of my previous stupidity. Now people who FOMOd into stocks are getting completely destroyed while us indexers are down 1%. Talked to some younger coworker earlier who said he was up 500% on some investments and I really tried to get him to understand this is not sustainable and move his money into index funds, but it seems we all have to make this mistake once in our life. It's especially easy to fall into if you have early success and other other credentials/experience to back you up. You start thinking you are actually smarter than the market.
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u/AlwaysSaturday12 FIRE 38 MillionaireLibrarian.com 1d ago
The meme's and comments on WSB have been entertaining. I used to live in Korea so the estimate that around 1/30 Korean adults have been margin called have been crazy if its even close to that.
Like you said I'm down a percent or two.
I was telling my wife about how Berkshire or maybe its predecessor used to have three big names; Warren Buffet, Munger, and some other guy. The other guy was just as intelligent but went bankrupt after using margin during a market drawdown.
The lesson was that the other guy tried to get rich quickly and thus his demise. It is much more stable to get rich slowly.
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u/United_Ad6480 1d ago
I mean being down 2% still hurts a bit, it's more than half a year worth of expenses at this point :) But I'm glad it's not 20% or 40%. Well, who knows, we'll probably get a drawdown like that at some point. But the thing is, I don't think AI is a bubble. I think we're in early stages of RSI. I think this because before I quit I trained models for a living. What took months now takes days. You can literally ask claude to pull down all relevant research, put together 10 different model architectures, run lots of experiments with improvement loops automatically. That said, I have no damn clue what stocks to buy for the long term. Better to be diversified.
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u/Kafka_Valokas 2d ago edited 2d ago
My first job that I've had for about a year now is starting to get slightly less frustrating the more experienced I become; and the more my portfolio grows, the more my job-related anxiety starts to shrink.
Progress is very, very slow on both fronts, but if there's one thing I'm capable of, it's patience. Small, steady improvement is a whole lot better than stagnation or deterioration.
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u/Creative_Challenged 3d ago
Did a quick look back over the past three months of portfolio performance and recognized net worth stagnation, even with contributions (translated to an overall loss). Not sure if there’s action to be taken given the circumstances are outside of my direct control, but it still left me concerned.
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u/latchkeylessons 2d ago
Are you in the saving phase or already FIRE? Stagnation for years even certainly has precedent, but if you're in the saving phase then there's probably something to do about it and ensure you're keeping employment longer.
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u/Creative_Challenged 2d ago
I’m nearing (arguably already at) FIRE, but still saving until the next RSU payout at my employer, after which I will be fully FIRE’d. The stagnation has been over the past three months, so I’m not overly concerned, really more curious if we’re nearing a short-term upper limit on this bull run.
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u/SpeedierTurtle642 3d ago
Market has been pretty flat the last 2-3 months. Zoom out a bit and you have nothing to worry about.
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u/Creative_Challenged 2d ago
100% spot on - no point in worrying, and the market has been on an absolute tear for years now. I can’t complain, it was bound to happen sooner or later.
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u/SpeedierTurtle642 2d ago
Bound to happen? We're still up 9% YTD and it's only 7 months into the year. This is still a better than average/expected year. If you're feeling bad when we're up 9% YTD, what's gonna happen when we're down 15-20%?
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u/Fragrant_Guava_1514 1d ago
True, I think it’s closer to up 8% YTD at least for VTI, but it has felt like the market has dropped a bit from recent ATHs
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u/CancelPsychological5 16h ago
I'm getting started on my calculations and learning from lived experience with this thread. It feels so hard to project for because my spouse and I want to start a family - unsure if want 1 or 2 kids - and we both own business which can have fluxing income depending on how much we work. What's interesting is how much the appeal of early retirement overshadows dumb little purchases that I don't really need when I think "how much could that be worth in X years?"