AUTHOR: bbbobbins on 10/11/2024 FIRST: Ben Rodriguez on 10/11/2024 | RECENT: Billy McKelvy on 10/15/2024
Comments
Well given I've been thinking of pulling the plug fairly soon, the past 2 weeks have been very much a gut check. Of course I'm concerned about SORR and was already planning a relatively cautious SWR in early retirement years. But I found that during the worst worry I was more focused on the simple cheap things that I want to do rather than the spendy things that might not be affordable in extremis. In fact I think I was more upset at the prospect of having to work longer and miss out on walks, cycling, enjoying nature than I was at financial loss. Worse case I guess, I take a historic bath because the world has been fundamentally destabilised and I have to return to working in some form. And I do very much have Jonathan's and Norman's circumstances in mind. What if the next 30 years is only 5 or 10? While YOLO is a cliche for younger folk I think for anyone over 50 or 60 it seriously needs to be weighted in. So not so much financial thinking but more a sign that my thinking has been heavily influenced by research about purpose and mental adjustment to retirement and that finances are the easier part.
Got to admit that I'm concerned but still holding on. Reality is I have a substantial cash/cash equivalent buffer to get me through a few years but as this is in all likelihood a year of transition for me I am concerned that this is more than pricking a bubble but instead deliberately and recklessly destabilising the world for egotistical and possibly foreign power purposes. In short it's not about the short term damage but the US making itself an unreliable state without the checks and balances to reign in extreme policies. That could be a much harder problem to overcome.
A particular moment in a particular football match with my dad and brother. An afternoon pushing my baby niece around in a pram to give her parents a bit of a break. Any number of evening sits on the patio with family. Playing ping pong in a sports store with my now typically teenage niece (usually buried in her phone). Lots of travel experiences I can probably replicate (although some may involve negotiating more crowds or selfie-hunters). Can't replicate the people and who they (& I) were at that specific moment. Goes also for those lightning in a bottle fleeting relationships in my relative youth too.
Now, if you find saving doesn’t not allow you to pay basic necessities adjustments have to be made. But more often it’s adjusting spending on wants not needs.
There you go - you're budgeting just a month in arrears because you wanted to go trial and error that first month..... And of course you're right - a budget is a plan, it's not an immutable object. I don't know what trauma in your life triggered you to view the word with such hostility. It feels like somewhere you want to look down on people who aren't as good at managing their spending as you and thus you think for them to manage by living to a budget is somehow cheating against your superior virtues?
We're not at all on different books. Just you get a reflex reaction when you hear the word "budget" as something you personally really dislike. Look at the derogatory language you've used in this thread about it. And equally you fail to recognise that what you advocate is just reverse budgeting. If you set hard guardrails about never incurring debt it's exactly the same outcome as living within a budget set in advance. Just possibly with more stress in the last days of the month around whether those essentials can be be paid for. How was it when you were low on the pay ladder, had a number of small kids and a non-working spouse? Did you really save first without regard to essential expenditure?
Again you're too hung up on the word "budget" rather than the principle. What you say is budgeting. If you allocate 15% to saving first, people then have to work the 85% to cover essential and discretionary spend. If essential spend is 90% they have a problem, equally if they are treating things that are really discretionary as essential. It's nuts to say save as much as possible then you must live on what remains. Without an assessment of financial needs and wants how on earth does someone determine how much they can afford to save? And without at least some thought work out what they can sacrifice now to build for the future. I don't have a problem with a spend sensibly/frugally and save what remains approach for those that have a high enough income but even then there is a reality check or form of budget in that such people will know roughly what they are spending each month. What would you say to a younger family member who came to you and said "I'm saving like you told me to but at the end of the month I'm always overdrawn or carrying a credit card balance?". Would you not say "well let's see what you're spending on and if there are any opportunties to cut back because you really don't want expensive consumer debt"? So you'd end up having a budgeting conversation.
Hmm. I've done quite a lot from backpacking to self driving tours. I think having a "money no object" approach isn't particularly helpful as it is likely to point you toward the luxury end of the market which in turn disconnects you more from the reality of the places you visit. I once astounded the (rather snobby) British expat owner of a guest house I stayed in in Cape Town by saying that I'd come from the airport on public buses - I think she was more used to being a guru who'd sign guests up for private taxi tours etc Clearly though in some places a high budget definitely helps access the experience - Antarctica or the Galapagos for instance. I'm planning retirement travels rather around freedom to wander. I'd like a small van based RV to tour the Nordics in summer and the Balkans in spring and perhaps Iberia in Oct/Nov. I'd like to bus travel (with strategic local flights) around South America again and hit countries injury ruled me out of previously like Peru, Equador, Columbia. And hike the Torres del Paine and Annapurna circuit again plus new to me things like a Camino variant or some of the GR5. All of which points to getting out and doing such things earlier in the go-go years.
Yep - pretty much this. They can try to save to get a deposit big enough to cover the deficit between mortgage capacity and property price but while doing so property price increases outpace their savings. It's hard to get across to people who breezed into their first mortgages on a single income in their 20s (and yes we know everyone faced down 15% interest rates while wearing only sackcloths) but it has the prospect of severely impacting generational wealth (or at least for those who can't count on parental/grandparental benevolence to keep them in the game.)
Semantic differences between rich and wealthy not worth retreading again. Wealth is a feature of perspective. Perhaps looking at those Federal Reserve figures provides a clue - how can the median and the "average" (I assume mean) be so different? I guess because there is a subdivision of mega wealthy whose wealth in the $100m -$billions skews the mean significantly. So compared to those individuals you're probably not wealthy. By most ordinary joe standards and those of everyone who "has" to work to SS age because of lack of other resources, lots of people here are wealthy. To Gen Zers who've already all but given up on the idea of property ownership (without an inheritance) their possibly quite high income doesn't translate to wealth in the sense of enduring financial security.
Comments
Well given I've been thinking of pulling the plug fairly soon, the past 2 weeks have been very much a gut check. Of course I'm concerned about SORR and was already planning a relatively cautious SWR in early retirement years. But I found that during the worst worry I was more focused on the simple cheap things that I want to do rather than the spendy things that might not be affordable in extremis. In fact I think I was more upset at the prospect of having to work longer and miss out on walks, cycling, enjoying nature than I was at financial loss. Worse case I guess, I take a historic bath because the world has been fundamentally destabilised and I have to return to working in some form. And I do very much have Jonathan's and Norman's circumstances in mind. What if the next 30 years is only 5 or 10? While YOLO is a cliche for younger folk I think for anyone over 50 or 60 it seriously needs to be weighted in. So not so much financial thinking but more a sign that my thinking has been heavily influenced by research about purpose and mental adjustment to retirement and that finances are the easier part.
Post: How has your financial thinking changed over the past year?
Link to comment from April 11, 2025
Got to admit that I'm concerned but still holding on. Reality is I have a substantial cash/cash equivalent buffer to get me through a few years but as this is in all likelihood a year of transition for me I am concerned that this is more than pricking a bubble but instead deliberately and recklessly destabilising the world for egotistical and possibly foreign power purposes. In short it's not about the short term damage but the US making itself an unreliable state without the checks and balances to reign in extreme policies. That could be a much harder problem to overcome.
Post: A Veteran’s Viewpoint
Link to comment from April 7, 2025
A particular moment in a particular football match with my dad and brother. An afternoon pushing my baby niece around in a pram to give her parents a bit of a break. Any number of evening sits on the patio with family. Playing ping pong in a sports store with my now typically teenage niece (usually buried in her phone). Lots of travel experiences I can probably replicate (although some may involve negotiating more crowds or selfie-hunters). Can't replicate the people and who they (& I) were at that specific moment. Goes also for those lightning in a bottle fleeting relationships in my relative youth too.
Post: Hitting Repeat by Jonathan Clements
Link to comment from April 4, 2025
Post: I don’t feel comfortable being “wealthy”
Link to comment from April 2, 2025
We're not at all on different books. Just you get a reflex reaction when you hear the word "budget" as something you personally really dislike. Look at the derogatory language you've used in this thread about it. And equally you fail to recognise that what you advocate is just reverse budgeting. If you set hard guardrails about never incurring debt it's exactly the same outcome as living within a budget set in advance. Just possibly with more stress in the last days of the month around whether those essentials can be be paid for. How was it when you were low on the pay ladder, had a number of small kids and a non-working spouse? Did you really save first without regard to essential expenditure?
Post: I don’t feel comfortable being “wealthy”
Link to comment from April 2, 2025
Again you're too hung up on the word "budget" rather than the principle. What you say is budgeting. If you allocate 15% to saving first, people then have to work the 85% to cover essential and discretionary spend. If essential spend is 90% they have a problem, equally if they are treating things that are really discretionary as essential. It's nuts to say save as much as possible then you must live on what remains. Without an assessment of financial needs and wants how on earth does someone determine how much they can afford to save? And without at least some thought work out what they can sacrifice now to build for the future. I don't have a problem with a spend sensibly/frugally and save what remains approach for those that have a high enough income but even then there is a reality check or form of budget in that such people will know roughly what they are spending each month. What would you say to a younger family member who came to you and said "I'm saving like you told me to but at the end of the month I'm always overdrawn or carrying a credit card balance?". Would you not say "well let's see what you're spending on and if there are any opportunties to cut back because you really don't want expensive consumer debt"? So you'd end up having a budgeting conversation.
Post: I don’t feel comfortable being “wealthy”
Link to comment from April 2, 2025
Hmm. I've done quite a lot from backpacking to self driving tours. I think having a "money no object" approach isn't particularly helpful as it is likely to point you toward the luxury end of the market which in turn disconnects you more from the reality of the places you visit. I once astounded the (rather snobby) British expat owner of a guest house I stayed in in Cape Town by saying that I'd come from the airport on public buses - I think she was more used to being a guru who'd sign guests up for private taxi tours etc Clearly though in some places a high budget definitely helps access the experience - Antarctica or the Galapagos for instance. I'm planning retirement travels rather around freedom to wander. I'd like a small van based RV to tour the Nordics in summer and the Balkans in spring and perhaps Iberia in Oct/Nov. I'd like to bus travel (with strategic local flights) around South America again and hit countries injury ruled me out of previously like Peru, Equador, Columbia. And hike the Torres del Paine and Annapurna circuit again plus new to me things like a Camino variant or some of the GR5. All of which points to getting out and doing such things earlier in the go-go years.
Post: Where Next? What Next?
Link to comment from April 2, 2025
There is of course this master of the complaint/counter-complaint https://27bslash6.com/massanutten.html
Post: Consumer Advocate by Ken Cutler
Link to comment from April 1, 2025
Yep - pretty much this. They can try to save to get a deposit big enough to cover the deficit between mortgage capacity and property price but while doing so property price increases outpace their savings. It's hard to get across to people who breezed into their first mortgages on a single income in their 20s (and yes we know everyone faced down 15% interest rates while wearing only sackcloths) but it has the prospect of severely impacting generational wealth (or at least for those who can't count on parental/grandparental benevolence to keep them in the game.)
Post: I don’t feel comfortable being “wealthy”
Link to comment from April 1, 2025
Semantic differences between rich and wealthy not worth retreading again. Wealth is a feature of perspective. Perhaps looking at those Federal Reserve figures provides a clue - how can the median and the "average" (I assume mean) be so different? I guess because there is a subdivision of mega wealthy whose wealth in the $100m -$billions skews the mean significantly. So compared to those individuals you're probably not wealthy. By most ordinary joe standards and those of everyone who "has" to work to SS age because of lack of other resources, lots of people here are wealthy. To Gen Zers who've already all but given up on the idea of property ownership (without an inheritance) their possibly quite high income doesn't translate to wealth in the sense of enduring financial security.
Post: I don’t feel comfortable being “wealthy”
Link to comment from April 1, 2025