The Second Stupidest Thing I've Read This Year

The other day I stumbled across an article called 5 Ways To Retire Before Age 40. Good gravy. First the tips; Ignore what other people think (about retiring at 40), save as much as possible as soon as possible, earn as much as possible as soon as possible, avoid fees while investing and consider a new definition of retirement.

Good gravy (repeated for emphasis). I will say ignoring what other people think is a good idea, it might be equivalent to staying on your own mat which I am all for. We all know people who try to keep up with friends or neighbors and this is a path to poor spending decisions.

Save as much as possible as soon as possible, well that too is a good idea. To bring up the Woody Allen quote that an anonymous reader left here ages ago; there is no problem where having more money made it worse. Summing it up succinctly, having more savings creates a bigger margin for error which will come in handy at some point.

In earning as much as possible the author is saying to work multiple jobs if need be to get to the goal of retiring at 40. The philosophical point I would raise here is that if you agree with the idea of life being about the journey and not the destination then having a bunch of jobs you are desperate to quit makes for a lousy journey.

Avoid fees while investing is a good idea even if minimize is a better word but I defy anyone to produce a mathematical model that shows even paying 300 basis points in fees was ever the difference in being able to retire at 40.

When I saw consider a new definition of retirement my second thought, after thinking this undercuts the entire article, was "yeah work until you're 70 and just lie to yourself." I think it is obvious that everyone needs a new definition of retirement.

As far as where I would come from on this, first get rid of the age concept. One idea, this is how I chose to set out on my path, was to have the life I wanted first and then figure out how to make a living. We bought a very cheap house when I was 32 and Joellyn was still in her 20s and we put a ton, I mean a ton of sweat equity into remodeling-paying out of pocket as we went, not borrowing money. I started doing what I love which was managing money for two clients and writing about the stock market so there was no real income for a little while but having a low overhead overcame that issue.

I tend to believe that if you are doing something you love, aside from not wanting to retire, you have a better chance at success, whatever that means to you, than you would doing a job you are wishing your life away to quit.

The premise put forth in the article belies not just a lack of understanding of the vagaries of investing but also the vagaries of life. Perhaps the bigger point here is about being comfortable or happy in your own skin. It is more difficult to be happy if you hate your job and can't wait for 65 to come along so you can quit and we all know people like this.

We made it to Oregon, transported Lilly to her new home near Portland and drove around toward Crater Lake, where we will be tomorrow, to the town of Prospect.

When we go someplace I try to bring a blue fire shirt to trade with someone at a department in our travels. Prospect being such a tiny town I was hoping to swap shirts there, this had been my plan for a while. The department is all volunteer though so the odds of anyone being around on a Tuesday night were not good but as we rolled into town around dinner time sure enough the doors were open because they were training and I got a shirt and a few shots of this hulking metal beast of a wildland truck. It had three axles, holds 1500 gallons, has two hose reels and has a very powerful pump. It is always neat to see what other departments do, the idea of such a heavy vehicle would be very different for us. The other picture is one of the many lakes we drove by on the way here.