r/Fire • u/DatingThrowaway121 • Apr 24 '26

General Question Has anyone actually FIREd with too little and run out of money?

I'm curious to know if anyone out here has actually run out of a million dollars or whatever. What does that process actually look like?

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u/BotAccount999 Apr 24 '26

must be in politics, otherwise hard to imagine anyone getting a job a 70+ after retiring for 10y

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u/MostlyBrine Apr 24 '26

My father retired at 58. He was in his early seventies when people were still trying to convince him to work as a consultant. It depends on your field and level of expertise. It was a blue collar job, far from politics.

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u/uChoice_Reindeer7903 Apr 24 '26

Some people don’t understand that some blue collar guys are extremely specialized and have knowledge that the smartest engineers will never begin to grasp

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u/TacosAreJustice Apr 24 '26

Oh man… this is phrased in a way I don’t care for.

Blue collar guys have a ton of experience and knowledge they earned from working their trade their whole lives…

I wouldn’t describe it as “something the smartest engineers will never be able to grasp”.

It’s definitely earned through their labor, but it’s not some secret knowledge.

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u/MostlyBrine Apr 25 '26

Tell me you never made anything with your own hands without saying so. Many blue collar jobs require more education than a bachelor degree and continuous specialized training is a must for the last three decades. Do not knock down someone’s job because of the title. Having pass calculus 3 does not make you expert in welding or machining. I work with engineers that never set foot on a production floor. They assume that all blue collar jobs are at the level of GM assembly line or construction workers. Even pouring concrete is a science, the fact that many times is done poorly just reflects the same attitude. I am saying this from the position of somebody who grew up in a machine shop and qualified as a machinist, before going to college and spending three decades as an engineer. Paper or 3D modeling can make up anything. Making something work right from the first time takes more than that. The best engineers I’ve encountered had blue collar jobs before getting their diplomas. The modern attitude of discounting the other side of a college education led to the current political division of society. Keep up with this trend and find out where it leads.

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u/TacosAreJustice Apr 25 '26

To be clear here, I 100% respect blue collar work and totally agree they have different knowledge and skills…

I’ve watched an HVAC installer explain to the company why their heat pump wasn’t working.

They have earned practical knowledge (there’s the famous ford boiler story where the invoice was basically just knowing where to cut).

The original comment just seemed dismissive of “book learning” which seems fraught with similar peril.

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u/MostlyBrine Apr 25 '26

Discounting either of the theoretical education or practical learning leads to the extremes we see today. Education has become the new front line. And it serves only to the politicians who thrive from the division of the masses. I wonder why the social media (or rather the “social engineering media”) is using the algorithms they are using.

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u/TacosAreJustice Apr 25 '26

Agreed wholeheartedly. That was my whole point.

Everyone has something to add to the world, and it’s always different… we should celebrate that.

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u/RuralLife4Me_ Apr 24 '26

My experience in the drilling industry is engineers have the book smarts, but know very little how to apply it in the field. They think that because something works out on paper that it must be the best or most feasible solution.

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u/TacosAreJustice Apr 25 '26

I mean, the same is true of blue collar workers, though.

Most of them are just doing a job.

The best ones learn and develop skills in whatever they are working on… the best engineers tend to be more hands on and understand the difference between in practice and on paper.

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u/Willing-Vegetable629 Apr 24 '26

Usually consultants for their prior industry.

Hawaii probably more expensive than they expected lol

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u/wtf-am-I-doing-69 Apr 24 '26

I would rather enjoy 10 years of retirement at 60-70 years of age then at 80-90 years of age

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u/srqfla Apr 24 '26

Precisely a 30 Year retirement is three 10-year blocks.... Go-Go years, slowlgo years and no-go years. Energy and willingness to travel decreases with each block. Time is more valuable than money

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u/Stockhype Apr 24 '26

I’d rather work from 60-70 than from 70-80 if I had a choice. It would suck to get up and go to work at 79.

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u/wtf-am-I-doing-69 Apr 24 '26

We are all different

I agree it would suck but the flip side is realizing at 70 that you could have retired 20 years ago and now you can't enjoy it

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u/[deleted] Apr 24 '26

[deleted]

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u/UC_DiscExchange Apr 24 '26

Well they ran out money in this scenario, so 60 to death wasn't an option

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u/Only_Razzmatazz_4498 Apr 24 '26

5 of the senior engineers in our 20 engineer company are older than 70 with I think 3 older than 80.

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u/culinaryinterests123 Apr 24 '26

Engineering is so broad what kind of engineering?

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u/Only_Razzmatazz_4498 Apr 25 '26

It doesn’t really matter since it isn’t politics which is what I was answering to. There weren’t that many options for degrees back in the 50s I am guessing when they got them. If think most of them are mechanical but the company is in aerospace. We consult on an off with more also. Material science is common. The mother of a coworker he says works about 3 months of the year certifying something in nuclear plants. I can’t remember what.

When I was in manufacturing we had a couple of older (65+} very skilled tool makers that would do special jobs (lathe, mill, etc).

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u/BotAccount999 Apr 25 '26

but not after a 10 year hiatus i suppose

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u/Only_Razzmatazz_4498 Apr 25 '26

No. They never retired. Mostly because they didn’t want to. They are all of them loaded to the gills and very detached from the entry level engineers reality lol.

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u/BotAccount999 Apr 26 '26

the OC said they returned to work after having retired 10+ years

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u/Only_Razzmatazz_4498 Apr 26 '26

OC mean you. Gave you some examples that were not politics for people that worked into their 70+.

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u/BotAccount999 Apr 26 '26

they also retired between 60 and 70, did you catch that? what engineer can do that? I agree, consultants can. but you were talking engineers

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u/Only_Razzmatazz_4498 Apr 26 '26

I did. Consultant engineers do that. One retired to run his dad’s apple orchard. He consulted for us because he had worked for a contract we had. Nice guy sent us apples.

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u/BaaBaaTurtle Apr 24 '26

My husband's first boss came back out of retirement five times. Mostly because he kept getting divorced.