What caught my eye this week.
The FIRE1 gospel has probably spread so widely because people can quickly grasp the point of Retiring Early, even if they struggle with the airier notion of Financial Independence.
Wrap-up it up in a catchy acronym like FIRE and boom! A meme was born.
Just compare FIRE to a standard DCMPA strategy – that’s Defined Contribution to Minimum Pension Age, and no, nobody ever typed that before – and it’s obvious why FIRE is massive on TikTok, while sorting out your DCMPA paperwork is at the bottom of most people’s To Do list.
Yet I’ve been reluctant to subscribe to the FIRE terminology myself. Partly that’s due to my inherent hipster snootiness, but it’s also because being Financially Independent was what got my imagination going, and that always seemed second fiddle in the FIRE sales pitch.
For whatever reason, thoughts of a bucolic early retirement just aren’t as inspiring to me as staying economically active but with a F-U fund / Death Star in my back pocket.
I’ve tried the term Financial Freedom, but that phrase always seems to come with connotations. Maybe it sounds vaguely hippie-ish?
Also, if what exactly qualifies for Early Retirement is a can of worms for pedants to kick about, then Financial Freedom is a mass of fish in a barrel to shoot.
How free is financially free? Free to get a bus when and where you’d like to? An Uber X? Free to catch your own private jet?
Debating an early retiree with a side hustle is child’s play by comparison.
Time Bandits
I’ve now learned of another term for the ‘economically purposeful semi-loafing but with a healthy bank balance’ lifestyle I aspire to.
Apparently, we’re time millionaires.
According to The Guardian this week:
First named by the writer Nilanjana Roy in a 2016 column in the Financial Times, time millionaires measure their worth not in terms of financial capital, but according to the seconds, minutes and hours they claw back from employment for leisure and recreation.
“Wealth can bring comfort and security in its wake,” says Roy. “But I wish we were taught to place as high a value on our time as we do on our bank accounts – because how you spend your hours and your days is how you spend your life.”
A quick skim reveals the term ‘time millionaire’ to be ill-defined, of course. But I can definitely get behind the notion.
I’ve always valued my time (especially the ability to do nothing ‘productive’ whenever I want) more highly than putting extra money in the bank – after a certain point anyway.
At my best as a freelancer I was a samurai-level time-manager. Not in order to squeeze more work in, but to squeeze more work time out.
When friends ask why I quit my little leg of the rat race, it’s hard to explain that the ability to wander into the British Museum on a Tuesday afternoon – or just to pop to Waitrose for one of its middling free coffees, whenever I wanted – inspires me as much as writing a novel or founding a startup.
Even when I was employed I’d make a point of taking the whole hour for lunch, wherever I worked. Nobody else did – not consistently.
Their loss!
Worse still, some co-workers put in very long hours, and it’s especially silly to throw 12 or more hours at work every day. Studies show that doing more than 55 hours or thereabouts actually makes you less productive. The extra effort is pointless.
Even if you do manage to squeeze out some useful effort, Parkinson’s Law will get you in the end.
The living is easy
I doubt the Time Millionaire lingo will catch on. But I am on-board with the idea and my money is where my mouth is.
Or rather, the money I haven’t got because I wasn’t working is!
(Okay, that’s a moutful – or is it literally not? Hey, we’re talking about ‘time millionaires’ so we’re already off the reservation.)
Regular readers with great memories might recall I quit my main work contract a year ago. I thought I’d put many more hours into growing Monevator, as well as a couple of other nascent projects.
But 12 months in and that hasn’t really happened. Not yet, anyway.
There are some good personal excuses for this, which we won’t go into today.
Not least because I can’t help thinking it’s mostly that I’ve been busy doing nothing (much).
Thank goodness they don’t tax free time!
What do you think? Would you rather be a money millionaire or a time millionaire? Can these two systems be fused with a Grand Theory of Everything Financial? Or does the FIRE lingo already do that?
Let us know in the comments below. And have a great weekend.
From Monevator
Savings rate to the rescue – Monevator
Portfolio (basket) case study – Monevator
From the archive-ator: Are ordinary investors missing out on venture capital returns? – Monevator
News
Note: Some links are Google search results – in PC/desktop view you can click to read the piece without being a paid subscriber. Try privacy/incognito mode to avoid cookies. Consider subscribing if you read them a lot!2
Tax officials tighten their grip on crypto [Search result] – FT
Britain’s homes could be worth £9.2 trillion on open market – Guardian
Pension savers face risk of higher fees as Sunak seeks billions for ‘leveling up’ [Search result] – FT
Homeowner gets £101,000 bill to fix cladding on £180,000 flat – ThisIsMoney
Bitcoin mining has vanished from China – Wired
Britons are pension potty [PDF] – The Great British Retirement Survey
Supply chain pain mini-special
Pump prices for petrol and diesel are near a record high – BBC
Price of chicken set to rise, Britain’s largest supplier warns – BBC
Shortage nation: why the UK is set for a grim Christmas [Search result] – FT
Products and services
Natwest and First Direct offer new switching bonuses worth up to £150 – Which
Food boxes that give you more nosh for your dosh – ThisIsMoney
Sign-up to Freetrade via my link and we can both get a free share worth between £3 and £200 – Freetrade
QPR’s CEO talks up club’s new 5%-paying mini-bond – ThisIsMoney
How to cut the cost of electric car ownership – Guardian
Would you pay 20p to read an article rather than take out a subscription? – ThisIsMoney
A deep dive into the proliferation of ‘buy now pay later’ schemes – Which
Homes for Strictly Come Dancing fans, in pictures – Guardian
Comment and opinion
What it really costs – Humble Dollar
Second homes: folly or fantasy? – Fire V London
The relationship between money and marriage – Incognito Money Scribe
How much should early retirement cost? – I Retired Young
Time horizon is everything for investors – A Wealth of Common Sense
Sunak on tenterhooks over a rise in borrowing costs – David Smith
When do you finally feel rich? – Financial Samurai
How the money game changes over time – Banker on Fire
Investment vehicles evolve to manage risk – Canvas
Naughty corner: Active antics
Larry Swedroe: Value stocks remain cheap compared to growth – TEBI
Making the investment case for Hotel Chocolat – Interactive Investor
This is what it sounds like, when funds die – bps and pieces
Covid corner
Is the ‘worst cold ever’ going around in the wake of Covid? – BBC
Success of mRNA Covid vaccines opens way to new drugs [Search result] – FT
Kindle book bargains
Quit like a Millionaire by Kirsty Shen and Bryce Leung – £0.99 on Kindle
The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder – £3.89 on Kindle
Creativity Inc. by Ed Catmull – £1.99 on Kindle
My Garden World by Monty Don – £0.99 on Kindle
Environmental factors
Your new beachfront property – Klement on Investing
Giant turbines are pushing the limits of possibility – BBC
Why so many of us are casual spider murderers – BBC
Thames Water sewage data show hundreds of illegal spills [Search result] – FT
Off our beat
The problem with the semi-rich 9.9% – Vox
What’s the point of 15-minute grocery delivery? – Vice
How London became a global centre for Fintech – Time
A.I. and maths to play bigger role in global diplomacy – Guardian
And finally…
“The beauty of empathy is that it doesn’t demand that you agree with the other person’s ideas.”
― Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference
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Comments on this entry are closed.
@TI … Typo alert “Britain’s homes could be worth £1.2 trillion on open market ”
= 9.2?
I think you nearly had Musk contemplating the purchase of a small country then 😉
Looks like “Time Millionaire” is an adition to the cap collection in the (yet to be announced Monevator Merch” section?
I quite like it.
JimJim
@JimJim — Yikes, good catch thanks! Regarding the merch ideas, I did come up with a few at the start of the year. Then I … didn’t knuckle down to it… 😉 At least that’s on-brand for this week’s article!
As Seneca said hundreds of years ago, “In guarding their fortune men are often closefisted, yet, when it comes to the matter of wasting time, in the case of the one thing in which it is right to be miserly, they show themselves most prodigal.”
and, worth remembering,
“You will hear many men saying: “After my fiftieth year I shall retire into leisure, my sixtieth year shall release me from public duties.” And what guarantee, pray, have you that your life will last longer?”
Any news on the book? 🙂
You beat me to the exit by a few months Investor, I’m wrapping-up the formal career in November. I hadn’t heard of Parkinson’s Law, but that’s a very apt reminder of why I’m swapping life in a global bank for life as a professional investor – the bureaucracy and nonsense is just oppressive, I’m actually somewhat staggered to think that I made it 25 years climbing the ladder in one company.
I’m not sure about the National Gallery and Waitrose coffee – if anything, my workload looks likely to increase! I have my own finance blog and podcast, and it’s almost a black-hole in terms of the amount of time I can sink into it – going in a year ago I thought this was just about researching companies and more publicly managing my portfolio; nobody told me I’d also have to become an expert in online marketing, audio editing, engagement analytics, public speaking, website optimisation – the list seems endless.
But yes, your concept of being a time millionaire resonates, and I might plagiarise that a little, as I’m still scratching my head as to how to answer the question of “what do you do?” in the future, without sounding like either an ass or a layabout! If you’ve successfully navigated this social quandary, I’d welcome a steer. 😉
The article on your new beachfront property struck a note as I was discussing this issue this very week. When does it become negligent not to comment on climate change risk to a property in the surveyor’s report I wonder. At some point in future it will open up a can of worms I imagine, but for now at least it seems a case of head in the sand.
The Parkinson’s law wiki was interesting. True in a lot of cases. I also know a few people worth a lot more than myself but are time poor. Weekends spent working with constant ever changing excuses, just once this project finished etc etc. They are slaves to debt in my eyes. Strange as if they sold up and cashed out they wouldn’t be poor but the hunger to get further ahead keeps them time poor.
@TI talking of merchandise, how is the book coming along? I still want to buy one.
That’s a very interesting comment Jim, I couldn’t agree more. If you can’t get off of the ‘hedonic treadmill’, no amount of capital will ever be enough.
I think it was Tyler Durden who wisely observed, “the things you own end up owning you”.
You mean your Waitrose has reinstated the free coffees? At mine, they disappeared in the first lockdown and haven’t made a comeback.
I read the same Guardian article and agree that the definition of Time Millionaire was not well defined. In a at least one example it felt like a cross between the Four Hour Work Week and slacker central.
One aspect of the Time Millionaire that seemed to be missed was being able to afford and get people to do stuff for you. I have had real problems getting anyone to fix household items, do repairs or even take my money for big jobs like double glazing.
Last week I spent six days repairing a barn door. A job an experienced joiner would have done in a day. Just not possible to get anyone even to return calls.
I don’t feel like a time millionaire
I was hoping you’d pick up on that article & write about it.
As someone who went part time at work in my mid 30’s, I’ve been valuing time over maximising my earnings for a long time now.
My friend refers to me as “a serial hobbyist” as I’ve spent various chunks of my free time getting involved in all sorts of different things.
We’re all running out of life days 24hrs at a time, & with my mum not even being able to retire before succumbing to an awful death before she reached 60, I chose “time now” accordingly.
None of us have a crystal ball for what our futures will actually hold, regardless of how keenly we make our dreams (& spreadsheets) for them.
Time millionaire vs. Money millionaire is a false dichotomy
The best answer is to be both
“My policy on cake is pro having it and pro eating it” Boris Johnson
And by the way that Matthew Stewart book on the 9.9 percent (Vox link above) looks really interesting – think I’ll get hold of a copy.
Riffing off the Parkinson’s notes a little more – also never heard of it. But I have been observing how “really busy” the “really busy” people have been over the last 18 months. So much more creativity to promote their “business”.
Is this more collateral damage from C-19? Not sure. Seems so much more “procedure” “protocol” “new working practices” “security” etc etc. Most of it entirely unnecessary.
Time thievery.
I’ve never really liked any form of work or study but everytime I think of a career change, I realize the other job sounds bloody awful. It’s the reason I’ve stayed in finance this long. I can get paid well but also have far more free time and flexibility than in other jobs. No weekends. No long hours. No politics etc. The only thing that could have matched finance would have been ivory tower academia and that opportunity went decades ago.
So the question I keep pondering is even if I just retired, would I instead fill my time with just even more tedious stuff? Would I actually “work harder” in retirement than in my current job? I do wonder.
From the FT article on pensions:
“Chancellor Rishi Sunak is looking at ways to tap billions of pounds of pension fund cash to invest in long-term projects, including infrastructure schemes, renewable energy projects and innovative tech firms, to help deliver on UK prime minister Boris Johnson’s pledge to spread economic growth across the UK.”
I’m liking my self invested pension even more on hearing that.
@ZxSpextrum
As an academic you are correct in identifying that you are a time millionaire. Perhaps time billionaire is more accurate especially for those of that inhabite humanities departments. 3 to 4 hours teaching per week for 22 weeks of the year. Rest of the year you are free to read, write, and research whatever you want. I do recognise that many academics will claim they are over wrought, drained etc but that is not my experience.
@ZX Spectrum48K #15
Being in “Academia” but oh so far from any Ivory tower, it has provided a work life balance that can only be described as all or nothing – It can take all the time you have and then demand more at times, other times the long holidays feel like mini retirements and the shock of going back to full on work is immense. I know many of my colleagues who “wait until summer to get ill” and have lost a couple of summer breaks myself to illnesses that are probably stress related. At this moment in time, stress levels are quite high (and I have just been floored by the cold @TI has reported on last week) and I long for a better life balance. I know that after Christmas, things should be settling down to a better rhythm and workloads will be manageable (or should be) – I chose this path, and, if I had stayed as a tradesperson, I dare say that would be demanding all the time I had too (at the moment, quite profitably!)
My point I suppose is that we all try and choose our own optimal glide path through working life. We look to what our strengths are and optimise them, as we endeavor to optimise a portfolio, some plan this, others just muddle through and hope it works out. (I like to think I fall into the former category) I have settled for a job that will meet my goals and not have me working until NPA. Most of the time it is enjoyable (less so these last few infected years) and still given me time to enjoy family, the outdoors and a few hobbies- (my optimal glide path, glide paths may vary). Not yet a time millionaire, but I have rarely been time poor.
We are not too dissimilar in our intolerance of the politics of work, and I am lucky that the place locks its doors most weekends (and I try not to bring things home too often).
Your question “Would I fill my time…?” I ask myself this continually when I contemplate retirement, and I think having the right balance while you work gives you the right balance when you retire. Most of the retirees from my profession I keep in contact with report that they did not know how they found the time to go to work. Almost without exception they do not have any longing to return.
JimJim
Successive governments have destroyed all incentives to save by their addiction to printing money, and by constantly fiddling with rules and allowances (pensions, CGT taper relief etc). No wonder so many investors have turned to property for returns, fuelled by more ill- thought out government policies (SDLT reduction). If Sunak wants money to invest, perhaps mandate NS&I to revive index linked bonds, and produce a coherent strategy which allows people to plan for the long term?
Hi, does anyone else think that II pension survey is nonsense? Specifically their claim that 21% of respondents believe they will top the “lifetime allowance” and 24% believe they will be close to it. Seriously?! 45% of their 10000 respondents believe they are above or close to hitting £1M savings? B.S. not to put to fine a point on it…
The FCA stats say that only 1 in 8 pension pots are above £250k.
Just makes me question the remainder of the claims. Anyone see it differently and able to explain their numbers?
Thanks, Loza
I haven’t read the article about ‘Time Millionaire’.
The term does though look rather like a clumsy’ish rendition of ‘life energy’, and how to properly value it, as described in, for example, Vicki Robin’s book, Your Money or Your Life.
Having entered time freedom a few months ago I recently was approached to do a small piece of work which would occupy me 50% compared to being fully employed.
I thought it be a useful experiment to try and see what it felt like now that I have lived the life of time freedom for a while especially as it is short term. What I have found is that fitting it into my now ‘schedule’ has been a squeeze, and once or twice I’ve come close to dropping something else, though I’ve not had to drop anything that I really want to do as yet. So the experiment so far suggests I’d ‘not have the time’ to go back to traditional work hours, only up to half tops. Giving up any more time than that and I’d be exchanging something I consider of real life value for money – i.e. defeating the purpose of achieving time freedom through financial independence. I’ve found doing 50% does mean I don’t have the slack for exploring new things or the practically unlimited flexibility I’ve become accustomed to so it too has some life cost to it.
@TI,
I am with you on FI matters more than RE. That was always my goal (now achieved). The ability to choose how I spend my time and the ability to say no.
However, as social animals, we are still caught in a web of obligations that can limit our ability to chose and to say no.
My partner is a keen gardener with a bad back. She has views on the importance of digging the vegetable patch and lifting plants for overwintering in the greenhouse. Not a task I would choose for myself, but this is someone I love.
I am working with a professional society helping them develop their contribution to a net-zero future. I think it is important, I have the skills, and the topic has some very interesting threads. However, there are meetings. Loooong meetings that contribute little. I could walk away, but this is something I care about. I could refuse to participate in the meetings but a) that would be churlish, and b) it would limit my ability to make the contribution I wish.
At the request of an old friend, I am helping his organisation out with some consultancy for one of their clients. It is a paid engagement, which I freely entered into because the project was exciting and I trusted my friend. Whilst this has not turned out to be the actual client from hell, given what I know now I would not have taken it on. But I committed, and so I grit my teeth and carry on. Of half a dozen short projects I have taken on in the last couple of years, this was the only total dud, so I consider myself ahead.
My observation is simply that FI increases your time wealth, but does not excuse you from family and societal obligations or from picking the wrong thing to get involved in. Unless you are prepared to go all ‘sovereign individual’ and say screw everyone else, you continue to create and feel obligations.
If you remain connected, then the connections will pull on you, no matter what your time-wealth.
Ever since I read the Guardian article earlier this week, I’d an inkling it would feature big time in your weekend post. Credit to them for the concept and the definition, but they did reduce the personality of a time millionaire to that of a shirker, which is unfortunate. There are other ways of getting there. For example, I had a few bumper years of earning – when I was able to side-hustle as an interim agency business and keep my day job. That, complimented with delegating some mundane business tasks to a VA, catapulted me to being time rich. I will add that the Financial Samurai link for this week is a great sequel to the Guardian article.
Side tracking…
Eroding pension tax relief has been bandied around for several years now by the media but I don’t believe it’ll happen in a serious way or at all.
It is a subsidy to the pension and finance industry who are a powerful lobby. Incentising people to save only makes sense with relief and without it, the burden on the state in future inevitably increases. Hence is counterproductive.
Moreover, eroding higher rate relief alone (while arguably being fairer) effectively raises the marginal rate of tax for higher rate payers (middle class) who themselves already pay the lion’s share of tax revenue. Not popular. These people are also more likely to be in position to command wage rises to compensate, increasing wage inflation pressure.
But most damning of all I believe is that ultimately it doesn’t really save a huge amount of money in the grand scheme of the country’s finances, while eroding what little public confidence there is in pensions and denting the finance industry, at best. As an added bonus, raising the reliefs again in future becomes a great political football if/when this country regains a credible opposition.
So, I think this sort of rumour ends up being something of a fairy tale that the industry wheels out from time to time (usually around the end of the tax year) to encourage those who are able to shove more cash into the machine “while they still can”.
But then again I might be completely wrong, just I have been for 20 years about the housing market. And given Sunak’s love of hammering on the crazy button like there’s no tomorrow, I wouldn’t put it past him! Fill yer boots.
My ambition in the mid 80’s was to be an idle millionaire, of course that million then, is nearer £3m now.
Then came downshifting, now its FIRE but I prefer the idea of FU money….
I gave up the 60+ hour a week role with a business 14 years ago and had a few side hustles along the way and thats great.
The opportunity to follow a career you wanted to at 18 but realised it was not economically sound, (I was right it wasn’t financially sound but fun doing it, not really work)
The art of being joyfully idle, some amazing sunsets the last week overlooking Cheshil beach and great bike rides… the option to be busy is fine but not the necessity.
@An Admirer, it is certainly true that the pension industry will have a powerful lobby. However although those higher rate taxpayers may in total pay a large proportion of the total tax revenue, it remains the case that in terms of individual tax as a fraction of income it is people lower down the ladder who are worse off. However politicians prefer to offer slogans rather than solutions to social inequity (“levelling up”).
In my view the problematic inequity in tax relief is the effect of Lifetime Allowance depending on whether someone’s pension is defined benefit, a purchased annuity, or a sensible drawdown rate. I would like to see the LTA abolished – or at least significantly raised – with the quid pro quo being a reduction in the Annual Allowance to (say) £30K.
@ JB
I’d like to see a simpler pension system:
Circa £2ook lifetime worth of tax savings – no earning limit, no in year limit, but once you’ve have 200k tax relief you’re done.
ISA should really have a cap ~£1m, and £20k pa seems excessive given the £9k limit not so long ago. Or at least no new money in if the value is > £1m.
Agree the DB multiplier of 20 looks generous by todays standards – perhaps it should be reviewed to say 25 (waspie women type issues with notice periods etc). Although some countries do tie their pensions to life expectancy, so perhaps some loose link with rolling 5 year annuity rates..
B
I saw 3 times the movie “In Time” (2011), so good it was;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBPOthBb20M
about value of time versus capitalist value of work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Time
About 5 years ago I read an online article about aiming for “salary independence”. I’m not a big fan of much of the “fire” related terminology, but the concept of being salary independent was what started me down this path, and has stuck with me!
@Bob Your story illustrates the dichotomy with FIRE – its all good until tradesmen (and pretty much everyone else) start retiring early too. Lets encourage our essential workers to leave for better climes asap, there are parallels.
I read recently that we each have on average 4,000 weeks of life. That number really brought things home for me. It’s a number I think you can get your head around, and view life through. Thinking that I’ve only got 1,000 weeks left has focused my mind and efforts — I really don’t want spend any of those remaining weeks on the rat race (and feathering other people’s nests!).
@loza aren’t they measuring different things? The FCA is explicitly about individual pots whereas ii are encouraging an answer based on an individual person who has an aggregate of pots. And as seen in the hateful pie chart (“the best chart to use when the main aim is to obscure data”) very many people have more than one pot. So a person with one pot of under 250k and one pot of 700k will be counted by FCA twice, once in the 1/8 and once in the 7/8, and counted by ii as likely to breach the lifetime limit. And it gets worse as the pot count goes up. Radio 4’s More Or Less is a great resource to learn how to be more deserning on statistics and claims like this https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qshd
@Calculus #31
” its all good until tradesmen (and pretty much everyone else) start retiring early too.”
Why should the notion of Fire be any different for any worker. Surely it is about planning to do it and executing that plan over a (very, for some) long period of time. The ability to do that eludes rich and poor alike (although the more you earn the better the tax breaks for pensions), and if these workers are “essential” then why have market forces conspired against them in the wage stakes? (Perhaps until now?).
Last year the CEO of Berkeley Group took home £8MM. for a production of less than 3000 homes. Not a great year, they have done better, but into that one pocket alone went £2666ish a unit. A bit over 500MM profit for the group including – 270MM taken in affordable homes / infrastructure subsidies. OR £166,666ish profit per unit. That seems to me to be a good percentage of the average U.K. house price.
Trades in the U.K. have a very high percentage of small firms subcontracting to large firms who act as managing agents. They bear the risk of bankruptcy, have the highest suicide rate of any job and suffer some of the highest levels of work related illness and injury.
If any tradesperson is astute enough to retire early – Bravo!
https://www.berkeleygroup.co.uk/media/pdf/m/k/Berkeley_Group_Annual_Report_2020_28072020.pdf
JimJim
@JimJim. I recognize that academia is highly stressful. The process of going from PhD to a full chair is grim: ridiculously low pay, no certainty over where the next position will be, producing research to order etc. Nonetheless, most of my friends (who I did my PhD with) seemed to have finally reached a point, now as full chair Professors at Cambridge, MIT etc, that their share of shovelling s**t and pointless college politics is done and now can pretty much do what they want. One of them just got another 5-year grant where he won’t have to teach at all. Yay! I suppose that is my definition of real “ivory tower” academia, not the day-to-day existence for most staff at unis.
With regard to tradespeople though I have less sympathy. I’m not sure my plumber is really risk life and limb changing my toilet at £100/hour. That’s if he can be bothered turning up sometime in the next year or so since he’s pretty much booked out for the rest of the decade!
With regard to any possible pension changes in the FT article. This is way overdue. I used to be able to invest in the fund I work via my SIPP until they implemented the rules in 2016. If I want to pay a 20% performance fee, surely that is my right? As private investors, I should be allowed to invest my pension (or ISA) money anywhere I damn well want. Cheap or dear. I don’t need govt protection that increase my risk and reduces my return by forcing me to overinvest in equities and bonds.
@JimJim You’ve missed the (perhaps not very clear) point Im trying to make – not that trades people are less deserving of the opportunity to become FI and retire early – absolutely they are and more! Its the direction of travel of RE as a movement in removing increasing amounts of working human capital from the system – at some point it becomes unsustainable. That’s perhaps a way off from where we are but we didn’t really anticipate the loss of the lorry drivers having such an effect either.
@ZX 🙂
HSE death stats/ ill health… https://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/industry/construction.pdf
Insolvencies … “In the year ending June 30 2021, the construction sector saw the highest number of insolvencies with 1,801. This was followed by accommodation and food services, with 1,474 and wholesale and retail trade with 1,366 insolvencies.”
Suicide… “According to the Office for National Statistics more than 1,400 construction workers committed suicide in the UK between 2011 and 2017 – more than three times the national average for men.”
Hard to make this stuff up really. Your plumber might be a great guy but this is but anecdotal evidence as I am sure you are aware 🙂
JimJim
@Calculus.
Point taken – Much clearer now. 🙂
I doubt that will be too much of an issue with the size of the Fire movement and the length of time it takes to achieve it. Not everyone is cut out to walk that path. It is a bit too much jam tomorrow.
In the U.K. getting ahead is getting more difficult for most, deposits for houses taking longer to acquire, mortgages starting later in life and for a longer duration, state pension age getting later in life will probably push people to work for longer than we have in recent history. One of the articles referred to here this weekend in the FT surveyed young savers and the majority of them could not see the state pension existing in their retirement.
If we are short of workers in any sector it is probably because the market for labour has changed (I won’t mention the B word). When it changes significantly, market forces dictate wages to some extent. This could carry on for some time as training people to do those jobs takes time. Inflation, a few short months ago was billed as transitory. Now the language is not so bullish.
JimJim
That Financial Samurai link was just depressing. The guy gets 200k in passive income. I’m sure he worked hard, but it just made me feel really small.
I worked for a junior manager who, in remarkably few years, rose to be the senior partner in a large professional practice. He retired at a respectably young age.
In all that time he never worked after 5.30 or spent a weekend in the office. He did not work at home. In the minimum time he did work, he was a focused work machine.
TP2.
@Mercerono (#39)
Well, try not to let it bother you.
FI covers a very broad range of incomes/net worth, and clearly Financial Samurai is at the upper end (I’ve yet to read of a higher annual requirement than his). You work towards what’s sufficient for you and what you want out of life.
As it is, he’s now targeting $300k; and if I had $300k total fund, I’d be both FI and RE by now 🙂
@mercerono: The trick with Financial Samurai articles, in my experience, seems to be not to read them. I’ve yet to read one that doesn’t irritiate, belittle or misinform, so much so that I assume that’s just his special way of generating traffic.
Case in point, his article claiming that the only possible safe withdrawal rate to use for FIRE is 0.5%. I’d instead read superb blogs like Early Retirement Now, who comprehensively debunk his nonsense.
Not sure if I’m allowed to link:
https://earlyretirementnow.com/2020/08/31/the-half-percent-safe-withdrawal-rate/
I like it! Never felt good about claiming the whole FIRE thing – skews too young for me anyways. And have gotten into some serious headbanging debates with FIREee’s who claim they’re done, but still have their side-gigs firmly ticking along. WTF is up with that?
So how about some clever symbology for Time Millionaire. I reckon I’ve got around a billion seconds left — and ALL of them are mine! All mine.
So maybe something with 10**9 involved? Dunno.
@jimjim, not sure if I qualify as young at 36 but I cannot see any real prospect of a state pension come 2050. British economic decline and demography will have us working to death unless we effectively plan to do otherwise.
@E&G
Agreed, and part of the point I was getting across to @Neverland. The demography we ‘could’ do something about, but as we have seen recently, the British public don’t like the idea.
As we already have a state pension that is one of the poorest in the developed world, even the USA beats ours, you could argue that there is room for improvement. Some argue that mechanisation should eventually bring a leisure society (an argument that I have seen no evidence of ever happening in my lifetime so far, and we have had an awful lot of mechanisation in it), some advocate a ‘universal basic income’. And good arguments have been put forward for that.
As long as our country is in any way socialist leaning I cannot see a social backstop being removed. What is less clear is if that backstop will remain universal. As this is a promise to the public that, if you pay your NI contributions, you get your benefits – any tinkering has a large impact upon the popularity of any political party brave enough to do it.
In my lifetime and yours the state retirement age has moved northwards by almost 2 years for men and 7 for women. The average retirement age has followed. As life expectancy increases, perhaps this is fair, but most are showing signs of the stress of life and perhaps have on average 10 years of healthy life after 50! https://theconversation.com/retirement-age-is-increasing-but-our-new-study-reveals-most-only-work-ten-years-in-good-health-after-50-141227
So how sustainable future rises in pension age will be to save the budget is questionable if people then just end up on another social backstop in the form of PIPS.
You are right in the observation that the demographic is not looking good, I also worry a little about how things pan out when our earnings are mainly on line and harder to tax by any one country without international agreement. The Australian pension system interests me and it is a model that has had much scrutiny in recent years.
JimJim
I appreciate the mention!
It seems like the FIRE bug has spread to Europe for sure!
I wonder if it’ll ever feel played out. I try not to write about FIRE often bc once you are FIRE, there’s a lot of other things one can do which is more exciting IMO.
Sam
I like “Salary Optional” – think it sums up very well!