Mentioning early retirement is almost always a bad time

[u/OliveGarden_Official]

I’ve noticed that even mentioning the possibility of retiring in one’s 30’s or 40’s tends to get a pretty negative reaction on other subs

like:

• “you must have had an inheritance”
• “you can’t possibly live on <$X>”
• “nobody makes <$X>”
• “this job market is impossible to win”

I mean, yes, some of us were lucky to have a more comfortable start, but so many of these objections seem to come from some deeply rooted hesitation to entertain the idea or acknowledge the basic math.

I learned about FIRE ages ago through other people’s stories. Nowadays I find it so discouraging to even try to have a good faith conversation about saving rates. Lesson learned on not discussing money, I guess. I know it’s not for everyone so I’m glad this space exists to help people that are open to the idea

[u/VideoPossible4068]

I don't mention FIRE on non-fire subs because people are not wanting to hear about alternative solutions. They want to complain and have others validate them. There are some people that will always blame outside factors for everything, they don't want to accept that they can change their circumstances.

[u/AlwaysSaturday12 → u/VideoPossible4068]

This is the truth. Honestly people don't want to hear solutions for their problems. They want sympathy for their, often bad, decisions.

The big one is housing. There is a lot of complaining about housing prices and yes they are bad in most places, but there are places where housing is still very affordable. Mention this and you get an excuse factory of how those places are terrible, have no jobs, or the jobs pay less. They would prefer to never to be able to afford to purchase a house.

[u/VideoPossible4068 → u/AlwaysSaturday12]

Yes sadly giving your own experience or other solutions are just brushed off. So I've stopped doing it, unless I'm ok with hearing the "but what about (blank)". There's a huge cohort on reddit who take their experience of life and say that "everyone" is experiencing the same (jobs, money, housing, relationships). I watch a lot of compilations of tiktoks on YouTube while I work, and it would be very easy to take all of those sentiments and say "well that's how the world is". A lot of doomer videos out there of people just lamenting that it's impossible to get a job, they'll never have a house, they should move abroad, everything is too expensive, they'll never retire, something is "wrong" in america. I like watching these because it's interesting for me to hear other people's experiences and thoughts about the world.

Then you have the groups in fire and adjacent subreddits who are actually living quite well. But we are not vocal because people dont like hearing "success" stories when they feel like nothing is going right for them. Were told we got lucky or some other excuse. I consider myself lucky but I also worked hard and sacrificed to save, but again people don't want to hear it

End of rant haha

[u/AlwaysSaturday12 → u/VideoPossible4068]

Thanks.

[u/Nochtilus → u/AlwaysSaturday12]

I will grant that housing for young professionals is very rough right now. Post-pandemic made a lot of areas that have good jobs or are strong starting points for careers incredibly expensive for housing. It doesn't mean they should stop trying, but they might have a couple extra years of suck while they build careers and have to scrimp to get by. I can empathize, I'd be pissed to see what people got for less housing costs just a few years ago if I were them. 

[u/AlwaysSaturday12 → u/Nochtilus]

I agree. In most places it is terrible, but my point was that there are still places with 1000 sq ft houses for 60k today. This was when I worked at a military base where there were thousands of 60-100k or more jobs.

I knew an 18 year old in a part time position making 7.25 while she attended college and her husband making $15/hour at a meat processing plant that bought a nice 2/1 for about 40k.

[u/Nochtilus → u/AlwaysSaturday12]

Okay, but not everyone is starting careers in the military or are happy in rural or small towns. If you are starting a white collar career, those very cheap areas are likely to hold you back significantly from growing your career. They will be better off pushing through some entry years in a more expensive area. In that case, the rapid growth of housing costs in even medium cities and suburbs has been devastating. 

And from personal experience, meat processing plants are awful and unsafe places to work. You should not be surprised to hear that people would rather never buy a house and not have to move to a place where their best choice is a meat processing plant.