Owner: Early Retirement Extreme URL:http://earlyretirementextreme.com Join Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2008 20:04:39 -0600 Rating:0 Site Description: The self-sufficient, environmentally friendly, frugal, and capitalistic fast track to financial independence and a simpler lifestyle. Site statistics:Click here
A salary veils economic reality 2008-04-01 09:38:42 I just sent my first invoice as a freelancer. It turns out that I have covered all my cost-of-living expenses (and then some) for March by working just a few hours every other day. What an amazing proof of concept.
Being paid an hourly rate and being able to work whenever (when there is work available) [...] Read more:reality
Make your own refried beans 2008-03-31 09:27:43 Here’s how to make refried beans (unit cost: negligible)
First you get a 20lbs bag of pinto beans for free at freecycle.org
Second, you take a large bowl and soak the some beans in water all day.
Third, you cook them in a pressure cooker. An ordinary pot works as well, but it takes 3 times [...]
Overtraining 2008-04-04 09:40:49 Not relying on a car (other than the occasional lift from DW), one of the things I have to worry about is overtraining(*) especially given that I’m not 20 anymore. The fact that I’m mostly moved by muscle power means that I have a rather real sense of how far I can go and how [...]
Living aboard 2008-04-03 09:32:47 As mentioned in last Saturday’s roundup, I had some ideas regarding the future last week, specifically how to spend retirement and how to live. I’m the type that sees life itself as an adventure. I left my home country almost 10 years to go to grad school in another country. When I finished, I left [...] Read more:Living
My favorite writings of March 2008 2008-04-02 09:08:01 I just saw a comment on another site that ERExtreme is really a minimalist blog claiming to be a personal finance blog. This is probably true. I have not been writing much about personal finance, since for me it is mostly a solved problem. Live in a consumer culture where salaries are high, but defy [...] Read more:March
Saturday Roundup - More book swapping 2008-04-05 09:24:43 Paperbackswap.com has turned out to be great for “upgrading” my personal library. I list books I haven’t read for a year and which I can not really imagine reading again. Since books are swapped one-to-one it has turned out to be less great for getting rid of books (and I have a lot of books [...] Read more:Saturday
, swapping
Row, row, row your boat — On the law of comparative advantage 2008-04-08 09:26:46 According to the economic law of comparative
advantage two parties are economically better off if they both focus on their advantage and trade for everything else. For instance, if Adam can make 4 widgets/hour or 3 gadgets/hour while Bob can make 1 widget/hour but 2 gadgets/hour, Adam should focus solely on making widgets, while Bob [...]
Tap water 2008-04-07 09:17:36 I’m blown away when a person is able to spend more than $20k a year on living expenses. But then I realize that they have little appreciation of the value of money [relative to what the money is spent on]. It’s treated like water
and it slips through their fingers. Turn on a pressurized faucet [...]
Cavalcade of Risk #49 2008-04-09 09:39:22 In reality, what happens happens. However, once an observer or an agent is introduced, the agent will try to model, mold, or change reality. Any modeling or molding of reality has known-knowns, known-unknows, unknown-knowns, and unknown-unknowns (Read more here). Known-knowns follow from certitude. Unknown-knowns follow from incompetence. Risk deals with uncertainty in the form of [...]
The major risks of buy and hold index investing 2008-04-11 09:17:36 I see stock markets falling in three, possibly more, stages. The first stage is the golden age of capitalism, where owners run and have a stake in their own company. In the second stage operations and stakeholdership is taken over by professionals, that is, CEOs, who own less than 1% of the company, and (institutional) fund [...]
Making changes 2008-04-10 09:19:58 Changes that depend more on a lack of a particular attitude(*) than a lack of skills or opportunities, will generally progress through the following stages.
(*) Health goals, diet goals, debt and savings goals generally fall within this category.
Precontemplation. The person does not see a need for change although others often do see a problem. If [...] Read more:changes
How I’m now getting books, CDs, and DVDs without paying for them 2008-04-12 09:08:46 One measure of financial independence is not to have to worry about having money to pay for goods. This is usually accomplished by having lots of money, but with the internet a second method is emerging. I’m talking about swap sites, freebie sites, etc. where computers match up people who then trade their stuff for [...]
Why I won’t join the middle class 2008-04-15 09:12:41 Mrs Micah asked what’s wrong with being middleclass
focusing on not working enjoyable but not too stressful jobs and still having the time and money to live comfortably. Lazyman talked about the upper limit of trading time for money and made some comments about the poor choice of working overtime just to buy unsatisfying [...] Read more:middle class
Let’s play some hockey (my guilty pleasure) 2008-04-14 09:16:58 I first got introduced to hockey
in phys ed. in elementary school. Our teacher handed out these yellow plastic sticks and put two mylec goals at each end and let us have at it. I saw a similar spectacle a couple of years ago. This time the kids were wearing gloves and full head gear [...]
Cauliflower omelet - another sub-dollar meal. 2008-04-16 09:10:09 One cooked cauliflower for the elven kings under the sky,
an equal volume of boiled potatoes for the dwarf lords,
nine dashes of pepper for mortal men, doomed to die.
One pan for the dark lord, also a lid,
and enough eggs to rule them all and in darkness bind them together
in the pan of Mordor - Served with [...] Read more:Cauliflower
How we eat 2008-04-17 09:07:09 A reader asked me how I combine the warrior diet with extreme frugality. The simple answer is that I don’t. I don’t follow the warrior diet to the letter, nor am I nearly as frugal with the food budget as I used to be (less than $200 per month for two people in NorCal is [...]
The frugal century 2008-04-18 09:01:19 First some nomenclature: A century is 100 miles on a bicycle. It is something serious cyclists would maybe call a long ride, but which weekend warriors have elevated to event status as a testament to the fact that in our culture doing things with other people somehow validates crazy behavior.
In case you want to join [...]
My weekend 2008-04-19 23:13:15 Today I went riding on a 20M loop. I passed 10-12 riders heading in the opposite direction. First the was the sole riders in team wear, then a couple of riders well sucking following by other couples (husband & wife). These were followed by the hoi polloi, people riding three or four abreast chatting, a [...]
Maximize your 401k early in the year 2008-04-21 09:25:39 Compared to the IRA with its $5,000 limit, the 401k with its $15,000 possesses an unfair advantage. Everybody with a W-2 income can get an IRA, whereas not everybody is lucky enough to have access to a 401k with the higher limit. These tools are useful because they minimize taxable income.
In this household I am [...] Read more:Maximize
Letter from the establishment 2008-04-22 09:12:50 Jacob’s posts on how frugal living and only buying what one really needs allows one to save up to three quarters of one’s income to reach financial independence and early retirement seem to be irresponsible and unsafe according to our collective mind. We would like to stress the importance of a shopping and working as [...] Read more:Letter
That was horrible! 2008-04-23 09:20:21 So yesterday I was out all afternoon training for the upcoming 100 miler. It’s the Sunday after the next one which leaves me two weeks to get ready for battle. During my lunch break, I rode up to the top of the local hill. Based on my rough estimate this is a 4-6% climb over [...]
Don’t wash your clothes every day 2008-04-24 09:18:44 When my mom was a kid, they had something called school clothes and play clothes. School clothes had to be kept clean and play clothes was something one changed into after school. The washing machine is sometimes said to be the factor of the 20th century that liberated women. I do think though, that the [...] Read more:every
Food Rationing 2008-04-25 09:34:51 Food rationing has returned to the US for the first time since World War II. Along with the ongoing bet of which will reach $5/gallon first — gas or milk (I say gas)– this is one of an emerging list of symptoms that the idea of exponential growth of the economy and people on a [...]
Why this early retirement blog continuously talks about cycling and cooking? 2008-04-28 09:37:51 Financial independence comes from the combination of having enough money and spending sufficiently little so that interest from the former covers the expenses of the later. The biggest sources of personal expenses are generally
Children
Housing
Transport
Food
Taxes
Reducing expenses in these areas will make a much larger impact that token efforts such as using CFLs, turning the thermostat down, [...] Read more:cooking
, retirement
The psychological requirements for going the distance 2008-04-27 11:47:25 This blog is turning into a cycling blog. The past few weeks I have posted several times on the century (100 miles) I’m doing next Sunday. Although I have now been told that this have little or nothing to do with running a marathon, I think that the underlying requirements are the same. The requirements [...] Read more:distance
, psychological
Saturday Roundup - One day late edition 2008-04-26 21:55:03 I can manipulate the date on posts, so this was actually written tomorrow. Similarly, most posts around here are not written on weekdays between 7 and 8 am but rather on day before between 5 and 7 pm. Sometimes (especially Sundays) I write several posts and space them out. Very many bloggers do that. This [...] Read more:Saturday
Good housekeeping 2008-04-29 09:04:33 From a minimalist/financial independence extremist perspective ordinary books on good housekeeping
(in case you need to learn it from a book ) just won’t cut it. Actually when it comes to financial independence, information targeted at “normals” is frequently useless(*). Hence, one must look elsewhere. I get my inspiration, not from run of the [...]
Quo vadis? 2008-04-30 09:00:44 In many ways I consider the problem of early retirement solved. I [think I] have shown what kind of choices that must be made, how to make them, and what it takes to reach financial independence in a handful of years. Following that, anyone can either accept or reject the conditions.
It was never my [...]
My favorite writings of April 2008 - including ecological budget 2008-05-01 09:10:33 A better way of “growing” in a limited world is to increase quality. Make things better fitting, smaller, and more efficient instead of just making them bigger and more powerful. With that in mind, here are the best posts of April
2008.
Making changes
Row, row, row your boat — On the law of comparative advantage
Why [...] Read more:budget
, ecological
New schedule 2008-05-02 20:00:31 In order to keep the content interesting and novel, I’ll be moving from a 5+1 posts a week to a more or less random schedule. Ahh, the luxury of a noncommercial blog
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