Jacob Lund Fisker

Apache is functioning normally

For over five years now, I’ve spent most of my waking hours reading and writing about money. I’ve learned a lot. Using this knowledge, I’ve been able to get out of debt, build savings, and even begin pursuing my passions. What’s next? As time passes, I find myself thinking more about financial independence and early retirement.

No surprise then that over the last couple of months I’ve been obsessed with Jacob Lund Fisker’s Early Retirement Extreme blog. And no surprise that my first book review since September is of Fisker’s book, also called Early Retirement Extreme.

Early Retirement Extreme

Imagine a personal-finance book written by a theoretical physicist. What would it be like? Full of formulas and figures, right? Well, that’s what you get with Early Retirement Extreme. But you get more, too.

Fisker’s story and style are unique. After graduating with a PhD in theoretical physics, he worked for five years as a research associate. For that five years, he saved 75% of his net (after tax) income. Fisker reached financial independence at 30 and then, at age 33, he retired. (How does Fisker define financial independence? By the time he was 30, he’d saved the equivalent of 25 years of living expenses. That’s a 25-year emergency fund.)

While many people think you need to earn big bucks to retire early, Fisker did it differently. Instead of boosting income, Fisker cut costs drastically. While drawing an average salary, he learned to live on less. Much less. He started to do things himself. (He wrote, edited, and published this book, for example.) His pre-retirement lifestyle and post-retirement lifestyle are essentially the same. Except now he doesn’t have to work.

Early Retirement Extreme feels like a book written by an engineer for other engineers. This isn’t a bad thing, but it is unique. Some people will love it; others will hate it.

Here’s a scan from page 111 to show what I mean:

While this sort of thing isn’t on every page, there’s still plenty of it in the book. Because Fisker is (or was) a theoretical physicist, his book is filled with formulas and figures. If this bugs you, Early Retirement Extreme probably isn’t a good choice. I found these passages amusing. Instead of letting the math intimidate me (my only college math course was behavioral statistics, and that was over twenty years ago), I glossed over it looking for the core concepts the book was trying to convey. (In the example above, “spend your time and energy on the things that will give you the biggest returns”.)

Note: Fisker notes that the book only has about twenty equations, and sixteen of them belong to one argument about investing. This is true. But Early Retirement Extreme does read like a textbook, and there’s other math, even when there aren’t complex calculations involved.

Fisker’s technical mind manifests itself in other ways. When writing about how to save money in the kitchen, for instance, he approaches it as an optimization problem. How do you choose what food to buy? Fisker writes, “The most optimal method is to shop for ingredients, and then, based on the ingredients one has available, determine a recipe.” In other words, start with what you have (or what’s on sale) and go from there. Learn to improvise. And optimally, you wouldn’t have a stovetop or a refrigerator. (You would have a slow cooker and a chest freezer, though.)

But Early Retirement Extreme is more than just a personal-finance book filled with formulas and figures. It’s also philosophical.

Philosophical Extreme

In many ways, Early Retirement Extreme is a book of philosophy. Fisker doesn’t set out to give you a step-by-step map to wealth; instead, he tries to give you the tools to draw your own map. He wants readers to think about their choices and about the world around them. He wants to challenge their assumptions about what’s financially feasible.

When I say this is a book of philosophy, I don’t mean that in some vague metaphorical sense. I meant it literally. To challenge his readers’ assumptions, Fisker begins the book by exploring Plato’s allegory of the cave.

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Plato’s allegory of the cave — like The Matrix for ancient Greeks

We’re like prisoners chained in a cave, Fisker says, except that we’re chained to our jobs, our expensive homes, the things we own. We don’t even realize there’s any other way to live. But it doesn’t have to be this way. “By taking the other end of the bargain, saving as much as other people are spending on wants, it’s possible to retire and live on invested savings after just five years of full-time work.”

Fisker notes that there are plenty of people who will dismiss this idea as crazy:

The most frequent objection to casting off the chains is that living on something corresponding to every third paycheck, or even every fourth paycheck ($6,000 to $10,000 a year), as opposed to living paycheck to paycheck, must be a boring life. Not knowing any better, I must admit that I started my own adventure with such assumptions.

[…]

As a lifelong consumer used to spending large amounts of money to obtain food, stuff, and entertainment, it’s hard to imagine how it’s possible to spend practically nothing on furniture, a few dollars on clothing, very little on food, almost nothing on transport, and generally less on rent/mortgage. However, it’s possible to live on a third or even a quarter of the median income, putting one solidly below the government defined poverty line, without living in austerity and eating grits.

This philosophical underpinning sets Early Retirement Extreme apart. The book (and the blog) are unlike any other financial material I’ve ever read. Yes, some books — including Your Money or Your Life or even my own Your Money: The Missing Manual — contain bits of philosophy, but not like this. At times, the philosophical bent is overwhelming.

Note: Think Early Retirement Extreme sounds too extreme? Check out these journals over at the ERE forums. Here’s where other people are documenting their experiments with this lifestyle.

Putting Theory into Practice

The first half of Early Retirement Extreme establishes a philosophical framework with which to evaluate your relationship to money. After he sets the stage, Fisker spends the last half of the book explaining how to put this theory into practice, how to work toward extreme early retirement.

In some ways, for instance, Fisker is like the opposite of Tim Ferriss. In The 4-Hour Workweek, you’ll remember, Ferriss advocated “outsourcing” as much of your life as possible in order to give yourself more time to do the things you want. Fisker thinks this is nuts.

“People spend eight hours a day for 30 years to buy electric can openers,” Fisker writes. (An electric can opener is one degree of outsourcing.) “The solution is to reverse the outsourcing of ordinary life skills and gradually insource skills that were previously acquired in the marketplace.” He urges readers to mend their own clothes, grow a garden, cook their own food, walk and bike for transportation, and so on.

Some parts of Early Retirement Extreme are brilliant. For instance, the six pages on “construction methods” (by which Fisker means using life skills to solve problems) are some of the best I’ve ever read about the value of doing things yourself. Fisker doesn’t actually tell the readers how to do anything; instead, he provides a framework for problem solving.

And I love the section on deciding which things to own. Fisker says that the stuff you buy should:

  • Have “appropriate quality” and a low lifetime cost.
  • Be durable.
  • Be easy to dispose of.
  • Be small and lightweight.
  • Be easy to make.
  • Be easy to service.

“For commonly used items,” Fisker writes, “a higher quality tends to pay off in the long run.” After years of frugality, I finally figured this out. Yes, it hurts to pay more for a quality item. But if it lasts, it’s worth it. (As Fisker notes, being willing to pay for quality is one of the differences between being frugal and cheap.)

Fisker also writes, “Only a fraction of the things we own contribute to our actual quality of life. These are the things we use on a daily basis.” Instead of owning lots of Stuff, why not focus on making sure the the things we use all the time are well made and a pleasure to use?

Note: My real millionaire next door is an example of someone who adheres closely to the lifestyle Fisker describes. Coincidence? Evidence that this works? Something else entirely?

Not Without Flaw

My chief complaint with Early Retirement Extreme is that the book could use an editor. Fisker writes well, but he tends to repeat himself at times. He uses long paragraphs. There are (minor) contradictions and typos here and there. An editor would help smooth some of these things — but an editor is anathema to Fisker’s philosophy.

Also, although Fisker writes with an authoritative and persuasive voice, I’m not convinced he’s always correct. (Fisker dismisses the need to cite his sources, but I think that makes the book weaker rather than stronger.)

The third chapter of Early Retirement Extreme, for instance, discusses “economic degrees of freedom” and includes a financial framework of Fisker’s own creation, which divides people into four categories:

  • The salary man — A wage earner with one source of income.
  • The working man — A freelancer or consultant with variable income.
  • The businessman — A business owner.
  • The Renaissance man — A generalist who makes a little money at many different things.

I’m sure these classifications make sense to Fisker, but they don’t make sense to me. I read this section several times and still the labels and differences between the groups seem arbitrary and not based on reality.

Despite my complaints — which are mostly about the book’s style, not its message — I loved Early Retirement Extreme. I don’t agree with everything, but I agree with much of it, and I admire the rest.

Early Retirement Extreme is about strategies, not tactics — it’s about the Big Picture instead of the day-to-day actions needed to retire early. As a result, some readers will be frustrated. But if you’re up to the challenge of filling in Fisker’s framework with your own details, this book could be a life changer.

Source: getrichslowly.org

Cashing in on the American Dream: How to retire at 35

All his life, Paul Terhorst wanted to be rich. Even in grade school, he looked forward to having a corporate job, to joining the world of big business. “I didn’t just dream about money and power and expense account living — I planned for it.” He grew up and made it happen.

He got his MBA from Stanford. He became a certified public accountant and joined a large accounting firm. At age 30, he became a partner in the company. He had “a huge office, a leather chair, and a view of a polluted river”. He’d achieved everything he’d always dreamed about.

But at age 33, while on a business trip to Europe, he overhead two guys talking about a friend who had retired early. Terhorst was intrigued. “I began toying with the notion that if I could come up with a way to live off what I already had, I’d never have to work again.”

It took him two years to figure everything out. But in 1984, at age 35, Terhorst made the leap. He retired. (And he’s been retired ever since.) In 1988 he published Cashing In on the American Dream to share his experience — and the experience of others who made an early exit from worklife to pursue their passions.

“We need to find new opportunities for sharp, hardworking people who leave the corporate structure,” he writes. “Up to now, those outlets have been second careers, the Peace Corps, turning a hobby into a business, and the like. Those outlets give you at least some money to live on. The route I describe in this book offers more freedom.”

It Takes Less Money Than You Think

The first part of Cashing In on the American Dream is devoted to Terhorst’s three-part formula for achieving early retirement:

  • Do your arithmetic, by which he means crunch the numbers to see how low you can trim your expenses and how much you need to have saved in order to cover your costs.
  • Do some soul-searching. Decide if early retirement is right for you. If so, what does it look like? How will you find meaning after work?
  • Do what you want. Terhorst advocates a life of “responsible pleasure”: Do what you love, but don’t spend a lot of money to make it happen.

It takes less money than you think to retire early. “Millions could retire right now,” Terhorst says. But many folks are bound by “golden handcuffs”. Their high incomes fund lavish lifestyles, which means they remain voluntarily shackled to their jobs.

In 1984, Terhorst believed you needed a net worth of $400,000 to $500,000 — which would be $972,000 to $1,216,000 today — to retire early. With this level of wealth, he thinks you could live well on $50 per day. (According to official government inflation data, $50 in 1984 is equivalent to $121.62 in 2018. That means Terhorst advocates spending roughly $44,000 per year.) If you opt for what he calls “bare-bones retirement” — what we might now call LeanFIRE — you can retire much sooner.

Early Retirement Extreme: The ten-year update

Today, I’m pleased to present a guest article from one of my favorite money bloggers of all time: Jacob Lund Fisker. Fisker founded Early Retirement Extreme in 2007. It quickly became an influential voice for the nascent FIRE movement. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that FIRE wouldn’t be what it is today with his work.

Fisker retired from blogging in 2011. Since then, he and I have exchanged long emails on sometimes arcane subjects. Occasionally I ask him for advice. Recently, I asked him if he’d be willing to update people on where he’s been and what he’s been doing for the past decade. He agreed.

Here, then, is Fisker’s story of life after Early Retirement Extreme (and extreme early retirement). Be warned: His story is not short.

Starting in 2007 (and largely finishing by 2011), I formalized a philosophical alternative to consumerism in the form of a 1000+ post blog and 100,000+ word book [J.D.’s review], which I mistakenly called “Early Retirement Extreme” (or ERE in acronym form). These days, I stick to the acronym form. 😛

Central to my philosophy was the renaissance ideal of spending your life mastering a productive level of competence in a broad range of subjects. This arsenal of “renaissance skills” would then be combined into a mutually reinforcing web-of-goals, which made living more interesting and balanced — but also more cost- and resource-efficient and resilient in the face of the growing complexities and uncertainties of the 21st century.

Being a theoretical physicist by training (and remaining one in spirit) compelled me to present all of this as a theory of everything, rather than the more typical format of a light non-fiction autobiography or overview. As I didn’t really figure on a general audience — it was fairly non-existent back in 2008 — that also meant using graphs and equations when applicable.

The benefit of that format was that others could use the ERE design principles to construct their own particular plan according to their own individual circumstances and goals instead of retracing the footsteps of one particular individual.

Retiring from blogging

Eventually, I considered the problem of “How to escape the earn-buy cycle in order to live a more interesting life” solved and sufficiently “communicated”. In 2011, I stopped blogging. I continued to follow the ERE principles in the spirit of the renaissance ideal with the goal of solving other big problems. Being financially independent (FI), I no longer require any compensation even if I still appreciate it — if nothing else than just to keep score or divert the lucre towards more useful purposes (e.g. supporting people on Kiva or Patreon).

Career workers who don’t know me typically ask me what I do for a living, expecting an answer in the form of a job title. (That tends to get awkward and I still don’t have a clever response.)

Similarly, people in the FIRE community (and the media that now covers it since they discovered it a couple of years ago) expect a curriculum vitae in the form of instagram-friendly bucket-list of accomplishments. However, following the systems-based web-of-goals approach, it’s really hard to answer that in a way that satisfies linear formats.

I follow many different leads and do many different things — often concurrently — and sometimes in ways where they combine and result in new, unexpected opportunities (the serendipity effect). It’s therefore difficult to summarize the last ten years of my life in chronological order, so let me instead attempt it as a “skill” or activity-based resume in no particular order.

This format makes more sense since the ERE strategy is to learn something and add value to the process and its environment, a side-effect of which is that I usually don’t have to pay to solve problems and that I sometimes get paid. As a consequence, my spending also remains ridiculously low. (I’ll get to that near the end of this article.)

I apologize that this is long and boring, but ten years is a long time and one can get a lot done in ten years — not all of which might be as interesting to the reader as it is or was to me. So, for the sake of completeness and in no particular order, and perhaps with the hope that I don’t have to write another autobiography for the next ten years, here’s a first-hand answer to the question: “Whatever happened to Jacob Lund Fisker?”