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Assuming you don't despise your career, I've never been a understood living like a monk to retire early (FIRE). A good developer can totally put away a net sur

Assuming you don't despise your career, I've never been a understood living like a monk to retire early (FIRE). A good developer can totally put away a net surplus year to year while living normally. Personally I've always found it far more enjoyable to be good at what you do, cherry pick jobs and take "mini-retirements" between them than sock away cash with the goal of never working again. To each his own, I suppose.

brookside 6y ago
The problem for me is that living normally in a dev job gives 15 total vacation/sick days a year. One can surely take mini-retirements between jobs, but realistically, it's harder to get salary bumps when you NEED a job and you don't have the luxury of choosing to stay at your current spot if an offer isn't an increase. Also one normally needs to stay at jobs for two years or otherwise can look like a risky hire. Five years of semi-monastic living with a good dev salary can be enough to buy freedom to work as little or as much as one chooses for the rest of life.
- AstralStorm 6y ago
  You mean at FAANG in the USA. Sorry, but that is not the general outcome for a software developer.
- adrianN 6y ago
  Try moving to Europe. Pay is a bit lower, but you get a lot more vacation.
- proverbialbunny 6y ago
  In tech you look bad if you've worked under a year at a company. It's common for employees to leave at exactly 12 months. Likewise, it looks bad if you take more than a year off between jobs.
neogodless 6y ago
Where did you read that you should live like a monk? The closest I've seen would be Early Retirement Extreme. He's still not exactly about deprivation, but rather self-sufficiency. And he targets lower income levels than a competent software developer. Most blogs I've read have focused on enjoying your life without being wasteful with your dollars. It's easy to spend money that doesn't return nearly what you might guess or hope when you click that buy button. Just a small effort can change your thought process and better optimize your use of money and improve your lifestyle. While many don't despise their career, everyone prefers having complete say over how they spend their time to having to do what a boss demands. If you still prefer working, that's great, but if you don't have a choice about it, you're likely less happy about that.
- psalminen 6y ago
  It the parent, but I'll say that I'm someone who needs structure born from necessity. I love what I do, but I know I'd be in trouble if I didn't have to.
  - neogodless 6y ago
    Sure, but do you need to spend all your money to ensure that you have no choice to work, just so you have structure? An alternative might be to build up a nest egg, and use free time outside of work to experiment with education, hobbies, and other activities, and find out if any of those give you enough of a compass towards creating and achieving that you need the employer less and less for the structure it hands you.
ghaff 6y ago
In general, I agree. I've never been in a great position to take much time off between my relatively few jobs for various reasons. But I've also tended to have fairly generous vacation by US standards--which has let me had month long vacations--and I've also been able to schedule time around business travel in many cases. I've never had a particular desire to retire especially early.
thrwn_frthr_awy 6y ago
You don't need to live like a monk to retire early. And in the FIRE community rarely does retirement mean never working again. I retired in my mid-thirties and almost everyone I told before hand had the same or similar pejorative response as yours... "Oh I could never do that" or "I would be bored" or even "Why would you want to do that?". I ended up stopping to tell people. There is so much you can do when you've disconnected your employment from your living expenses. Not _having_ to work is very different than simply not working. You can work on what ever you would like. You can ask to work 2 days a week for 20% pay. You can work on mastering something completely different like woodworking, cooking, and instrument, or even something around software development. But to just associating FIRE with a monk-like or sedentary lifestyle is an overly broad and often inaccurate representation of the community.
- emit_time 6y ago
  FIRE “enthusiast” here currently saving a large portion of my income. (24 years old) What have you been doing in retirement?
  - thrwn_frthr_awy 6y ago
    Pretty much all the things I did before but never thought I had enough time for :) With two young kids, a full-time job, a parter I wanted to spend time with, friends I wanted to spend time with, family I wanted to spend time with, solitude, hobbies, learning, exercise, and therapy, 40 hours set aside for work just didn't leave me enough time for things that I didn't want to cut out of my life. I was constantly feeling like I was stealing time from away something that I didn't want to steal time from. And when I was doing things, I felt I was constantly running from one thing to the next. Now I just do most of the same things, but with a more relaxed pace and with time in between to transition. For instance, if I meet a friend for coffee on a weekday morning I used to have the pressure to rush off to work afterwards. Instead, I can stay at the coffee shop afterwards and enjoy a quiet moment or read a book for a few minutes before moving on to the next thing. Technology related... I moved from software development to doing building small electronics, learning to soldier components, and 3D printing cases. Currently I'm building a small device out of wood that has a round matrix of LEDs embedded that lights up and tracks satellites as they pass over my house. I have no idea what I'm doing really, but its been fun. You are thinking about the right problem though–when I was in my twenties I mostly focusing on want to not work, rather than what I was going to do once I wasn't working. It's important to understand what your true goal is so that you can make sure FIRE satisfies it or you can set yourself up for some post-retirement blues.
taneq 6y ago
I agree with you on the lifestyle choice. I'd define the goal slightly differently, though - rather than "never working again", the real goal is "never HAVING TO work again." If I struck paydirt tomorrow and had f-you money I'd still show up to work on Monday. I'd just enjoy it more because I didn't HAVE to.

brookside 6y ago

The problem for me is that living normally in a dev job gives 15 total vacation/sick days a year. One can surely take mini-retirements between jobs, but realistically, it's harder to get salary bumps when you NEED a job and you don't have the luxury of choosing to stay at your current spot if an offer isn't an increase. Also one normally needs to stay at jobs for two years or otherwise can look like a risky hire. Five years of semi-monastic living with a good dev salary can be enough to buy freedom to work as little or as much as one chooses for the rest of life.

AstralStorm 6y ago
You mean at FAANG in the USA. Sorry, but that is not the general outcome for a software developer.
adrianN 6y ago
Try moving to Europe. Pay is a bit lower, but you get a lot more vacation.
proverbialbunny 6y ago
In tech you look bad if you've worked under a year at a company. It's common for employees to leave at exactly 12 months. Likewise, it looks bad if you take more than a year off between jobs.

neogodless 6y ago

Where did you read that you should live like a monk? The closest I've seen would be Early Retirement Extreme. He's still not exactly about deprivation, but rather self-sufficiency. And he targets lower income levels than a competent software developer. Most blogs I've read have focused on enjoying your life without being wasteful with your dollars. It's easy to spend money that doesn't return nearly what you might guess or hope when you click that buy button. Just a small effort can change your thought process and better optimize your use of money and improve your lifestyle. While many don't despise their career, everyone prefers having complete say over how they spend their time to having to do what a boss demands. If you still prefer working, that's great, but if you don't have a choice about it, you're likely less happy about that.

psalminen 6y ago
It the parent, but I'll say that I'm someone who needs structure born from necessity. I love what I do, but I know I'd be in trouble if I didn't have to.
- neogodless 6y ago
  Sure, but do you need to spend all your money to ensure that you have no choice to work, just so you have structure? An alternative might be to build up a nest egg, and use free time outside of work to experiment with education, hobbies, and other activities, and find out if any of those give you enough of a compass towards creating and achieving that you need the employer less and less for the structure it hands you.

ghaff 6y ago

In general, I agree. I've never been in a great position to take much time off between my relatively few jobs for various reasons. But I've also tended to have fairly generous vacation by US standards--which has let me had month long vacations--and I've also been able to schedule time around business travel in many cases. I've never had a particular desire to retire especially early.

thrwn_frthr_awy 6y ago

You don't need to live like a monk to retire early. And in the FIRE community rarely does retirement mean never working again. I retired in my mid-thirties and almost everyone I told before hand had the same or similar pejorative response as yours... "Oh I could never do that" or "I would be bored" or even "Why would you want to do that?". I ended up stopping to tell people. There is so much you can do when you've disconnected your employment from your living expenses. Not _having_ to work is very different than simply not working. You can work on what ever you would like. You can ask to work 2 days a week for 20% pay. You can work on mastering something completely different like woodworking, cooking, and instrument, or even something around software development. But to just associating FIRE with a monk-like or sedentary lifestyle is an overly broad and often inaccurate representation of the community.

emit_time 6y ago
FIRE “enthusiast” here currently saving a large portion of my income. (24 years old) What have you been doing in retirement?
- thrwn_frthr_awy 6y ago
  Pretty much all the things I did before but never thought I had enough time for :) With two young kids, a full-time job, a parter I wanted to spend time with, friends I wanted to spend time with, family I wanted to spend time with, solitude, hobbies, learning, exercise, and therapy, 40 hours set aside for work just didn't leave me enough time for things that I didn't want to cut out of my life. I was constantly feeling like I was stealing time from away something that I didn't want to steal time from. And when I was doing things, I felt I was constantly running from one thing to the next. Now I just do most of the same things, but with a more relaxed pace and with time in between to transition. For instance, if I meet a friend for coffee on a weekday morning I used to have the pressure to rush off to work afterwards. Instead, I can stay at the coffee shop afterwards and enjoy a quiet moment or read a book for a few minutes before moving on to the next thing. Technology related... I moved from software development to doing building small electronics, learning to soldier components, and 3D printing cases. Currently I'm building a small device out of wood that has a round matrix of LEDs embedded that lights up and tracks satellites as they pass over my house. I have no idea what I'm doing really, but its been fun. You are thinking about the right problem though–when I was in my twenties I mostly focusing on want to not work, rather than what I was going to do once I wasn't working. It's important to understand what your true goal is so that you can make sure FIRE satisfies it or you can set yourself up for some post-retirement blues.

taneq 6y ago

I agree with you on the lifestyle choice. I'd define the goal slightly differently, though - rather than "never working again", the real goal is "never HAVING TO work again." If I struck paydirt tomorrow and had f-you money I'd still show up to work on Monday. I'd just enjoy it more because I didn't HAVE to.