turn a year or two of my life into the roughly 40k it’d take to retire on a couple acres, a garden, and a yurt.
Have you actually done the calculations that convince you you could retire on $40k? Because that seems awfully optimistic to me.
Let’s make the following optimistic assumptions: (1) You will be able to invest the money so that it grows reliably at 4% over inflation. (2) You will only need the money to last you for 25 years (e.g., because after that some rich family member will die and leave you a big pile of money. Or because after that you will die and not care any more). Then, taking inflation to be zero for convenience (the alternative is to inflation-adjust all the numbers, and because of the form of assumption 1 this is equivalent but uglier), if my scribblings are correct then you can afford to spend about $2500/year.
Living on $2500/year in the US seems really, really tough.
And that’s assuming none of the $40k actually needs to be spent on the acres, the garden, and the yurt.
The $40k was more roughly the number I had in mind for getting set up somewhere. Land, yurt, gardening tools, and food expenses for a year or two. My ongoing costs would be property taxes, food costs if gardening doesn’t work out, and water/electricity (or budget for upkeep/maintenance/replacement on my own systems).
Gardening can be an income stream, too—selling fresh vegetables at a farmer’s market (or effective income stream in offsetting food costs). But that’s probably not wise to count on—it keeps my position dependent on not failing at gardening.
It’s really getting the living expenses down that’s important, though. If I can meet my needs cheaply enough, then it’s really not that big of a deal if I have to pick up a shitty job later.
The research I’ve done also suggests that it’s fairly straightforward to get on disability. That would more than cover incidental expenses at $500/month.
Anyhow, I kind of rambled for this, but that’s mostly because it’s not particularly thoroughly thought out. It’s more out of a suspicion that it takes much less money to live a happy life than most Americans think it takes, and that the common error mode is spending too much time making money to try to fulfill your needs, rather than simply fulfilling your needs with more effort and less money.
Have you actually done the calculations that convince you you could retire on $40k? Because that seems awfully optimistic to me.
Let’s make the following optimistic assumptions: (1) You will be able to invest the money so that it grows reliably at 4% over inflation. (2) You will only need the money to last you for 25 years (e.g., because after that some rich family member will die and leave you a big pile of money. Or because after that you will die and not care any more). Then, taking inflation to be zero for convenience (the alternative is to inflation-adjust all the numbers, and because of the form of assumption 1 this is equivalent but uglier), if my scribblings are correct then you can afford to spend about $2500/year.
Living on $2500/year in the US seems really, really tough.
And that’s assuming none of the $40k actually needs to be spent on the acres, the garden, and the yurt.
The $40k was more roughly the number I had in mind for getting set up somewhere. Land, yurt, gardening tools, and food expenses for a year or two. My ongoing costs would be property taxes, food costs if gardening doesn’t work out, and water/electricity (or budget for upkeep/maintenance/replacement on my own systems).
Gardening can be an income stream, too—selling fresh vegetables at a farmer’s market (or effective income stream in offsetting food costs). But that’s probably not wise to count on—it keeps my position dependent on not failing at gardening.
It’s really getting the living expenses down that’s important, though. If I can meet my needs cheaply enough, then it’s really not that big of a deal if I have to pick up a shitty job later.
The research I’ve done also suggests that it’s fairly straightforward to get on disability. That would more than cover incidental expenses at $500/month.
Anyhow, I kind of rambled for this, but that’s mostly because it’s not particularly thoroughly thought out. It’s more out of a suspicion that it takes much less money to live a happy life than most Americans think it takes, and that the common error mode is spending too much time making money to try to fulfill your needs, rather than simply fulfilling your needs with more effort and less money.