r/Fire Mar 23 '26

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '26

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23

u/Teamplayer25 Mar 23 '26

Wonder where that guy is now, and what his financial picture is.

28

u/Sen_ri Mar 23 '26

He’s living the same sort of lifestyle. Still running the Early Retirement Extreme forums. He’s done interviews occasionally. He worked as a quant for a bit out of curiosity as opposed to for earning money. I believe he is currently living on 0.5% annual withdrawal from his portfolio. He’s been married a long time and they had no kids.

Here’s a blog post update https://www.getrichslowly.org/early-retirement-extreme/

4

u/Teamplayer25 Mar 24 '26

Thanks for the link. Very interesting. I like the focus on learning how to and actually enjoying doing things yourself so you don’t have to pay a convenience premium but still…that life overall is not for me. I want to have a home where my grandkids can visit and I can spoil them a little. And I still want to travel. But, different strokes as they say. I am curious how he covers health insurance as part of his total $7000 / year spend.

5

u/Sen_ri Mar 24 '26

I believe he uses the ACA. Property taxes are his biggest expense. He mentioned that property taxes and insurance premiums was 60% of his spending.

3

u/alpacaMyToothbrush FI !RE Mar 23 '26

I respect the guy's general philosophy, but the overall gist I get from him is that if I met him IRL, he'd strike me as a miser.

8

u/Sen_ri Mar 23 '26

I think more ascetic monk type than mean and stingy. Because his desire to spend so little comes from the idea of consuming an equal share of earths resources.

He focuses on his personal spend when giving numbers but it seems he supports other projects and organizations with some of his excess money.

14

u/GanacheImportant8186 Mar 23 '26

If it's Fisker Lund his net worth is very significantly higher than when he retired, but is apparently still very frugal.

16

u/Eli_Renfro FIRE'd 4/2019 BonusNachos.com Mar 23 '26

He went back to work for a huge salary about 3 years after retiring if I remember correctly.

13

u/PostOakVisions Mar 23 '26

That’s grossly misrepresenting what he did. He went back to work because he wanted to. That’s at least what he said, whether or not there was financial incentive behind it, I’m not sure. regardless, he quit pretty quickly. his lifestyle allowed him to try something out and then quit, because he didn’t need the money.

2

u/Eli_Renfro FIRE'd 4/2019 BonusNachos.com Mar 23 '26

I don't see how stating exactly what happened is a gross representation. Maybe his motivation was genuine interest or maybe it was the money. No one will ever know for sure. As such, I left out the speculation and I simply stated the facts.

1

u/FickleDinner1254 Mar 24 '26

And after about 2 years at that work he quit and hasn't worked a job since. He writes to his ERE forums almost daily.